Claudia Sheinbaum Sworn In As First Female President Of Mexico

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in Tuesday as Mexico’s first feminine president, using the keenness over her predecessor’s social applications but in addition going through challenges that embrace stubbornly excessive ranges of violence.

After a smiling Sheinbaum took the oath of workplace on the ground of Congress, legislators shouted “Presidenta! Presidenta!” utilizing the female type of president in Spanish for the primary time in over 200 years of Mexico’s historical past as an impartial nation.

The 62-year-old scientist-turned-politician receives a rustic with numerous quick issues, additionally together with a sluggish economic system, unfinished constructing applications, rising debt and the hurricane-battered resort metropolis of Acapulco.

In her inauguration speech, Sheinbaum stated that she got here to energy accompanied by the entire ladies who’ve struggled in anonymity to make their method in Mexico, together with “those that dreamed of the likelihood that sooner or later irrespective of if we have been born as ladies or males we might obtain our desires and wishes with out our intercourse figuring out our future.”

She made a protracted record of guarantees to restrict costs for gasoline and meals, increase money hand-out applications for girls and youngsters, assist enterprise funding, housing and passenger rail building. However any point out of the drug cartels that management a lot of the nation was temporary and close to the tip of the record.

Sheinbaum provided little change from former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s ‘Hugs not Bullets’ technique of addressing root causes and never confronting the cartels, other than pledging extra intelligence work and investigation. “There might be no return to the irresponsible drug battle,” she stated.

Sheinbaum romped to victory in June with almost 60% of the vote, propelled largely by the sustained reputation of her political mentor, López Obrador. She has pledged to proceed all his insurance policies, even those who strengthened the ability of the army and weakened the nation’s checks and balances.

After the inauguration, Sheinbaum appeared at a mass rally in Mexico Metropolis’s colonial-era essential plaza to take part in a ceremony involving an all-women committee representing Mexico’s roughly 70 Indigenous teams.

Sheinbaum was blessed and brushed with herbs and incense by Ernestina Ortiz, a “non secular information,” who instructed Sheinbaum “You’re a voice for all of us who had no voice for a very long time.” An Indigenous elder then handed Sheinbaum a picket Indigenous “workers of authority,” like these carried by neighborhood leaders.

After the ceremony, Sheinbaum stated she would push for a complete ban on any public servant being re-elected to workplace — a tall promise, provided that her social gathering has now handed a regulation making all judges stand for election. That will recommend Mexico could have a brand new crop of inexperienced judges each few years.

Lucía Ruíz, a 42-year-old mom of three, was one in every of hundreds making an attempt to achieve the principle sq. to see the rally. She stated she hopes Sheinbaum will be capable to fight excessive charges of violence towards ladies within the nation.

“She goes to characterize us,” stated Ruíz. “We’ve all the time been ruled by males, they usually suppose we’re incapable, however we’re not. We’re the pinnacle of our households.”

López Obrador took workplace six years in the past declaring “For the great of all, first the poor,” and promising historic change from the neoliberal financial insurance policies of his predecessors. Sheinbaum promised continuity from his in style social insurance policies to controversial constitutional reforms to the judiciary and Nationwide Guard rammed by means of throughout his closing days in workplace.

Regardless of her pledge of continuity, Sheinbaum is a really completely different persona: a cautious scientist and ideological college leftist, versus the outgoing president’s chummy, everyman attraction.

“López Obrador was a tremendously charismatic president and plenty of occasions that charisma allowed him to cowl up some political errors that Claudia Sheinbaum is not going to have that risk of doing,” stated Carlos Pérez Ricart, a political analyst at Mexico’s Middle for Financial Analysis and Educating. “So, the place López Obrador was charismatic, Claudia Sheinbaum should be efficient.”

She is going to wield formidable energy as a result of López Obrador’s Morena social gathering controls each homes of Congress. However the nation stays deeply polarized between the outgoing president’s fanatic followers and virtually one-third of the inhabitants who deeply resent him.

“If we would like a powerful authorities, the checks and balances additionally should be robust,” stated opposition Sen. María Guadalupe Murguía, suggesting that an omnipotent military and unchecked ruling social gathering may come again to hang-out Mexico. “Keep in mind,” she stated, “no person wins the whole lot, and no person loses without end.”

Sheinbaum shouldn’t be inheriting a simple scenario.

Drug cartels have strengthened their maintain over a lot of Mexico, and her first journey as president might be to the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco, which was flooded final week by Hurricane John, which killed at the very least 17 individuals alongside the coast across the resort. Acapulco was devastated in October 2023 by Hurricane Otis, and had not recovered from that blow when John hit.

Sheinbaum should additionally cope with raging violence within the cartel-dominated northern metropolis of Culiacan, the place factional preventing inside the Sinaloa cartel broke out after drug lords Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López have been apprehended in the US after they flew there in a small aircraft on July 25.

López Obrador has lengthy sought to keep away from confronting Mexico’s drug cartels and has overtly appealed to the gangs to maintain the peace amongst themselves, however the limitations of that technique have turn into manifestly obvious in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, the place gun battles have raged on the town’s streets. Native authorities and even the military — which López Obrador has relied on for the whole lot — have primarily admitted that the preventing will solely finish when the cartel bosses determine to finish it.

However that’s solely the newest hotspot.

Drug-related violence is surging from Tijuana within the north to Chiapas within the south, displacing hundreds.

Whereas Sheinbaum inherits an enormous finances deficit, unfinished building initiatives and a burgeoning invoice for her social gathering’s money hand-out applications — all of which may ship monetary markets tumbling — maybe her largest looming concern is the opportunity of a victory for Donald Trump within the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election.

Trump has already vowed to slap 100% tariffs on automobiles made in Mexico. Although that will seemingly violate the present U.S.-Mexico-Canada commerce settlement, there are different issues Trump may do to make life troublesome for Sheinbaum, together with his pledge of huge deportations.

Relations with Mexico’s northern neighbor have been already tense after López Obrador stated he was placing relations with the U.S. embassy “on pause” after public criticism of the proposed judicial overhaul.

At her inauguration, Sheinbaum boosted the free commerce settlement with the US and Canada, saying “we all know that financial cooperation strengthens the three nations.”

There are areas the place Sheinbaum may attempt to take Mexico in a brand new route. For instance, she has a Ph.D. in vitality engineering and has spoken of the necessity to deal with local weather change.

However on Tuesday, she stated she would cap oil manufacturing at 1.8 million barrels per day, which might be greater than what the troubled state-owned firm at present produces. “We’re going to promote vitality effectivity and the transition towards renewable sources of vitality,” she stated.

Related Press writers María Verza, Megan Janetsky and Mark Stevenson in Mexico Metropolis contributed to this report.