By FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ and FERNANDA FIGUEROA | Associated Press
MEXICO CITY (AP) — President Claudia Sheinbaum said she is pressing charges after a man groped her in the street while she walked between meetings in Mexico City.
She also called on states to scrutinize their laws and procedures to make it easier to report such assaults and said Mexicans needed to hear a “loud and clear no, women’s personal space must not be violated.”
Sheinbaum, 63, the nation’s first woman president, said on Wednesday that she felt a responsibility to press charges for all Mexican women. “If this is done to the president, what is going to happen to all of the young women in our country?” she asked.
The groping occurred Tuesday as the president, on a five-minute walk from the National Palace to the Education Ministry offices, stopped to talk with people in the street. In a video circulating widely on social platforms, a man came up behind her and put his right hand on her right shoulder, then leaned in and appeared to kiss her neck. He swept his left hand up toward her breast; she brushed it away and maintained a stiff smile as she stepped away from him.
Authorities said the 33-year-old man was arrested. Sheinbaum said he was drunk and had reportedly harassed other women before approaching her.
The incident immediately raised questions about the president’s security, but Sheinbaum dismissed any suggestion that she would increase her security or change how she interacts with people.
She explained that she and her team had decided to walk to the Education Ministry to avoid a 20-minute car ride in city traffic.
Sheinbaum said Wednesday that she had similar experiences of harassment when she was 12 years old and using public transportation to get to school, and understands the problem is widespread.
Andrea González Martínez, 27, who works for Mexican lender Nacional Monte de Piedad, said she has been harassed on public transportation, in one case the man followed her home.
“It happens regularly, it happens on public transportation,” she said. “It’s something you experience every day in Mexico.”
Her co-worker Carmen Maldonado Castillo, 43, said she has witnessed it.
“You can’t walk around free in the street,” she said.
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