MEXICO CITY — Every September, Mexico’s president seems earlier than a crowd of tens of 1000’s within the nation’s central sq. to carry out the grito, the shout of independence commemorating the nation’s break from colonial rule.
This 12 months, for the primary time, a girl will lead the plenty in chants of “Long live Mexico!”
Monday’s ceremony in Mexico Metropolis’s principal plaza will likely be a historic second for the nation and for President Claudia Sheinbaum, who, in her first 12 months because the nation’s first feminine chief, has maintained remarkably excessive marks regardless of a spate of home and worldwide challenges.
Supporters take selfies with the brand new president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, after her swearing-in ceremony in Congress in 2024.
(Felix Marquez / Image Alliance / Getty Photographs)
Sheinbaum, 63, who took workplace final Oct. 1, boasts approval scores above 70% and has notched a number of victories: profitable passage of main constitutional reforms, overseeing unprecedented judicial elections and deftly negotiating with President Trump, making concessions on immigration and safety to avert the worst of his threatened tariffs on Mexican items.
She has additionally overseen a 25% drop in homicides, a powerful feat in a rustic exhausted by drug violence that she chalks as much as her administration’s aggressive new crackdown on organized crime.
“We’re doing well and we’ll get better,” Sheinbaum mentioned this month throughout a speech to Congress, the place members of her political get together, which controls each homes of the legislature, cheered her with shouts of “Long live Claudia!”
However maybe Sheinbaum’s largest feat has been rising from the lengthy shadow solid by her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a hero among the many working class whose assist was essential to her election.
As a candidate for López Obrador’s Morena get together, Sheinbaum promised to proceed his populist challenge, which sought to cut back poverty and shift energy away from conventional financial and political elites.
Mexicans line up at a polling station in Guadalajara on June 2, 2024, the day voters solid ballots to elect Claudia Sheinbaum the president of Mexico.
(Ulises Ruiz / AFP by way of Getty Photographs)
After she gained in a landslide, she confronted criticism that she could be his “puppet,” a discourse she dismissed as sexist.
Nonetheless, there’s no query that Sheinbaum has needed to stroll a difficult line: defining her presidency on her personal phrases whereas additionally demonstrating loyalty to the political motion that acquired her there.
As López Obrador has retreated from public life, retiring to his ranch in southern Mexico, Sheinbaum has embraced a lot of his signature insurance policies, together with a preferred welfare program that distributes money to youth, folks with disabilities and senior residents.
Political analyst Jorge Zepeda Patterson mentioned that Sheinbaum has efficiently outmaneuvered different Morena get together members, together with a number of former political rivals, to be seen as the brand new voice of López Obrador’s motion.
“She is the heir, she is the interpreter of the entire movement, and that is no small thing,” he mentioned.
Supreme Courtroom President Hugo Aguilar Ortiz receives a conventional purification ceremony from representatives of Indigenous communities throughout the swearing-in ceremony on the Supreme Courtroom constructing on Sept. 1 in Mexico Metropolis.
(Hector Vivas / Getty Photographs)
Sheinbaum additionally muscled throughout the end line one among his most controversial undertakings: an overhaul of the judicial system that mandates judges be elected by well-liked vote. Critics argue the transfer was designed to pay attention energy within the arms of Morena and opens the door to corruption.
“That’s something dictators only invent to control the judiciary,” mentioned Ernesto Zedillo, a former president and chief of the Institutional Revolutionary Get together.
However whereas furthering López Obrador’s agenda, Sheinbaum has additionally quietly been carving her personal path.
Her most important departure from her mentor has been on issues of safety.
As a part of his “hugs not bullets” coverage, López Obrador scaled again safety cooperation with the U.S., ordered troopers to cease confronting cartels and put an emphasis on new social applications. All through his six-year time period, homicides hovered close to file highs and prison teams expanded their management.
Sheinbaum, beneath strain from Trump to clamp down on drug trafficking, has modified tack, dismantling fentanyl labs, finishing up main drug busts and sending dozens of accused cartel leaders to the U.S. to face justice.
Regardless of these wins, main challenges loom.
The most important one is Trump.
Vans queue close to the Mexico-U.S. border earlier than crossing the border at Tijuana on March 4.
(Guillermo Arias / AFP by way of Getty Photographs)
Mexico’s financial system was already on the rocks when the U.S. president started issuing tariff threats, spooking abroad traders who as soon as considered Mexico as a pipeline to maneuver merchandise into the U.S. tax-free. Because of this, progress has slowed.
Sheinbaum and Trump have but to fulfill, however have spoken a number of instances in telephone conversations each leaders have described as profitable. “More and more, we are getting to know and understand each other,” Trump mentioned in August.
For Sheinbaum one fixed strain is the specter of U.S. navy motion in Mexico.
Trump lately signed an order permitting the Protection Division to make use of drive in opposition to Latin American drug cartels, which he has designated as international terrorist teams. The U.S. navy lately destroyed a Venezuelan boat it mentioned was trafficking medicine, killing 11.
President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador attend a ceremony on Sept. 19, 2024, commemorating lives misplaced throughout main earthquakes which have hit Mexico on Sept. 19 in 1985, 2017 and 2022.
(Guillermo Arias / AFP by way of Getty Photographs)
Carlos Bravo Regidor, a Mexican political analyst, mentioned a lot of Sheinbaum’s first 12 months has been dominated by two males: Trump and López Obrador, who is often recognized by his initials, AMLO.
“She’s trapped between the legacy of AMLO and the reality of Donald Trump,” he mentioned.
Sheinbaum’s posture on attainable U.S. navy motion embodies how she’s handled Trump. She’ll converse plainly — “There will be no invasion” and Mexico is “not a colony of anyone” — however resists partaking in tit-for-tat remarks to stoke Trump’s ire.
Greater than as soon as, when requested to answer Trump’s newest hyperbolic remark, she’s replied: “President Trump has his own way of communicating.”
President Sheinbaum speaks throughout the first State of the Union report of her tenure at Palacio Nacional on Sept. 1 in Mexico Metropolis, Mexico.
(Manuel Velasquez / Getty Photographs)
Nonetheless, there’s little doubt that Sheinbaum has benefited from the wave of nationalism that has surged right here within the face of an American president who persecuted Mexican migrants residing within the U.S. and threatened drone strikes on Mexican territory. That sentiment is prone to be on show on Monday, when Mexicans don the crimson, white and inexperienced of their flag and convene within the Zócalo for the independence celebrations.
There may also be a robust present of feminism.
Sheinbaum has typically repeated the mantra she first spoke the night time she gained workplace: “I didn’t arrive alone, I arrived with all Mexican women.”
For a lot of Mexicans throughout get together traces, her presidency has been transformative.
Mexico Metropolis resident Esther Ramos, 40, mentioned she deliberate to take her younger daughters to see Sheinbaum ship the grito, not as a lesson in politics, per se, however as a lesson in what is feasible.
“My two daughters will see that a woman is capable of achieving whatever they want,” she mentioned.
