Claudia Sheinbaum, the president of Mexico, has been groped by a man as she mingled with citizens on the streets of Mexico City, raising questions about the lack of presidential security and the level of sexual harassment faced by the country’s women.
A video of the incident on Tuesday shows a visibly drunk man trying to kiss the president on the neck and embrace her from behind, as she removes his hands and turns to face him, before a government official steps in and places himself between them.
As the man is steered away, Sheinbaum can be seen smiling stiffly and saying: “Don’t worry.”
State police later confirmed that the man had been arrested, and Sheinbaum said on Wednesday she would press charges.
“This is something I experienced as a woman, but it is something that all women in our country experience,” said Sheinbaum in her daily press conference. “If I do not file a complaint, where does that leave all Mexican women? If they do this to the president, what happens to all the other women in the country?”
Commentators said the incident showed that no woman was immune to sexual harassment in Mexico.
“Even if you’re the president, any guy believes he has the right to touch you,” said Catalina Ruiz-Navarro, a journalist for the feminist outlet Volcánicas. “When they ask what the patriarchy is – this is it.”
But the incident also highlighted the broader security risk that Sheinbaum faces on the street, given that her security detail was not clearly visible in the video and it took seconds for anyone to intervene.
It comes just days after Carlos Alberto Manzo RodrĂguez, a popular mayor, was killed at the Day of the Dead celebrations in Uruapan, in the state of Michoacán, by a gunman who shot him seven times at close range before being killed himself.
In the months prior, Manzo RodrĂguez had publicly appealed to Sheinbaum on social media for help to confront criminal groups in the region.
Manzo RodrĂguez was only the latest official to be killed in Mexico, where 37 candidates were killed on the campaign trail before the election in June 2024, and another 10 municipal presidents have been killed since Sheinbaum’s government began on 1 October.
Even though it is local authorities that are most frequently targeted in Mexico, high-level officials are not exempt from risk.
In 1994, the presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta was gunned down at a rally in the border city of Tijuana. More recently, in 2020, the Jalisco cartel tried to assassinate Omar GarcĂa Harfuch, Sheinbaum’s current security minister, riddling his convoy with bullets in the middle of Mexico City.
Sheinbaum herself had a security scare last year while campaigning in the state of Chiapas, when masked men stopped her vehicle to ask her to address the violence in the state, before letting her move on.
Nonetheless, Sheinbaum has kept the habit of her popular predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who mingled with crowds and preferred a lighter degree of security, and said that she would not be changing her security arrangements.
“We cannot distance ourselves from the people,” said Sheinbaum. “That would be to deny where we come from and who we are.”
“Hopefully [the presidency will press charges], and the president will send a clear message: no man has the right to kiss or touch a woman without her consent,” wrote Alejandra Escobar, editorial director of Etcétera, a Mexican magazine, on X. “May this also serve as an example for [her assistants]: it is not acceptable for her to be so exposed.”
