Over breakfast at an upscale Mexico City restaurant, Senator Xóchitl Gálvez struggled to get a word in amid the stream of interruptions as well-wishers came to shake her hand, pleading with her to run for higher office.
Such shows of enthusiasm are rare these days for politicians in Mexico’s seemingly soulless opposition. But since she announced a bid for the presidency last month, the excitement around Gálvez has risen to fever pitch: a poll published on Wednesday by El Financiero newspaper showed the senator within striking distance of the governing party’s leading candidates.
Suddenly, Gálvez has energized Mexico’s 2024 presidential race, which for years had seemed all but certain.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s landslide win in 2018 dealt a crushing blow to opposition parties: they lost election after election, while the president’s popularity remained sky-high. Given Mexican law forbids re-election, the only question seemed to be which of the president’s favorites would be vaulted to victory. Now, that path may be more difficult.
“She’s a woman with a lot of personal confidence, a lot of humor,” said Blanca Heredia, a Mexican political analyst, of Gálvez. “And for me something that is especially important is that she’s not afraid of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.”
Although representing the conservative Pan party, Gálvez has pushed a more progressive agenda, promoting laws to expand domestic workers’ rights and championing clean energy. But she built up her brand through a series of political stunts, including dressing in an inflatable dinosaur costume to protest controversial electoral reforms.
And when López Obrador, or Amlo as he’s known, falsely claimed Gálvez wanted to end his social programs, Gálvez obtained a judge’s order securing her right of reply and showed up at one of the president’s morning press briefings last month.
The doors to the National Palace remained shut, but the ensuing media frenzy opened a path for the freshman senator’s presidential ambitions.
Within weeks, Gálvez, who many assumed would run for mayor of Mexico City, was coasting down the Paseo de la Reforma, the city’s main boulevard, on her bike, traditional huipil blouse blowing in the wind, cameras clicking as she arrived to register for the opposition primary.
“At the very least I knew that I was going to make this thing interesting because it’s been really dull,” Gálvez said in a recent interview. “It got a lot more interesting than I thought.”
Since then, Gálvez has inspired fawning opinion columns, graced front pages of major newspapers, gone viral on social media and drawn crowds at rallies across the country. But her greatest boost has come from Amlo himself, who has regularly attacked her in his daily news conferences.
“It seems like Andrés Manuel is her campaign director,” said Heredia. “The president has the biggest audience imaginable in Mexico.”
Amlo’s most recent attacks have focused on Gálvez’s business, going so far as to tweet a document listing state and private contracts obtained by the firm, supposedly worth tens of millions of dollars.
“When the president messes with my business and makes public my clients’ private information – that’s a crime,” said Gálvez. “As Shakira says, ‘Women don’t cry – we invoice.’ I have a business on the straight and narrow that’s been running for 31 years.”
Such cheeky quips are partly what have made Gálvez stand out from the rather uninspiring figures leading Mexico’s political landscape. But her personal story has also been crucial.
Gálvez was born in an impoverished community in Hidalgo state; her father was physically abusive and battled alcoholism. As a young girl, she worked with her mother selling puddings to make ends meet.
She graduated with an engineering degree from Mexico’s National Autonomous University, and went on to found a successful firm specializing in intelligent building design.
In 2000, then president Vicente Fox chose her to head up the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples. She ran unsuccessfully for governor of Hidalgo in 2010, before winning the mayorship of the wealthy Miguel Hidalgo borough in Mexico City in 2015. She entered the Mexican senate in 2018.
Gálvez’s rags-to-riches story provides a sharp contrast to other opposition candidates, one of whom is the son of a former president. And despite being in politics for years, she hasn’t been tainted by the graft scandals that have ensnared many in Mexico, making it harder for Amlo’s punches against the “corrupt elite” to find their mark.
“She has a kind of armor through her own story,” said Heredia.
Still, Mexico’s elections are nearly a year away, and there are relatively few polls showing that Gálvez has been embraced by Mexican voters, millions of whom are fiercely loyal to Amlo.
“It’s not clear that that media buzz, from the columnists and pundits and opinion writers, has a social base,” said Carlos Pérez Ricart, a political scientist at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico City. “She reminds me more of a good song on Spotify that rises rapidly up the charts, but can fall just as quickly.”
To even claim the nomination, Gálvez will first have to win over voters from the Pan party, a conservative base largely opposed to the senator’s progressive views on issues like abortion. And even if she manages to secure the nomination, she will still have to unite a fractious coalition while also carrying the baggage of political parties tainted by decades of corruption.
“A personal narrative is great for a reality show,” said Pérez Ricart. “I’m not sure it’s enough to win the presidency.”
Gálvez counters that her campaign is not about party ideology but rather about uniting voters desperate to address some of Mexico’s greatest issues: widespread violence, an ailing healthcare system, an economy driven by dirty power.
“I’m an engineer who knows how to solve problems,” she said.
