Mexico, the newly elected President Sheinbaum will follow Lopez Obrador tracks.

Translated by Irene Cecchi

For the first time after more than two hundred years of democratic history, the president of Mexico will be a woman. During the presidential elections of June 2nd Claudia Sheinbaum, 62 years old from the Morena party, collected the 60% of votes, defeating the representative of the opposition party Fuerza y Corazón por México, Xochitl Galvez, that instead got stuck at 28%. The results were spread by the National Electoral Institute (INE) confirming the predictions.

Narcos plague

Sheinbaum’s government will have to face the rising violence by the drug trafficking cartels in the Country. In the last five years, there have been more than 30 thousand killings each year, with an average of 23 victims per 100 inhabitants (40 times the Italian rate).

During this year’s campaign more than 30 people politically involved were killed by narcos groups, a record in Mexican election history. Along with the victims, the political consulting firm Integralia reported more than 5 hundred people physically attacked based on political belief and more than 300 candidates threatened.

In the last few years criminal cartels have entered the political world, corrupting and threatening public officials and parties' candidates; this is how several clans reached government offices and accessed various corridors of power.

A woman in charge

Starting on October 1st, the 62 years old Claudia Sheinbaum will occupy the presidential house in the Palacio Nacional de Ciudad de México. Coming from a Jewish family from Lithuania and Bulgaria, Sheinbaum graduated at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico with a major in physics and then completed her PhD in energetic engineering publishing more than a hundred papers about the environment, sustainability and energy. Based on this knowledge she was picked by the ONU to be a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In 2000 she entered the world of politics as a city counselor for the environment in the capital, backed by his political mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also known as AMLO, who was running the country since 2018. In 2015 Sheinbaum became the head of the city government of Ciudad del Mexico being part of the newborn list AMLO Morena that gained 48% of votes in the elections.

Sheinbaum campaign reiterated that she will follow the political tracks of his predecessor. Regarding the security issue, she stated that she wants to keep pursuing the rhetoric of “Abrazos, no balazos” (hugs not bullets) aiming to decrease the repression and support the economic development in poorer areas in the Country. Sheinbaum declared: «Mexico already went through all that, war is not the answer, it only produces more violence» since she believes that in the long term the strategy of creating more possibilities for younger people will be more effective than starting a bloody war against the narcos.

In the field of social policy, she made sure she will go on with the support for the poorer classes. López Obrador, during his six years mandate, guaranteed financial aid for 25 million families, along with a higher minimum wage and subsidies for oil and electricity. One of Sheinbaum proposals is to let women retire at the age of 60/64.

The defeated rival

Xochitl Galvez, 61 years old, focused her campaign entirely on the theme of security, introducing herself as the real alternative for the seriously worrying situation in the Country. Under the AMLO administration the cartels of drug traffickers had an easy time: more than 180 thousand people were killed and an unknown number went missing.

During a public assembly she stated: “We are done with hugs for criminals. In Mexico criminals have their own political party and it's called Morena”. Weeks before the vote she raised the tone and started using typical Trumpian slogans like “I have ovaries like this” to show that her party would face the trafficking clan’s plague with courage and determination.

Falko Ernst, Mexican politics expert at the International Crisis Group, believes that Galvez's defeat may be related to the fact that the parties in her coalition «represent the old times full of corruption and bad security policies».

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