President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday that she filed a complaint against the man who groped her and tried to kiss her while she greeted people on the street, a day after a video of the incident went viral.
Sheinbaum said in her regular morning news conference that the incident was a crime, adding that she, like other women in Mexico, has experienced similar situations before.
“If they do this to the president, what will happen to all the young women in our country?” she said.
Video of the incident quickly went viral on the Internet before being removed by some accounts, underscoring for many in Mexico the insecurity that women face in a country steeped in machismo and gender violence.
The images have also raised questions about the president’s security team. Like her predecessor and political mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, she travels with minimal security and makes herself widely available to the public, even wading into crowds.
Sheinbaum said Wednesday that he did not plan to change that practice, saying “we can’t be away from people.”
The incident occurred on Tuesday in the historic center of the capital when the president was making the short walk from the National Palace to the Ministry of Education.
-With information from Reuters.
