Women Can Be Autocrats, Too? Responding to the Gendered Paternalism of US Narratives Around Claudia Sheinbaum
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Some things remain a constant in this life. Death; taxes; and David Frum meddling in the affairs of other countries. The notorious neocon - who cut his teeth as a speechwriter for George W. Bush during the invasion of Iraq - has lately developed something of an unhealthy obsession over Mexican politics. More precisely, Frum has been sweating in the pages of The Atlantic over the staggering political successes of Morena, the party that has governed Mexico since 2018.
His latest attempt at sounding the alarm over Mexican democracy, however, also comes with an extra dash of misogyny. Women Can Be Autocrats, Too is the crudely titled column Frum has penned to declare Claudia Sheinbaum, the country’s recently elected first female president, a dangerous authoritarian. As well as displaying a shallow, US-centric understanding of the current Mexican political scene, Frum's piece betrays an underlying sexist narrative about President Sheinbaum. Regrettably, this framing has become commonplace among large swaths of the mainstream political commentariat in both the US and Mexico.
The first whiff of misogyny can be found in Frum’s characterisation that Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), Sheinbaum’s predecessor and founder of Morena, favoured her in the presidential nomination process because she was the candidate who most “lavishly praised” him. After all, lavishly praising men is what women do. The fact that Sheinbaum was herself a prominent and popular mayor of Mexico City need not warrant our attention. Frum then goes on to speculate AMLO may have calculated that “by choosing the least magnetic successor with the smallest personal following” he has secured his continued influence over national affairs. Never mind that Sheinbaum won the nomination through a series of popular polls conducted within and outside the party.
This broader narrative that, as Frum describes it, “López Obrador has orchestrated his succession in such a way that he may continue as the real power in the land” has become received-wisdom within Washington-centric circles. As well as struggling to disguise its misogynistic overtones, this story about a pliant presidenta and her predecessor pulling the strings in the background simply does not stand up to scrutiny. For one, Mexico has the strongest political culture around presidential one-termism in the region. To find an example of a president controlling the government after leaving office you have to, as Frum did, go back 100 years.
Sheinbaum promised continuity with AMLO’s “Fourth Transformation” of Mexican society during her campaign simply because it remains a political project that is overwhelmingly popular with Mexicans. For evidence of this we need look no further than Morena’s thumping victory in the June elections. Mexico’s first female president now commands a mandate even greater than that of her predecessor. She may have campaigned on a platform of continuity, but since taking office she has established a markedly different tone from AMLO in her manañera morning press conferences. Indeed, in reference to Sheinbaum’s no-nonsense style of governing and to dispel any notions of her being influenced by him, López Obrador quipped “yo soy fresa” - (I’m posh) compared to her.
Put simply, there is little evidence to support Frum’s sexist notion that Sheinbaum will be subject to the whims of her more charismatic, male, predecessor. Whatever one’s view of the government’s latest constitutional reforms (far beyond the scope of this article), talk of Sheinbaum’s authoritarianism is both hysterical and deeply unhelpful. It says far more about Frum and the legion of incredulous establishment commentators who cannot believe that the Mexican people would, as they see it, vote for a bunch of handout-giving populists. It is class politics masked as political journalism plain and simple. Frum is merely the loudest voice with the biggest platform amidst a cacophony of paternalistic onlookers who have failed to reckon with the immense electoral success of Morena in recent years. There are reasonable, intelligent critiques to be made of López Obrador’s legacy and the wider Morena platform, not least on the environment. But they will not be found among the pages of The Atlantic.