It’s not feminist to compare women to put them at odds with each other. So, I don’t intend to compare two great leaders of the popular Obradorist movements, Claudia Sheinbaum and Clara Brugada, but rather I note that all kinds of women occupy key decision-making positions in Mexico today.

Many women activists start out with local problems. In their neighborhoods, they strive to create decent places for their sons and daughters and for those they care for (the ill, elders and people with disabilities). It’s wonderful that in Mexico City today, you can walk on a street and discover fruit trees planted by the women who live on that street.

Clara Brugada also began in this way. As a university student at the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UNAM), she was invited to teach high school in Iztapalapa. She chose to move to San Miguel Teotongo with its inadequate running water and electricity. Residents there were fighting for the right to housing, considered a basic right since the First World Habitat Conference in 1976. Clara joined them and has dedicated the last 40 years to that fight.

She co-founded several neighborhood organizations, including the Popular Urban Movement and the Emiliano Zapata Popular Revolutionary Union. She understood that a more effective way to achieve reform was to join a left party; in 1995 she joined the PRD (Partido de la Revolución Democrática). She was elected their Federal Representative twice, elected local representative to the Congress of Mexico City, and as a Delegate of Iztapalapa. The PRD’s disintegration taught her that it was necessary to continue organizing, but alongside the workers movement. She’s now in the Morena party.

Until recently, Clara Brugada was known only in Iztapalapa. As mayor of that borough, she created “Utopias,” safe and beautiful community centers with free art and music, sports facilities, programs for youth, and free services for women that empower them to end violence. But in 2023, when she ran against Omar García Harfuch (Mexico City’s former secretary of citizen security) for the position of Head of Government of Mexico City (similar to the Governor of a Mexican state), she became a public figure.

We feminists have applauded the Utopias for years because Clara's was the only vision to become a reality that embraced the significance of creating care facilities for the long-awaited national care system. Along with the hospitals, schools, rehabilitation centers, daycare centers, and public transportation (including safe paths along streets) that Claudia championed, the Utopias transform neglected neighborhoods into dignified spaces. Clara’s government finally acted as a caring entity, no longer leaving care work only to unpaid women.

Brugada promises to create 100 Utopias throughout Mexico City when she’s elected. The years 2024-2030 will be exciting because women, Claudia Sheinbaum and Clara Brugada, will occupy two vitally important government offices.

As the Los Angeles Azules — a famous cumbia band from Iztapalapa — say, “from Iztapalapa to the world!"