The sweeping election in June to the Mexican presidency of socialist former mayor of Mexico City Claudia Sheinbaum is a landmark moment in the 200-year history of the country as an independent state. Voters elected the country’s first woman and first Jewish person as leader, while strongly reaffirming the legacy of her predecessor and mentor, the popular Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
At her inauguration on Tuesday Sheinbaum boasted with some justice to enthusiastic crowds of a tide-turning moment. “For the first time, we women have arrived to lead the destinies of our beautiful nation,” she said. Mexico is a nation in which an estimated nine out of 10 women have been subjected to sexual violence .
Her Morena party, although divided by squabbling factions, has a supermajority in congress, and controls most of the state legislatures. But tthe new president faces huge challenges, from the largest budget deficit in decades to an open, bloody war with the drug cartels alongside an immigration crisis. Critics warn of a drift to authoritarianism in the battle with the cartels and a weakening of checks on presidential power. Controversial plans to elect judges are seen as undermining judicial independence.
Hundreds marched against the judicial reforms on Tuesday while enthusiastic Morena supporters rallied for her speech.
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Sheinbaum, who above all represents continuity, remains committed to López Obrador’s populist, anti-poverty and infrastructure programmes but her critics accuse her of being no more than a puppet of her predecessor. In her speech she denied authoritarianism and emphasised women’s rights, green energy and new passenger railways.
A trained scientist with a PhD in energy engineering, who participated in a United Nations panel of climate scientists that was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, Sheinbaum spent years straddling academia and politics. She has a reputation as a skilled administrator and technocrat. She is no clone of her mentor.