Copyright New York Daily News
Mexico president Claudia Sheinbaum said she’s pressing charges after she was groped by a drunk man while speaking to people on a street in Mexico City. The incident occurred Tuesday. Videos show a man put his arm around Sheinbaum’s shoulder and lean in for a kiss before putting his hands near or on her chest. She moves away and flinches as the man tries to put his arm around her again. She faces the man and says, in part, “don’t worry.” Mexico City mayor Clara Brugada announced overnight that the man was arrested after charges were filed. “If they touch the president, they touch all of us,” Brugada wrote in a statement released Wednesday. In a video posted online Wednesday, Sheinbaum said this wasn’t the first time she’d been harassed. “No man has the right to violate that space,” she said, adding that the man was harassing other women on the street. “I decided to press charges because this is something that I experienced as a woman, but that we as women experience in our country,” Sheinbaum added. “My reflection is that if I do not report the crime, what condition does that leave Mexican women in?” The incident highlighted how Sheinbaum — like her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador before her — tends to travel with a light security detail and spontaneously mingle with crowds. She said on Wednesday that she did not plan to change that practice, saying “we have to be close to the people.”
