The situation is unprecedented in Mexico. This year, the favorites in the primaries that will, in early September, determine the candidates for the June 2024 presidential election are women. And they represent both the left and the right. In a country where machismo is still prevalent and where more than 10 femicides happen every day, the possibility of a woman acceding to power would already make this election extraordinary, even before taking into account the two leaders' extensive and unusual resumés.

On the left, Claudia Sheinbaum, 61, leads in the primary polls for the Morena party (National Regeneration Movement, center-left), which has been in power since 2018 under Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known as "AMLO"), who is ineligible for re-election. A loyal supporter of the president, Sheinbaum was mayor of Mexico City until June, making the capital the showcase for her presidential project. Sheinbaum, who has a PhD in energy engineering and was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) until 2013, has unsurprisingly been active on ecological issues. But she has also reproduced Obrador's social policy at the city level, creating infrastructure (transportation, universities) and distributing social aid in the poorest districts.

Her opponents portray her as an "AMLO puppet." She proclaims without reservation that she will continue "the policies of our movement" and repeats Obrador's motto in her meetings: "For the good of all, the poor first." For the time being, the rules of the left's primary prevent her from putting forward her own ideas. In an interview with Le Monde, however, she promised to focus "on renewable energies, the water that Mexico is running out of and the issue of violence, particularly against women."

On the right, 60-year-old Xochitl Galvez needed only a few weeks of campaigning to outpace the leaders of her movement, the National Action Party (PAN, right), as well as those of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, center-right) and the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD, left), who have united against Morena. With her impressive professional background, Galvez, a woman from a rural background, has given hope to AMLO's opponents, who are looking for a candidate capable of countering the Obradist wave.

This businesswoman and robotics engineer, who headed the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples under the government of Vicente Fox (2000-2006), emphasizes her Otomi origins and wears only large huipils, the Mexican embroidered garment. Taking up traditional left-wing themes (abortion rights, defense of LGBTQ+ people, social welfare), she has led a disruptive candidacy among the conservative and elitist ranks of her party. Since the launch of her candidacy, she has been regularly attacked by the president during his daily press conferences, a sign of a certain anxiety about a candidate who does not fit the "conservative" label he wants to stick on his opponents.

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