Mexico’s President Sheinbaum visits Juárez, returns native lands in Sierra Tarahumara

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum inaugurated a new general hospital in Juárez, announced plans for new child care centers and signed decrees returning tribal lands in the Sierra Tarahumara in a visit to Chihuahua state this weekend.

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President Sheinbaum took part in the red-ribbon cutting ceremony on Saturday, Dec. 21, of the new 260-bed Regional General Hospital No. 2 of Mexico’s Social Security Institute, known as IMSS.

Sheinbaum, who in October took office as Mexico’s first woman president, said that her administration would work with state and local leaders for the development of Juárez.

“Here (in Juárez) there is a historical debt with the women, not only of Ciudad Juárez, but of the entire country,” Sheinbaum said, according to a partial transcript in a news statement. “Juárez, we no longer want it to be the symbol of feminicide, we want it to be the center of the rights of all women in the country.”

Feminicides refer to the hundreds of disappearances and murders of women in Juárez since the 1990s.

Juárez to get new child care, women centers

Sheinbaum also announced plans in Juárez for 12 new Centros de Educación y Cuidado Infantil — Child Education and Care Centers, known by the acronym CECI — to help women of the working poor, including maquiladora and agricultural workers, with child care as well as being part of a network of centers across Mexico informing women of their rights.

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“Juárez was an example of the terrible neoliberal period that our country lived through,” Sheinbaum said.

“For decades and particularly with the first (North American) Free Trade Agreement, we were made to believe that the only thing Mexico could offer was cheap labor,” she said. “That is how the maquiladora industry grew, and other industries in the country, told the lie that if wages increased, inflation also increased and for 36 years they said that the competitive advantage was cheap labor, fortunately everything changed with the arrival of (former President Andres Manuel) López Obrador.”

Sheinbaum was joined at the hospital inauguration by Juárez Mayor Cruz Perez Cuellar, Chihuahua Gov. Maria Eugenia “Maru” Campos, Zoé Robledo Aburto, the director general of Mexico’s Social Security Institute, and the cabinet secretaries of the nation’s wellbeing and women’s issues departments.

Perez Cuellar is a member of the Morena political party, along with Sheinbuam and her predecessor, López Obrador. Campos is with the National Action Party, or PAN.

Mexico’s president returns native lands in Sierra Tarahumara

On Friday, Sheinbaum was joined by Campos when the president signed two decrees returning traditional communal native lands to Rarámuri communities in Chihuahua’s Sierra Tarahumara.

One decrees transfers 1,485 hectares to the indigenous community of Guasachique and the second decree is for 693 hectares for the indigenous community in the forests of San Elías Repechique, authorities said.

“In this stage of the second step of the Fourth Transformation we continue the fight for social justice and a commitment to national unity; for a future in which all Mexicans, regardless of their origin, gender, ethnicity or social class, have the same opportunities to prosper,” Sheinbaum said, according to comments from the president’s office.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Mexico’s President Sheinbaum visits Juárez, returns native lands

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