The Mexican Claudia Sheinbaum has taken the oath

‘VOTE FOR EVERYONE’:
After the inauguration, Mexico’s first female president attended a ceremony where she was blessed and presented with a wooden ‘staff of authority’

Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in as Mexican president on Tuesday. She benefited from enthusiasm for her predecessor’s social programs, but also faced challenges such as persistently high levels of violence.

After a smiling Sheinbaum took the oath of office on the floor of Congress, lawmakers shouted, “Presidenta. Presidenta,” using the feminine form of president in Spanish for the first time in more than 200 years of Mexican history as an independent country.

The 62-year-old scientist-turned-politician is hosting a country with a number of immediate problems, including a sluggish economy, unfinished construction programs, mounting debt and the hurricane-ravaged seaside resort of Acapulco.

Photo: AFP

In her inauguration speech, Sheinbaum said she came to power accompanied by all the women who have struggled in anonymity to make their way in Mexico, including “those who dreamed of the possibility that one day, regardless of whether we were born women or men, we would realize our dreams and desires without our gender determining our fate.”

She made a long list of promises to cap gasoline and food prices, expand cash handout programs for women and children and support business investment, housing and the construction of passenger railroads.

However, any mention of the drug cartels that control much of the country was brief and near the end of the list.

Photo: AFP

Sheinbaum offered little change from former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s “hugs, not bullets” strategy of tackling root causes and not confronting the cartels, beyond promising more intelligence work and investigations.

“There will be no return to the irresponsible drug war,” she said.

She has pledged to continue all of Lopez Obrador’s policies, even those that strengthened the military’s power and weakened the country’s checks and balances.

After the inauguration, Sheinbaum attended a gathering in Mexico City’s main colonial-era plaza to participate in a ceremony involving an all-women committee representing Mexico’s approximately 70 indigenous groups.

Sheinbaum was blessed and anointed with herbs and incense by Ernestina Ortiz, a “spiritual guide,” who told Sheinbaum, “You are a voice for all of us who for a long time had no voice.”

A native elder then presented Sheinbaum with a wooden “staff of authority,” like those carried by community leaders.

After the ceremony, Sheinbaum said she would push for a total ban on the re-election of any official.

Lucia Ruiz, a 42-year-old mother of three, was among thousands who tried to reach the main square to attend the rally.

She said she hoped Sheinbaum would combat the country’s high rate of violence against women.

“She’s going to represent us,” Ruiz said. ‘We have always been ruled by men, and they think we are incapable of doing that, but that is not the case. We are the heads of our families.”