Claudia Sheinbaum becomes the first woman to assume the presidency of Mexico in its more than 200 years of independent history with the commitment to continue the policies of its predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The 62-year-old scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, who identifies as a leftist, comes to power after winning decisively in the general elections in June and the shelter of her mentor, López Obrador, whom she met more than two decades.
Although there is no doubt about her political closeness to the popular Mexican leader, with whom she shares her way of understanding the role of the government in the fight against inequality, she is considered less confrontational and more attached to data and academia, something to which she pointed out. incorporate for your cabinet to some researchers and academics.
FILE – The ruling party’s presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, right, wrapped in confetti, at the campaign closing ceremony in the Zócalo, the main square in Mexico City, on May 29, 2024.
(Eduardo Verdugo/AP)
Sheinbaum will be able to govern comfortably, at least in the first half of his six-year term, given that the ruling Morena party and its allied forces will have control of Congress until 2027 and the opposition was decimated in the last elections.
The new president has insisted on emphasize your scientific training. He has a doctorate in Energy Engineering. His brother is a physicist. In an interview with The Associated Press in 2023, he proclaimed: “I believe in science.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I have chosen to handle it differently than the one that López Obrador followed at the national level.
While the federal government downplayed coronavirus testing, Mexico City expanded its testing policy. Sheinbaum limited working hours and conditions at companies as the virus spread rapidly, even though López Obrador wanted to avoid any restrictions that could harm the economy. She also publicly wore a mask and urged social distancing, something that the former president insisted on not complying with.
FILE – The ruling party’s presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum raises a fist in victory while being transported to a voting center in the general elections in Mexico City, on June 2, 2024.
(Eduardo Verdugo/AP)
Politics also has a solid left formationprior to López Obrador’s nationalist and populist movement.
His parents were prominent activists in the 1968 Mexican student movement that ended tragically with a massacre in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco Plaza just days before the Olympic Games opened there that year. Dozens of students and civilians died in a shootout involving soldiers and government agents dressed in civilian clothes. According to official figures, about 25 people died, although some estimate that at least 350 died.
Sheinbaum is also the first president of Jewish origin in a predominantly Catholic country.
Despite identifying herself as progressive and proclaiming from the electoral campaign that upon coming to power she will fight to vindicate women’s rights, the new president has managed with reservation against abortion. He has also kept his distance from the claims of hundreds of “searching mothers”—as those who search on their own for their missing children and relatives are known in the country—who have denounced the abandonment of the State in the face of a tragedy of violence. which totals more than 115,000 missing.
FILE – The presidential candidate of the ruling party Claudia Sheinbaum before voting in the general elections in Mexico City, on June 2, 2024.
(Matias Delacroix/AP)
Many challenges await Sheinbaum in the next six years, but the violence will be one of the biggest. The new president has committed to maintaining the security policies of her predecessor and continuing to rely on the armed forces and the National Guard. Likewise, he has assured that he will preserve social programs aimed at young people to prevent them from being recruited by cartels.
In line with the policies of his predecessor, Sheinbaum has shown open support in recent weeks for a package of constitutional changes that López Obrador promoted at the end of his term, including controversial reforms to the judiciary and the military, recently approved.
The initiative in judicial matters, which occurred amid strong protests by court employees, imposes the election by popular vote starting next year of more than 1,000 judges. With the military reform, the transfer of the National Guard to the control of the army was formalized, which deepened the militarization of public security despite questions from humanitarian groups and United Nations experts.
After the recent wave of violence in the northwestern state of Sinaloa due to disputes between two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, the new president ratified her adherence to the policy of non-confrontation with criminal groups that López Obrador maintained and announced that she will present some initiatives to Congress to reform security laws and create a National Intelligence and Investigation System.
In terms of the economy, he has also stated affinities with his predecessor. He has blamed neoliberal economic policies for condemning millions of people to poverty, promised a strong welfare state and praised the Mexican state oil major Pemex, while promising to intensify the use of clean energy.
“Being left has to do with that, with guaranteeing the minimum rights to all inhabitants,” Sheinbaum told the AP last year.
But unlike López Obrador, who on several occasions became entangled in public fights with representatives of other branches of power, such as the judiciary or the electoral branch, and the media, Sheinbaum has so far been less confrontational or, at least, more selective in her battles.
