03 - Mexico City Politics

 03 - Mexico City Politics

On Tuesday Claudia Sheinbaum took office as President of Mexico, the first woman and Jewish person to hold the nation's highest office, an achievement that the United States has yet to equal.  She vowed to continue the progressive policies of her predecessor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, which made him Mexico's most popular leader in decades.  The popularity of those policies gave Sheinbaum the greatest electoral majority of any candidate since the end of the corporatist rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which has now virtually disappeared.

Speaking to an enormous crowd in the Zocalo, Mexico City's central plaza, Sheinbaum made a series of 100 commitments that she pledged to fulfill during her six-year administration.  Among them:

"The neoliberal model that did so much damage to Mexico won't return."
"A government without luxuries and without privileges will continue."
"The state - the CFE - will produce at least 54% of [electricity] and 46% [will come from] private generation."  By the end of her term 45% of power will be renewable energy.
"We will build at least one million homes, with 450,000 low-cost loans for home improvement."
"We will gradually move toward the 40-hour week."
"Access to water will be a priority for our government. ... Water belongs to the nation."

Unnoted in the U.S. media, however, was another historic electoral first.  The same June vote that elected Sheinbaum also elected Clara Brugada the new mayor (called chief of government) in Mexico City.  Both Sheinbaum and Lopez Obrador were mayors of the city as well, which has been the bastion of the left in Mexican politics.  While there is no guarantee that Brugada will make the same step, and become Mexico's second woman president, it is very possible.

Brugada comes from Ixtapalapa, a borough or municipality within Mexico City that was originally a peninsula between the lakes of Xochimilco and Texcoco.  Xochimilco still exists, in a much diminished and endangered state, but Texcoco was filled in and became the site of settlements of poor migrants arriving from the south, looking for work.  It has suffered enormous problems of water scarcity, while at the same time the city treated it as an easy site for trash dumps.

Most of the borough's residents come from the indigenous towns in states like Oaxaca and Guerrero.  Many continue to speak their original languages and adhere to their communities' cultural traditions, giving Ixtapalapa itself a vibrant cultural life. Because it is also a city of struggle, Brugada came into politics as a neighborhood activist, first in the Unión de Colonos de San Miguel Teotongo, or the Union of Colonos (or land occupiers) of San Miguel Teotongo, and later with other community-based social movements.  

After being elected Ixtapalapa's mayor, Brugada used her political skills and training as an economist it to win basic services for its residents, 44% of whom live below Mexico's poverty line.  She was elected Ixtapalapa mayor three times, first with the former left Party of the Democratic Revolution, and then with the Movement for National Regeneration (Morena) after it's founding by Lopez Obrador and other left activists.

One of the most visible symbols of her time in office has been the creation of 12 community cultural centers, called Utopias (Units of Transformation and Organization for Inclusion and Social Harmony), where people have access to artistic and cultural activities and education.  Many include sanctuaries (Houses of Evergreens) for women, day care centers for seniors, Hummingbird Centers to help young people kick drug addiction, and service centers for disabled people.  Their goal is to increase the participation of residents in local government, and Brugada's administration decentralized of many of its functions to make participation meaningful.

Her advisor Rocio Lombera says "the Iztapalapa municipality is a movement made government, a self-government of social movements."  As Mexico City mayor Brugada appointed a majority of women to her municipal cabinet, and she, Lombrera and others continue to live in Ixtapalapa.  They have promised to create 100 more Utopias in Mexico City's 15 other boroughs.

Mexico as a whole has enormous problems of water scarcity, affecting especially the enormous metropolis of Mexico City.  As mayor, Brugada has created a city water secretariat, will expand the capture of rainwater, and plans to spend billions of pesos to rebuild the city's 11 other water sources. Many residents, especially in Ixtapalapa, still have no running water and get it from trucks called pipas.   

I had the chance to photograph and speak with Clara Brugada in 2005, in her office as a newly elected deputy in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies.  Although I was not in Mexico City at the swearing-in ceremony for Claudia Sheinbaum, I was in the Zocalo the day Lopez Obrador took office.  These photographs, one of Brugada and the rest taken in 2018's historic inauguration, show the political excitement of that moment, that six years later made Sheinbaum's election possible, and continue to be the base for social change in Mexico.

Clara Brugada

AMLO's inauguration