Claudia Sheinbaum becomes the first female president of Mexico

By FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ and MARIANA MARTÍNEZ BARBA

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in Tuesday as Mexico’s first female president, riding on enthusiasm for her predecessor’s social programs but also facing challenges such as stubbornly high levels of violence.

After a smiling Sheinbaum was sworn in before Congress, lawmakers shouted “Presidenta!” President! » using the feminine form of president in Spanish for the first time in Mexico’s more than 200-year history as an independent country.

The 62-year-old scientist-turned-politician hosts a country facing a number of immediate problems, including a sluggish economy, unfinished construction programs, growing debt and the hurricane-battered resort town of Acapulco.

In her speech, Sheinbaum said that with her arrival comes all the women who struggled anonymously to make their way in Mexico, including “those who dreamed of the possibility that one day, no matter if we were born as women or men, we could achieve our dreams and desires without our gender determining our destiny.

She made a long list of promises to limit gasoline and food prices, expand cash distribution programs for women and children, support business investment, housing construction and passenger trains. But any mention of the drug cartels that control much of the country was brief and near the end of the list.

Sheinbaum proposed few changes from outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s “Hugs, Not Bullets” strategy of tackling root causes and not confronting cartels, aside from committing more intelligence work and investigations. “There will be no return to an irresponsible war on drugs,” she said.

Sheinbaum won in June with nearly 60% of the vote, propelled in large part by the sustained popularity of his political mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. She has pledged to pursue all of her policies, even those that strengthen the military’s power and weaken the country’s checks and balances.

López Obrador took office six years ago declaring “For the good of all, first of all the poor,” and promising a historic change from the neoliberal economic policies of his predecessors. Sheinbaum promised continuity of his popular social policies through the controversial constitutional reforms to the judiciary and the National Guard implemented during his final days in office.

Despite her pledge of continuity, Sheinbaum is a very different personality: a cautious scientist and academic left-wing ideologue, as opposed to the outgoing president, who is a friend to everyone.

“López Obrador was an extremely charismatic president and this charisma often allowed him to cover up certain political mistakes that Claudia Sheinbaum would not have the opportunity to make,” said Carlos Pérez Ricart, a political analyst at the Center for Economic Research and Education from Mexico. “So where López Obrador was charismatic, Claudia Sheinbaum will have to be effective.”

She will wield formidable power because López Obrador’s Morena party controls both houses of Congress. But the country remains deeply polarized between the outgoing president’s fanatical fans and nearly a third of the population who deeply resent him.

“If we want a strong government, the checks and balances must also be strong,” said opposition senator María Guadalupe Murguía, suggesting that an all-powerful army and an unchecked ruling party could come back to haunt Mexico. “Remember,” she said, “no one wins everything and no one loses forever.”

Sheinbaum is not inheriting an easy situation.