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News > Latin America

Mexico: Who Are the Women That Make Up Half of AMLO's Cabinet?

  • (L-R): Luisa Maria Alcalde, Rocio Nahle, Irma Sandoval and Olga Maria del Carmen Sanchez are part of AMLO's cabinet.

    (L-R): Luisa Maria Alcalde, Rocio Nahle, Irma Sandoval and Olga Maria del Carmen Sanchez are part of AMLO's cabinet. | Photo: Facebook / Twitter / plumas libres

Published 11 July 2018
Opinion

Eight of the key figures in AMLO's future government are women and they have interesting proposals for Mexico.

Of the 16 confirmed members of president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s cabinet eight are women. teleSUR English reviews their profiles and plans for their tenure. 

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AMLO’s cabinet will include representatives of the business sectors and members of the traditional Institutional Revolution Party, but it also has an important share of academics and progressive women.

Olga Maria del Carmen Sanchez, the first woman to head the ministry of the Interior, was a judge in Mexico’s Supreme Court between 1995 and 2005. She is in favor of legalizing marijuana and believes the country needs to rethink its policy on drugs.

During an interview with Zosimo Camacho, Sanchez criticized the lack of judicial symmetry with the United States and stressed the importance of changing the strategy in the war on drugs. “How is it possible that here in our country we are killing ourselves and the U.S. is decriminalizing drugs?,” she questioned.

AMLO’s pick for social development, Maria Luisa Albores is an agronomist and specialist on social economy, which is based on the principle of solidarity. Since 2001 she has worked with Indigenous and Campesino communities in the development of productive and economic cooperatives and projects.

During the campaign trail, Albores vowed to work for the economic and social inclusion of rural Mexico and stressed the importance of restructuring Mexico’s social development ministry. According to Albores the ministry has “served to keep people poor, and poverty has been administered electorally.”

For Minister of Labor and Social Welfare, AMLO has appointed Luisa Maria Alcalde, a lawyer and former legislator, who has done extensive work on a dignified salary in Mexico.

Alcalde has announced she will hold meeting with Mexico's private sector and the country's central bank to find a viable path to an increase to the country's minimum wage. 

Economy will be headed by Graciela Marquez, Ph.D. in economic history and professor in several universities in Mexico and abroad. She has written extensively on economic development, inequality and commercial policy. She would be the first woman to head the ministry of economy and will head the current negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Alejandra Frausto has accepted to lead Mexico’s ministry of culture. She has worked to promote access to culture and the arts as a central element in social development, with an emphasis on popular and Indigenous cultures.

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The Ministry of Environment and natural resources will be headed by Oxford graduate Josefa Gonzalez, who studied transformative art and has worked with vulnerable populations in art-related projects. For the past years she has worked in the southern state of Chiapas in conservation and reforestation projects.

Irma Sandoval has been given the Ministry of the Civil Service. She is a political scientist and researcher for Mexico’s Autonomous University (UNAM). Sandoval is also the coordinator of UNAM’s Lab on corruption documentation and analysis.

She has proposed to use technology to monitor the good use of public resources, a monitoring system open to citizens to control public works, and to encourage anonimous complaints to fight corruption in Mexico.

Finally, AMLO’s pick for the Energy Minister is Rocio Nahle who has worked in the petrochemical industry for years. Her main proposal is the construction of two refineries in Tabasco and Campeche, and the rehabilitation of six refineries to meet Mexico’s internal demand.

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