From social programs to irreversible rights
Since the beginning of her administration, the head of government, Claudia Sheinbaum, decided to delete the “Talented Children” program, which was one of the banners of Miguel Ángel Mancera –his predecessor– to later implement her own scholarship program aimed at anyone child who studies in public school at the basic level.
One of his main justifications for the implementation of “My Scholarship to Start”, which is also part of his speech, every time he “shows off” his programs in other entities of the country or in his government reports, is that all the children of Mexico City have the right to receive support and that the talented children program only caused a problem that could even fall into a matter of discrimination.
The program was announced in mid-2019, but it went into operation on September 1 of that same year with a register of 1.1 million children. Initially, between 330 and 400 pesos per month were distributed to the beneficiaries.
After the 2021 elections, when the political map of Mexico City was split in two, the capital’s government changed its institutional image to standardize social programs with those of the federal government, thus changing it to “Well-being for boys and girls, My Scholarship to Start” which included an exchange of cards.
In that same year, the school scholarship program was embroiled in controversy after a public event to hand out cards to children in basic education schools, Luis Humberto Fernandezhead of the federal educational authority, called this program the “Claudia card”, which even led to complaints against the capital’s president before the electoral bodies for personalized promotion.
In 2022, Claudia Sheinbaum decided to send a bill to the capital’s congress to elevate the scholarship program to constitutional status, which was approved in November of this year. Now Sheinbaum, she also wants the free internet to be a right for the inhabitants of Mexico City.
