In Argentina, the popular feminist uprising has yet to halt the worst aspects of President Javier Milei’s right-wing economic policies, which have installed what Gago describes as “state-led anti-feminism.” In Mexico, we are undergoing a peculiar process of immense confusion, and must carefully try to identify the main nodes of conflict.
According to high-ranking officials here, we now live in an “era of women” thanks to changes in government. This so-called “era of women” comes on the heels of almost 10 years of feminist struggle, which built upon an even longer fight for justice by mothers of young people who have been murdered and disappeared. Complaints against the judiciary and state violence have long been central to their demands for justice.
The current cycle of struggle opened in 2014 with the incarceration of Yakiri Rubio—a young woman who was trapped in a web of state (in)justice in Mexico City after she killed one of her aggressors during an attempted sexual assault—and the disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teacher Training School in September of that terrible year.
On April 16, 2016, there were concerted calls to action against femicides, with coordinated demonstrations in over 10 cities protesting violence and impunity. The suffering of women and feminists led to uprisings against killings, increasingly common in small towns and cities under militarized occupation. Activists denounced the ever-increasing femicides and the networks of complicity that make judges, prosecutors and police indistinguishable from the criminals who carry out murders and disappearances.
In conversation with Gago’s piece but from my home in Mexico City, I want to explore three ideas to illustrate key debates in this country, now ruled by a female president and other women who claim the Mexican state is now “feminist.”
First, I want to look at the issue of militarization, which has gone hand in hand with the arrival of women in high-ranking government positions in Mexico. Second, I want to reflect on the anti-feminism of this “progressive” state, making clear that this is not something limited only to far right governments, even though it is less vocal and offensive in scope here. And finally, I’ll explore the growing threat of co-optation the feminist movement faces.
Women administrators, military power
When Claudia Sheinbaum became Mexico’s first female president, a glass ceiling that seemed impossible to break was shattered. Political parties adopted the principle of “gender parity” for candidates in response to the intense pressures from women and gender dissidents in the years prior, although this was never a demand in the streets or demonstrations.
As a result of these changes, women now govern the bulk of the urban population and the country’s central cities including in Mexico City, Mexico State and Morelos.
Now, it seems public life in Mexico is reviving a heteropatriarchal gendered system widely recognized in the family sphere. Women are in charge of efficient administration, while men claim to “offer protection” while also keeping their decision-making prerogative on crucial matters.
The strong presence of women in government in the over six months since Sheinbaum took office has come with the continuation of an unprecedented increase in the influence and presence of armed groups (the army, the navy, the National Guard and the Secretariat of Public Security, at the federal level). The armed forces have encroached on the economic and political spheres and now undertake activities that civilians had previously controlled.
These policies are in line with international trends of reorganizing public budgets to increase defense spending and expanding the influence of the military in political affairs.
Progressive anti-feminism
While other countries in the region undergo a strong rightward shift, Mexico is experiencing the continuity of a progressive government. The Morena party and its allies now have majorities in Congress and the Senate, as well as in many state governments, all led by Mexico’s first female president.
Despite efforts to paint the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018–2024) in a progressive light, we quickly learned that right-wing governments are not the only ones to carry out “state-led anti-feminism.”
AMLO’s government, with its nationalist and anti-neoliberal rhetoric, set out to strengthen strategic public sectors—especially oil and electricity—and spurred on the construction of mega-projects by the armed forces. This was combined with a strong conservatism on gender issues, revealed most clearly by a sharp decrease in public spending on services such as daycare and reproductive health.
The government reluctantly allowed the decriminalization of abortion in several states, the result of the intense struggles by many women. And Mexico’s Supreme Court—atrophied and now undergoing a process of reorganization—finally decriminalized abortion nationally.
The AMLO and Sheinbaum administrations have not explicitly oppose the rights of trans people, but allowed a series of crimes against the community to go unanswered, while perpetrators acted with impunity.
Resisting capture
In addition to state-led anti-feminism from an economic and social point of view, feminists face a growing threat of co-optation in Mexico today. Relations between government agencies and autonomous collectives and organizational efforts, each with their own initiatives, are fraught.
This tension was visible in the most recent International Women’s Day march in Mexico City. Mothers of murdered young women had to dodge public officials and pro-government organizations who tried to finagle their way to the front so that they could pretend to lead the huge protest.
We have also witnessed the shuffling of feminist professionals within the public bureaucracy, particularly those active in the justice system. After being given public positions in relevant places due to pressure from mothers and relatives of murdered women, some have now been transferred to other roles where their efforts and contributions have less impact. In the deep waters of the state’s administrative structure, this flow of professionals from one office to another undermines incremental achievements of previous struggles that seek to undo networks of complicity and improve the glacial speed of the criminal legal system.
The creation of a Women’s Secretariat—a federal secretariat—under Sheinbaum to address issues of equity and violence did not come with increased funding for programs aimed at women. Instead, it has led to even more attempts to co-opt and copy the organizational strategies of autonomous feminists. One example is the government’s ongoing efforts to build a network called the “Weavers of the Homeland.” This initiative currently involves promoting a census of diverse projects and local efforts led by women. Once that information is compiled, it will be used to show support for the government.
These actions, in Diego Castro’s words, are an example of the translation of demands for justice into the administrative prose of subsidies and support, managed from above. This is old school Mexican corporatism, now focused on neutralizing feminist strength.
Over the past years, here in Mexico, the transfeminist fight for justice has been creative and resilient. Justice is central to feminist organizing. The government has started a process of judicial reform with a crucial date on the horizon—June 1, when the first public vote to elect the judges, ministers and magistrates, who will make up the judiciary.
But we need more than a superficial turnover of officials in the justice sector. That is why we must reflect deeply on what we have achieved and what we still need to do. It is crucial that we strengthen the ties we have within and among our diverse and often contradictory collectives and efforts. The time of rebellion led by women and dissidents, weaving together in grassroots struggle, remains open.
