Transcript

Kaeden: Cool, well, welcome to The Full Extent podcast. I’m your host Kaeden Thomas and the reason that we are recording these episodes is to delve into current events with professors, academics and individuals who know a lot more about the the event itself, than I do, and today we are joined by Professor Susie Porter, she is a professor of gender studies at and history at the University of Utah and one of her main focal points of study is feminism within Mexico, and the event we’re covering today is the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum. She led the cry of Dolores on the 16th of September, and that was monumental for various reasons that we’ll explore here in a second, but first, I think it’s important that we cover the history before we get into the event itself. So, would you mind giving a brief overview of Mexican Independence Day and Mexican independence overall?

Prof. Susie Porter: Yeah, thank you so much for having me here. So, context on Mexican independence requires that I go back just a little bit to understand what the independence was from, right? So, the Spanish conquered the Aztec Empire in central Mexico in 1521. That was a several-year process, and then the Spanish crown established a viceroyal royalty, in a few years later in 1535. And so the land that we stand on today, which is the ancestral land of the Utes, the Shoshone, the Paiute, and the Goshute. At that time, then became a part of the Spanish vice-royalty, and it extended from northwards of where we are now in Utah, all that included what we now know of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, all the way down through what is now Central America, including parts of the Caribbean and the Philippines.  So New Spain, the vice-royalty of New Spain, was a huge geographical area. The Spanish ruled over that area for more than 200 years. It was a very rich and thriving colonial project for the Spanish. There was a huge production of silver, of agricultural production, very much due to the labor of indigenous peoples and of Africans that were brought to the Americas as well, which then, through their labor, generated a lot of wealth for the Spanish colonies. And so what happened after these more than 200 years of Spanish rule was that events in Europe created a political vacuum that coincided with unrest in Mexico. It’s what became Mexico itself in New Spain. So in 1810, Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the Bourbon monarchy that controlled Spain. He put his brother in charge to rule over Spain, Joseph Bonaparte. And that created a crisis of legitimacy for the elite, and in New Spain, they began talking about the relationship between the colonies and the metropole, the Spanish crown. At the same time there had been different moments of unrest in the countryside, in response to Spanish rule over indigenous pueblos and peoples, in response to different moments of agricultural crisis and hardships and, in response to limits that had been placed on what people could and couldn’t do in the colonies like rules against who could participate in government, rules on who could produce certain products and goods, those kinds of things. So, the “Grito de Dolores”, the cry or the shout of Dolores, refers to a call to arms that was made by a parish priest, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, who lived in Dolores and called for revolt. And so, there was a response. He said yes, and that set off a war in 1810 against Spain. So the exact words that the priest, the parish priest, Hidalgo y Costilla, uttered are not clear, but they’ve been reconstructed by historians along the lines of this: “Long live our Lady of Guadalupe,” the Virgin of Guadalupe, who’s the patron saint of Mexico, “Death to bad government,” right? So there’s the critique of the crisis of legitimacy of rule over the colonies, and “death to Gachupines,” who were the Spaniards, that was the way of referring to the Spaniards. So there’s resentment on the part of people living in New Spain against colonial rule. So there was a huge uprising. A lot of the people who followed Hidalgo were people from the countryside, right? And what happened was then, that elites, especially in Mexico City, freaked out. All these people in the countryside, large numbers of people, people that did not look or act like them, and so that fear of a social uprising led elites in Mexico City to suppress that movement. So what’s celebrated on this day of independence is the beginning of a movement, but what happened in fact was that the movement was suppressed; they captured and executed Hidalgo about a year later. And so what we’re celebrating really on that night is the beginning of a movement, but a movement in fact that from one perspective was overtaken by elites, and then Mexico did not experience, did not gain independence from Spain until almost 11 years later, on the 28th of September, in a couple of days here, in 1821. And what happened was it was an elite movement led by several people, including Agustine de Iturbide, who then declared himself emperor of Mexico. That’s the moment of formal independence from Spain.  

Kaeden: Right, and so the celebration itself marks the beginning of the independence movement essentially.

Prof. Susie Porter: Yes.

Kaeden: Right, got you. And that ended with the Treaty of Cordoba, which instituted a constitutional monarchy, which then eventually turned into a republic. 

Prof. Susie Porter: That’s right, fantastic. 

Kaeden: Well, so getting into the event itself, what value does the cry of Dolores have in Mexican identity today?  

Prof. Susie Porter: Yeah, so, let’s talk about Mexico first, and then we can talk about sort of the Mexican diaspora. Any holiday, right?  It’s about family, it’s about cooking, it’s about being together, if you’re fortunate, it’s a day off, a national holiday, but also there’s a lot of symbolism that’s being communicated.  It’s a moment of national pride. There are a lot of things that we could talk about. Maybe one is the importance of sovereignty for Mexico.  So Mexico has been in its independent period, been invaded by many different countries, including the United States, at least three times, maybe more, depending on how you count it. So there’s the Mexican-American War in 1846 to 48, and then twice during the Mexican Revolution, the United States invaded Mexico, one in 1914. They arrived at the port of Veracruz on the eastern coast of Mexico, and then again, there was an expedition to try and catch Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution, when US forces invaded Mexico across the border into Mexico. And there are many other examples of US forces influencing politics in Mexico. So Mexico has a museum of foreign invasions, right? So, the issue of sovereignty is very important to Mexico historically; it’s also very important right now, given the tensions between, for example, the United States and Mexico, right? And the sort of threats of sovereignty, the demands that are being made on Mexico, the threats of violations of sovereignty. So, Mexican independence, one of the important things that’s being celebrated, is Mexican sovereignty, the fact that Mexico is its own nation that decides its own future for the benefit of its own people, not at the service of other countries.

Kaeden: Right, yeah.

Prof. Susie Porter: Yeah, so it’s an important symbolic moment, and the event, as anyone can see on Instagram or on video, is of the president who stands on the balcony of the national palace where Scheinbaum now is living, instead of in Los Pinos or in other places where presidents have lived, right? So she’s there, on the main square of Mexico City, the Socalo, which is the center of political, religious, and cultural power. And I think there were, I don’t know, 280,000 people they counted in the Socalo when she did the Grito. So that’s also part of the symbolism. 

Kaeden: Yeah, there are definitely vast implications. I think, yeah, I mean, Mexico has had a very convoluted past, and this is a cry for decolonization and the continuation of a sovereign state, unique from their European counterparts, right? So I think that’s, I think that’s super important for Mexican identity, and as you said, a multitude of ways.

Prof. Susie Porter: Sorry to interrupt, I was gonna say that then it’s a holiday that’s celebrated in other countries like the United States by people of Mexican heritage, immigrants, or long-standing residents of Mexico, as well as all of the people who had the border crossed them with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, right? And so the holiday celebration here in the United States is very important in terms of it echoes with national pride, right, but it has a particular meaning here in the United States to celebrate heritage and identity, especially in moments when that heritage and identity are being held against people, right? So there can be very political manifestations of the celebration of independence, there can be more narrowly nationalistic, or, you know, festive celebrations, so it really has a lot of meanings depending on where we’re talking about. 

Kaeden: No, yeah, and especially now, under the Trump administration, who is persecuting individuals of Mexican heritage, whether they have a visa or not, in the United States, I think it’s important for people to recall their heritage, right?

Prof. Susie Porter: Absolutely.

Kaeden: Moving on to the next question, I think this one is important. What makes this most recent cry distinct from those of the past?

Prof. Susie Porter: Yeah, well, I think the most obvious is that this is the first female president of Mexico. She’s the first woman, or this is the first time a woman has given the Grito, right, because she was inaugurated on October 1st, so this is the first time that this holiday has come around during her presidency. The presidents in Mexico serve for six years and there’s no re-election, so once her term is over, she will step down. And so, this is very important in terms of the symbolism of women’s role in Mexican society, and both during the inauguration of Scheinbaum’s inauguration on October 1 last year and during this national celebration, she has lifted up and highlighted the role of women in society, of indigenous peoples, and of the people of Mexico. She’s been very conscientious of symbolism, right? So in the ceremony of the Grito, there’s a moment when the president and usually his wife, but in this case her husband, walk down a gallery of paintings to the balcony where the Grito is made, right? So if you go on Instagram or, you know, YouTube or whatever, you can find films that her presidency has put out of these moments. So she walks with her husband down this gallery and this year stopped in front of a painting of Leona Vicario, who is one of the important mothers of Mexican independence, right, and stopped for a photograph in front of the painting. So she’s highlighting the role of women in Mexican independence. And from there then, she moved from the painting, the moment at the painting, to receive the banner and sash from military officials, to then step out onto the balcony. And the sash she wore, the presidential sash, was made by female military and seamstresses. And there’s also, again, I’m very interested in labor and how things are made and where they come from. There’s a great video of the women who made the sash. And the honor guard that passed the flag and this onto Scheinbaum were women honor guard. So you have women in history, women in the history of independence highlighted, you have women in military positions in this process, right, which, that’s a new image, right? You know, to highlight the role of women in the military. Another part of the ceremony is once on the balcony, there is a roll call of heroes of the independence movement, and sometimes then a call to support specific values that the president is associating with their presidency and with Mexican independence. And Scheinbaum began her address to Mexican men and women specifically, right, calling out men and women. And then naming both heroes and heroines of the Mexican independence movement. So Leona Vicario, Gertrudez Bocanegra, Maria Manuela Molina, she referred to Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez, who historically has been known as La Corregidora. That title for Ortiz de Dominguez was based on her husband’s occupation. So a corregidor was an official in colonial New Spain. This woman was married to the corregidor of Queretaro, the city of Queretaro, and she participated in supporting the Mexican independence movement. But what Scheinbaum did was to not only not refer to her by association with her husband’s occupation, but to refer to her by her name before she was married. Yeah, so she’s very conscientious of many aspects of how we present ideas about women in society. And she also, I think this is important to note, that she’s not just about famous people, so in that roll call she also said, they say “viva,” right? “Long live, long live the unsung heroines.” So not only the people whose names we know, but all the people whose names we don’t know, right? People like us, who, you know, 100 from 200 years from now, they’re not gonna know who I was. I’m an unsung person in history, right? So I think that was an important call, and a call to Mexicans who are not, you know, quote unquote somebody, right? She made a call, long live our brothers and sisters who are migrants in other countries. So she’s aware of the larger family of people who claim allegiance or sympathy for Mexico. So yeah, there’s a lot that’s significant about this moment. 

Kaeden: Yeah, and she, I mean, as you said, she’s very careful about her rhetoric with regards to naming various heroines and such, and I think it was very all-encompassing. One thing to also add is that one of her quotes was “free, independent, sovereign country,” right? And I think that’s more important now than ever, with, as you said, Trump encroaching on their sovereignty as a state, you know, and so, yeah. And I think this was, we sort of covered this, but I mean, how does this aim to counter notions of machismo and patriarchal values within Mexico? I think maybe it’d be a better question to ask how President Sheinbaum, aside from this cry, fought patriarchal values.

Prof. Susie Porter: Yeah, it’s a really good question, and I’m gonna answer the question as a typical academic kind of pushing back on how it’s framed. And I appreciate the way that the question was posed because I think that it’s important to at one and the same time recognize patriarchal values in Mexico, but I think it’s a very complicated issue, right? What are the causes of, for example, violence against women, right? That’s an issue that I tied to cultural values, but also the US-supported drug trade in Mexico and the proliferation of arms in Mexico. Violence against women cuts across class, but certainly, poverty does not help, right?  So there are a lot of things that I think we would need to talk about to really pin down what we’re actually talking about when we’re talking about patriarchy, right? 

Kaeden: Yeah, yeah.

Prof. Susie Porter: No, no, no, but it’s good, it’s good because I think it’s not a question that people wouldn’t ask from in Mexico themselves, but being aware of the fact that I’m speaking to probably a mostly US-based audience, I want to complicate that. And the other thing I wanted to point out is I always want to acknowledge where I’m coming from. So in the United States as of this year, women are 28% of the US House of Representatives and 26% of the US Senate. In Mexico, women hold approximately 50% of the seats in both the Mexican Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. In the United States, 26% of governors are women in Mexico, 40%. So, when we talk about patriarchal values, we also have to talk about what spaces we are talking about and recognize the patriarchy in our own society, right? And what kinds of efforts are people willing to make in this country to address patriarchy before I even open my mouth about patriarchy in Mexico?

Kaeden: Yeah, absolutely look inward before you look outward, right? 

Prof. Susie Porter: Yeah, yes, yeah, and also as someone from the outside, right, commenting on Mexico, I think that’s also important, yeah. And we have a lot of work to do in terms of patriarchy and sexism in the United States. But, that said, your question is also a good one because, like in the United States, patriarchy is a thing. Mexico has a serious problem with violence against women and as I said before, it’s complicated, right? The United States plays a role in that violence against women in Mexico, a serious one. Scheinbaum has been criticized, especially when she was the mayor of Mexico City, for not supporting feminist activists enough. Activists who were trying to point out and call out the violence against women. So that’s a tricky issue, right? So, on the one hand, she has elevated and made visible women, indigenous women, and women from the popular classes. She’s a self-proclaimed feminist, but at the same time, there have been criticisms at the sort of how far she’s willing to go to support women. Yeah, on that particular issue. 

Kaeden: Yeah, no. I definitely think it’s important to note that the United States has never had a female president in the past. So, you know, Mexico is making strides to surpass us in many ways, right, in that sense. 

 Prof. Susie Porter: Yeah. And there’s a very clear path forward that’s possible, right? And I think that countries like Mexico and many Latin American countries have shown us the way, and the question is whether or not we want to pay attention, right?  So Mexico has gender parity laws that require elections to put forth half of the candidates need to be women. Right, we don’t, we don’t have a law like that.  Mexico has federal, paid maternity leave. We don’t have that. 

Kaeden: Wow, yeah, very cool. And then, just the last question here: What exactly does Claudia Sheinbaum represent for the future of Mexico? You know, I think it’s indicative that she has a very high approval rate as the first female president, you know, of 89% within the last two weeks. What do you think of that question? 

Prof. Susie Porter: What does she represent?  So she represents the political consolidation of a particular Political party in Mexico, Morena, which has an interesting history of the larger history of the dominance of the political process by one party for decades, right? And that was broken up, and she’s a part of a new movement of the Morena party, so she in some ways, represents the consolidation of that political party and process. She represents a populist presidential program that focuses on social programs of finding ways to lift people out of poverty with, you know, subsidies for certain social groups, programming that targets poverty, that addresses the minimum wage. They just passed a law recently that gives more rights to gig workers, right? So the Uber and Didi drivers and all of those people who are “self-employed” now have access to more rights as workers. So there are a lot of Social programs that her presidency represents and that she’s upholding, and she’s a scientist, right? She has a degree in energy engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, a PhD, she studied at the Berkeley Lawrence Livermore Lab at UC Berkeley, one of my alma maters, and she’s data-driven. She believes in science, she believes climate change is a real thing, and she understands the role that Mexico can and can’t play in addressing global climate change. So I think that those are conversations that she’s trying to find her way forward on and that she’s opening up for the country, that are very important, right? Mexico historically has been very dependent on oil production. One of the big issues in the Mexican revolution of 1910 was who gets to own that, right? It was owned by foreign corporations, and during the revolution, it was taken over by the Mexican state. So the Mexican state has had a very large invested interest in the oil industry and fossil fuels, and that oil, the oil industry has also been playing an increasing role in drug cartels and organized crime, or however you wanna call it. So she’s opening conversations about that.  She’s also opening conversations in new ways about corruption, which is a very delicate issue in Mexico. Trying to address long-standing, ingrained types of corruption. Again, acknowledging corruption in the United States, that would be another conversation. Yes, I would say those are some of the things that she represents. 

Kaeden: So in many ways she’s groundbreaking in her field and within Mexico, you know, coming into this position within a new political party and being a woman and having very, I mean, multidisciplinary values that are distinct from those of her predecessors. Very cool.  Well, I think that about does it. Thank you very much, Susie Porter, for coming on this podcast and providing so much insight with regard to this current event. 

Prof. Susie Porter: Great, I’m so glad that this event was of interest and that I hope people enjoy learning a little bit about Mexico and go out and learn some more. 

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