MEXICO CITY — Every September, Mexico’s president seems earlier than a crowd of tens of hundreds 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 lady will lead the plenty in chants of “Lengthy reside Mexico!”
Monday’s ceremony in Mexico Metropolis’s foremost 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 effectively and we’ll get higher,” Sheinbaum stated this month throughout a speech to Congress, the place members of her political occasion, which controls each homes of the legislature, cheered her with shouts of “Lengthy reside Claudia!”
However maybe Sheinbaum’s greatest feat has been rising from the lengthy shadow solid by her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a hero among the many working class whose help was essential to her election.
As a candidate for López Obrador’s Morena occasion, Sheinbaum promised to proceed his populist venture, 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 received in a landslide, she confronted criticism that she can be his “puppet,” a discourse she dismissed as sexist.
Nonetheless, there’s no query that Sheinbaum has needed to stroll a tough line: defining her presidency on her personal phrases whereas additionally demonstrating loyalty to the political motion that obtained her there.
As López Obrador has retreated from public life, retiring to his ranch in southern Mexico, Sheinbaum has embraced lots of his signature insurance policies, together with a preferred welfare program that distributes money to youth, individuals with disabilities and senior residents.
She has continued López Obrador’s follow of each day morning information conferences, the place she usually pays lip service to the previous president and repeats his signature phrase: “For the great of all, the poor first.”
Political analyst Jorge Zepeda Patterson stated that Sheinbaum has efficiently outmaneuvered different Morena occasion 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 inheritor, she is the interpreter of all the motion, and that’s no small factor,” he stated.
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 in every of his most controversial undertakings: an overhaul of the judicial system that mandates judges be elected by fashionable vote. Critics argue the transfer was designed to pay attention energy within the palms of Morena and opens the door to corruption.
“That’s one thing dictators solely invent to regulate the judiciary,” stated Ernesto Zedillo, a former president and chief of the Institutional Revolutionary Celebration.
However whereas furthering López Obrador’s agenda, Sheinbaum has additionally quietly been carving her personal path.
Whereas he was combative and extremely ideological, railing for hours at his information conferences in opposition to neoliberalism and the “energy mafia” that he stated lengthy managed Mexico, Sheinbaum has embraced a extra diplomatic tone. She says Mexico’s future will depend on its entrepreneurs. In her information conferences, she chooses her phrases rigorously, a serene smile on her face.
Her most vital 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 packages. All through his six-year time period, homicides hovered close to document highs and legal teams expanded their management.
Sheinbaum, underneath 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 economic system was already on the rocks when the U.S. president started issuing tariff threats, spooking abroad traders who as soon as seen Mexico as a pipeline to maneuver merchandise into the U.S. tax-free. Consequently, progress has slowed.
Sheinbaum and Trump have but to satisfy, however have spoken a number of occasions in telephone conversations each leaders have described as profitable. “An increasing number of, we’re attending to know and perceive one another,” Trump stated in August.
For Sheinbaum one fixed strain is the specter of U.S. army motion in Mexico.
Trump not too long ago signed an order permitting the Protection Division to make use of pressure in opposition to Latin American drug cartels, which he has designated as international terrorist teams. The U.S. army not too long ago destroyed a Venezuelan boat it stated was trafficking medication, killing 11.
(Guillermo Arias / AFP by way of Getty Photographs)
Carlos Bravo Regidor, a Mexican political analyst, stated a lot of Sheinbaum’s first 12 months has been dominated by two males: Trump and López Obrador, who is usually recognized by his initials, AMLO.
“She’s trapped between the legacy of AMLO and the truth of Donald Trump,” he stated.
Sheinbaum’s posture on potential U.S. army motion embodies how she’s handled Trump. She’ll converse plainly — “There will likely be no invasion” and Mexico is “not a colony of anybody” — however resists participating in tit-for-tat remarks to stoke Trump’s ire.
Greater than as soon as, when requested to reply to Trump’s newest hyperbolic remark, she’s replied: “President Trump has his personal means of speaking.”
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 can even be a robust present of feminism.
Sheinbaum has usually repeated the mantra she first spoke the evening she received workplace: “I didn’t arrive alone, I arrived with all Mexican girls.”
For a lot of Mexicans throughout occasion traces, her presidency has been transformative.
Mexico Metropolis resident Esther Ramos, 40, stated 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} girl is able to reaching no matter they need,” she stated.
