Mexico has a pioneering new president. But does she have new ideas to fight the spiral of crime?

On October 1, Claudia Sheinbaum will be sworn in, receive a sash and become the first female president of Mexico.

Sheinbaum is the former mayor of Mexico City and a climate scientist who received a Nobel Prize in 2007 as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

She takes the head of a government totally dominated by the ruling Morena party. Although barely ten years old, Morena exploited widespread public disillusionment with the more established parties. He has a majority in both houses of the national Congress and will occupy 24 of the 32 state governorships.

Morena has always been closely associated with its founder, the outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and his personal, populist approach to politics.

Presidents are strictly limited to a single six-year term by the Mexican constitution. López Obrador says he will now retire to his ranch, far from the places of power in Mexico City. However, some observers expect him to continue to wield power within Morena, the power behind Sheinbaum’s throne.

Even if López Obrador has built a winning political machine closely tied to his own charisma, it is not clear that it is built to last. His policies ensured his popularity, but often did so in ways that could weaken governments in the future.

Sheinbaum thus begins his mandate in an extremely powerful position. At the same time, his power is often questioned, assumed to not really be his. And she faces the difficult task of tackling some of the country’s most intractable problems, which her predecessor either sidestepped or exacerbated.

Organized crime and disorganized politics

One of the most pressing issues has preoccupied Mexico’s leaders for years: high rates of homicides and other violent crimes.

Violence in Mexico is often attributed to organized crime groups, but the situation is much more complicated. Violence is fueled by various factors. This includes collusion between authorities and criminal groups, as well as heavy-handed police and military responses to crime.

Since President Felipe Calderón declared an ineffective war on drug trafficking in 2006-2008, each leader has taken his or her own approach to the issue. López Obrador came to power with a promise abrazos no balazos (hugs, not slugs), aimed at tackling the underlying causes of crime through social programs. He even declared the end of the war in 2019. In practice, however, anti-crime measures continued.

Homicide rates remained high throughout his term, while corporate extortion by criminal groups increased by 60%, in part due to the government’s perceived permissiveness toward lesser crimes. violent.

In this year’s elections, the major candidates and parties seemed largely out of new ideas. Insecurity remains a pressing problem, but there are few real plans to better manage it.

Sheinbaum campaigned on Mexico City’s relative safety during his tenure as mayor, but the capital is a very different place from other parts of the country. Some wealthy cities are able to achieve a certain degree of security by investing in police and private security (and perhaps tolerating extralegal security measures), but this is not a paradigm for the country as a whole .

Organized crime and the war on drugs still dominate the headlines, but this masks other alarming patterns of violence.

Femicide, or the killing of women because they are women, has remained at consistently high levels during López Obrador’s term, but has received little attention from him. Surveys suggest that high levels of impunity for femicide can encourage other forms of violence.

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Read more: What Australia can learn from Latin America when it comes to tackling violence against women

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The military becomes more public and private

On October 1, Sheinbaum became supreme commander of the Mexican armed forces. However, she assumes command of a military with more autonomy and power than at any time in recent history.

For some time, activists and academics have been sounding the alarm about the dangers of increased militarization in Mexico, that is, the military taking over civilian roles.

With the war on narcotics in 2006, the military took on civilian security roles, such as maintaining order. López Obrador has greatly expanded this range of roles, using the military to build large infrastructure projects.

López Obrador also granted substantial concessions to the military. After building several train lines as part of the Mayan Train megaproject in southeastern Mexico, for example, military companies will now take over management of the transportation system, as well as airports, hotels and other tourist facilities connected.

Other Latin American militaries have vast economic portfolios, but these are generally seen as a relic of an authoritarian past. Once a government grants such public roles and economic autonomy to the military, it is very difficult to get them back.

This increased participation of the military in various aspects of public life raises troubling questions about transparency and justice.

For example, the military has provided little access to information about the Mayan Train project, such as environmental impact statements. When I conducted interviews, residents reported experiencing pressure and intimidation from the military regarding the expropriation of land for infrastructure projects.

Sheinbaum’s biggest challenges

Observers note that Sheinbaum rarely strays from support for López Obrador and his policies. This is sometimes seen as a sign of weakness, with Sheinbaum seen as a sort of devoted daughter to the patriarch of Morena.

However, this risks oversimplifying – in a highly gendered way – the political context in which Sheinbaum rose to power. She has little to gain by distancing herself from her powerful predecessor before even taking office. (Adopting your regional accent, however, is another story).

The question of how Sheinbaum emerges from López Obrador’s shadow is an important one. But that has less to do with him quietly retiring than with the difficulties he leaves behind.

Presidential terms in Mexico are long (six years). Historically, this has given new presidents time to distance themselves from their predecessors (who often play a role in their ascension) to develop their own agendas.

Sheinbaum’s real challenge will be to craft policies that meaningfully address violence and insecurity, while managing a military with greater autonomy and a changing portfolio of interests.

Many other issues also require attention. Sheinbaum would do well to start repairing some of the relationships damaged by López Obrador, including between the president and the press, academia, indigenous communities, and the country’s irrepressible feminist movements.