Mexico’s government has delivered falling violence, rising wages and broad social reform. Yet its record has attracted remarkably little attention in the English-language media, even as external pressure from the United States intensifies.

At the beginning of last month, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum stood in front of an estimated 600,000 supporters in Zócalo Square and reflected on the achievements of her first year in office and the seven years since the Morena Party, which she heads, came to power.

It was quite a list: 13 million people lifted out of poverty; the minimum wage increased by 125 per cent; Indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities allocated budgets to run their own affairs; a locally produced people’s electric car about to roll off production lines; a new fast rail system crossing the country; a national park spanning 14 million acres across Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala; a 37 per cent drop in homicides; and on it went.

Sheinbaum is Mexico’s first woman president, its first Jewish president, and a climate scientist who was part of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize–winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change team. In short, she has a story to tell, but it’s not one our media pays enough attention to.

That speech – where she declared the end of neoliberalism in Mexico – barely rated a mention in the world’s English-language press.

In fact, Sheinbaum’s extraordinarily popular first year in office – El País reports she has an approval rating of over 70 per cent – has been largely ignored by the English-language media, with three notable exceptions: when she was groped by a man on the streets of Mexico City last November, it made front-page news around the globe; a much-hyped series of “Gen Z” protests; and her dignified, and at times witty, responses to bellicose threats to Mexico’s sovereignty from the US president – which have seen her labelled the anti-Trump.

So........

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