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The book that last week went on sale, authored by President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, recovers an almost forgotten way of narrating: the travel diary. After a brief and measured autobiographical entry, Dr. Sheinbaum recounts, almost day by day, the months of the transition. The diary begins on June 2, 2024, when the INE gave the results of the resounding electoral victory that the President attributes to three main elements: “The first: the achievements of the six-year term of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and the revolution of consciences that awakened in millions of people. The second: that I always defended with clarity and conviction the need to continue and advance with the transformation project that the people desired and supported. And the third, although no less important, time of women was not just a slogan, but part of a recognition by society and a real empowerment of women.”
But it is on June 10 when what the book wants to tell really begins: that day Sheinbaum and AMLO ate together at the National Palace, and agreed to promote judicial reform and tour the country together, one to say goodbye and the other to thank, and at the same time take note of the projects to be concluded in the six-year term that would soon begin.
And that is what the newspaper tells: the trip that marks a unique event in the life of Mexico: “In the past (in the PRI era), the president-elect used to mark distance from his predecessor, chart a new course. This time it was not like that, it was not necessary. Because we are part of the same transformation project.” The newspaper portrays the country and its beauty, also its problems, its pending issues and, above all, “the generosity and enthusiasm with which people received us everywhere.”
The tour began in Pasta de Conchos, an emblematic mine in the Coahuila Coal Basin, where a terrible accident occurred in 2006 whose “management” revealed the rapacity of the Grupo México company and the insensitivity and selfishness of Vicente Fox and Humberto Moreira, at the time president of the Republic and governor of Coahuila, respectively. I am not going to summarize what Sheinbaum wrote about that emotional day because I think it has to be read directly. Yes, note the enormously symbolic nature of the start of the tour. By August 2025, the bodies of 23 miners had been rescued.
Like every travel diary, Sheinbaum’s is landscape and describes, in simple and emotional language, the natural beauty of Mexico, from the north to the south, from the Pacific to the Gulf. Also, the point-by-point account of the emblematic works of the AMLO administration to which Sheinbaum would have to give continuity or conclusion: the Isthmus railway, the Dos Bocas refinery, the Mayan Train. In addition to the large projects, they also jointly launched justice plans for indigenous peoples, agreeing to the continuity of programs such as Sowing Life and Young People Building the Future. The newspaper ends by reproducing Sheinbaum’s inauguration speech on October 1, and a brief reflection on what it means that a left-wing woman has become President. I do not advance anything about those two pages so that they can be read as they are written, naturally and fluently, like the entire book, enjoyable, accessible and illustrative. As a historian, I consider that this book, like Thank youby AMLO, is an invaluable primary source for writing, not now, the history of #4T. I conclude: I understand that the book is also a weapon of defense against an extreme right that, feeling sheltered by very dangerous and aggressive external agents, has made its hate campaign against President Sheinbaum and former President AMLO increasingly more virulent, even seeking to separate them, or separate the movement into two irreconcilable groups. Our President makes it very clear to you that this is not going to happen.
Final note: among the many timely digressions, there is one that I want to highlight. Our President says: “On this trip I spoke with the president about my decision not to invite the king of Spain to my inauguration. He responded that it was not necessary for me to accept the disagreements that he had had with the Spanish crown. I told him that, firstly, I agreed with the proposal that he had made to the king, and secondly, that no president should ignore the fact that a ruler or head of state of another country treats a president with disdain, and even less so someone like him, so deeply loved by his people. The offense of the king of Spain was not only against the head of the Executive, which was already unacceptable, but also against the people of Mexico.”
