Who is Claudia Sheinbaum? Geopolitics of Mexico’s new strong woman

At the end of the largest electoral process in the history of Mexico – more than 20,000 elected positions were at stake – it was the Morena candidate (left), Claudia Sheinbaum, who became the country’s first president and the first of Jewish origin. .

Training and education: a committed youth

Although she is the candidate supported by outgoing president López Obrador, Claudia Sheinbaum has a different profile than her mentor.

• Sheinbaum grew up in a family where science and politics were intertwined. His parents were university professors—his father, chemist Carlos Sheinbaum Yoselevitz, and his mother, biologist Annie Pardo Cemo—and both supported the 1968 student protests in Mexico, whose leaders were regularly received at the home of the Sheinbaums.
• The new president has the habit of saying that she is “daughter of ’68”, in reference to the 1968 movement in Mexico formed by students, professors and intellectuals from the main universities in the country who demanded the release of political prisoners and the end of the authoritarianism of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), in power for 30 years.
• He studied physics and energy engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She was even the first woman to defend an “energy engineering” thesis at UNAM—Mexico’s main university—titled “Trends and perspectives of residential energy in Mexico.”
• As part of his doctoral research, and thanks to a scholarship from UNAM, he worked for four years at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California, United States.
• He is a member of the National System of Researchers and the Mexican Academy of Sciences. In 2007 he joined the IPCC.
• From his first years at UNAM, Sheinbaum participated in the University Student Council to fight against the privatization of public education led by the then rector, Jorge Carpizo. The Student Council helped found the Democratic Revolution Party, which Claudia Sheinbaum joined in 1988.

The first mayor of Mexico City: a political career in the wake of AMLO

Claudia Sheinbaum won the municipal elections of Mexico City in 2018 in her third attempt and after being mayor of Tlalpan, one of the 16 territorial demarcations, following in AMLO’s footsteps on two fronts.

• On the one hand, he benefits from the popular momentum that brought López Obrador to the presidency of the country on December 1, 2018. On the other, he follows in the footsteps of his mentor, who was also mayor of the capital between 2000 and 2005.
• As of 2019, it announces one of its emblematic measures after declaring the “gender alert” with the creation of the free number “SOS *765” and the “Walk free, walk safe” trails, a program designed to help eradicate gender violence on public roads.
• In the educational field, it has launched a school scholarship program for more than one million students, a measure that became a constitutional right throughout the country in 2022.
• During the Covid-19 epidemic, Sheinbaum quickly decided to introduce the use of face masks, using them herself constantly. In this sequence, a clear divergence emerges between the mayor and the president, who questioned the data on the virus, repeated over and over again that there was no need to worry, and never used a mask. It should be noted that even during meetings with AMLO, Sheinbaum scrupulously kept his mask on.
• In terms of mobility, the mayor promoted the use of bicycles in the capital with the construction of 200 km of cycle paths and cycle stations. She lowered public transportation fares and restored and expanded the capital’s metro lines.
• The matter of line 12. On May 3, 2021, a very serious accident occurred on metro line 12, which saw one of its trains fall into the void; 27 people died and hundreds more were injured. A great controversy broke out in the capital, since many warnings had been made about the poor condition of the metro. An independent report determined that there had indeed been failures in the maintenance of the subway in question under the Sheinbaum government, whose image was greatly tarnished by the accident. Given the controversy, the mayor did not accept the conclusions of the report, which she described as “biased.”
• Shortly before taking office in 2018, when she was mayor of Tlalpan, a similar controversy broke out after the collapse of the Rebsamen school during the 2017 earthquake, which caused the death of 26 people, many of them children. The opposition accused Sheinbaum’s administration of negligence regarding irregularities in the construction of the building.

AMLO’s heir: continuity and rupture

After her research stay in the United States, Sheinbaum became a doctor and assumed her position as a researcher at the UNAM Engineering Institute. Just when she was becoming one of the pioneers of climate change studies in Mexico, López Obrador became mayor of the capital and was looking for a technical profile to occupy the position of Secretary of the Environment in his government.

• It was the physicist José Barberán, AMLO’s advisor, who was the first to speak to him about Sheinbaum, who had already visited the home of the Imaz-Sheinbaum couple on several occasions for party meetings. Some biographers even claim that Sheinbaum became known in López Obrador’s circles mainly because of the activism of her husband, Carlos Imaz.
• Claudia Sheinbaum was Secretary of the Environment of Mexico City from 2000 to 2006, the year in which she resigned from her position to join the campaign team of López Obrador, who at that time was a candidate for the presidency.
• On September 6, 2023, she won the Morena primary against Marcelo Ebrard—who was Secretary of Foreign Affairs in the AMLO government—and officially became the presidential candidate endorsed by López Obrador.
• Throughout the presidential campaign, Sheinbaum presented herself as AMLO’s heir, which allowed her to secure the popular support enjoyed by the outgoing president (approved by 60% of public opinion). In her campaign closing speech, she stated that she was “committed to respecting the legacy of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.”
• However, it is interesting to note that she talks about “respecting” AMLO’s legacy, but perhaps not making it last. There are points of disagreement between the two; Sheinbaum has never hidden it, although she emphasized it less during the campaign.
• Sheinbaum’s training and profile may explain the existing differences. She has a habit of favoring technical qualities in her environment instead of rewarding loyalty, as López Obrador has always done.
• If the management of Covid-19 on both sides was an eloquent example of the differences, the central place given by the new president to ecology, gender, sexual diversity and human rights is another. At a time when Mexico is suffering extreme heat and drought and a high rate of femicides (10 women are murdered every day), Sheinbaum seems to embody a left more in touch with the country’s deep problems.
• If Claudia Sheinbaum presents herself as AMLO’s heir, the question is to what extent and for how long she will continue to play this role.

The coordinates of a Sheinbaum doctrine?

Sheinbaum has said little about foreign policy, a silence that suggests that, at least for the moment, his positions coincide with those of AMLO.

• While the outgoing president condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, he has since maintained a kind of strategic ambiguity, avoiding taking sides and instead calling for “a ceasefire” in Ukraine. and Gaza, because Mexico is “for peace and dialogue.”
• In her program, Claudia Sheinbaum states that her “foreign policy will follow the constitutional principles of self-determination of the people, non-intervention and fraternity with all the peoples of the world.”
• It also emphasizes the leadership that Mexico wants to regain both regionally and internationally, an area that López Obrador has somewhat neglected during his mandate. Specifically, Sheinbaum has toured the main embassies in Mexico City to assure them that relations will be easier than with the previous administration.
• The program also emphasizes the growing importance of Mexico’s economic relations with the United States. With nearly $800 billion in trade in 2023, it has become the main trading partner, “dethroning China from this historical position” and highlighting how beneficial it is for Mexicans.
• The new president’s main task will be to negotiate a review of the trade agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada signed in 2020, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement, and whose review is scheduled for 2026.
• Since Morena came to power, there has been a clear rapprochement between Mexico and China. In terms of exports, China is Mexico’s fourth trading partner, and the second in imports.