Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum is urgent prices towards a person who she mentioned was “drunk” and harassed her on Tuesday, calling the incident “an assault on all women.”
The man was arrested in a single day, in line with Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada, and is in custody on the Sex Crimes Investigation Unit.
The incident passed off on Tuesday when a person broke by means of a crowd of individuals greeting Sheinbaum in Mexico City and appeared to grope her, in line with viral footage of the incident.
The video showed a person method Sheinbaum. He appeared to the touch her breast, and try to kiss her whereas bystanders within the central neighborhood of Zócalo watched. The incident ended when one among her prime aides, Juan José Ramírez Mendoza, intervened.
The episode has sparked outrage on-line and renewed a debate over harassment and the security of ladies in public life.
Mexico City police mentioned preliminary findings hyperlink the person to the alleged harassment of two different girls that very same day. NCS is trying to find out if the person has legal illustration to obtain remark.
Sheinbaum, who’s Mexico’s first feminine president, introduced Wednesday that she was motivated to take legal action towards the person, who she described as “completely drunk.”
“I decided to press charges because this is something I experienced as a woman — something all women in our country experience,” she mentioned. “No man has the right to violate that space,” she mentioned.
She added that this was not the primary time she had skilled harassment. Throughout her profession, Sheinbaum has been candid concerning the harassment she skilled prior to now. In 2021, as Mexico City mayor, she shared a video for International Women’s Day wherein she recollects being harassed on public transportation on the age of 12 and being harassed by a professor when she was a scholar.
Tuesday’s incident has raised questions on Sheinbaum’s safety. It comes simply days after the brutal assassination of Uruapan Mayor Carlos Manzo throughout a public occasion for the Day of the Dead, elevating questions concerning the degree of safety scrutiny wanted for public officers.
Sheinbaum, like her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has chosen to not preserve a Presidential Guard, which was dissolved in 2018.
Security analyst Raúl Benítez-Manaut advised NCS en Español that the choice left a niche in high-level safety: “After the dissolution of the Presidential Guard, no specialized protection system was rebuilt. Sheinbaum relies on a small team of aides, not a professional perimeter security unit.”
Sheinbaum defended her method on Wednesday. “We can’t stay far from the people — that would deny who we are. Our aides will continue to accompany us, but we must remain close to citizens,” she mentioned.
The Secretariat for Women, a part of Sheinbaum’s administration, condemned the incident on Tuesday, saying proximity to the general public “cannot be used as an excuse to invade someone’s personal space or make physical contact without consent.”
“Unfortunately, no woman is exempt from sexual harassment in our country,” the ministry mentioned. “It’s crucial for men to understand that these acts are not only violent but criminal.”
The workplace urged victims to report incidents relatively than dismiss them. “These forms of violence must not be trivialized; denouncing them is fundamental to justice and cultural change,” it wrote.
The incident involving Mexico’s head of state underscores a wider downside for ladies in public life. The National Electoral Institute (INE) has recorded 516 recorded cases of violence towards girls in political positions from September 2020 to July 2025.
Mexico City’s mayor echoed Sheinbaum’s personal marketing campaign message about girls’s illustration, saying the occasion reveals why “being the first woman president is not just symbolic — it’s a call to confront misogyny head-on.”
The incidence on Tuesday factors to a deep-rooted nationwide downside. According to Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography’s (INEGI) 2021 nationwide survey, 70.1% of Mexican girls aged 15 and older have skilled not less than one type of violence, with 49.1% of these girls reporting sexual violence.
Sheinbaum mentioned Wednesday she is going to work with the Secretariat for Women to assessment whether or not harassment is criminalized in all Mexican states and launch a nationwide marketing campaign towards harassment.
“There must be respect for women in every sense,” she mentioned. “Harassment is a crime — and it’s time everyone in this country understands that.”