Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum speaks at a press conference this Thursday at the National Palace in Mexico City. EFE/Isaac Esquivel
Mexico City, Aug 27 (EFE) – Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum expressed her admiration Thursday for the historic American activist Angela Davis, whom she recognized as “an institution” in the defense of women’s and civil rights, one day after the philosopher led a massive feminist gathering in Mexico City.
“Angela Davis is an institution in the defense of women’s and civil rights. She is a woman who has fought her entire life for the defense of freedoms and rights,” the president stated during her morning press conference.
Sheinbaum highlighted Davis’s (Alabama, 1944) career in the fight against racial discrimination and recalled a definition of feminism by the American activist that she often uses.
“She has a very simple phrase that I use a lot. When people ask her, ‘What is feminism?’ she says, ‘It’s considering a woman a person.’ It’s that simple,” she said.
Sheinbaum, the first woman to hold the presidency of Mexico, has placed women’s rights at the heart of her administration and has repeatedly championed women’s access to positions of power under the slogan “We all arrive.”
The Mexican leader also highlighted Davis’s historic struggle against segregation and discrimination in the United States.
“She has had a very admirable history of fighting in the United States for the rights of Black people, against racism, classism, and also against sexism, and in favor of freedoms. So, she is an admirable woman,” she stated.
Sheinbaum’s remarks come a day after thousands of women welcomed Davis at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where the activist gave a talk accompanied by groups of trans women, mothers searching for their missing children, human rights defenders, and students.
During the meeting, held as part of the International Book Fair for University Students (FILUNI), Davis lamented the violence in Mexico but championed social mobilization as an instrument of transformation.
“The first task of radical activism is to generate hope and convince people that a better world is possible,” the academic stated, warning that despite the many current crises, “despair is not an option.”
Davis also called for continued efforts to combat racism and pointed out that Mexico is not exempt from the historical consequences of slavery and colonialism.
The activist, one of the international symbols of anti-racist and feminist struggles, lived through American racial segregation, was persecuted by the FBI and spent more than a year in jail in the early 1970s, accused of kidnapping, conspiracy and murder, charges of which she was eventually acquitted.
