For this reason, Mrs. Delfina cries when she hears the Pilares Monumental Orchestra sing a brief part of “Las Golondrinas,” which she mixes with “Cielito Lindo.” Sara, 70, also feels sad about the six-year term that is ending, but says that, at the same time, she is excited because a woman will govern the country. “I had not imagined it, but it happened and, from now on, we are going to have more female presidents,” she confides. So when Sheinbaum leaves the National Palace to broadcast his message in the Zócalo, Sara bursts into joy, cheers and applause. “After many years of struggle that we have all given,” she adds.
On the other side of the Zócalo, where the orchestra can barely be heard, a woman complains because she says that she has been asked to arrive since eight in the morning to occupy a place a few meters from the flagpole. She says that they did not give her a choice, that she tends a stall on one of the main streets of the Historic Center, that to keep it she had to be there and that she did not vote for Claudia Sheinbaum and that she does not believe in the workshop, that she only noticed an increase in insecurity, a topic that the president has left until point 100 and to which she has dedicated just a few words.
The president has returned to the path of her predecessor, celebrating the reform of the Judiciary and leaving at the end, in commitment number 100, the security of the country. He supports the consolidation of the National Guard and states that it will create a national intelligence system. “The supreme commander of the Armed Forces is a civilian and she is a woman, and we will never give an order to repress the people of Mexico,” he emphasizes, but does not mention more about public security at the hands of the Army. Here other sad eyes appear. Those of people who do not see a change in the first president. “What a bitter feeling,” says Adriana Torres, 38 years old, originally from Puebla.
The hope for a better future
A few meters away, Angélica and her daughter do not stop hugging each other, at times they stick cheek to cheek. Both say that it was a good day, that Sheinbaum “brings the desire,” that no one forced them to go and that they did not imagine one day seeing a woman become president. Angélica is 52 years old, Pamela, her daughter, is 26 and pregnant. He will have a girl.
(Photo: Carl de Souza/AFP)
Pamela says that she voted for the Morenista because she wants a better future for her daughter and that she believes that a president can give it to her. Although Sheinbaum has avoided at all costs touching on the topic of the missing in his speech. Despite this, Pamela’s response is repeated on several occasions among the women who are in the Zócalo, many of them with children in their arms, breastfeeding in the middle of a public square – something that until a few years ago could have been harshly criticized – or hugged But it is true that Sheinbaum has come to govern a country where some men refuse to break with archetypes.
A group of 10 plays a kind of matatena in the middle of the Zócalo square, five of them are near a board with coins thrown as a bet. They have made the square another stage. They don’t listen to the 100 points, they talk loudly, shout and throw tantrums when they lose and when one of the firecrackers thrown into the air explodes very close to their ears. They don’t care that a woman now rules them. They are there because they have been ordered to monitor the merchants they have taken as carriers and this game in betting mode is just a kind of signal so that the vendors know that they are there, says María, one of the assistants and who has asked to change his name for this text.
María studied communication and a master’s degree in education. But she says that she has never been able to find a job in the media or as a teacher and that she hopes that now, in the new six-year term, with a woman at the center, she can leave the jeans stand that she runs a few blocks from the square.
López Obrador and Claudia Sheinbaum governed closely during the last six-year term, geographically separated only by a corner. The founder of Morena has promised that he will leave politics, which has laid the foundations for him. He doesn’t want to be a shadow, but that seems inevitable. The promise of continuity is largely responsible for the triumph that brought Sheinbaum to the presidency. They have walked together – on the political path – in the last 30 years, Andrés Manuel was no longer physically there yesterday raising Sheinbaum’s hand in the Zócalo. Behind his actions there will always be the doubt – typical of machismo – of whether or not it will be a legitimate act by Sheinbaum or whether it is a legitimate act by Obradorism. But yesterday thousands of people already applauded Sheinbaum and went from the classic “It’s an honor to be with Obrador!” to the new slogan “It is an honor to be with Claudia today!”
