“Let’s hope that in Ecuador, they’ll soon be shouting ‘Presidenta with an ‘A’! This enthusiastic endorsement, given by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to another prominent female politician, Ecuadoran presidential candidate Luisa González credited at the time with a 50\50 chance of being elected, was the focus of much media attention during the recent Ecuadoran presidential campaign.
Female leadership and Left-wing populism 2.0?
The obvious solidarity between these two high-profile female politicians triggered many speculations as to the possibility of a new era of female Left-wing populism in the Americas. Indeed, both share a set of common Left-wing populist political inclinations, focused on state interventionism, natural resources nationalization, and, above all, a return to social policies. In Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum’s government is fully dedicated to the country’s “4th transformation or 4T”, a national plan resurrecting the traditional Left-wing populist style of the Mexican revolution. The 4T’s iconic measures include a 120% increase in minimum wages, doubling the purchasing power after 35 years of stagnation, as well as new labor laws securing the right to sit down during working hours for typically female jobs such as tellers and cashiers.
However, this apparent return to fully-fledged traditional Left-wing populism -or its promises in the case of Luisa González who failed to get elected in Ecuador, should not obliterate another important aspect that sheds light on the nature of a possible new era of female Left-wing populist leadership in Latin America. While González promised to reestablish some key democratic and human rights institutions abolished by President Daniel Noboa, her Mexican counterpart, along with her majority government of the MORENA party (National Regeneration Movement) is engaged in the process of building a rampart to protect reproductive rights, following the Supreme Court of Mexico (SCJN)’s pivotal rulings.
Paradoxically, in a country that remains one of America’s deadliest for women, with a feminicide rate only surpassed by Brazil’s, the current Mexican government’s position on reproductive rights contrasts sharply with the major setbacks on gender and reproductive rights that is taking place in Right-wing populist countries such as El Salvador, where president Bukele is a spearhead for the influence of international Anti-Rights movement. This is also at play in the Trump 2.0 administration, which aims at the deliberalization of democracy particularly through the subordination and political persecution of the Judicial power.
At the opposite end of the scale, and just a few days away from her first anniversary in power on July 3, both President Sheinbaum and her predecessor President López Obrador -“AMLO” (2018-2024) can boast about their support and implementation of two consecutive Supreme Court of Mexico rulings that have led to the complete depenalization of abortion, at the national (federal) level in Mexico, since 2023.
Drawing the line between Left-wing and Right-wing populism: Gender and reproductive rights policies and the primacy of judicial rulings
Despite the fact that many other relevant criteria might be used to distinguish Left-wing populism from Right-wing versions, assessing the situation of gender and reproductive rights is currently a key factor in differentiating them. Despite the pervasiveness and lack of sufficient efforts to counter gender violence, the defense of reproductive rights, as well as the respect for the primacy of judicial decisions regarding the latter, allow us to draw a clear line between the ideological and institutional orientations of Mexico’s current Left-wing populist government versus the Right-wing populist governments led by Presidents Bukele in El Salvador, Noboa in Ecuador and Milei in Argentina. While the World Health Organization warns that the vast majority of abortions are unsafe in Latin America, targeted attacks on gender and reproductive rights by these Right-wing populist governments have worsened the situation since the 2020s.
A telling example of Right-wing populism’s attacks on gender and reproductive rights can be found in the 2024 bill that Argentinian President Javier Milei has submitted to re-penalize and criminalize abortion, with prison sentences of three years for any woman who undergoes a voluntary termination of pregnancy (VTP). This major setback is designed to overturn the brief victory of reproductive rights advocates, supported by massive demonstrations which had succeeded in decriminalizing VTP in 2020.
For his part, and faithful to his grandiloquent style, President Nayib Bukele has opted in 2023 to label abortion as “genocide” and has increased prison sentences so that Salvadoran women now face up to 50 years in prison for undergoing a VTP, even if the life of the mother is at risk. The dramatic hearing of “Beatriz and others vs El Salvador”, defending the case of a 21-year-old mother who died because she couldn’t get access to a VTP despite the threat to her life, exemplifies the authoritarian drift in this country where journalists criticizing the work of the police/army also face 10-15 year prison sentences, while other spectacular illiberal measures have dropped the country to the bottom 25% of the world’s least free countries in 2023–2024.
In stark contrast to these attacks to gender and human rights, Mexico stands besides Colombia, renowned for its strong and independent judicial power, as being the only two governments in the region that have actively supported and implemented court rulings in favor of a full depenalization of VTPs since 2021. In Mexico, the government has notably supported and implemented two different Supreme Court rulings for the depenalization of abortion: starting in the state of Coahuila in 2021 and expanding to the national level in 2023. While this specifically required governmental support to ensure that all federal facilities throughout the country would offer VTPs, it is noteworthy that the Mexican government chose to highlight the Supreme Court’s role and primacy in its website, stating that “With this decision from the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, federal health institutions throughout the country will have to provide abortion services to women and persons with gestational capacity who request it.”
Political support for reproductive rights in Mexico: Beyond populism and electoralism
This clear support for the primacy of court rulings may be surprising in a country that otherwise values political discourse and communication strategies that put forward direct relations between the President and the population. These are carefully staged during the daily television programs that President Sheinbaum, like AMLO before her, uses as powerful communication tools to “receive the appeals” of “the People”, following the example of late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s “Alo presidente” daily tv shows, and perpetuating the emblematic direct mass appeal used since the 1940’s by many other Left-wing Latin American populist leaders.
Governmental support for the controversial judicial decisions on reproductive rights also signals a surprising distancing from electoral considerations. Despite the powerful Mexican Catholic Church (representing 78% of population) and Evangelical churches’ very vocal outrage and opposition to depenalization, the MORENA governments openly supported the Supreme Court’s decisions on abortion. Despite obvious electoral advantages that could be obtained from siding with religious authorities in this country of great religious fervor, the Mexican government chose to send a strong signal of support for the independence and primacy of the courts in matters of reproductive and gender rights.
Thus, along with a few other consolidated liberal democracies like Colombia, Claudia Sheinbaum’s Left-wing populist government in Mexico provides a bulwark against the growing attacks on gender and reproductive rights imposed by Right-wing populist governments throughout the Americas.
However, Left-wing populism’s typical political strategy of co-optation of social movements also seems to be at play in Mexico and hinders the development of autonomous feminist and women’s organizations that have been key to major legislative and social change in Latin America and over the world. Ongoing tensions between the MORENA administrations, and specifically of President Sheinbaum with feminist and Indigenous organizations in recent mass demonstrations for the elimination of violence against women, should remind us that a solid democracy cannot thrive without a strong and autonomous civil society that won’t be oriented or co-opted by its political leaders, nor criminalized for its opposition.
This blog is the third in a 3 part series related to an event held on April 9, 2025 titled “Left Populist Movements and Women’s Reproductive Rights: A Comparative View of Recent Abortion Law Reforms“. Read the first blog by Seána Glennon and the second blog by Anna Bogic.
