Thread: First woman president in Mexico

What to know about Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico's first woman president

Claudia Sheinbaum made history Sunday after becoming the first woman to be elected president of Mexico.

Why it matters: Her election marks a groundbreaking achievement in a country with a strong culture of machismo and high rates of violence against women.

• She has also made history as the first Jewish person to be elected president of the predominantly Catholic country.
• Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, will have the chance to put her stamp on Mexico's climate and immigration policies once she takes office on Oct. 1.

What is Sheinbaum's background?

Sheinbaum was born in Mexico City in 1962 to parents who both worked in the sciences, per the New York Times.

• Both sets of Sheinbaum's grandparents were Jews who immigrated to Mexico from Lithuania and Bulgaria, per the Times.

Sheinbaum first met her husband, Jesús María Tarriba, a financial risk specialist at the Bank of Mexico, while they were both in university.

• The pair reconnected in recent years and married in 2023.
• Sheinbaum has two children and one grandchild, per CNN.

Sheinbaum's career as a scientist

Sheinbaum got a degree in physics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) before moving on to earn a PhD in energy engineering.

• During her doctoral studies in the 1990s she spent four years doing energy engineering research at the University of California, Berkeley, Reuters reported.
• In 2006, she joined the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — becoming a member of the team that would win the Nobel Peace Prize the following year, CNN reported.

Her years in politics

Sheinbaum first entered politics in 2000, when outgoing Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) — then the newly-elected mayor of Mexico City — appointed her to be his environment secretary, per CNN.

• In 2015, Sheinbaum became the head of Mexico City's largest borough, Tlalpan.
• She remained in the role until 2017, and was elected Mexico City mayor the next year.

Divergence from her predecessor

While running for president, Sheinbaum promised to pursue similar policies to those of her mentor, AMLO.

• Sheinbaum is also a member of AMLO's leftist Morena party.
• Still, Sheinbaum told the New York Times that she and AMLO are "different people" with different priorities.

State of play: Upon taking office, Sheinbaum will have to contend with the surging violence in Mexico that AMLO's policies largely failed to stymie.

She also told the Times she's prepared to work with whichever candidate wins this year's consequential U.S. election.

• She has vowed to continue Mexico and the U.S.' efforts to address migration by tackling its root causes as well, per the Times.

Most of us can hope........

Mexico’s new president ran on climate goals. Will she follow through?

The month before Mexico’s 2 June presidential vote the country was bedeviled by water cuts and blackouts as a record heatwave took the country beyond red and into an ominous purple on the weather map.

As dehydrated monkeys dropped dead from trees, the landslide victory of Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist, might look like salvation. But her record paints a more complicated picture – one where climate convictions have often, and may still, come second to political pragmatism.

Sheinbaum will inherit a country that has slipped from frontrunner to laggard on climate policy – in part due to the policies of her predecessor and ally, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which she has promised to continue.

López Obrador, who comes from the oil-rich state of Tabasco, prioritised “energy sovereignty” by growing the role of state companies and striving for self-sufficiency.

This was manifested in a $17bn oil refinery and colossal injections of cash and tax cuts for Pemex, the most indebted state oil company in the world, and one of the biggest historical polluters.

One result was to entrench a dirty-energy matrix, with almost 80% coming from fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s climate commitments were left to languish. It is one of just two G20 countries not to have a net-zero target, and it’s a long way from reducing emissions by 35% by 2030, under the Paris agreement.

“Not only are we nowhere near it, but we don’t have any specific and detailed plans to achieve it, let alone financing and concrete infrastructure projects,” said Diego Rivera Rivota, a researcher at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

This is despite the fact that Mexico is highly vulnerable to climate change – as was driven home by the extraordinary hurricane that hit Acapulco in October 2023, killing dozens and causing catastrophic damage.

“Acapulco taught us a big lesson. We weren’t prepared for that,” said Gustavo Alanís, general director of CEMDA, an environmental NGO. “These floods, droughts, hurricanes and heatwaves aren’t just going to continue, but possibly get more severe and frequent.”

Many hope Sheinbaum’s background as a climate scientist – one who contributed to the reports of the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – will shine through once she takes office on 1 October, notwithstanding her reliance on López Obrador to win the presidency.

When she was mayor of Mexico City, there were certain signs of the approach she might take as president, with an emphasis on solar energy, electrified public transport and a new cable car line.

But then, the city saw no great improvement in either of its fundamental environmental problems: air pollution and water shortages.

Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, Sheinbaum promised all things to all people, saying she would both continue López Obrador’s policies but also do more for the environment.

This means the Maya Train – one of López Obrador’s flagship infrastructure projects to develop historically poorer regions – will continue to cut through Latin America’s second-largest tropical forest. Sheinbaum has even suggested expanding it to neighbouring Belize and Guatemala.

There will also be more backing for Sembrando Vida, López Obrador’s pet forestry and rural development initiative that has had money plowed into it as budgets for state environmental agencies have been slashed – even though its results are little understood, and there are reports it even promotes deforestation.

And there will be more public money for Pemex as it staggers on under its debt burden and tries to increase its oil output.

On the other hand, Sheinbaum has also suggested that Pemex expand its remit to include mining for lithium, a crucial element of electric batteries.

And there was a campaign pledge to spend $14bn on clean-energy projects. That would mark a radical change from López Obrador’s government, which not only invested very little in renewables, but also revoked or blocked permits for private projects.

Experts also expect to see more action on the demand side of the equation, with an emphasis on electrification of public transport and incentives for residential solar panels. “This is a country with 300 days plus of sun,” said Rivera Rivota. “It has massive potential for that.”

Although Sheinbaum’s proposals lack detail at this stage, she has repeatedly emphasised the need for long-term planning for both energy and water – looking not just to 2030, but to 2050 and beyond.

“[Long-term planning] was not guaranteed during the current administration. We had several legal and regulatory changes, and other attempts at change that led to battles in court,” said Rivera Rivota. “As long as it’s clear what the rules of the game are, what the legal framework is, I think Mexico has enormous potential for investment in renewable energy.”

The scale of victory for Sheinbaum’s Morena party, which seems to have given it a supermajority in one and perhaps both houses of congress, as well as the governorships of 24 of Mexico’s 32 federal entities, has given Sheinbaum a huge mandate as president-elect.

But whether she wants or will be able to move away from her predecessor’s policies is an unknown.

López Obrador will remain a powerful figure – and his continued support may be needed to help hold together Morena, the party that he founded but has since expanded to house disparate ideologies, and fractious groups.

“She was never going to contradict the president during the campaign,” said Rivera Rivota. “But who knows what will happen when she’s sitting in the Palacio Nacional and making the calls herself.”

“There is hope, and there is a vote of confidence [in Sheinbaum],” said Alanís of CEMDA. “But here we will be vigilant, and we will be checking the actions of her administration every day.