'Presidenta! Presidenta!' chants fill victory party as 1st female president elected: ANALYSIS
MEXICO CITY -- The chants broke out just before midnight as Claudia Sheinbaum took the stage at her victory party in Mexico City.
"Presidenta! Presidenta! Presidenta!"
Notice the last letter -- the historic nature of this election was not lost on the crowd. For the first time in the 200-year history of Mexico’s republic, a woman will become president.
Sheinbaum defeated two others overnight to capture the presidency, according to projections from Mexican election authorities.
Though votes are still being tallied, the final margin is expected to be roughly 30 points. It is a landslide victory for Sheinbaum and her party, MORENA, outpacing most polling that had her favored by about 20 points.
This is a monumental moment for a country whose society, and therefore its politics, has long been patriarchal. Women were not even granted the right to vote until the 1950s.
Sheinbaum, the Jewish -- that’s a first for a president here too -- former mayor of Mexico City with a Ph.D. in engineering, won’t have long to bask in her win.
Mexico’s challenges are myriad, chief among them public security or the lack thereof. Six of 10 voters in this election cited safety as their top concern, according to government statistics.
More people have been murdered during the six-year term of the current administration than any other, including more than 230 people in election-related violence this election cycle, according to Mexican consulting firm Integralia.
Organized crime’s vice grip on the country has only increased, with human smuggling and drug trafficking at or above record levels.
Of course, it’s the country to the north that buys what organized crime is selling. How Sheinbaum navigates the U.S. relationship is expected to be the focal point of her foreign policy.
On one hand, Sheinbaum is a progressive, internationally oriented person. She studied in the U.S., has family there, speaks English proficiently and was part of a Nobel prize-winning team nearly two decades ago for a report on climate change.
She has been a relatively pragmatic leader, one with whom many believe the US could work with effectively.
On the other, she is the protégé of the current president, Ándres Manuel López Obrador, an avowed populist whose prickly relationships with both the Trump and Biden administrations have been defining features of his term.
Does she follow in his footsteps and use the U.S. and its hegemonic history as political foil or does she chart a different, more cooperative path? It’s an open question for now.
Sheinbaum will take office on Oct. 1, a little less than four months before the next U.S. president is sworn in.
