Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has called for sexual harassment to be made a crime nationwide after being groped on the street while greeting supporters near the presidential palace in Mexico City.
Sheinbaum, 63, said on Wednesday that she had pressed charges against the man and would review nationwide legislation on sexual harassment following the attack by a drunk man who put his arm around her shoulder, and with the other hand touched her hip and chest, while attempting to kiss her neck.
Mexico’s first woman president removed the man’s hands before a member of her staff stepped between them. The president’s security detail did not appear to be nearby at the moment of the attack, which was caught on camera.
The man was later arrested.
“My thinking is: If I don’t file a complaint, what becomes of other Mexican women? If this happens to the president, what will happen to all the women in our country?” Sheinbaum told her regular morning news conference on Wednesday.
In a post on social media, the president said the attack was “something that many women experience in the country and in the world”.
Translation: I filed a complaint for the harassment episode that I experienced yesterday in Mexico City. It must be clear that, beyond being president, this is something that many women experience in the country and in the world; no one can violate our body and personal space. We will review the legislation so that this crime is punishable in all 32 states.
Sheinbaum explained that the incident occurred when she and her team had decided to walk from the National Palace to the Education Ministry to save time. She said they could walk the route in five minutes, rather than taking a 20-minute car ride.
She also called on states across Mexico to look at their laws and procedures to make it easier for women to report such assaults and said Mexicans needed to hear a “loud and clear, no, women’s personal space must not be violated”.
Mexico’s 32 states and Mexico City, which is a federal entity, all have their own criminal codes, and not all states consider sexual harassment a crime.
“It should be a criminal offence, and we are going to launch a campaign,” Sheinbaum said, adding that she had suffered similar attacks in her youth.
The incident has put the focus on Mexico’s troubling record on women’s safety, with sexual harassment commonplace and rights groups warning of a femicide crisis, and the United Nations reporting that an average of 10 women are murdered every day in the country.
About 70 percent of Mexican women aged 15 and over will also experience at least one incident of sexual harassment in their lives, according to the UN.
The attack also focused criticism on Sheinbaum’s security detail and on her insistence on maintaining a degree of intimacy with the public, despite Mexican politicians regularly being a target of cartel violence.
But Sheinbaum dismissed any suggestion that she would increase her security or change how she interacts with people following the incident.
At nationwide rallies in September to mark her first year in power, the president allowed supporters to embrace her and take selfies.
