"Claudia Sheinbaum was cheered at #CLACSO2022 with shouts of 'President, President'"
Transcript of Karina Batthyány's column
in InfoCLACSO – May 29, 2024
Today in Bogotá, we are holding various preparatory meetings for our 10th Latin American and Caribbean Conference #CLACSO2025. We had an organizational working meeting with our CLACSO Colombia Member Center and various organizations from both the public sector and the field of International Cooperation. Our 10th Conference will take place from June 9 to 12, 2025, in Bogotá, Colombia.
The issue of divergences, inequalities and power disputes is a historical and structural axis of our Latin American and Caribbean region and will also be one of the central themes leading up to our X Conference #CLACSO2025.
In the face of the discussions and exchanges that CLACSO is holding with the partners of Swedish cooperation, these themes appear as elements of work, that is, themes linked to democracies; human mobility and migrations; inequalities associated with gender, race, ethnicity and the generational and territorial issue and all that it represents for Latin America and the Caribbean.
In addition, a theme emerges that we at CLACSO have always been working on, but which is incorporated into this new view of international cooperation: the one linked to health, to health systems, that is, health as a right for everyone.
The emphasis on health issues stems from the post-pandemic situation the world is currently experiencing. These discussions will shape the work of CLACSO in the coming years, giving significant importance to elements that CLACSO has always championed: the crucial role of civil society, academia, organizations, and social movements in shaping transformative public policies.
On another note, I want to remind you of the confirmed dates for our 10th Conference #CLACSO2025. Our assembly, the most important political and academic event of our Council, will be held on June 7th and 8th. This assembly takes place every three years, where we discuss the work agenda, thematic and policy priorities for the coming years, and elect a new Steering Committee and Executive Director. Following this, our Conference will begin from June 9th to 12th, 2025, in Bogotá, Colombia.
Elections in Mexico 2024
We are currently in an election year in our Latin American and Caribbean region. We have been discussing the elections in Panama, the electoral process in Mexico, and will continue with other electoral processes such as those in Uruguay.
This Sunday, June 2nd, Mexico goes to the polls en masse. These elections will renew 20.000 public offices across the country, including the Presidency of Mexico, for a six-year term with no possibility of reelection, beginning on October 1, 2024. In addition, 128 Senate seats and 500 federal deputy seats will be up for election.
Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo is the candidate for the "Let's Continue Making History" alliance, made up of Morena, the Labor Party (PT) and the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM).
Senator Xóchitl Gálvez Ruiz, candidate for the "Strength and Heart for Mexico" coalition, made up of the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), will also be competing for this position. Jorge Álvarez Máynez is the third candidate from the Citizens' Movement (center-left).
There are many polls, and they differ on the percentages, but all show Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo as the clear winner. Based on the results of the Polls MX survey, a platform that analyzes both the information obtained by polling firms and their historical performance in relation to the official results of past elections, Sheinbaum leads the electoral race with a margin of more than 20 percentage points over her closest competitor, Xóchitl Gálvez Ruiz.
The former Head of Government of Mexico City has 53% of the electoral preferences, while Gálvez Ruiz is in second place with 31% of the voting intentions. In third place is Jorge Álvarez Máynez, who has 14% of the preferences.
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo is a woman, politician, scientist, and academic, and a founder of the Morena party. She served as Head of Government of Mexico City from December 5, 2018, to June 16, 2023, and was the first woman elected to that office. During her term, among other government actions, she declared a gender violence alert in the city in 2019 and established the SOS hotline *765.
Years later, she emphasized that the alert established a zero-tolerance policy for impunity, in addition to initiatives such as the Lunas program, through which female lawyers provide legal counsel to women who have suffered violence and are filing complaints with the Public Prosecutor's Office. In the area of higher education, the Rosario Castellanos Institute of Higher Studies and the University of Health were created during her tenure. Previously, she served as Secretary of the Environment for the Federal District from 2000 to 2006 and as borough mayor of Tlalpan from 2015 to 2017.
With Claudia Sheinbaum we shared two moments that profoundly marked what #CLACSO2022 was in Mexico City: the opening of the Conference itself at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the meeting with the Cuban troubadour Silvio Rodríguez in the lead-up to the closing of the 9th Latin American and Caribbean Conference of Social Sciences, in the Zócalo square in Mexico City in June 2022.
Claudia Sheinbaum was enthusiastically cheered by many participants at the #CLACSO2022 Conference with shouts of "President, President," marking the beginning of an electoral campaign that would later confirm her as a presidential candidate for Mexico 2025.
Amelia Sanjurjo Casal
For those of us who are Uruguayan, May is the month of Remembrance, in which we demand Memory, Truth, Justice, and Never Again. On May 20th, the iconic march is organized along the main avenue to demand the clarification of the disappearances that occurred during the infamous dictatorship in Uruguay in the 70s.
May, the Month of Remembrance, deeply affects all of us who live in Uruguay. This year ends with the news of the identification of a new discovery, which actually occurred in 2023: it is the remains of a woman named Amelia, whose parents were deceased and who had no children. A lengthy process was undertaken to identify her remains by referring them to other relatives, culminating in the announcement of her identity by the Mothers and Relatives of Detained and Disappeared Uruguayans. Furthermore, the 2023 discovery was, once again, thanks to the work of the Anthropology Team of the University of the Republic (Udelar), but primarily with the support and collaboration of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF).
Amelia Sanjurjo was a militant member of the Communist Party of Uruguay, kidnapped in the street in 1977, four years after the start of the brutal military dictatorship in Uruguay, which was marked by significant persecution of the Communist Party. Amelia was 40 years old and pregnant when she was kidnapped and disappeared. Today, we have been able to identify her. As the Mothers and Relatives of the Disappeared said: “Come home, to the Uruguayan people.”
This discovery evokes mixed feelings: on the one hand, the joy of having identified his remains, on the other, the realization of the horror that this entire period represented in Uruguay and throughout the Southern Cone. It is more relevant than ever to remember Truth, Memory, Justice, and Never Again in Uruguay and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
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