Claudia Sheinbaum, who will be Mexico\u2019s first woman leader in the nation\u2019s more than 200 years of independence, captured the presidency by promising continuity. The 61-year-old former Mexico City mayor and lifelong leftist ran a disciplined campaign capitalizing on her predecessor\u2019s popularity before emerging victorious in Sunday\u2019s vote, according to an official quick count. But with her victory now in hand, Mexicans will look to see how Sheinbaum, a very different personality from mentor and current President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador, will assert herself.<\/p>\n
While she hewed close to L\u00f3pez Obrador politically and shares many of his ideas about the government\u2019s role in addressing inequality, she is viewed as less combative and more data-driven. Sheinbaum\u2019s background is in science. She has a PhD in energy engineering. Her brother is a physicist. In a 2023 interview with The Associated Press, Sheinbaum said, \u201cI believe in science.\u201d Observers say that grounding showed itself in Sheinbaum\u2019s actions as mayor during the COVID-19 pandemic when her city of some 9 million people took a different approach from what L\u00f3pez Obrador espoused at the national level.<\/p>\n
While the federal government was downplaying the importance of coronavirus testing, Mexico City expanded its testing regimen. Sheinbaum set limits on businesses\u2019 hours and capacity when the virus was rapidly spreading, even though L\u00f3pez Obrador wanted to avoid any measures that would hurt the economy. And she publicly wore protective masks and urged social distancing while the president was still lunging into crowds. Mexico\u2019s persistently high levels of violence will be one of her most immediate challenges after she takes office Oct 1.<\/p>\n
On the campaign trail she said little more than that she would expand the quasi-military National Guard created by L\u00f3pez Obrador and continue his strategy of targeting social ills that make so many young Mexicans easy targets for cartel recruitment. \u201cLet it be clear, it doesn\u2019t mean an iron fist, wars or authoritarianism,\u201d Sheinbaum said of her approach to tackling criminal gangs, during her final campaign event. \u201cWe will promote a strategy of addressing the causes and continue moving toward zero impunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sheinbaum has praised L\u00f3pez Obrador profusely and said little that the president hasn\u2019t said himself. She blamed neoliberal economic policies for condemning millions to poverty, promised a strong welfare state and praised Mexico\u2019s large state-owned oil company, Pemex, while also promising to emphasize clean energy. \u201cFor me, being from the left has to do with that, with guaranteeing the minimum rights to all residents,\u201d Sheinbaum told the AP last year.<\/p>\n
In contrast to L\u00f3pez Obrador, who seemed to relish his highly public battles with other branches of the government and also the news media, Sheinbaum is expected by many observers to be less combative or at least more selective in picking her fights. \u201cIt appears she\u2019s going to go in a different direction,\u201d said Ivonne Acu\u00f1a Murillo, a political scientist at Iberoamerican University. \u201cI don\u2019t know how much.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Claudia Sheinbaum, who will be Mexico\u2019s first woman leader in the nation\u2019s more than 200 years of independence, captured the\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":47636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[474,14828,783,13254,587,2965],"class_list":["post-47635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-campaign","tag-claudia-sheinbaum","tag-mexican-president-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador","tag-mexican-presidential-elections","tag-mexico","tag-victory"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}