Rags-to-Riches Female Candidate Shakes Up Mexico Presidential Race

CUERNAVACA, Mexico— Xóchitl Gálvez, wearing an ankle-length traditional indigenous dress, strode into a packed auditorium to a standing ovation from business people shouting Xóchitl! Xóchitl!

Since entering Mexico’s presidential race in June, the 60-year-old Gálvez has appeared to electrify a downcast opposition and unsettle President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose ruling Morena party is expected to romp to victory in next year’s presidential election, riding on the popular leader’s coattails. 

In a matter of weeks, Gálvez has positioned herself as the clear front-runner among a dozen hopefuls to win the nomination of Mexico’s opposition coalition. The candidate will be named on Sept. 3 after a primary. 

López Obrador isn’t running again because Mexico doesn’t allow re-election. He is likely to give his blessing to former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, who is expected to win his party’s nomination. She leads another Morena hopeful, former Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, by some 10 points in opinion polls. 

Opposition voters had been resigned to an overwhelming Morena victory in the 2024 elections, until Gálvez entered the scene. 

The little-known senator, who is often seen getting around on her electric bicycle, has a compelling personal story, having gone from street vendor as a young girl to successful businesswoman and elected official. Her message of women’s rights, support for struggling Mexicans’ aspirations for a better life, and of national unity has given hope to Mexicans worn out by López Obrador’s divisive politics, her supporters say.

Gálvez owes much of her recent rise in the polls to López Obrador himself, who blasted her daily at his morning news conferences, poking fun at her up-by-the-bootstraps story and raising her profile nationally, Mexican political analysts say. 

“She has been a spectacular phenomenon,” said pollster Ulises Beltrán, noting her double-digit lead over the nearest opposition contender.

López Obrador’s spokesman denied the president had boosted Gálvez politically and attributed her rise to favorable media coverage. He declined to comment on the presidential race.

Former senator Ricardo Monreal, a member of the ruling party who is also seeking the nomination, said López Obrador made the comments about Gálvez to mobilize his political base. 

“He is right in making the differences crystal clear,” he said.

While Gálvez’s success as a businesswoman appeals to Mexico’s political and economic establishment, her folksy manner, earthy language and fondness for theatrical gestures score points with ordinary Mexicans.

Wearing a silver-colored wig and white guayabera, she parodied López Obrador in a 2018 video that got tens of thousands of views on YouTube. Last year, she burst onto the Senate floor dressed in a green Tyrannosaurus rex costume to protest López Obrador’s proposed electoral overhaul, which she said would take Mexico “back to the Jurassic era.”

Gálvez, whose first name Xóchitl is pronounced “SOH-cheel” and means flower in the Náhuatl language, was born to an indigenous Otomí father and a mestizo woman in Tepatepec, a drowsy town of some 11,000 people surrounded by lush cornfields about a two hours’ drive from Mexico City.

Gálvez said her hard-drinking father, now deceased, frequently beat her mother and once forced his wife and daughter out of the house in the middle of the night after threatening to shoot the mother with a shotgun.

As a child, she slept with her parents and four siblings in the same room of a single-story adobe house a few blocks from the town’s main plaza, said her cousin Ramón Gálvez. The house didn’t have running water and the family had to collect rainwater. They shared a latrine with seven relatives who lived in two other rooms.   

“It was a life of violence and poverty,” she said. To help make ends meet, Gálvez said she helped her mother sell jello and tamales on the street. She said she defied her father when he opposed her studying past sixth grade. 

“If there is something that defines her, it is her eagerness to better herself,” said cousin Marco Antonio Ruiz. 

At 17, Gálvez left Tepatepec for a one-room shack made of metal sheeting in a tough Mexico City barrio. She worked as a telephone operator in the mornings and studied engineering in the evenings at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where she received a scholarship, she said in an interview. 

Fascinated by computing, she founded a high-tech company that equips intelligent buildings. In 1999, she was included in the World Economic Forum’s list of 100 future global leaders. The following year, head hunters recommended her to President Vicente Fox to lead an indigenous-affairs institute, which she did until 2006.

In 2018 she became a senator for the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, although she isn’t a party member.  

“Her life story surpasses any dramatic script of Mexico’s national story,” said Gustavo Madero, a fellow senator and former president of the PAN.        

Beltrán, the pollster, said Gálvez’s strength as a candidate is that she upends López Obrador’s caricature of the opposition as representing a wealthy, corrupt and conservative oligarchy. 

“The message is the messenger,” said Jorge Castañeda, a political analyst and former Mexican foreign minister. “She makes López Obrador’s identity politics boomerang on him in her favor.” 

Pollster Alejandro Moreno said Gálvez is also drawing traditional voters from López Obrador’s party. “She is attractive to women, older people and people with less education,” he said. 

Still, Gálvez is 10 points behind Sheinbaum in a recent poll by El Financiero newspaper.

Gálvez said she supports the president’s social programs but thinks they should be more effective. She sees her personal story as a rebuke to López Obrador’s disdain for Mexican strivers like herself. 

Gálvez has filed criminal two complaints against López Obrador after the president revealed financial data on her companies’ contracts. She said the data included confidential tax information, which she said was obtained illegally. López Obrador hasn’t said where it came from. His spokesman said judges will determine whether López Obrador did something improper or illegal.

Mixing an occasional Mexican slang word with a giggle, Gálvez has been adept at rebutting López Obrador’s attacks. 

“He is a macho, and I’ve dealt with many machos in my life,” she said.

In June, she demanded an apology from him after he incorrectly said she wanted to take away pensions from the elderly. After he refused, she went to a court, obtaining a ruling giving her the right to reply on the same forum.

“I don’t back away from fights. When he challenged me, I went to court,” she said.  

Court order in hand, Gálvez rode her bicycle to the presidential palace where López Obrador was holding his morning press conference. She knocked on the heavy wooden doors to the palace, but the president refused to let her in. Gálvez finally left.

Her failed attempt generated a wave of support, leading her to think hard about running for president. Two weeks later, she announced her candidacy.  

Write to José de Córdoba at [email protected] and Juan Montes at [email protected]