Claudia Sheinbaum On Tuesday she 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 scientific and former mayor of the City of Mexico62 years old, who identifies himself as leftistcomes to power after winning decisively in the June general elections and the shelter of his mentor, López Obrador, whom he met more than two decades ago.
Although his political closeness to the popular Mexican leader is undoubted, with whom he shares his way of understanding the role of the government in the fight against inequality, is considered less confrontational and more attached to data and academia, something she aimed at by incorporating some researchers and academics into her cabinet.
Sheinbaum will be able to govern comfortably, at least in the first half of his six-year term, given that the ruling party Brunette and its allied forces will have control of the Congress and the opposition was decimated in the last elections.
The new president has insisted on emphasizing her training scientific. He has a doctorate in Engineering Energy. His brother is a physicist. In an interview with The Associated Press in 2023, he proclaimed, “I believe in science.”
During the pandemic COVID-19I have done, chose to give it a different management than the one that López Obrador followed at the national level.
While the government federal downplayed the importance of evidence coronavirus detection, City of Mexico expanded its policy evidence. Sheinbaum limited working hours and conditions in companies when the virus was spreading 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.
The politician also has a solid formation of leftprior to motion nationalist and populist of López Obrador.
His parents were activists featured in the motion Mexican student of 1968 that ended tragically with a massacre in the Plaza de Tlatelolco of City of Mexico a few 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 She is also the first native president Jew in a country mostly Catholic.
Despite identifying himself as progressive and proclaiming from the electoral campaign that with his arrival to power he will fight to vindicate the rights of women, the new president has handled herself with reserve towards the 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.
There are many challenges that await Sheinbaum in the next six years, but the violence He will be one of the greatest. The new president has committed to maintaining the policies of security of his predecessor and continue to rely on the armed forces and the Guard National. 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 showed in recent weeks open support for a package of changes constitutional that López Obrador promoted at the end of his mandate, including controversial reforms to the judicial and military power, 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 Guard National control of the army, which deepened the militarization of the security public 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 Sign of Sinaloathe new president ratified her attachment to the policy of non-confrontation with criminal groups that López Obrador maintained and announced that she will present to the Congress some initiatives to reform the laws of security and create a National Intelligence and Research System.
In matters of economyhas also expressed affinities with his predecessor. He has blamed economic policies neoliberals condemning millions of people to poverty, has promised a strong welfare state and has praised the large Mexican state oil company Pemex, while promising to intensify the use of clean energy.
“Being of left It has to do with that, with guaranteeing the minimum rights to all the inhabitants,” he said Sheinbaum to 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 of communication, until now Sheinbaum has been shown less confrontational or, at least, more selective in their battles.
