Mexico's Sheinbaum wins landslide to become country's first woman president

 

PAN presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez (left) and Morena presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum (right) face off in Mexico’s June 2 elections. Images (cc) via Wikimedia Commons and compiled using Canva.com.

 

Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo

 

 Claudia Sheinbaum

Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo was born on 24 June 1962 to a Mexican Jewish family in Mexico City. Her paternal Ashkenazi grandparents emigrated from Lithuania to Mexico City in the 1920s. Her maternal   Sephardic grandparents emigrated there from Sofia, Bulgaria, in the early 1940s to escape the Holocaust. Though raised secular, she celebrated the major Jewish holidays at her grandparents' homes.

 

Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo (born 24 June 1962) is a Mexican politician, scientist, and academic serving as the 66th president of Mexico since 2024, becoming the first woman to hold the office.  She previously served as Head of Government of Mexico City from 2018 to 2023.

 

A scientist by profession, Sheinbaum received her Doctor of Philosophy in energy engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She has authored over 100 articles and two books on energy, the environment, and sustainable development. She contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and in 2018 was named one of BBC's 100 Women.

 

In 1989, Sheinbaum joined the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). From 2000 to 2006, Sheinbaum served as secretary of the environment in Mexico City under Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was then head of government. In 2014, she left the PRD and joined López Obrador's splinter movement, Morena.

 

She was mayor of the Tlalpan borough from 2015 to 2017. She was elected head of government of Mexico City in the 2018 election, where she ran a campaign that emphasized curbing crime and enforcing zoning laws.

 

In June 2023, Sheinbaum resigned from her position as head of the city government to seek Morena's presidential nomination in the 2024 election. In September 2023, she secured the party's nomination over her closest opponent, former foreign secretary Marcelo Ebrard.

 

In June 2024, Sheinbaum won the Mexican general election in a landslide against the National Action Party (PAN) candidate Xóchitl Gálvez. She took office on 1 October 2024.

 

66th President of Mexico

 

The election saw Sheinbaum receiving the highest number of votes ever recorded for a candidate in Mexican history, surpassing López Obrador's record of 30.1 million votes from 2018. Sheinbaum was officially sworn into office on 1 October 2024.

 

 

Claudia Sheinbaum, who won Mexico’s presidential vote in June, is finally declared president-elect

https://apnews.com/article/mexico-claudia-sheinbaum-president-elect-

1of 5 Mexican President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, accompanied by husband Jesus Maria Tarriba, holds the official document  as she leaves a ceremony certifying her as the winner of the presidential election, at the Federal Electoral Tribunal in Mexico City, Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

 

Updated 8:51 AM GMT+13, August 16, 2024

 

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Claudia Sheinbaum, the woman who won Mexico’s June 2 presidential vote, has finally been formally declared Mexico’s President-elect, the first woman to hold the office in Mexico.

 

At a ceremony Thursday, the former Mexico City mayor was handed the legal ruling declaring her the country’s next president. The ruling had been delayed by appeals before the federal electoral tribunal.

 

Sheinbaum will be sworn in as president on Oct. 1, instead of the usual Dec. 1 swearing-in ceremony. The transition period was shortened after Mexican legislators judged that outgoing presidents stayed too long in office. Sheinbaum will serve a six-year term through 2030.

 

Sheinbaum has pledged to follow all the policies of her predecessor and political mentor, outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

 

She wasted no time in saying that López Obrador’s “hugs, not bullets” policy of not confronting the country’s powerful drug cartels was here to stay. The policy, which stresses hand-out programs to reduce the pool of cartel recruits, has proved ineffective at stemming the wave of drug violence.

 

“The war against drugs will not return,” Sheinbaum said.

 

Sheinbaum won with almost 60% of the vote, about double the number of her nearest competitor, Xóchitl Gálvez.

Gálvez had argued that López Obrador had used his influence and popularity to skew the race in favor of Sheinbaum. ___

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

 

 

Mexico's Sheinbaum wins landslide to become country's first woman president

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mexicans-vote-election-seen-crowning-first-female-president-2024-06-02

 

By Kylie Madry and Valentine Hilaire  REUTERS

June 3, 2024 7:40 PM GMT+12Updated 5 months ago

 

MEXICO CITY, June 2 - Claudia Sheinbaum won a landslide victory to become Mexico's first female president, inheriting the project of her mentor and outgoing leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador whose popularity among the poor helped drive her triumph.

 

Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, won the presidency with between 58.3% and 60.7% of the vote, according to a rapid sample count by Mexico's electoral authority. That is set to be the highest vote percentage in Mexico's democratic history.

 

The ruling coalition was also on track for a possible two-thirds super majority in both houses of Congress, which would allow the coalition to pass constitutional reforms without opposition support, according to the range of results given by the electoral authority.

 

Opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez conceded defeat after preliminary results showed her taking between 26.6% and 28.6% of the vote.

 

"For the first time in the 200 years of the republic I will become the first woman president of Mexico," Sheinbaum told supporters to loud cheers of "president, president".

 

Victory for Sheinbaum is a major step for Mexico, a country known for its macho culture and home to the world's second biggest Roman Catholic population, which for years pushed more traditional values and roles for women.

 

Sheinbaum is the first woman to win a general election in the United States, Mexico or Canada.

 

"I never imagined that one day I would vote for a woman," said 87-year-old Edelmira Montiel, a Sheinbaum supporter in Mexico's smallest state Tlaxcala.

 

"Before we couldn't even vote, and when you could, it was to vote for the person your husband told you to vote for. Thank God that has changed and I get to live it," Montiel added.

 

Sheinbaum has a complicated path ahead. She must balance promises to increase popular welfare policies while inheriting a hefty budget deficit and low economic growth.

 

After preliminary results were announced, she told supporters her government would be fiscally responsible and respect the autonomy of the central bank.

 

She has vowed to improve security but has given few details and the election, the most violent in Mexico's modern history with 38 candidates murdered, has reinforced massive security problems. Many analysts say organized crime groups expanded and deepened their influence during Lopez Obrador's term.

 

Sunday's vote was also marred by the killing of two people at polling stations in Puebla state. More people have been killed - over 185,000 - during the mandate of Lopez Obrador than during any other administration in Mexico's modern history, although the homicide rate has been inching down.

Item 1 of 28 Claudia Sheinbaum, the presidential candidate of the ruling MORENA party, reacts as she addresses her supporters after winning the election, in Mexico City, Mexico June 3. REUTERS/Raquel Cunha

[1/28]Claudia Sheinbaum, the presidential candidate of the ruling MORENA party, reacts as she addresses her supporters after winning the election, in Mexico City, Mexico June 3. REUTERS/Raquel Cunha Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

 

"Unless she commits to making a game-changing level of investment in improving policing and reducing impunity, Sheinbaum will likely struggle to achieve a significant improvement in overall levels of security," said Nathaniel Parish Flannery, an independent Latin America political risk analyst.

 

The ruling MORENA party also won the Mexico City mayorship race, one of the country's most important posts, according preliminary results.

 

U.S. RELATIONS

 

Among the new president's challenges will be tense negotiations with the United States over the huge flows of U.S.-bound migrants crossing Mexico and security cooperation over drug trafficking at a time when the U.S. fentanyl epidemic rages.

 

Mexican officials expect these negotiations to be more difficult if the U.S. presidency is won by Donald Trump in November. Trump has vowed to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese cars made in Mexico and said he would mobilize special forces to fight the cartels.

 

At home, the next president will be tasked with addressing electricity and water shortages and luring manufacturers to relocate as part of the nearshoring trend, in which companies move supply chains closer to their main markets.

 

Sheinbaum will also have to wrestle with what to do with Pemex, the state oil giant that has seen production decline for two decades and is drowning in debt.

 

"It cannot just be that there is an endless pit where you put public money in and the company is never profitable," said Alberto Ramos, chief Latin America economist at Goldman Sachs. "They have to rethink the business model of Pemex."

 

Lopez Obrador doubled the minimum wage, reduced poverty and oversaw a strengthening peso and low levels of unemployment - successes that made him incredibly popular.

 

Sheinbaum has promised to expand welfare programs, but it will not be easy with Mexico on track for a large deficit this year and sluggish GDP growth of just 1.5% expected by the central bank in 2025.

 

Lopez Obrador has loomed over the campaign, seeking to turn the vote into a referendum on his political agenda. Sheinbaum has rejected opposition claims that she would be a "puppet" of Lopez Obrador, though she has pledged to continue many of his policies including those that have helped Mexico's poorest.

 

In her victory speech, Sheinbaum thanked Lopez Obrador as "a unique person who has transformed our country for the better".

 

But political analyst Viri Rios said she thought sexism was behind criticism that Sheinbaum was going to be a puppet of the outgoing leader.

 

"It's unbelievable that people cannot believe she's going to be making her own decisions, and I think that's got a lot to do with the fact that she's female," she said.

 

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Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz, Sarah Kinosian, Ana Isabel Martinez, Noe Torres, Stefanie Eschenbacher, Diego Ore, Anthony Esposito, Brendan O'Boyle, Laura Gottesdiener; Writing by Cassandra Garrison, Brendan O'Boyle, Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Stephen Eisenhammer, Lisa Shumaker, Will Dunham, Nick Zieminski, Diane Craft, Lincoln Feast and Alex Richardson

 

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