Her rise to power and her future as president of Mexico

By Eduardo García and Alfredo Corchado

Text by Eduardo Garcia, Alfredo Corchado Photos by Omar Ornelas Edited by Dudley Althaus, @dqalthaus

Puente News Collaborative is a bilingual nonprofit newsroom, organizer and funder committed to high-quality, fact-based news and information about the U.S.-Mexico border.

MEXICO CITY — When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, then-Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum quickly rebranded C-5, the sprawling Mexican capital’s public safety center, into a hub for handling emergency calls and coordinating medical assistance.

Previously used to monitor traffic and crime, the C5’s surveillance cameras were deployed to direct ambulances through the city’s vast, labyrinthine streets. The strategy ensured that emergency vehicles could reach their destination quickly and transport patients to the nearest available hospital or clinic.

“When we arrived at C5, there was already a big map of the city, and you could see illuminated dots showing the locations of all the ambulances from different organizations,” recalls Carlos Mackinlay, Mexico City’s then Minister of Tourism, who helped coordinate efforts. “You could even communicate with the ambulances to find out why they stopped or if they needed additional equipment.”

Sheinbaum’s swift response to the health crisis in early 2020 has raised hopes among millions of Mexicans that she will bring similar pragmatic efficiency to the national government after becoming the country’s first female president on Tuesday.

Sheinbaum won the presidency in the June election with 59 percent of the votes cast. Her center-left Morena party also controls the Mexican National Congress and more than two-thirds of the country’s 32 state governments.

Many who have worked closely with the new president emphasize her rigorous and results-oriented attitude – traits likely honed during an academic career in science and technology.

Sheinbaum, 62, earned a doctorate in engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and did postdoctoral studies at the University of California-Berkeley. She contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

“She is organized and structured. She leads short, executive meetings with concrete, precise orders and clear demands,” Mackinlay said, before adding that Sheibaum is also “a woman with deep social and political convictions.”

The biggest concern among her opponents, however, is whether the new president will be able — or willing — to step out of the shadow of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, her longtime mentor.

These critics fear that Sheinbaum, whether by force or conviction, will march in her predecessor’s footsteps.

Sheinbaum has supported Lopez Obrador’s top policy priorities throughout her political career. These include reducing private sector involvement in the energy sector and advocating a strong role for the state in alleviating poverty.

“I am part of a social movement,” Sheinbaum proudly declares in a forty-minute documentary about her life.

A renewed confrontational attitude toward Washington and a wave of constitutional changes implemented in September — including reforms that increase political control over the judiciary and place all federal security forces under military rule — have people at home and abroad worried are.

As a result, some analysts view Sheinbaum’s six-year presidency as beginning with “one hand tied behind her back,” with her ability to maneuver sharply defined.

“López Obrador did not just pick Claudia.” said Lila Abed, director of the Washington-based Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute. “He has also selected many of the current representatives, senators and governors who are loyal to him, and not necessarily to her.”

Many Mexicans, including López Obrador himself, believe she will not change course as president, in part because she is not meek. Certainly, Sheinbaum identifies as a left-wing politician rooted in much the same anti-market and nationalist vision that López Obrador has long championed.

“Some think that once I leave, things will go back to the way they were before, or that the government will be more benevolent,” López Obrador said at a recent press conference. “No, no, no. I take this opportunity to warn you: I am the good-natured one.

Not surprisingly, Sheinbaum faces widespread skepticism among her opponents and proponents of democracy.

Their doubts are also fueled by several controversial decisions she made during her tenure as mayor.

During the pandemic, her government has distributed nearly 200,000 medical kits containing ivermectin, a drug commonly used to treat animal parasites, to individuals who tested positive for the coronavirus. These individuals were not informed that they were part of an experimental treatment that was later determined to be ineffective.

After part of an elevated subway line collapsed in southern Mexico City, killing 26 passengers and injuring 98, Sheinbaum tried to withhold politically damaging parts of an independent report she commissioned to investigate the cause. to research.

A Norwegian group’s report attributed the tragedy mainly to poor construction techniques and poor supervision, which occurred two governments before hers. Still, the findings criticized Sheinbaum’s administration for failing to implement proper maintenance controls that could have prevented the tragedy.

The new president’s left-wing political activism began in the cradle.

Her parents, children of secular Jews from Eastern Europe and the Middle East who emigrated to Mexico in the early 20th century, participated in the 1968 student movement that demanded greater political openness. That movement was suppressed by the government, including the massacre of dozens of people by security forces during the so-called Tlatelolco massacre on October 2 that year.

Sheinbaum himself participated in later social movements, including the long and bitter student strike that paralyzed Mexico’s National University for ten months at the turn of the century. While studying at Berkeley, Sheinbaum protested the visit of Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who encouraged free market policies and opposed democratic reforms.

“Fair Trade and Democracy Now!!” demands a sign Sheinbaum holds during the protest.

That activist push could pose challenges for the next U.S. president, whoever he or she may be. In turn, Donald Trump has threatened to impose sanctions and even invade Mexico or bomb drug cartels’ labs to crack down on organized crime.

“I think this is on the table, and I don’t think we can take it lightly,” Abed said.

Such threats during Trump’s presidency proved effective in winning immigration concessions from López Obrador and his Mexican predecessor. How Sheinbaum might respond is an open question.

Because the two countries share a border of more than 2,000 miles, Mexico is the US’s largest trading partner and an important ally in the fight against illegal immigrants and drug gangs that use the country as a springboard.

Under U.S. pressure, Mexico has helped suppress much of the immigrant trade — if not the narcotics — to the north.

But Mexico’s apparent shift toward what critics see as a one-party state under López Obrador’s final six-year term has raised alarms in Washington. If this continues to fester, it could strain Sheinbaum’s relations with the White House and Congress, analysts say.

Yet a confrontation with the US may not be in the interests of Sheinbaum or Mexico, because as a northern neighbor it is not only the largest trading partner but also the main source of investments and remittances.

To be sure, Sheinbaum faces very different circumstances than those López Obrador faced when he came to power six years ago, including an even further depleted state treasury.

Despite improving the lives of millions of people through state subsidies, López Obrador has also poured vast resources into still-unprofitable projects such as a new oil refinery, a tourist train on the Yucatán Peninsula and a little-used second airport in Mexico City. The first two projects cost two to three times more than originally planned and the three require subsidies to stay afloat.

Moreover, the state oil company Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, is a netball case. Despite more than $50 billion in government bailouts over the past six years aimed at increasing production and refinery capacity, Pemex is still losing billions over the past six years, mostly from its refinery division.

Recent judicial reforms threaten to undermine foreign investor confidence in Mexico, which is essential for economic growth and poverty reduction.

Finally, a series of criminal gangs have gained effective control of nearly a third of Mexico’s territory, engaging in extortion and other rackets that affect local communities far more severely than the international narcotics trade.

In addition to Sheinbaum, López Obrador has also inherited the hyper-violence, largely as a result of underworld battles that began in 2006. As many as 30,000 people have been killed annually since 2018, according to the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, while more than 30,000 people have been killed annually. Over the past six years, 45,000 people have been reported missing or presumed dead.

López Obrador disputes the figures, claiming they were inflated to harm him politically.

Many hope that circumstances will force Sheinbaum to adjust course, if only slightly, to López Obrador’s project, which he romantically characterizes as the fourth transformation in Mexico’s history. Even if she doesn’t want to, they argue, Sheinbaum must tread carefully to live up to her stated belief that “governing serves the people.”

At heart, Sheinbaum “may be even more nationalist and left-wing than López Obrador,” said Duncan Wood, president of the Pacific Council on International Policy, a think tank focused on U.S.-Mexico issues.

Still, he said reality can bite.

“She is an academic, a scientist. “If you look at her cabinet appointments since she won the election, you see a balance between left and right, closed and open,” Wood said recently at a conference in Austin.

“I think we will see a president who is more diplomatically open to the US than her predecessor.”

Dudley Althaus edited the story