Claudia Sheinbaum’s checklist of accolades is lengthy: She has a Ph.D in vitality engineering, participated in a United Nations panel of local weather scientists awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and ruled the capital, one of many largest cities within the hemisphere.
On Sunday, she added one other achievement to her résumé: turning into the primary girl elected president of Mexico.
Ms. Sheinbaum, 61, captured at the least 58 p.c of the vote in a landmark election on Sunday that featured two girls competing for the nation’s highest workplace — a groundbreaking contest in a rustic lengthy recognized for a tradition of machismo and rampant violence in opposition to girls.
“For the primary time in 200 years of the republic, I’ll turn into the primary feminine president of Mexico,” she mentioned. “And as I’ve mentioned on different events, I don’t arrive alone. All of us arrived, with our heroines who gave us our homeland, with our ancestors, our moms, our daughters and our granddaughters.”
Now that she has clinched the presidency, Ms. Sheinbaum’s subsequent hurdle will likely be stepping out of the shadow of her predecessor and longtime mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the outgoing president.
She and Mr. López Obrador are “completely different folks,” she mentioned in an interview. He’s an oilman who invested in environmentally questionable tasks; she’s a local weather scientist. But Ms. Sheinbaum has appealed to voters primarily by promising to cement his legacy, backing strikes like his massive wager on the nationwide oil firm and proposed constitutional adjustments that critics name antidemocratic.
Their alliance has additionally left many Mexicans asking: Can Ms. Sheinbaum be her personal chief? Or will she simply be his pawn?
“There’s this concept, as a result of a variety of columnists say it, that I don’t have a character,” Ms. Sheinbaum complained to reporters earlier this 12 months. “That President Andrés Manuel López Obrador tells me what to do.”
She insists she’s going to govern independently from Mr. López Obrador and has some completely different priorities. However veering too removed from his agenda could possibly be very dangerous.
Listed below are 5 issues to know in regards to the newly elected president of Mexico that assist inform whether or not she’s going to stray from Mr. López Obrador’s insurance policies or dedicate herself to cementing his legacy.
1. Sheinbaum will inherit a bunch of challenges.
A former ballet dancer, Ms. Sheinbaum calls herself “obsessive” and “disciplined.” However self-discipline is probably not sufficient, analysts say.
As president, she already stands to inherit an extended checklist of troubles. The state-owned oil firm is buckling below debt, migration via the nation has reached historic highs and cartel violence continues to torment the nation.
She has mentioned she would proceed Mr. López Obrador’s coverage of addressing the drivers of violence as an alternative of waging conflict on the prison teams, however may even work to decrease charges of impunity and construct up the nationwide guard.
With a U.S. presidential election simply months away, she instructed The New York Instances that she was ready to work with whichever candidate wins. Publicly, she has echoed Mr. López Obrador’s emphasis on tackling migration by addressing its root causes.
In a touch of potential change, she mentioned in a current debate that she would search to reform the country’s migration authority, an company typically accused of corruption.
2. She’s seen as reserved, even aloof.
The Instances spoke with two dozen individuals who have labored with or know Ms. Sheinbaum and in addition visited marketing campaign occasions, reviewed her writings and her media appearances and interviewed her, as soon as in 2020 and once more this 12 months.
What turned clear is that Ms. Sheinbaum, (pronounced SHANE-balm), has lengthy appeared extra snug quietly getting issues carried out than promoting herself or her achievements.
The granddaughter of Jewish immigrants who fled Europe, she not often discusses being Jewish or nearly something about her private life, colleagues say. When interviewers ask her in regards to the Nobel Prize she shared with a panel of local weather researchers, she notes what number of others have been concerned within the work.
She is named a troublesome boss with a fast mood who can encourage in her workers concern and adoration on the identical time. Publicly, although, her have an effect on is so managed it verges on aloof.
Some say her professorial demeanor might pose a problem in a political panorama outlined by Mr. López Obrador, who constructed his celebration right into a juggernaut by counting on the drive of his character.
“She wants him,” mentioned Carlos Heredia, a Mexican political analyst. “She doesn’t have the charisma, she doesn’t have the recognition, she doesn’t have the political stamina of her personal, so she must borrow that from López Obrador.”
For some Mexicans, nonetheless, a thrills-free girl could also be a perfect antidote to an entertaining man who plunged the nation into partisan turmoil.
3. She’s lengthy sought to maintain Mr. López Obrador completely satisfied.
The candidate’s political profession started when Mr. López Obrador was elected mayor of Mexico Metropolis in 2000 and invited her to a gathering at a diner. “What I need is to scale back air pollution,” she recalled Mr. López Obrador telling her. “Have you learnt how to try this?”
Ms. Sheinbaum, who by then had written greater than a dozen studies on vitality use and carbon emissions, mentioned sure. She turned his atmosphere minister. In conferences, she appeared keen to do nearly something to make her boss completely satisfied, based on a number of individuals who labored along with her.
“The phrase she used again and again was ‘The mayor mentioned to,’” mentioned Mr. Heredia, who labored along with her in metropolis authorities below Mr. López Obrador. What that meant, based on Mr. Heredia: “We’re not a cupboard for giving concepts,” he mentioned. “We’re a bunch of individuals right here to execute what he decides.”
Within the years that adopted, Ms. Sheinbaum straddled academia and politics, however she all the time stayed near Mr. López Obrador. When he based his Morena celebration in 2014, he requested her to run on the celebration’s ticket to turn into mayor of Tlalpan, a borough of Mexico Metropolis. Along with his backing, she gained.
4. She is understood for being a demanding boss.
In 2018, Mr. López Obrador was swept into the presidency in a landslide and Ms. Sheinbaum turned Mexico Metropolis’s mayor. She shortly gained a status as an exacting boss.
“One doesn’t go to her conferences to inform her, ‘I’m engaged on it,’” mentioned Soledad Aragón, a former member of Ms. Sheinbaum’s cupboard. When she walked right into a room, Ms. Aragón mentioned, everybody sat up straight.
As mayor, she might bear in mind particular numbers talked about in a gathering weeks after it occurred, Ms. Aragón mentioned, calling her “sensible” and “demanding,” particularly of herself, including: “It has gotten outcomes.”
5 officers who’ve labored with Ms. Sheinbaum, who weren’t approved to talk publicly, mentioned that she was fast to anger at occasions and would yell at her subordinates in entrance of enormous teams. By means of a spokesman, Ms. Sheinbaum declined to touch upon the accusation.
Her defenders say some folks merely reacted badly to a girl in cost.
“I do know that in her authorities, generally folks acquired offended or felt dangerous as a result of she yelled at them,” mentioned Marta Lamas, a longtime feminist activist who has been near Ms. Sheinbaum and her staff. “But when a person yells, it wouldn’t be a difficulty as a result of culturally, it’s completely different.”
“Folks say it in a essential means: ‘She’s powerful,’” Ms. Aragón mentioned. “What would you like, somebody mushy in control of the town?”
5. She is a real believer in Mr. López Obrador’s imaginative and prescient.
For years, Ms. Sheinbaum has tried to clarify how she will be so in keeping with Mr. López Obrador whereas additionally being herself. The reply, she says, is straightforward: She genuinely believes in him.
In 2022, a radio host requested her a pointed query from a feminine listener: “Why don’t you select to be a girl who governs along with her personal concepts? Why don’t you get out of AMLO’s circus?” she requested, utilizing Mr. López Obrador’s nickname. “Why have the identical rhetoric with the identical phrases?”
Ms. Sheinbaum didn’t hesitate.
“When you assume the identical as one other particular person, it’s not that you just’re copying them; you simply agree with the concepts,” she mentioned. “You possibly can’t deny what you imagine.”
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting.
