My president

I want a female president or a male president or a non binary-president, because identity representation is the beginning of the struggle – never the end of it. I want a president who knows about gender issues and not merely someone who has a vulva, because to think that just because she is a woman, she will be good or different is not only essentialist – it’s naïve. Women, whether presidents or not, are not biologically “good,” and assuming this implies forgetting that this necro-capitalist system – regardless of who’s in power–enables, encourages and replicates certain types of violent behaviour. I want a president who does not make campaign promises and then does exactly the opposite.

I want a president who understands that it’s not enough to be a “good person” and just change names and acronyms. I want her to overturn the system designed to reproduce the bullshit she swore to change. I want a president who will restructure power. A president who serves and does not serve herself. A president who knows that the centre of power lies not with her but with the people she represents and that this is not just to do with option A or B, but rather it has to do with the current political imaginary.

I want a president who is not the lesser evil. I want a president who has taken care of her elderly parents. I want a president who knows how to change nappies, who knows what it's like to have sleepless nights caring for a sick daughter. I want a president who will return the military to their barracks.

“I want a president who does not make up figures. I want a president who knows what it is to go hungry”

I want a president who never blames the victims of femicide for their deaths or the hundreds of young people murdered because “they were up to something.” I want a president who knows that a flag is just a rag at the root of too much violence. I want a president who speaks Spanish and English, sure, why not, but whose mother tongue is one of the 68 native languages of this country.

I want a president who has survived cancer and knows what medicine shortages feel like. I want a president who has had a clandestine abortion. I want a pansexual president. I want a president who has planted and tended a field of corn and beans, a president who knows how hard it is to work the land. I want a president who has had to change subway lines at the Pantitlán station during rush hour, a president who knows what it’s like to be mugged on the bus and have your pay cheque or mobile phone taken from you every other week. I want a president who has a brother affected by the justice system and who has waited in line to visit him.

I want a president who has spent hours queuing for everything, and has never jumped the line. I want a president with varicose veins. I want a president who has been displaced: either by organised crime, or because her community ran out of water, or because the mining company kicked her out of her home at gunpoint. I want a president who politicises based on the consequences her decisions will have on the seventh generation. I want a president who is allergic to the power of a partisan system of plunder. I want a president who has searched for her disappeared relatives with picks, with shovels, with sticks and her fingernails, because a president who does not know this is negligent.

I want a president who does not make up figures. I want a president who knows what it is to go hungry. I want a president who knows that a woman becoming president is not an achievement for feminism, or for women, or for anyone, if this person does not create a climate of accountability and responsibility. I want a president who knows that life should be at the centre and not her own power, who knows that this long list of things are not just part of her identity: they are her struggle to change this country and to build a better world.

Gabriela Jauregui: “Mi presidenta”, inspired by the poem “I want a president” by the American artist Zoe Leonhard (1992) 
© Gabriela Jauregui

Translated from Spanish by Jess Smee