Women in the Vanguard
Also in this edition: The biggest investors. Poniatowska on human rights at the World Cup. A call for solidarity with Cuba. Windows to the world in Wirikuta.
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Sheinbaum: Equality Is Built Every Day
The election of a woman to the presidency with a clearly feminist government agenda, the growing participation of women in high-level positions across the three branches of government, and the implementation of social programs specifically aimed at women have contributed to the dignity, empowerment, and exercise of gender rights in Mexico. At the same time, disappearances and femicides persist, and there is still a long road ahead to close the gap between rhetoric and reality.
“For a long time, the history of our country was told as if it had been built only by men,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said this week. “At every stage of our history, women have been present: caring, organizing, resisting, fighting, and also defending the independence, sovereignty, and justice of our beloved Mexico.”
UN Women reports that Mexico has achieved gender parity in both the federal and local legislative branches. In addition, 13 states are now governed by women, almost double the number in 2018. These advances have been accompanied by significant legal and institutional reforms, including the classification of different forms of violence, such as digital and political violence, based on gender.
Sheinbaum acknowledges that despite the “many advances” the country has made in this area, “there is still more to do; how far we’ve come is not enough.” Women, she says, “still need greater protection from the state and progress in their economic autonomy.”
Women’s rights organizations argue that everyday violence, including abuse, rape, and murder, remain at unacceptable levels, that crimes against women continue to go unpunished, and that thousands of women are still missing. Groups of relatives searching for disappeared persons, such as Guerreros Buscadores de Jalisco and Solecito de Veracruz, as well as feminist organizations like Fondo Semillas and Brujas del Mar, have kept pressure on the authorities and—together with those who came before them—have largely driven the progress achieved to date.
Although femicides have declined in the country, the National Citizen Observatory on Femicide notes that only between 25 and 27 percent of violent deaths of women are investigated as femicides.
Despite advances in regulations and public policy, UN Women states that “significant challenges remain to achieve substantive equality.” In Mexico, only 13.1 percent of women who experienced physical or sexual violence from their partner filed a complaint with authorities, as fear, the risk of stigmatization, revictimization, and institutional mistrust persist.
Ninety percent of the countries worldwide have strengthened their legislation to confront violence against women, but gaps in effective enforcement remain, according to the United Nations. In Latin America and the Caribbean, 20 countries have classified femicide as a crime, and in Mexico this legal category is recognized in all states. However, UN Women warns that in 54 percent of countries rape is still not determined on the basis of consent.
Internationally, the political and media advance of the right wing constitutes the main threat of regression in the reality that women face every day. “The time has come to recognize that gender inequality is the greatest human rights challenge of our time and that promoting equality is one of the most powerful drivers of sustainable development and peace,” writes UN Secretary-General António Guterres. In the pages of La Jornada, he details eight measures for a more equal world.
The advances and achievements of women, such as the right to vote, the right to make decisions about their own bodies, and the fight for economic and social equality, are the result of a long history of collective struggles. International Women’s Day was initially promoted by socialist and labor women in the United States in 1910. It was also celebrated in recognition of the long struggle for voting rights in England and was first officially declared by Lenin to honor the role of women in the Russian Revolution. It wasn’t until 1975 that the UN officially designated March 8 as International Women’s Day, notes English writer Jeanette Winterson, emphasizing that “all human life begins with a woman.”
The Quote:
"We want to be alive, free, and without fear.”
—Slogan used in March 8th Marches
In Case You Missed It
◻️ The biggest investors. In 2025, remittances from Mexicans abroad remained the main source of funds for the Mexican economy, totaling $61.791 billion USD. Although remittances experienced their first decline in more than a decade, they still surpass the sums provided by the agri-food sector, foreign direct investment, international tourism, and oil exports.
◻️ Homicides drop 44 percent. Between October 2024 and last February, homicides in Mexico decreased by 44 percent, and 46,400 people were arrested for high-impact crimes. Authorities also seized 24,000 firearms and confiscated 346 tons of drugs. This month, the government announced that additional resources will be allocated to the 61 most violent municipalities in Mexico for social programs and infrastructure.
◻️ Human rights at the World Cup, by Elena Poniatowska. The World Cup offers Mexico City an opportunity to show that it is a cutting-edge city in terms of human rights, explained the director of the Mexico City Human Rights Commission to Poniatowska. “Here, abortion is legal, the rights of LGBTQ+ people are protected, and many more individual rights are safeguarded,” said María Dolores González Sarabia.
◻️ More of the same, but worse. U.S. President Donald Trump called on his allies in Latin America to launch a new war on drugs. According to Julio Hernández, Trump’s words at the first “Shield of the Americas” meeting —labeling Mexico as the ‘epicenter’ of cartels in the hemisphere— are part of his plan to “prepare the ground and organize structures aimed at overthrowing the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum.”
◻️ Millions of deaths from U.S. sanctions: Mearsheimer. “The amount of murder and mayhem that we have created around the world is just unbelievable,” said the renowned expert, citing an estimate of 38 million deaths from U.S. economic sanctions between 1971 and 2021. "If you think about the consequences of the Iraq war, what we do in places like Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, you understand we're using this tremendous economic leverage we have to basically starve people, to make them suffer, to inflict great punishment on them so that they'll rise up against their governments.”
◻️ Call for solidarity with Cuba. Hundreds of artists, writers, and journalists in Mexico declared this week: "We call for solidarity with the Cuban people and for an end to arrogant and aggressive unilateralism. We support all governmental or citizen actions undertaken to protect the well-being, integrity, and human dignity in Cuba." Signatories include Laura Esquivel, Carmen Lira Saade, Elena Poniatowska, Jesusa Rodríguez, and Laura Restrepo.
◻️ China-U.S. confrontation “harms the world.” On the eve of Trump’s planned visit to China at the end of March, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated that neither China nor the United States can change the other, “but we can change the way we coexist.” Wang emphasized that China does not accept “the logic that the world can be run by great powers.” On the international stage, regardless of how the situation develops or the level of development the nation reaches, China “will never seek hegemony or expansion,” he stressed.
◻️ Glimpses of the Wirikuta world. “We are born from and are a musical vibrational frequency that renews itself endlessly. Water is the vital essence of the earth, and from the ocean emerges a serpent of life that illuminates the world in Wirikuta,” writes La Jornada Ecológica in its issue dedicated to “Wirikuta: Cradle of Community Resistance and Spiritual Integrity.”
📚 What We Are Reading
How to Fight the Empire - Arundhati Roy
Edited by David Brooks and Jim Cason in the United States, Tania Molina Ramírez in Mexico City, of La Jornada, and Elizabeth Coll in Tokyo, under the direction of Carmen Lira Saade and Guillermina Alvarez. More information.