4 great challenges that the historic presidency of Claudia Sheinbaum will face to deliver a better Mexico than the one it receives

Claudia Sheinbaum has already secured a place in history as the first female president of Mexico. But his government will also be remembered for how it deals with different challenges facing its country, some of which are very difficult.

An environmental engineer, Sheinbaum achieved a record 35.9 million votes (59.7% of the total) in the June elections as a candidate for an official coalition that includes the Morena party of the outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, her political godfather. .

This 62-year-old former head of government of Mexico City (2018-2023) will lead the country with the most Spanish speakers on the planet starting October 1.

His challenges go far beyond deepening his predecessor’s achievements, such as reducing poverty in a nation where more than a third of people still live in that situation.

In fact, there are four major factors that will define Sheinbaum’s historic presidency:

The violence and organized crime They have been hot topics for Mexican heads of state for a long time, but Sheinbaum will have to address them at a special moment.

López Obrador, also known by his initials AMLO, claims that during his mandate the upward trend in homicides in the country was reversed, the rate of which fell to 24 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi). ).

But in the first five years of AMLO’s government, 173,483 homicides were recorded in Mexico, according to Inegi, more than during the entire six-year terms of his predecessors since 1990.

Experts believe that Sheinbaum has the challenge of reducing those numbers and the power of the mafias in Mexico.

“We need a presidency that has the political will to take this issue head-on with all its aspects and recognize the protection networks from the State that have supported organized crime for years,” says Sandra Ley, a distinguished professor at the School of Sciences. Social and Government from the Tecnológico de Monterrey who has investigated criminal violence and its influence on politics.

Sheinbaum usually remembers that in Mexico City he managed to reduce homicides by almost 50% and proposed expanding nationally policies that he implemented to improve coordination between police and prosecutors.

However, in the capital there was also an increase in deaths from undetermined causes that cast doubt on its security improvements, Ley warns.

And he adds that at the national level There are other phenomena to worry about apart from homicidessuch as the disappearances of people, forced displacements or the interference of organized crime in the political and social order of hundreds of municipalities for which clear data is lacking.

“Given Morena’s control in 23 states, the lack of coordination between levels of government can no longer be a pretext for the new federal administration to justify poor results in terms of security,” Ley tells BBC Mundo.

Although Mexico has made progress towards gender parity in politics in recent years, At the social level, women still suffer serious violations of rights and its first president will also be evaluated according to how much this reality changes.

Nine women are murdered every day in the country, according to the UN.

70% of Mexican women have suffered some type of violence, whether psychological, sexual, physical, economic or discriminatory, according to Inegi.

And although the Supreme Court of Justice decriminalized abortion throughout Mexico last year, only 14 of the country’s 32 states have modified their legislation to do so.

Alejandra Mora Mora, executive secretary of the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM), highlights that Mexico leads the process of bringing women into decision-making positions in the region with a 2019 “parity in everything” law that guarantees them 50% of the candidacies and positions in different branches of the State.

And she points out that Sheinbaum “as the first female president of Mexico, has the challenge that the women’s agenda (with issues) such as care, eradication of violence, political and labor insertion of women, not be peripheral but essential”.

“No one better than her to deeply understand the challenges and needs of women and girls in Mexico,” Mora Mora tells BBC Mundo.

“Her leadership, based on her unique experience and her identity as a woman, will be an opportunity to break into the leadership narrative, which is in a masculine key and constitutes an obstacle for women to also be recognized as leaders, ready to occupy decision-making positions,” she concludes.

Another key to Sheinbaum’s government will be the relationship with the United States and, in particular, what happens on the 3,200-kilometer land limit between both countries.

The crossing of migrants without papers across that border from Mexico has become one of the most sensitive political points in the United States, which in November will hold elections with a duel for the White House between the current vice president, Kamala Harris, and former president Donald Trump.

Entries of migrants of different nationalities to the US from Mexico plummeted this year, after a monthly record of arrests by border agents was recorded in December.

Experts attribute this decline to restrictions that President Joe Biden put in place to grant asylum to undocumented migrants and to Mexican cooperation, but they warn that things can change again for various reasons.

Michael Shifter, former president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank in Washington, points out that the US approaches this as a national security issue, so it will keep pressure on Mexico to keep the numbers under control no matter who is in charge. the White House.

“For the next president of Mexico it is going to be a very complex and very delicate challenge to manage,” Shifter tells BBC Mundo.

Sheinbaum has indicated that he hopes to work with the next US president, whether Democrat or Republican, as López Obrador did.

“We are the first trading partner of the United States. right now,” she said in an interview with the BBC before being elected. “They need us and we need them in economic terms.”

However, Shifter observes that Sheinbaum seems “a little tougher and more ideological” than AMLO, who “is an old politician who knows how to reach agreements.”

“Under Sheinbaum’s presidency, and if Trump wins above all, the relationship could enter a very complicated stage, even more so than what we have seen in recent years with AMLO and Biden,” says the professor of Latin American studies at the University from Georgetown.

Sheinbaum’s electoral victory had different pillars, from his management in Mexico City to his effective electoral campaign. But he also had the key support of a highly popular president like López Obrador.

A question now is how much Sheinbaum’s presidency will be similar or different from that of his political godfather. It is something that will also define his mandate.

López Obrador has indicated that he plans to retire from politics after leaving power and that he will “try not to bother” Sheinbaum, although he plans to remain in communication with the president if she seeks him out.

Many of AMLO’s critics suspect that he chose Sheinbaum as his successor to extend his rule and maintain his influence through her.

In the campaign, Sheinbaum was indifferent to these suspicions and assured that she will be the one who will govern with her own objectives, at a different time than AMLO’s, although with the same principles.

But Coming to power with the patronage of a former president and then marking differences with him can be difficult: This is shown by recent cases in the region, such as that of Juan Manuel Santos and Álvaro Uribe in Colombia, or Lenín Moreno and Rafael Correa in Ecuador.

Luis Carlos Ugalde, director of Integralia, a public affairs consultancy in Mexico, anticipates that Sheinbaum “will want to remain politically close” to her predecessor, who has the loyalty of a majority of the new Morena legislators in Congress.

In his opinion, “López Obrador has subdued Sheinbaum during the transition, through appointments to the new government that he has suggested and through the appointment of his son as organizational secretary of Morena.”

“In addition, He pushed for judicial reform to be approved that has caused fear and uncertainty and that has prevented Sheinbaum from making his government’s priorities known,” Ugalde tells BBC Mundo.

“Sheinbaum will begin her government politically limited,” he observes, “and time will show whether she becomes independent or bows to the figure of Lopez Obrador.”

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