Who is Claudia Sheinbaum, the new president of Mexico – Telemundo Bay Area 48
Mexico City — Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday became the first woman president of Mexico in its more than 200 years of independent history, pledging to continue the policies of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The 62-year-old scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, who identifies as a leftist, comes to power after a landslide victory in June’s general election and the shelter of her mentor, Lopez Obrador, whom she has known for more than two decades.
While there is no doubting her political proximity to the popular Mexican leader, with whom she shares an understanding of the government’s role in the fight against inequality, she is seen as less confrontational and more attached to data and academia, something she has pointed to incorporate some researchers and academics into the cabinet.
Sheinbaum will be able to govern comfortably, at least for the first half of his six-year term, since the ruling Morena party and its allies will control Congress until 2027 and the opposition was decimated in the last election.
The new president has insisted on emphasizing her scientific training. He has a PhD in Energy Engineering. His brother is a physicist. In an interview with the Associated Press in 2023, he declared: “I believe in science.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I chose to handle it differently than what López Obrador followed at the national level.
While the federal government scaled back on coronavirus testing, Mexico City expanded its testing policy.
Sheinbaum limited working hours and conditions at companies as the virus spread quickly, even as López Obrador wanted to avoid any restrictions that could hurt the economy. He also wore a mask in public and urged social distancing, which the former president insisted he does not follow.
Politics also has a solid left-wing bent, before López Obrador’s nationalist and populist movement.
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His parents were prominent activists in the 1968 Mexican student movement that ended tragically in a massacre in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco Plaza just days before the Olympics opened there that year.
Dozens of students and civilians died in an exchange of fire with soldiers and government agents dressed in civilian clothes. According to official figures, about 25 people died, although some estimate that at least 350 died.
Sheinbaum is also the first president of Jewish descent in a predominantly Catholic country.
Despite identifying as a progressive and declaring on the campaign trail that once in office she would fight to defend women’s rights, the new president has treated abortion with reservations.
He also distanced himself from claims by hundreds of “seeker mothers” – as those who search alone for missing children and their relatives are known in the country – who have denounced the state’s abandonment in the face of tragedy. a total of more than 115,000 are missing.
THE CHALLENGES AWAITING SHEINBAUM
There are many challenges that await Sheinbaum in the next six years, but violence will be one of the biggest.
The new president has pledged to maintain the security policies of her predecessor and continue to rely on the armed forces and the National Guard. Likewise, he has pledged to maintain social programs aimed at young people to prevent them from being recruited by cartels.
In line with his predecessor’s policies, Sheinbaum has shown open support in recent weeks for a package of constitutional changes pushed by López Obrador at the end of his term, including controversial reforms to the judiciary and the military that he recently approved.
The judicial initiative, which emerged amid strong protests by judicial officials, mandates the election by popular vote from next year of more than 1,000 judges.
With the military reform, the transfer of the National Guard to the control of the military was formalized, which deepened the militarization of public security despite questions from humanitarian groups and United Nations experts.
After the recent wave of violence in the northwestern state of Sinaloa due to disputes between two factions of the Sinaloa cartel, the new president reaffirmed her commitment to the policy of non-confrontation with criminal groups maintained by López Obrador and announced that she will present some initiatives to Congress to reforming security laws and creating a National Intelligence and Investigation System.
Financially, he has also expressed affinities with his predecessor. He blamed neoliberal economic policies for condemning millions of people to poverty, promised a strong welfare state and praised Mexico’s state oil company Pemex while promising to step up the use of clean energy.
“That’s what being a leftist is about, about guaranteeing minimum rights to all residents,” Sheinbaum told the AP last year.
But unlike López Obrador, who has on many occasions engaged in public spats with representatives of other branches of power, such as the judiciary or the electoral branch, and the media, Sheinbaum has so far been less confrontational or, at least, more selective . her battles.