México City (March 10, 2021).- Senator Josefina Vázquez Mota, who was a presidential candidate for the PAN political party back in 2012, denounced that she was a victim of gender violence by former presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón during her presidential campaign, 9 years ago.
During her participation in the forum “United we are stronger”, held in Querétaro and which was also attended by Margarita Zavala, Calderón’s wife, she told what she considered to be two difficult moments in her campaign.
“President Fox, I think it is the first time I have told this, I almost do not like to tell … sometimes our loyalty is excessive or wrong (…) he said that he was going to accompany me to the second presidential debate, who we have lived through a presidential debate we know that it is an easy moment of the campaign, and the night before I saw that an e-mail came in from him and I was very excited because I was sure that in that e-mail he was going to give me encouragement, and may be saying: ‘Go for it, Josefina, step forward!’, things like that …“So I opened that e-mail and what I read it was: “I had decided to support another candidate”, one night before the second debate, and it seems to me that this is called gender violence and that many of us would never dare to do it, but they do it with us”, she told a group of women convened by the PAN State Steering Committee in Querétaro in the context of International Women’s Day.
Before telling a second anecdote, now featuring Felipe Calderón, Vázquez Mota, the first PAN candidate for the Presidency of the Republic in 2012, apologized to Margarita Zavala (Calderon’s wife).
The senator said “the day I won the internal election, which were like 25 states, the president (Felipe Calderón) called me and asked me ‘how did it go?’ I said ‘I won like 25 states’. It seemed like a long silence to me, maybe it wasn’t that long, and the only thing I heard from the other side was: ‘let me check, give me a few minutes because I have other data.’ And that’s how I started that night of February 5th”.
She also recalled that in a meeting with “well-known” businessmen, for which she had prepared in order to respond on security and economic issues, the first question they asked her was why she was not wearing her wedding ring.
“I wanted to answer so many things, just because I was in the campaign I resisted, but these are the things the press wanted to know about; I am sure that a man has never been asked why he forgot his wedding ring… women in Mexico are treated with a different standard, ”said the former presidential candidate.
The PAN legislator commented that she shares this type of anecdote because women should be aware of the situation, gender violence is still a reality in our country, and women should keep struggling and never give up.
“Here nobody gives us anything, it is not a concession, we are not going to take a step back and there is no wall or anything or anyone to stop our dreams, except ourselves,” Vazquez Mota added.
Source: Milenio
