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MEXICO ELECTS FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT  
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Jeff Abbott
June 7, 2024
The Progressive
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_ In an election marred by violence, Mexico has chosen its first ever
female leader. _

Claudia Sheinbaum, Fred Ramos/Bloomberg via Getty Images

 

Claudia Sheinbaum was declared the president of Mexico following the
June 2 elections. The results of the elections are historic, as the
sixty-year-old becomes Mexico’s first woman president in the
country’s 200-year history. 

“For the first time in history, a woman won the presidential
elections,” Adriana Baez Carlos, a political science professor at
the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM), tells _The
Progressive_.

Sheinbaum, a climate scientist who formerly served as the mayor of
Mexico City, won in a landslide
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with nearly 60 percent of the vote. She is a close ally of Mexico’s
outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, popularly known as
AMLO.

Sheinbaum is also Jewish, making her the county’s first ever Jewish
president. During the campaign, she spoke of
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of faith” while not being religiously affiliated. Her grandparents
emigrated to Mexico from Bulgaria and Lithuania in the years before
the Holocaust, but her parents, she says, “were atheists.” Her
parents were also active on the left, participating
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in labor struggles, rallies in support of Cuba, and the violently
repressed
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student protests in Mexico City.

She campaigned promising to continue the policies implemented during
AMLO’s presidency. “We have made possible the continuity and
progress of the fourth transformation,” Sheinbaum posted on X
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(formerly known as Twitter). The candidate promised she would not let
her supporters down.

Sheinbaum ran with the_ Sigamos Haciendo Historia_ coalition, which
brought together AMLO’s _Movimiento Regeneración Nacional _party,
or Morena, in coalition with the _Partido Verde_ (Green Party) and the
_Partido del Trabajo_ (Labor Party). AMLO’s victory in 2018 broke
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the decades-long hold on power of the traditional political class in
Mexico. 

Her closest rival, Xóchitl Gálvez, who ran with a coalition between
Mexico’s traditional ruling political parties—the _Partido
Revolucionario Institucional _(PRI), _Partido Acción Nacional_ (PAN),
and the _Partido de la Revolución Democrática_ (PRD)—won 27.9
percent
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of the vote. The remaining candidate, Jorge Álvarez Máynez of the
_Movimiento Ciudadano_ party, won 10.4 percent.
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The elections were marred by violence, with thirty-seven candidates
killed
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ahead of the June 2 elections. It was the largest number of candidates
killed in an election since
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the presidential elections of 2018. 

Morena and their coalition also won a majority in the congress. This
could open the door to pursuing the constitutional reforms
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that had been on AMLO’s agenda. 

“The results not only show a strong legitimacy, but [also show]
great support in congress,” Baez Carlos, who assisted in counting
the votes, says. “The extraordinary results are very favorable for
the new president.”  

Both opposition candidates have conceded
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defeat and congratulated Sheinbaum on her victory, something that has
become less common
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in the Western Hemisphere. 

“The position that both opposition candidates took is the democratic
path,” Baez Carlos says. “It is what we all should strive
for.” 

Mexico’s far right failed to get into the race. Their candidate,
Eduardo Verástegui, a Mexican-American singer and telenovela actor
who had served as an adviser
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to Donald Trump, did not gain enough signatures
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to get on the ballot. 

A devout Catholic, Verástegui has become an internationally known
anti-abortion activist
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and brought the first Conservative Political Action Committee to Latin
America. He had promised
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to make Mexico a “pro-life” and “pro-family” country, and to
roll back abortion rights. 

“[Verástegui] appealed to religiosity, but those circles already
had a home within the PAN party,” Luis Herrán Ávila, an assistant
professor of history at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque
who researches far-right movements in Mexico and Latin America, tells
_The Progressive._ “He just played his cards wrong and his platform
was just too extreme.” 

He added: “Trying to replicate a sort of Trumpism in Mexico just
didn't have a lot of resonance [with voters]. It . . . showed the
limits of that heart of conservatism—the hard right in Mexico does
not have an electoral base.”

To demonstrate Herrán Ávila’s point, in a rejection of
conservative and anti-abortion efforts, Mexico nationally
decriminalized abortions
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in 2023.

In February 2024, Mexico’s _Instituto Nacional Electoral _(INE), the
electoral governing body, opened an investigation
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into Verástegui for illegally receiving campaign funding from a
company based in the United States during his failed attempt to run
for office. 

Verástegui had sought to find favor in Mexico’s deeply religious
sectors. But as Herrán Ávila points out, religion has taken a
backseat in Mexican electoral politics.

“There is a very strong legacy of Mexican secularism,” Herrán
Ávila says. “There is a certain separation—even if sometimes
unspoken—where people are deeply Catholic but also are able to
separate their political beliefs from their religion.” 

Sheinbaum will inherit a country that continues to be plagued
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by historic levels of violence, the growing influence
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of drug trafficking networks, a healthcare
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crisis, and a worsening
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climate crisis. 

“Sheinbaum does not receive a very stable country,” Baez Carlos
says. “Rather it has great challenges, and above all, I think the
greatest challenge is insecurity.”

Sheinbaum will also inherit the historic level
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of migration from or through Mexico to the United States. She has
stated that she is willing to work with whomever wins the presidential
race in the United States to address the migration crisis. 

During the campaign, Sheinbaum promised to bring industry
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to Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas to resolve the unemployment
crisis in the region and address the root causes of migration. She
promised that half of the new jobs created would be available to
residents of the southern state, with the other half being made
available to migrants from Central America. 

Sheinbaum will take office
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on October 1.

* Mexico
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