5 issues to find out about Mexico’s first feminine president

MEXICO CITY—Claudia Sheinbaum, an environmental scientist and former mayor of Mexico Metropolis, takes workplace on Tuesday as Mexico’s 66th president and its first feminine chief. Sheinbaum, who received the election in June in a landslide, assumes the presidency amid excessive expectations and massive challenges, together with endemic cartel violence and a big nationwide deficit.

The political protege of well-liked outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum has a status for being analytical, disciplined and unflappable.She campaigned on a promise to proceed López Obrador’s legacy—an advanced one that’s onerous to suit into an ideological field. Supporters hail his well-liked social packages to assist the poor; detractors accuse him of undermining the nation’s fledgling democracy. Listed here are 5 issues to find out about Sheinbaum:

She is Mexico’s first feminine president

Sheinbaum’s presidency marks two milestones: she is the primary feminine president in Mexico’s historical past and in addition the first with Jewish heritage.

In a conservative nation led by males for greater than two centuries, Sheinbaum’s victory underscores the advances ladies have made within the political sphere. Additionally it is notable given Mexico’s issues with gender-based violence—it has one of many highest charges of homicide towards ladies on the planet. Sheinbaum mentioned as president she would create an anti-femicide prosecutor’s workplace, a measure she carried out when she was mayor of Mexico Metropolis. However she has dodged detailing her place on abortion rights and feminists criticized her marketing campaign for missing gender-specific insurance policies.

Sheinbaum’s election can also be notable for her Jewish heritage. Her grandparents emigrated to Mexico from Lithuania and Bulgaria. Sheinbaum says she is happy with her ancestry however not religiously affiliated.

Even so, her ascension is outstanding provided that Jews comprise lower than one % in a rustic with an overwhelmingly Catholic inhabitants, one of many largest on the planet.

She is a local weather scientist

The 62-year-old has a PhD in vitality engineering and within the early Nineteen Nineties studied on the Lawrence Berkeley Nationwide Laboratory in northern California. She was a part of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change workforce that shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore in 2007.

Sheinbaum began her political profession as López Obrador’s environmental minister after he was elected Mexico Metropolis mayor in 2000. She has been unwaveringly loyal ever since, at the same time as he sidelined green-energy initiatives and championed fossil fuels in an effort to safe vitality independence.

Sheinbaum’s environmental platform marks one of many largest pivots from López Obrador. It requires extra electric-powered public transit, selling the use and manufacturing of electrical autos, and renewable vitality manufacturing by means of photo voltaic, wind and hydropower. Notably, López Obrador actively blocked renewable vitality initiatives throughout his presidency.

On the similar time, Sheinbaum has lauded considered one of López Obrador’s signature initiatives: a brand new multibillion greenback oil refinery often called Dos Bocas. The mission, which Sheinbaum lauded as “majestic,” is affected by value overruns and stays removed from totally operational. How Sheinbaum will cope with the refinery stays an open query.

Mexico’s President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum and outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attend an anniversary occasion honoring the victims of the 1985 and 2017 earthquakes, on the Zocalo in Mexico Metropolis,

Fernando Llano/AP/AP

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Fernando Llano/AP/AP

She is Lopez Obrador’s political protege

Sheinbaum received the presidency largely due to her shut ties to López Obrador. Probably the most well-liked and divisive figures in Mexican historical past, López Obrador carried out social packages that helped tens of millions of individuals rise out of poverty whereas additionally weakening democratic establishments and empowering the army.

However the place López Obrador is folksy and charismatic, Sheinbaum is seen as analytical and data-driven.Their variations have been on show in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whilst López Obrador downplayed the significance of testing and dove into crowds of individuals, Sheinbaum expanded Mexico Metropolis’s testing capability and urged social distancing.

Huge image, Sheinbaum has promised to broaden on López Obrador’s imaginative and prescient for Mexico. In an indication of their alignment, she named to her cupboard a lot of López Obrador’s confidantes, together with his finance minister, his public safety minister, his former international affairs minister and his present international affairs minister.

One of many challenges for Sheinbaum will likely be to create a political id that’s indirectly linked to López Obrador.

She has an enormous political mandate

Sheinbaum enters workplace with an enormous political mandate. Her political coalition has a supermajority within the decrease home of Congress and practically two-thirds within the Senate.

But when López Obrador gave Sheinbaum political clout, he additionally saddled her with vital challenges. She may also have to handle a rising price range deficit fueled by his authorities’s spending on social packages, the Dos Bocas oil refinery and an enormous vacationer practice mission.

She additionally confronts a reworked system of governance. One in every of López Obrador’s final main acts as president was to push by means of a Constitutional modification that may take away all of Mexico’s 7,000 judges from workplace. Beneath the modification, judges will likely be elected as a substitute of appointed—a reform López Obrador says is critical to rid the judiciary of corruption and impunity.

Critics say the reform erodes checks and balances on presidential energy and creates uncertainty within the enterprise world, which has in flip brought on the Mexican peso to plummet towards the greenback. Amongst Sheinbaum’s first duties as president will likely be to reassure monetary markets whereas overseeing implementation of the judicial reform.

Claudia Sheinbaum greets supporters throughout a closing marketing campaign rally for her presidential candidate bid to signify the ruling MORENA occasion, in Mexico Metropolis, Aug. 26, 2023.

Ginnette Riquelme/AP

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Ginnette Riquelme/AP

Sheinbaum’s stances on safety and migration

In the course of the presidential marketing campaign, polls confirmed that the primary difficulty for voters in Mexico is safety. Organized crime has change into so highly effective that they’re extorting all the things from fuel stations to avocados growers and trucking corporations.Sheinbaum says she is going to concentrate on addressing the foundation causes of crime and violence, much like López Obrador.

She has additionally pledged to extend the variety of Nationwide Guard troopers and create youth training and job packages.

Whereas immigration is a non-issue for voters in Mexico, it’s a high concern for voters within the U.S. Consecutive Republican and Democratic administrations have pressured Mexico to ramp up enforcement and cease migrants from reaching the U.S.’s southern border. Political analysts say it’s possible Sheinbaum will, like López Obrador, work with the U.S. to discourage migration, largely as a result of it has change into a strong cudgel to barter on different urgent points, resembling commerce agreements.