America, This Could've Been Us
Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum Is a Beacon of Unity, Progress
When Mexico’s 66th president waved from the balcony of the National Palace in downtown Mexico City on Sept. 15, 2025, almost 150,000 people filled the Zócalo square below.
President Sheinbaum saluted female soldiers from Mexico’s Heroico Colegio Militar. One soldier solemnly presented the Mexican flag to her. She then held it aloft, rang the ceremonial bell, and began shouting the traditional El Grito de la Independencia, the Cry of Independence to the deafening cheers and response of the crowd. Together, the entire country celebrated their independence from Spain.
El Grito commemorates the rise of the Mexican Independence movement when Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a priest in Dolores, Guanajuato shouted in the pre-dawn dark, calling the people to fight for their freedom on September 16, 1810.
Our North American neighbors to the south rang in 215 years of independence with the first woman to ever serve as the Mexican president.
The energy engineer and climate scientist, former Mexico City mayor, and a lead researcher for a major ICC publication, President Sheinbaum wore purple, the symbolic color that represents both feminism and the nationwide movement to end femicide in Mexico.
She called out the maiden names of the women heroes of the revolution, Josefa Ortiz Téllez Girón (traditionally referred to by her married name, Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez), Leona Vicario, Gertrudis Bocanegra, and Manuela Molina. President Sheinbaum also recognized the “anonymous heroines” of the revolution, whose names history failed to memorialize, Indigenous women, and migrants. This remarkable gesture of recognition, albeit belated, doesn’t undo historical oppression but it is a necessary incremental step toward telling the whole story of Mexican independence.
This isn’t just leadership, it’s solidarity. And that leadership isn’t performative, it’s not just speeches and ceremony. It’s policy change, domestic integrity, and international diplomacy.
On her second day in office she proposed a number of reforms, including “modifying six articles of the Constitution and seven secondary laws, changes that will likely be approved in both houses of Congress.”
President Sheinbaum promised to continue the current 12% annual minimum wage increase policy. This dramatically increases purchasing power against inflation. She proposed a “women’s bill of rights” of sorts with a constitutional guarantee of equal pay for women for equal work, freedom from violence, and gender parity in government positions. She is trying to fight misogyny, machismo, and femicide with federal policy. Mexico is the second deadliest country for women in the Americas. Men kill an estimated 10 women every single day in Mexico in domestic violence murders. Though women all over the world are still fighting for equality, creating and enforcing federal policies to protect women is a crucial legal step toward creating cultural shifts.
When a post went viral thanking her for deploying Mexican emergency relief workers to Texas to help with critical rescue work, she didn’t just clarify that she hadn’t issued any such order, she specified who did. She thanked Fundación 911 from Ciudad Acuña, a border town in Coahuila state. “Honor where honor is due,” she said at her daily national press conference. She then recognized the mayor and each heroic firefighter and aid worker by name: Javier Alvarado Lumbreras, Christopher Abraham Herrera, Roel Delgado Martínez, José Omar Llanas, Aldo Ortiz Rodríguez, Mario Alberto Linares Linares, Guillermo Samuel Quiroz, Javier Isaac Alvarado, Jesús Eduardo Salas, Ismael Aldana Flores, Miguel Ángel González, Jesús Gómez Arispe, and Jorge Fuentes.
We shouldn’t have to praise elected officials for not taking false credit but in an era of rising nationalism, being confident instead of arrogant, and secure enough to share the proverbial spotlight is just one more measure of integrity.
Recently, she welcomed Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to the National Palace, brightly decorated with Canadian and Mexican banners and flags. There was no rhetoric about “Mexico First”, President Sheinbaum instead noted that the two countries share more than an institutional or economic bond, they share a human bond.
Both leaders smiled and laughed together. They held a joint press conference. They didn’t choose gifts that pandered to the ego of the other leader, they exchanged culturally significant souvenirs from their respective countries.
Concluding a video highlighting the trip she emphasized mutual respect, “walking together, and the “certainty” that cooperation is the way to overcome any challenge of our times.
Meanwhile, the American government has disappeared some 1,200 men of Hispanic and Latino heritage from Alligator Abu Ghraib. Conversely, in Mexico, President Sheinbaum is making very public, very consistent strides toward equality for the long marginalized Indigenous Mexicans.
My fellow Americans, we too could’ve chosen an educated, politically experienced leader who champions equality and progress instead of creating and relishing chaos and division. But hundreds of thousands of Americans said, “No thank you” and chose a draft-dodging convicted felon and has-been TV show host instead of a leader who served as a former attorney general, senator, and U.S. vice president.
Kamala Harris and Claudia Sheinbaum are not one-to-one counterparts. Neither leader is perfect or could meet the needs and dreams of all their constituents. But we don’t need perfection. We need integrity, intelligence, diplomacy, and compassion.
Too many Americans still prefer an underqualified incompetent elderly white man to an enormously educated, experienced, and capable Black woman.
It’s rare that one finds occasion to quote John Cougar Mellencamp, but ain’t that America.
The gestures are meaningful, yes, but the framing leans heavily on optics while glossing over structural complexity. Purple isn’t policy. Naming heroines isn’t enforcement. And constitutional reform in Mexico, while promising, still operates within a deeply entrenched system of impunity and institutional fragmentation.
Sheinbaum’s presidency is historic, no doubt. But to call it “not performative” while citing ceremonial gestures, press conferences, and souvenir exchanges feels premature. Leadership isn’t measured by how many names are read aloud or how many flags are hung. It’s measured by how systems respond when power is challenged, when corruption is exposed, and when violence persists despite legislation.
The comparison to the U.S. is emotionally compelling but analytically thin. If we’re serious about democratic integrity, we need to interrogate incentive structures, not just personalities. As Foucault warned, power doesn’t reside in individuals—-it circulates through systems. And as Amartya Sen argued, justice isn’t just about intentions. It’s about institutional outcomes.
So yes, celebrate symbolic breakthroughs. But let’s not confuse narrative with transformation. Mexico’s challenges—-femicide, impunity, militarization—-won’t be solved by purple dresses and polite diplomacy. They’ll be solved when the incentives that sustain violence are dismantled. That’s not a photo op. That’s behavioral reform.
— Johan
Strategic Advisor | Behavioral Economist | Former Foreign Service Officer
Fantastic analysis and response.