Mexico City
Associated Press
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Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in as Mexico’s first female president on Tuesday. She shared her enthusiasm for her predecessor’s social programs, but also faced challenges that included stubbornly high levels of violence.

After a smiling Sheinbaum took the oath of office in Congress, lawmakers chanted, “Presidenta! President!” For the first time in Mexico’s more than 200-year history as an independent country, the feminine form of president was used in Spanish.

The 62-year-old scientist-turned-politician welcomes a country with a host of immediate problems, including a sluggish economy, unfinished construction programs, rising debts and the hurricane-ravaged resort town of Acapulco.

In her speech, Sheinbaum said that with her arrival came all the women who had struggled in anonymity to find their way in Mexico, including “those who dreamed of the possibility that one day, whether we were women or… Men were born would “achieve our dreams and desires without our gender determining our destiny.”

She made a long list of promises to cap gasoline and food prices, expand cash handouts for women and children, and support business investment as well as housing and passenger train construction. But any mention of the drug cartels that control much of the country was brief and near the bottom of the list.

Sheinbaum offered little change to outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” strategy of addressing root causes and not confronting the cartels, aside from a pledge to conduct more intelligence work and investigations. “There will be no return to the irresponsible war on drugs,” she said.

Sheinbaum won in June with nearly 60% of the vote, thanks largely to the enduring popularity of her political mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. She has promised to continue all of his measures, including those that strengthened the military’s power and weakened the country’s separation of powers.

López Obrador took office six years ago declaring: “For the good of all, first the poor” and promising a historic change from the neoliberal economic policies of his predecessors. Sheinbaum promised continuity from his popular social policies to controversial constitutional reforms to the judiciary and the National Guard that he pushed through in his final days in office.

Despite her promise of continuity, Sheinbaum is a very different personality: a cautious academic and ideological university leftist, in contrast to the outgoing president’s chummy, everyman appeal.

“López Obrador was an extremely charismatic president and that charisma often allowed him to cover up some political mistakes that Claudia Sheinbaum would not have that opportunity to do,” said Carlos Pérez Ricart, a political analyst at the Mexican Center for Economic Research and Teaching. “So where López Obrador was charismatic, Claudia Sheinbaum must be effective.”

She will wield tremendous power since López Obrador’s Morena Party controls both chambers of Congress. But the country remains deeply divided between the outgoing president’s fanatical fans and nearly a third of the population who deeply resent him.

“If we want a strong government, the separation of powers must also be strong,” said opposition Senator María Guadalupe Murguía, suggesting that an all-powerful army and an uncontrolled ruling party could come back to haunt Mexico. “Remember,” she said, “no one wins everything and no one loses forever.”

Sheinbaum doesn’t inherit an easy situation.

Drug cartels have tightened their grip on much of Mexico, and her first trip as president will be to the flood-hit resort of Acapulco on the Pacific coast.

Hurricane John, which struck last week as a Category 3 hurricane, then reemerged and struck again as a tropical storm, dumped four days of incredibly heavy rain that killed at least 17 people along the coast around Acapulco. Acapulco was devastated by Hurricane Otis in October 2023 and had not yet recovered from that blow when John struck.

Sheinbaum also has to contend with raging violence in the cartel-dominated northern city of Culiacán, where factional fighting broke out within the Sinaloa cartel after drug lords Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López were arrested in the United States after heading there A small plane flew in on July 25th.

López Obrador has long sought to avoid confrontation with Mexico’s drug cartels and has openly appealed to the gangs to maintain peace among themselves. But the limits of this strategy are becoming clear in Culiacán, the capital of the state of Sinaloa, where shootings continue to erupt on the city’s streets. Local authorities and even the army – which López Obrador has relied on for everything – have essentially admitted that the fighting will only end when cartel bosses decide to end it.

But that’s just the latest hotspot.

From Tijuana in the north to Chiapas in the south, drug-related violence is increasing, displacing thousands of people.

As Sheinbaum inherits a huge budget deficit, unfinished construction projects and a burgeoning bill for her party’s spending programs — all of which could cause financial markets to crash — perhaps her biggest concern is the possibility of a Donald Trump victory in November. 5 US presidential election.

Trump has already promised to impose 100 percent tariffs on vehicles made in Mexico. Although this would likely violate the current U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, there are other things Trump could do to make life difficult for Sheinbaum, including his promise of massive deportations.

Relations with Mexico’s northern neighbor were already strained after López Obrador said he would put relations with the US Embassy “on hold” following public criticism of planned judicial reform.

At her inauguration, Sheinbaum endorsed the free trade agreement with the United States and Canada, saying, “We know that economic cooperation strengthens the three nations.”

There are areas where Sheinbaum could try to take Mexico in a new direction. For example, she has a Ph.D. in energy engineering and has spoken about the need to address climate change.

But on Tuesday it said it would limit oil production to 1.8 million barrels a day, which would be more than what the troubled state-owned company currently produces. “We will promote energy efficiency and the transition to renewable energy sources,” she said.