Any seasoned sailor —unwilling to expose their own to a shipwreck— knows that a hurricane is not to be confronted. Experience on the high seas teaches how to skirt the cyclone.
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In the busy global context, Claudia Sheinbaum has donned a captain’s hat. She sailed us to Spain for the IV Summit in Defense of Democracy with Pedro Sánchez (Spain), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Brazil), and Gustavo Petro (Colombia). Major names in present-day history.
Representing Mexico —a country often judged to be the center of almost nothing—, Claudia Sheinbaum assumed the leadership of an incontrovertibly left-wing international bloc. Let no one be mistaken; our country’s precarious geographical location neither hinders nor binds us. We are what we are despite the giant above us.
That Sheinbaum’s positioning was natural should not mislead us into describing it as simple. Her speech —delivered in the Trump era— made moments destined for different times coincide. Sheinbaum forced the simultaneity of the incompatible. She matched opposites.
To begin with, Sheinbaum traveled to Spain and, through an imprecision —the denial that a diplomatic crisis had existed between both countries—, resolved the misunderstanding. In parallel —and, I reiterate, on Spanish territory—, she recalled that our ancient cultures were silenced, plundered, and enslaved. Thus, there will be no doubt about which side of the dice the non-existent discussion landed on.
At the summit, Sheinbaum also addressed the Cuban asynchrony. At a time when the small island is more rigorously enduring external discontent over the full exercise of its sovereign rights, the president did not hold back and requested a declaration against military intervention in its territory.
Finally —because that’s where we were headed— came the fundamental incompatibility. The most complicated: confronting Donald Trump, our perfect storm. Three months before the start of the USMCA review, a direct confrontation with him would be a harakiri. An act unbecoming of someone who has learned the art of navigation.
Therefore, before flying to Spain, Sheinbaum clarified that the summit was not a meeting against Trump, but a propositional encounter in favor of peace.
However, once at the summit, the portrait Sheinbaum drew mirrored Trump in reverse: she spoke of respect for the self-determination of peoples, non-intervention, peaceful resolution of disputes, rejection of the use of force, legal equality of States, and the permanent struggle for peace.
He who has ears to hear, will have heard. If Donald Trump listened, he will know he was alluded to.
Claudia Sheinbaum’s speech at the Summit in Defense of Democracy deserves to be called brave. Faced with the temptation of submission —compliance, subordination—, Sheinbaum opted for the tactical. Where abstention seemed most sensible —to let be, to let pass— she decided to intervene.
It also deserves the adjective sensible. The president took one step without undoing the other. She made a move without revoking the previous one. She led the progressive international —and even invited the forum to be held in our country next year—, two days before meeting at the National Palace with the US trade representative for the second round of talks on the USMCA.
On the surface, Sheinbaum’s narrative appears conciliatory in a bilateral relationship that demands playing dead. At its core, the gesture was a brave act: articulating the first significant multilateral response to the global far-right embodied by the neighboring country to the North.
Claudia Sheinbaum’s first trip to Europe —also the first of the Fourth Transformation— has given rise to a historic moment: a left-wing Latin American woman steps forward. What in ordinary political jargon is usually called manhood, today falls to her.
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