Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday that she has filed a criminal complaint against a man who was filmed groping and trying to kiss her.
The incident occurred on Tuesday while Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first female president, was walking near the presidential palace in Mexico City towards the Education Ministry, stopping to shake hands and take pictures with people.
According to videos on social media, the man approached her from behind before putting his arm around her shoulder. He then touched her chest and hip with his other hand while trying to kiss her.
Sheinbaum’s security team then intervened and removed the man, who appeared to be intoxicated.
“This person approached me completely drunk, I don’t know if he was on drugs,” the president said on Wednesday morning. “It wasn’t until I saw the videos that I realized what had really happened.”
Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada said the man has been arrested.
What else did Sheinbaum say about the groping incident?
During a press conference on Wednesday, Sheinbaum said she had decided to press charges against the man after learning that he had continued to harass other women after groping her.
“No man has the right to violate that space,” she said.
“My view is, if I don’t file a complaint, what will happen to other Mexican women? If they do this to the president, what will happen to all women in our country?” Sheinbaum said.
“I decided to press charges because this is something that I experienced as a woman, but that we as women experience in our country,” she said. “I have experienced it before, when I wasn’t president, when I was a student.”
Sheinbaum also called for sexual harassment and groping to be made a “criminal offense in all states.”
Mexico is made up of 31 federal states, as well as the district of Mexico City. Each has its own criminal code, and sexual harassment is not penalized in all of them. But such behavior is a criminal offense in Mexico City.
What has been the reaction to the incident?
Sheinbaum’s security detail has come in for criticism following the incident.
Like her predecessor and political mentor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, she prefers to travel with minimal security arrangements. She also makes herself available to the public, often greeting people in crowds.
During her press conference, Sheinbaum said she has no intention of changing that approach. “We have to be close to the people,” she said.
The incident has also highlighted “macho” attitudes in Mexico, where UN women estimates that 70% of women aged 15 and older have been sexually harassed at least once.
Mayor Brugada referenced Sheinbaum’s own words when she was elected, when she said that her election victory meant that “all women” were coming to power.
This was “not a slogan,” Brugada said, but “a commitment to not look the other way, to not allow misogyny to continue to be veiled in habits, to not accept a single additional humiliation, not another abuse, not a single femicide more.”
In Mexico, around 10 women and girls are killed every day by their partners or relatives, the UN says citing government data.
Edited by: Zac Crellin
