Mexico’s newly elected and first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, was celebrated on Monday as an ambitious moderniser. But the success of her mission will depend ultimately on factors outside her control: on who wins the presidential election north of the Rio Grande and on international drug and migrant flows. It looks set to be a bumpy ride.
On paper, the election seems to have awarded real political muscle to Ms Sheinbaum, a former mayor of Mexico City. The presidential vote was accompanied by balloting for more than 20,000 other positions, including 500 new members of congress, 128 new senators, nine new governors and thousands of regional and municipal representatives. A whole political establishment has been rearranged in an elaborate display of musical chairs. It does not amount to a full-blown revolution, more like an orderly succession.
The outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, having served his six years in office, has used his political machine to help his protégée Ms Sheinbaum into power. If she can garner enough support for constitutional change, Mr López Obrador calculates, it should buy enough time to complete what he calls Mexico’s Fourth Transformation, a series of epoch-making leaps that began with independence in 1821.
• Meet the woman ready to be Mexico’s first presidenta
Ms Sheinbaum needs, however, to free herself from the dreams of her overly ideological leftist patron and address Mexico’s real-world problems. Her first task is to assess what alliances she can form within the new congress to shape reforms to the health system, to security, the economy and welfare. Some 27 million Mexicans receive direct support from the government and the state is due a shake-up in the institutions they depend on.
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Crime rates are soaring due to the unfettered activities of Mexico’s murderous drug cartels. Last year there were 30,000 registered drug-related killings; this year there have been more than that number in the first five months. Assassination is an everyday hazard of politics. In the 2021 midterm elections 27 candidates were murdered; so far in 2024 there have been 40 political killings. Two mayoral candidates in one township were killed within hours of each other. In addition, Mexico is ranked as the most dangerous place for journalists in the western hemisphere.
Ms Sheinbaum, a US-trained expert on sustainable development, is deemed to be more worldly than her monolingual patron, who hardly left the country. She will have to engage with Washington and Latin America to stem the production of fentanyl tablets which, using smuggled Chinese precursor drugs, is turning pockets of suburban America into drug zones. There is a recognition by Mexico and the US that the sheer volume of bilateral trade —$800 billion — demands a degree of mutual respect. Even Donald Trump, who on the 2016 election trail regularly insulted Mexicans, came to realise as president that it was madness to make an enemy out of a neighbour. President Sheinbaum will no doubt try to elevate the tone of discourse over coming months, as she will try to tighten the border with Guatemala to slow the flow of migrants crossing Mexico to reach the US.
Much depends on the US election. In the next ten years young and dynamic Mexico, with its diversified economy, could thrive. But its leader must learn from Mr López Obrador’s mistakes and make proximity to the US a geopolitical asset, not simply a narco and people-trafficking opportunity.
