Mexico bid farewell Monday to Ifigenia Martínez, a feminist icon of the nation’s political left, who died at age 99 on Saturday — simply 4 days after presiding over the hand-over of energy to Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first lady president.
Martínez’s coffin, draped with the Mexican flag, was wheeled into the Legislative Palace of San Lázaro, the seat of Congress, the place lawmakers paid homage to a pioneer who had served as an envoy, senator, and, on the time of her loss of life, was president of the Chamber of Deputies.
Sheinbaum earlier attended a memorial for Martínez, whom she lauded as an inspiration for generations of Mexican girls and leftists.
Sheinbaum’s ascension to the presidency culminated a long time of battle for equal rights in a nation with an extended legacy of machismo — and the place girls didn’t win the precise to vote till 1953.
Upon Martínez’s passing, Sheinbaum praised her idol on social media.
“On June 2, I voted for Ifigenia Martínez, a principled lady of convictions. On Oct. 1, I acquired the presidential sash from her fingers. At the moment she left us,” Sheinbaum wrote. “I ship all my affection and solidarity to her household, companions and associates. Hasta siempre [Forever onward] expensive trainer Ifigenia.”
After casting her poll in nationwide elections on June 2, Sheinbaum, a long-time leftist activist, was requested which presidential candidate had acquired her vote.
“Ifigenia Martínez,” Sheinbaum replied with out hesitation.
It was a write-in, as Martínez’s title was not on the poll. However Sheinbaum had sought to pay symbolic homage to the trail-blazer.
After her election, Sheinbaum extolled Martínez as “one of many girls who has opened the trail for a lot of girls in Mexico.”
On Oct. 1, an ailing Martínez presided over Sheinbaum’s inauguration as a whole bunch of lawmakers and visiting heads of state seemed on.
Martínez, her respiration labored, acquired the presidential sash — that includes the colours of the Mexican flag and embossed with a gold-threaded nationwide coat of arms— from the outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and offered it to Sheinbaum, symbolically finalizing the switch of energy.
A day earlier than her loss of life, Martínez posted on social media: “The arrival of Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum to the presidency is the end result of a wrestle that has lasted by total generations of girls. Ladies who, with braveness, have challenged the boundaries of our occasions.”
Participating within the historic transition she wrote, was “one of many best honors” of her life. “All my love, expensive president.”
It was the finale of a long time of political activism for Martínez.
She was first elected in 1976 to the the Chamber of Deputies. Within the Nineteen Eighties, Martínez was was among the many leftist political leaders behind a reformist bloc that finally fashioned a base for the the Nationwide Regeneration Motion, or Morena — formally registered as a political social gathering a decade in the past by López Obrador. Sheinbaum ran for president below the banner of Morena, profitable a landslide victory in opposition to a center-right opposition coalition.
Morena, with Sheinbaum as its standard-bearer, now dominates Mexican politics.
Aside from her storied political profession, Martínez served as Mexico’s ambassador to the United Nations and as head of the economics division on the Autonomous College of Mexico (UNAM) — additionally the alma mater of Sheinbaum, who holds a PhD in local weather science.
In keeping with UNAM, Martínez was the primary Mexican lady to obtain a masters in economics from Harvard College, the place she additionally studied for her doctorate.
As an UNAM school member in 1968, Martínez expressed vocal opposition to the the navy occupation of components of the campus throughout 1968 pro-democracy demonstrations.
In considered one of her first public pronouncements as president, Sheinbaum, 62, referred to as herself a “little one of 1968,” and delivered a proper state apology for the bloodbath of scholars and different protesters by Mexican safety forces throughout 1968 demonstrations in Mexico Metropolis.
