A woman will rule, for the first time, in a country of males. Cláudia Sheinbaum becomes President of Mexico with the biggest vote in two centuries of the Republic. The 61-year-old leftist, trained physicist and former head of government of Mexico City, the capital with nine million inhabitants, swept the polls with the support of the outgoing President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and its social programs, which won over the most popular classes with amounts in the order of ten billion dollars (9,710 million euros) per year.
Just like in the sports competitions she won in her youth, this granddaughter of Jewish emigrants from Lithuania and Bulgaria broke record after record. She defeated her center-right rival Xóchitl Gálvez by almost 32 percentage points (59.22% -27.84%), totaling 38 million votes, eight million more than her predecessor.
Claudia Sheinbaum, follower of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is the most likely winner of the presidential elections
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“I didn’t get here alone, we all got here,†said Sheinbaum, also the first woman to govern one of the great North American countries, before the United States and Canada. It is the historic victory of the woman who will take office in October, 70 years after a Mexican woman made her debut in Parliament. This is now parity, but at the end of the 20th century men still occupied 90% of the seats. There is, without a doubt, a before and an after in the fight for equality.
Parliamentary majority allows changes to the Constitution
“I will watch over Mexicans without distinction and we will guarantee their freedoms. We will walk in peace and harmony,” promised the President-elect, ensuring that she will not be authoritarian or repressive. Although she bets on a conciliatory message, in contrast to the style of the populist and ultra-individualist AMLO, she considered him an “exceptional and unique manâ€. The still head of state, on the contrary, did not hesitate to continually violate electoral laws to favor his protégé.
Victory celebrations in Zócalo Square, in Mexico City, the capital that Sheinbaum governed before running for president
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The change led by Sheinbaum relativizes, for now, the overwhelming triumph of AMLO’s populist proposal, whose supporters will have a qualified majority of two thirds in Congress and, almost certainly, in the Senate. This will allow them to move forward with constitutional reforms to concentrate more power and achieve judicial independence. Sheinbaum won the elections and AMLO swept his plebiscite.
Daughter of communist chemist and businessman Carlos Sheinbaum and biologist Annie Pardo, National Prize in 2022, the future ruler has mixed science and politics since childhood. She almost always shattered records. Few would have predicted that the Physics graduate in 1989, with the thesis “Thermodynamic study of a domestic firewood stove for rural use†, would end up sitting on the “eagle throne†, a symbol of power in the country of Mayans and Aztecs.
An embroidery with the phrase “you don’t know my name, I’m between 25 and 30 years old”, made to mark the protest against the violence suffered by Roxana Ruiz, an indigenous woman who was raped and survived femicide
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Fighting since college
Sheinbaum was also the first student at the Autonomous University (UAM) to receive a doctorate in Environmental Engineering. To this end, she lived in California for four years, with her husband and two children. Today she is remarried to Jesús María Tarriba, her college boyfriend, whom she met again after the end of her first marriage.
Still in higher education, he joined the same struggles as his parents, perhaps with more dedication. She considers herself “daughter of May 68†and had no doubts about climbing the rectory building to hang a flag. During those times, she recalled that the Colombian President, Gustavo Petro, helped the M-19 guerrilla movement with his student groups in the fight against the State.
Sheinbaum is a political disciple of the outgoing President, Andres Manuel López Obrador, but has a very different style
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When she wanted to enter politics, Sheinbaum met López Obrador and they never separated. She became his right-hand man both in the management of the capital (which AMLO occupied before her) and in the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), which he created in 2011, leaving the Revolution Party o Democratic. In the first moments, when his mentor lost the 2006 presidential election by a handful of votes and protested in Zócalo Square, Sheinbaum was by his side.
She is so far from the charisma of her predecessor that friends and enemies call her “Ice Lady†. A better administrator than speaker, Sheinbaum certainly represents a change of behavior in Mexico.
