The race to successor Mexico’s beloved president is being shaken up by a street food vendor who went on to become a tech entrepreneur and senator. She is also providing many voters with the first viable option to the country’s ruling party.
When she was younger, Xóchitl Gálvez, now 60, sold tamales on the street to support her family. Currently, Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Morena party, which controls Congress and 22 of Mexico’s 32 states, is a long shot against the frank opposition senator.
Despite the president’s limited chances, Gálvez appears to have upset him so profoundly that he has been disparaging her virtually every morning during his briefings. Nearly a year before the national election on June 2, 2024, the opposition senator enjoys a comfortable place in the national spotlight.
Roy Campos, head of the polling company Mitofsky Group, said of her, “She fills a space that was completely empty.” She becomes visible to the entire opposition population, which inspires optimism.
López Obrador will have the chance to demonstrate in the upcoming election if he has created a political movement that can endure beyond his charismatic leadership. Continually high levels of violence, heavily armed drug cartels, and migration across the country’s roughly 2,000-mile border with the United States will all need to be addressed by whoever succeeds him.
Although Campos’ organization hasn’t polled the opposition candidates, he still feels confident in calling Gálvez a “political phenomenon.”
Gálvez, a political independent who initially intended to run for mayor of Mexico City and frequently commutes across the city on a bicycle, entered the Senate in December dressed as a dinosaur as a dig at party bosses infamous for their antiquated, immovable traditions. López Obrador had at the time suggested election changes that opponents claimed would damage the nation’s National election Institute. They were passed by the Senate earlier this year, but the Supreme Court later halted their implementation.
Never afraid to disagree with López Obrador, Gálvez. She requested permission to speak at the president’s daily news briefing from a judge in December. Although she was given the order, the president turned it down.
Gálvez has an advantage with a large portion of the working class and with many young Mexicans thanks to her fluid use of profanity, which contrasts with her comfort moving in political circles. She joked that López Obrador was her campaign manager when she registered last month to run for the presidential candidacy of a large opposition coalition that included the traditionally leftist PRD, the conservative PAN, and the PRI that ruled Mexico for 70 years.
[sourcelink link=”https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/maverick-mexican-politician-xochitl-galvez-throws-hat-ring-presidency-2023-06-27/”]
