Mexico’s first female president takes office

MEXICO CITY — Claudia Sheinbaum took office Tuesday, the first woman and Jewish person to lead Mexico in the country’s more than 200-year history as an independent nation.

“For the first time, we women have arrived to lead the destinies of our beautiful nation,” Sheinbaum said during her inauguration ceremony Tuesday. “And I say we arrived because I do not arrive alone. We all arrived.”

Thousands packed into Mexico City’s main square on Tuesday afternoon to wait for Sheinbaum to address supporters.

Licet Reséndiz Oropez, a resident of Tijuana, traveled more than 50 hours by bus to be in the capital on the day a woman became the country’s president for the first time in history.

“It’s something historic,” Reséndiz Oropeza said. “It’s a joy that I cannot begin to describe.”

The leftist former mayor of Mexico City, Sheinbaum triumphed in June elections with the largest margin of victory since Mexico transitioned to democracy and a sweeping mandate to follow through on her promise to continue the social policies of her predecessor and political mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

But while Sheinbaum is stepping into office with considerable power in her hands, she will also have to contend with a multitude of forces that may constrain her, analysts say.

She is inheriting a complex set of challenges: the largest budget deficit in decades, a deepening security crisis, the largest wave of migration in recent history and a fractious political movement that has moved to profoundly redesign the judiciary, among other institutions.

Sheinbaum is known as a capable executive, but not as a transcendent political talent like her predecessor. López Obrador built an entire movement largely on the force of his charisma, reinforcing his enormous influence with a regular morning news conference that he used to keep his allies in line and back adversaries into a corner.

Now the Morena party that he founded has a near hegemonic grip on the nation’s political system, with an effective supermajority in Congress, and control over the vast majority of state legislatures and governorships.

But as it has expanded, the party now encompasses a mishmash of disparate factions that don’t always share the same goals or vision. Some analysts wonder whether Sheinbaum will be able to corral such a restive coalition.

“She no longer has the control of the party as López Obrador did,” said Fernanda Caso, a political analyst and journalist, adding that rather than unifying the party, Sheinbaum would at best be able to discipline it. “She is going to constantly live with internal power struggles within her party.”

There are also questions over how much influence the larger-than-life López Obrador will exert over his protege. His allies have filled her Cabinet and his son, known as Andy, was recently named to one of the most powerful positions in the party.

Sheinbaum has been close to the outgoing president for decades and has insisted that she will have the same priorities and policies as López Obrador not because she is his puppet, but because she genuinely believes in him.

“Being ideologically tied to López Obrador doesn’t mean that you will be manipulated by López Obrador,” said Viri Ríos, a political analyst.

“She is exercising a leadership that is perhaps more quiet than what we are used to in Mexican macho politics,” Ríos said, “but that leadership is there.”

Here is what to know about Mexico’s new president.

Who is Claudia Sheinbaum?

A trained scientist with a doctorate in energy engineering, Sheinbaum spent years straddling academia and politics, where her career has closely tracked López Obrador’s rise. Her first foray into government was as the environment minister of Mexico City when López Obrador became mayor in 2000.

Years later, she participated in a United Nations panel of climate scientists that was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. When López Obrador became president, she won office as mayor of Mexico City, one of the largest metropolises in the hemisphere.

Sheinbaum, 62, describes herself as “obsessive” and “disciplined.” She is known as an exacting boss with little patience for laziness, someone who can squeeze every last drop out of her staff.

The descendant of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews who emigrated to Mexico in the 20th century, Sheinbaum is also the country’s first Jewish president — a watershed moment for some and a trivial detail for others who have rarely seen her discuss her heritage.

Analysts say Sheinbaum’s administration will try to blend her technocratic and pragmatic approach to governing with López Obrador’s populist rhetoric.

At times, she pulled away from his policies. During the pandemic, she tested aggressively while he trusted in good-luck charms; when fighting crime, she invested in intelligence and the police while he relied on the military.

But during the campaign, she supported many of López Obrador’s most contentious policies, including constitutional changes that critics say would undermine democratic checks and balances. She has, as a result, battled the perception among some Mexicans that she could just be a pawn of her mentor.

What challenges will she confront?

Sheinbaum will face pressure to show progress in the fight against increasingly powerful drug cartels, which retain their sway over large swaths of Mexico. While homicides declined modestly during the López Obrador administration, reports of extortion and disappearances have shot up since 2018. Killings, including spates of mass murders, are still near the highest levels recorded.

In recent weeks, violence between warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel has caused a spike in deaths and kidnappings in northwest Mexico, bringing people’s lives to a standstill in cities such as Culiacán.

Sheinbaum will have little financial maneuvering room to fulfill her campaign pledges. Mexico’s budget deficit is nearing 6% of gross domestic product, the largest shortfall in the past 24 years. Pemex, the state-controlled oil giant, is now the world’s most indebted oil company, requiring multibillion-dollar bailouts.

What are her plans?

Besides continuing López Obrador’s infrastructure projects and keeping his popular anti-poverty programs, including a yearly increase in the minimum wage, Sheinbaum comes to office with her own plans.

She has announced that all women ages 60 to 64 will receive a cash payment; currently, old-age pensions are given to anyone 65 and older. She has said most children will receive a stay-in-school scholarship, which would be an expansion of a current social program. And starting next year, she said, 20,000 doctors and nurses would begin visiting the homes of senior Mexicans — an effort to reverse the massive drop in access to public health care seen in the past few years.

Sheinbaum also wants to expand renewable energy infrastructure and increase green technology. At the same time, she has vowed to rescue Mexico’s massively indebted oil company and support a costly $16 billion oil refinery that remains far from fully operational.

What does a female president mean for Mexico?

While Sheinbaum has signaled that her administration represents a true change for Mexican women, her record as mayor of Mexico City offers a more nuanced picture.

As mayor, Sheinbaum supported the creation of a special prosecutor’s office to investigate femicides. Her programs helped reduce the number of violent deaths of women by 34%.

But she also called women’s rights demonstrations in the capital to protest the rape of a minor by police officers “provocations.” Female protesters were met with excessive use of force by authorities under her command, according to a report by Amnesty International.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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