MEXICO CITY (AP) — Claudia Sheinbaum takes office as Mexico’s president on Tuesday first female president in the country’s more than two hundred years of independence.
The 62-year-old former mayor of Mexico City and lifelong leftist campaigned on a promise of continuity, of protecting and expanding the signature initiatives of her mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
In the four months between her election and inauguration, she stuck to that line and supported López Obrador on issues large and small. But Sheinbaum is a completely different person; she likes dates and doesn’t have López Obrador’s personal touch.
Mexico is now waiting if she wants to step out of his shadow.
What is Sheinbaum’s background?
Sheinbaum’s background is in science. She has a Ph.D. in the field of energy technology. Her brother is a physicist. In one 2023 interview with The Associated PressSheinbaum said, “I believe in science.”
Observers say this support was reflected in Sheinbaum’s actions as mayor during the COVID-19 pandemic, when her city of some 9 million took a different approach than López Obrador advocated nationally.
She comes from an older, more firmly left-wing tradition predates López Obrador’s nationalist, populist movement.
Her parents were leading activists in the Mexican student movement of 1968, which tragically ended in government massacre of hundreds of student demonstrators in Tlatelolco Square in Mexico City, just days before the Summer Olympics opened there that year.
Sheinbaum is also the first president with a Jewish background in the largely Catholic country.
What did her victory look like?
Sheinbaum led thread to thread and won convincingly in June with almost 60% of the votesabout double the number of her closest competitor, Xóchitl Gálvez.
As López Obrador’s chosen successor, she enjoyed the enormous popularity he maintained during his six years in office.
The opposition coalition led by Gálvez struggled to gain traction, while there was support for the ruling party transferred to Congresswhere voters gave Morena and its allies margins that allowed it to pass major constitutional changes before López Obrador left office.
What is her position on recent controversial issues?
Before the adoption of a controversial constitution review of the Mexican judiciary which allows all judges to stand for election, Sheinbaum stood behind López Obrador, who had put pressure on this.
Sheinbaum said that “the legal system reforms will not affect our commercial relations, nor private Mexican investments, nor foreign investments. On the contrary: there will be a bigger and better rule of law and democracy for everyone.”
Shortly afterwards, when López Obrador’s proposal to place the National Guard under military command was being considered, Sheinbaum defended it against critics. She said the country would not be militarized and that the National Guard would respect human rights.
And just days before she took office, Sheinbaum stood next to López Obrador in his long-standing diplomatic row with Spain. She defended her decision not to invite Spain’s King Felipe VI to her inauguration, saying in part that the king had not apologized for Spain’s conquest of Mexico, as López Obrador had demanded years earlier.
How important is her election for Mexican women?
Sheinbaum’s victory came 70 years after women won the right to vote in Mexico.
The race actually came down to two women, Sheinbaum and Gálvez, but Mexico’s prevailing machismo still pushed both women to explain why they thought they could become president.
Since 2018, the Mexican Congress has had a 50-50 gender split, partly due to gender quotas for party candidates. Yet Sheinbaum inherits a country with enormous violence against women.
There are also still many parts of the country, especially rural indigenous areas where men have all the power. And approximately 2.5 million women toil in housework where despite reforms they still face low wages, abuse by employers, long working hours and unstable working conditions.
Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that national laws banning abortion are unconstitutional and violate women’s rights.
Although the Mexican ruling orders the removal of abortion from the federal criminal code and requires federal health agencies to offer the procedure to anyone who requests it, further legal work is underway on a state-by-state basis to eliminate all penalties.
Feminists say that simply electing a woman as president does not guarantee that she will govern from a gender perspective. Both Sheinbaum and López Obrador have previously been criticized for appearing to lack empathy for women protesting gender violence.
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