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With just hours to go until the end of Mexico’s 2024 presidential campaign, then-opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez told this newspaper that she had no plan B in case she lost the election. Gálvez lost, by a landslide, to Claudia Sheinbaum, but Mexico knew, for the first time in its history, what it was like a competition for the country’s highest office between two women. While both candidates made an effort to leave aside the obvious gender issue, the campaign was historic and forced a highly sexist country to face the mirror of its own shortcomings. A year and a half later, the former candidate has reinvented her role in Mexican politics: far from political parties, but very present on social networks.
Gálvez, who has never joined any political party, has continued to distance herself from it over the past 18 months. During the election campaign he did not hide the fact that the leaders – all men – of the political groups that supported his candidacy had different opinions from his on how to develop his campaign. The links of that relationship were evident, which is why Gálvez now expresses his opinions, very openly, in short videos on social networks in which he comments on current political events. The most viewed are those in which he criticizes the morenista Adán Augusto López, his comments on his favorite football team, Cruz Azul, and the story of how he lost 18 kilos in weight in the last year.
Underdog stories rarely contain an element of self-care, but Gálvez has managed in this new life to appeal to the importance of good health. “After the campaign I was tired, stressed, I slept three or four hours, I ate terribly. One day I realized that I couldn’t move my legs like before,” she says in one of the videos. At 62 years old, Gálvez decided to join the gym and embark on the path to a healthier life. One of his most viewed videos is his recipe for preparing green juice, recommended by nutritionists for its high fiber content. Without losing her smile, the former candidate is honest on camera about how difficult it has been to make her health a priority. In the comments of the posts you receive congratulations and other questions about your weight loss process.
The former candidate even makes a self-criticism of the lack of attention she found herself in at the end of the campaign. Gálvez’s situation is closely linked to the way many Mexican women live their daily lives: full of tasks and busy taking care of others, to the point of forgetting about their own.
The 2022 National Care System Survey indicates, for example, that in Mexican families, 75% of women are responsible for caring for other family members, compared to 24% of men. In many of these cases, women neglect their personal well-being at the expense of devoting their attention to other people or activities. The Women’s Secretariat of Mexico City points out that women often stop going to medical appointments or playing sports to give priority to caring for another.
Xóchitl Gálvez has been making waves in Mexico’s political life for more than two decades. The politician, originally from the state of Hidalgo, spoke during her electoral campaign about her humble origins and how her social rise was upon her arrival in Mexico City. Her heated debates in the Mexican Congress also marked her career, as did her ability to take advantage of speeches that are adverse to her.
As an MP, she led several protests and came to publicly acknowledge her support for abortion rights, despite being supported in many of her positions by the National Action Party (PAN), a right-wing party. His confrontation with the then president Andrés Manuel López Obrador earned him the candidacy for the presidency, in which almost all of the Mexican opposition was grouped.
Gálvez did not opt for political office after losing the elections. Many of the Mexican presidential candidates who lose in the race take refuge in their personal lives or in academia, away from the spotlight. The opposition was inclined to do exactly the opposite. Almost like a influencerhe took advantage of the number of followers he gained during the campaign to promote both his political ideology and his new lifestyle. A very common format in his videos is where he takes Sheinbaum’s statements during his morning lecture and compares them to his opinion on the topic. In others, he organizes the offering in his company offices, trains with weights or walks his dog. “I feel stronger every time,” he says at the end of one of the videos.
He talks about his body, but also about his life after the defeat.
