Women’s Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!

Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s
First Woman President
New Face, Same Old
Ploy of the Bourgeoisie

The landslide victory of Claudia Sheinbaum, candidate of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) in the June 2 presidential elections, has generated enormous enthusiasm in vast sectors of the country. She obtained almost 60 percent of the vote and defeated by more than two to one her opponent Xóchitl Gálvez, of the coalition formed by the traditional bourgeois parties in Mexico – the clerical reactionary National Action Party (PAN), the former state party Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and what was left of the former “leftist” bourgeois Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) – who received only 27 percent of the total. Sheinbaum, the former head of government of Mexico City, won in every state except arch-conservative Aguascalientes, and in many southern states her vote exceeded 70 percent. Sheinbaum’s victory has been widely described as a historic milestone for being the first woman to reach the presidency in the 200 years of the country’s existence.

In a country of rampant machismo (male chauvinism), in which the oppression of women takes on blatant forms, the fact that a woman has been elected president represents, and reflects, an important social change. Sheinbaum’s victory reflects, in part, the fact that millions of women are fed up with male-chauvinist violence, whose function is to perpetuate the subordination of women through their enslavement and confinement in the home, while in the streets and workplaces they walk in hostile territory. But Claudia Sheinbaum’s landslide election victory also reflects that she is seen as the guarantor of the continuation of the policies of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (universally known by his initials, AMLO) and his bourgeois populist government, to which the MORENA candidate promised time and again to add a “second floor.” In particular, many low-income voters said they backed her as protector of the increases of the minimum wage and the welfare measures of AMLO’s social programs.

Nevertheless, in the Mexican elections of June 2, the three candidates for the presidency all represented the capitalists. Their differences are at most tactical. Their common purpose is to maintain the system of exploitation of this semicolonial country, in the service of the imperialists. Thus the Grupo Internacionalista, Mexican section of the League for the Fourth International, called for “Not one vote for the bosses’ parties: MORENA, PRI, PAN, PRD, MC,¹ etc. Whoever wins, the exploited and oppressed lose. Forge a revolutionary workers party!”

Sheinbaum’s victory was hailed by women, working people and the poor. She is a scientist of Jewish descent, who has not disavowed her leftist activism in the university or her communist parents. But the top national bourgeoisie and their imperialist masters are also breathing a sigh of relief. AMLO kept his promise to maintain “social peace” between the exploited and the exploiters. Ever since the 1950s there have been repeated rebellions of dissident union movements against the iron state control exercised by the corporatist pseudo-unions.² The outbreaks of struggles by sectors of workers and the oppressed against the starvation measures of the PRI governments of Carlos Salinas and Ernesto Zedillo, the PAN governments of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón, and once again the PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto, worried the capitalists. Even so, the “independent” unions were politically subordinated to the bourgeoisie, at first via the bourgeois PRD founded by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, and then through MORENA. López Obrador in power has managed to limit as much as possible these outbreaks of class struggle through a project of re-corporatization of the unions that had partially broken the corporatist shackles.

Claudia Sheinbaum, too, presents herself as a pacifier of the struggles of the plebeian sectors. However, there is a contradiction between the hopes engendered by her electoral victory among the exploited and oppressed, and the realities of a semicolonial capitalist country. In the first place, the welfare programs depend on public resources not being exhausted by a future fall in the prices of oil and other raw materials, as occurred with the Latin American populist governments of the “pink tide” of the first decade of the 2000s. More fundamentally, women’s oppression is rooted in the capitalist system. For millions of women in the country, oppressed by centuries-old domestic slavery, additional oppression is added by exploitation in the factory, and many are victimized by the ever-present anti-indigenous and anti-black racism – in addition to the appalling xenophobia that the bourgeoisie today whips up against migrants.

The victory of a candidate of a bosses party will not diminish in any way the burden of the double and even triple oppression of the women who work in the maquiladoras scattered throughout the country, for example. Their cheap and regimented labor will continue to be guaranteed by the corporatist pseudo-unions, since the “competitive advantage” of Mexican capitalism continues to be the super-exploitation of the working class. The fact that a worker in a seatbelt factory in Reynosa is paid a tenth of what her counterpart on the other side of the Rio Grande earns is precisely the attraction for the owners of the big “multinational” companies to move production to low-wage countries. The new industrialization boom is largely due to the “decoupling” of the U.S. economy from China for geopolitical reasons, but also because Chinese industrial wages have increased from $1,127 dollars a year in 2000 to $16,153 in 2023),³ to the point that it is cheaper for Foxconn to produce iPhones in Ciudad Juarez than in Zhengzhou.

Moreover, during the six years of AMLO’s government, the minimum wage increased by 280 percent and by 2024 it will be 9,475 Mexican pesos per month, which is equivalent to about $491 U.S. dollars, or US$5,892 per year. Just compare Mexico’s wage figures with those of the bureaucratically deformed workers state of China. In Mexico City, the rent of an apartment for four people in a lower middle-class area on the east side of the city would be about 5,000 pesos, plus 600 to 900 pesos per person per month for transportation. This means that, taking everything into account, including the increase in the minimum wage, paying for housing and services leaves very little money for food, education, health and entertainment. Nationally, of the 40 million people who receive revenues per employment, 28.7 million (71 percent of the total) earn less than US$982 per month. In the maquiladora areas of the North, where the rent of an apartment would not be less than 3,000 pesos and the transportation costs substantially higher, almost all workers receive only the minimum wage. Do the math: this is still poverty.

Bourgeois Feminists Euphoric

Sheinbaum’s election victory caused enormous excitement in a large part of the feminist movement in Mexico, as well as in various Latin American countries, and even in the United States. Academics, journalists, politicians and feminist collectives of various kinds (including several that consider themselves “leftist” and even socialist), were ecstatic on election day when the media began to publish the results of the exit polls. After the announcement by the National Electoral Institute that she had won, Sheinbaum proclaimed in the Zócalo (Mexico City’s main square, facing the presidential palace): “I didn’t get here alone. We women all made it together.”

For the vast majority of feminist figures and collectives, the victory lies in the fact that it is a woman who has become president, regardless of whether her politics are “left-wing” or rightist. This was made perfectly clear before the elections under the claim that “whoever wins” (whether Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchitl Gálvez) “it will be history in the making” with the first female president in North America. In March, journalist Yuriria Sierra published the book along these lines, titled Presidenta: más de cien mujeres te escriben (Madam President, Over 100 Women Are Writing to You), with women writers from across the bourgeois political spectrum: from former AMLO government ministers such as Olga Sánchez Cordero and Tatiana Clouthier to the liberal academic Denise Dresser and the openly racist writer and “señora bien” (proper lady) Guadalupe Loaeza, the latter two both staunch supporters of Gálvez.

The convergence of such diverse figures of feminism and bourgeois politics in a book like Sierra’s expresses the political nature of feminism: by considering that the main contradiction in our society is that which opposes men and women, feminism is in itself a bourgeois program that seeks to eliminate the obstacles that prevent women from assuming the privileged roles in society up to now held by men. Women’s advances are very often referred to as “breaking the glass ceiling,” an “invisible” barrier that prevents women from assuming leadership positions in the economy, politics, academic life, etc. Clearly, a woman worker who enters the factories at the minimum wage has not broken any “glass ceiling” when she is still subjected to domestic slavery, even if to do so she had to overcome a whole series of reactionary obstacles, starting with the family prohibiting her from leaving the home.

The feminist enthusiasm was palpable from the beginning of the campaigns. The fact that the two main presidential candidates were women was pointed to everywhere as a reason for congratulation. Television commentators, bourgeois press columnists and feminists stressed that, regardless of who won the elections, Mexico would have a woman president for the first time in its history. Thus the academic Marcela Lagarde expressed her “feminist joy” for a probable victory of Claudia Sheinbaum, “I am very happy that she could win, and that it will be Claudia, because she is a woman of the left, democratic” (La Jornada, March 6). Feminist journalist Sara Lovera, on the other hand, in a report on the “Pink Tide” demonstration (a reactionary rally in support of Gálvez)⁴ on May 19 in Mexico City, enthusiastically stressed that “Xóchitl Gálvez Ruíz, candidate for the presidency of the Republic, recognized the feminist struggle against patriarchy” (semmexico.mx, May 19).

Singer-songwriter Vivir Quintana, famous for having composed the song “Vivir sin miedo” (Living Without Fear) that became sort of a feminist anthem at the beginning of AMLO’s six-year term, said that beyond the differences between Gálvez and Sheinbaum, there will be “A woman compañera in the presidency who will tirelessly lead efforts to eradicate gender violence, who guarantees equal access to opportunities and governs to improve the quality of life, in all stages of life, of every woman in this country, from the big cities to the most remote communities” (Milenio, May 25). That same night she presented to the public a new song, “Compañera presidenta.” In an interview with Billboard (May 29) she commented: “My 16-year-old niece can now dream of being a woman president”. But while she is dreaming the heretofore impossible dream, she will face the undiminished burdens and restraints of women’s oppression.

In Mexico, unlike in many countries, since the beginning of AMLO’s government, the bulk of organized feminists have allied themselves with the right, a fact that can be seen in the March 8 (International Women’s Day) marches. (It should be noted that López Obrador, an evangelical Christian, is not in favor of abortion rights.⁵) The feminist group linked to the PAN, Brujas del Mar (Sea Witches), which supported Xóchitl Gálvez in the elections, had reservations over the outcome: “We women are going to have to pick up with our hands the glass ceiling that was broken last night.” On the other hand, Marta Lamas, a traditional second-wave feminist, opined: “I believe that what Claudia managed to transmit was a level of congruence, discipline and efficiency, which are usually, wrongly, considered masculine virtues”. Feminist collectives claiming to be leftist also showed their enthusiasm. Thus, Rosas Rojas (Red Roses), a feminist organization linked to the pseudo-Marxist Grupo de Acción Revolucionaria (GAR – Revolutionary Action Group) wrote on its X account, formerly Twitter (June 3):

“Mexico has for the first time a woman president, and one who got the most votes in history. Undoubtedly [it is] a triumph for the political rights of all women, which we are pleased to see is accompanied by a high level of social support. Claudia’s victory cannot be explained without the history of struggle of mobilized women and the massive mobilizations in the streets we achieved in recent years.”

What does Sheinbaum’s Victory Mean for Women in Mexico?

Upon taking office, President Claudia Sheinbaum will be the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the backbone of the capitalist state. She will be in charge of maintaining the peace required by capitalist business, even when this means resorting to repression. That she has the approval of the Mexican bourgeoisie and its imperialist bosses is evident. A few days after her election, she met with an imperial delegation sent by U.S. president Joe Biden, headed by Elizabeth Sherwood Randall, a White House “security” advisor, to promise the continuity of the “policy of friendship” between both governments that guarantees a “genuinely hemispheric approach to cooperation on immigration” (that is, militarily blocking migration to the north through deploying thousands of troops of Mexico’s National Guard on the borders). She also met with Kathryn McLay, CEO of the fiercely anti-union Walmart International, who “endorsed the company’s commitment to the country” (Milenio, June 11).

Various feminist groups are using Sheinbaum’s victory to sow illusions in the possibility of reforming capitalism to serve women. Their program is one of class collaboration, of support by the exploited and oppressed for women of the class that exploits and oppresses them. But the struggle for women’s liberation is not merely a democratic question. The oppression women suffer because they are women is the result of the private property on which the capitalist system of exploitation is based. And since the oppression of women is rooted in the institution of the family, for full emancipation of women it is necessary to lay the material foundations to overcome this reactionary institution through socialization of the tasks it performs. Thus we fight for free 24-hour day-care centers, pointing to the institutions of a socialist society, as well as for free abortion on demand in the framework of a socialized health care system of the highest quality.

But even purely democratic demands such as these cannot be fully realized without a socialist revolution, since their implementation affects essential institutions of capitalist society, beginning with the family. This is also the case of violence against women. While the murder rate (deaths by violence) of men is ten times higher than that of women,⁶ and the sharp increase in homicides against women in recent years is rooted in the “war on drugs,” violence against women is omnipresent. Under the cry of “they are killing us,” many feminists call, implicitly or explicitly, for a greater deployment of military and police forces in the cities, endangering everyone. It would seem absurd, but necessary, to emphasize that the capitalist police are neither friends nor allies of women. But the daily violence against women in the home is a machista means of “keeping women in their place.” In other words, it reflects the oppression of women in the family, and it will take a revolution to eliminate it.

Such domestic violence and street harassment are indeed the product of the machismo that all must fight against. It also reflects in many cases the desperation of poor families, which has intensified in recent decades due to the destruction of the rural economy and the forced migration of millions of people to the impoverished areas surrounding the big cities, where they lack any economic security. To really advance the struggle for women’s liberation from the double or triple oppression they suffer, it is necessary to go to its root. This root is bourgeois private property whose fundamental unit is the institution of the family, both to transmit property to a new generation of capitalists, and to reproduce new generations of the exploited, both men and women, who generate the wealth that the bourgeoisie squeezes from them. The liberation of women is impossible without putting an end to the capitalist system of private ownership of the means of production.

Fight for International Socialist Revolution!

The support that AMLO and Claudia Sheinbaum have received from working men and women, as well as among the rural and urban poor, is ultimately based on promises that no capitalist government can fulfill. The program of re-corporatization of the “independent” unions implemented by López Obrador is an attempt to return to the “golden” years of the PRI, which fostered a corporatized so-called “social pact” based on two pillars: the integration of workers and peasants organizations into the bourgeois state apparatus, and the granting of some basic democratic rights such as access to health and education. Public education grew greatly in the years 1940-1980 – with the enormous expansion of the National University and the creation of the Polytechnic Institute and the Teachers Training College – as did the public health sector, with social security institutes such as the IMSS and the ISSSTE.⁷

This was the “carrot” that softened the blows of the “stick” of the PRI-government that strongly repressed any who did not bow to the Bonapartist regime. The carrot was possible thanks to a highly nationalized bourgeois economy. With the “neoliberal” privatizations since the end of the 1980s, this basis no longer exists. So AMLO’s government has developed several social assistance programs for the most needy. The government reports that “five million people” will have been lifted out of poverty during AMLO’s six-year term, with 41.9 percent of the population living below the poverty line in 2018, falling to 36.3 percent in 2022 (the last year for which Coneval, the government institution that measures poverty, has data). However, the number of those living in “extreme poverty” has increased. Capitalism “with a human face” is not possible, much less in a semicolonial country like Mexico.

AMLO’s populist measures that Sheinbaum promises to maintain and “deepen” do not at all represent putting an end to the policy of attacks on the working class known as “neoliberalism.” In fact, the welfare measures consisting of direct transfers of money to the poor are part of the playbook of the American “free marketeer” economists known as the Chicago Boys. In 1975, Milton Friedman himself, the dean of the Chicago Boys, called on the bloodthirsty Pinochet coup government in Chile to make such cash transfers to avoid social explosions among workers without secure jobs in various sectors. In Mexico under the government of López Obrador, “Benito Juárez scholarships” for children and adolescents in basic education were generalized. But even if they relieve a bit the most brutal effects of poverty, these measures are based on undermining and even effectively eliminating rights for the general population, as in public education and health.

As shown by the experience of Red October of 1917, it is essential that the exploited and oppressed have a vehicle for political struggle, an internationalist revolutionary workers party. It was the Bolshevik Party under Lenin and Trotsky that for the first time legalized abortion while seeking to introduce socialized institutions that would lay the foundations for a true liberation of women. The party that is needed must wage a hard fight for free abortion on demand within the framework of a socialized health system of the highest quality. It will also have to fight machismo in all its forms, defending the rights of gays, lesbians and trans people. In order to wage this fight, the touchstone is full and complete independence of the exploited and oppressed from capitalist parties and politicians, as well as their state.

The election of a woman president, while reflecting an important social change, does not change anything about the systematic oppression of women. To free women, as well as all the oppressed, it is necessary to break with all capitalist parties – from the PRI, PAN, PRD and Greens to MORENA and its satellites – and forge a Leninist-Totskyist party of the proletarian vanguard. The emancipation of women can only be achieved through a socialist revolution, in which the working class, at the head of all the oppressed, fights for a workers and peasants government to reorganize society based on the “expropriation of the (capitalist) expropriators” and extends the socialist revolution internationally.

This is the program of the Grupo Internacionalista, Mexican section of the League for the Fourth International. Join with the GI and the LFI! ■

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