Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first female president, has promised to continue her predecessor’s course of anti-neoliberal economic development.
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, now president-elect of Mexico, in 2020 while mayor of Mexico City. (Secretaría de Cultura Ciudad de México, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)
By Zoe Alexandra
Peoples Dispatch
Claudia Sheinbaum, who won the presidential election in Mexico on Sunday, ran with the “Let’s Continue Making History” Coalition composed of the Movement for National Regeneration (MORENA), the Labor Party (PT), and the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico.
The scientist, [and former mayor of Mexico City], Nobel Peace Prize winner, longtime activist and now the country’s first female president, defeated another female, Xóchitl Gálvez Ruíz, who was the candidate of the right-wing Force and Heart for Mexico Coalition of PRI-PAN-PRD. Jorge Álvarez Máynez came in third with around 10 percent of the total vote share.
Sheinbaum addressed thousands of supporters in the Zocalo in the center of Mexico City to celebrate her victory.
“I feel excited and thankful, for the recognition that you have given to the Fourth Transformation of public life of Mexico. Here as we have always done, I promise to not let you down. Today, the people of Mexico have made possible the continuity and advance of the Fourth Transformation, and also for the first time in 200 years, we women have arrived at the presidency of the republic!”
Earlier in a press conference, Sheinbaum also announced that MORENA [the ruling party since 2018] had achieved a majority in the Chamber of Deputies and was set to also win a majority in the Senate.
Vows to Continue Making History
Celebration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s July 1, 2018, election victory, Zocalo, Mexico City. (Salvador alc, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Sheinbaum has vowed to continue the project of the “Fourth Transformation” inaugurated by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, aka AMLO, led by the principle of “Mexican Humanism.”
The anti-neoliberal socio economic project has raised the standard of living for the majorities in the country through the increase in minimum wage, expanded social and economic programs to increase access to key rights of education, housing, healthcare and more.
AMLO will finish his term in office with an 80 percent approval rating, according to Gallup polls.
Sheinbaum, [who takes office on Oct. 1] spoke about the importance of the Fourth Transformation project in an interview with Peoples Dispatch and BreakThrough News in April 2023. At the time she said:
“… states have to give the rights to the people. What do we think is a right? Education, health, a home, pension for all the elders. We also believe in strategic areas of the economy such as energy. The state has to be part of this, especially electricity, oil and mainly and now lithium … . It’s important and it’s going to be very important in the future … . You cannot have private investment measured only by GDP or international investment. You have to measure investment, public and private, in wealth for the people. And that’s the big difference with neoliberalism that believed that everything was going to be solved by the market.”
Mexico’s northern neighbor, the United States, is its most important trading partner. During AMLO’s six-year term, he managed to maintain a mostly amicable relationship with both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.
Mexico’s AMLO with Biden in Mexico City in January 2023. (White House/Adam Schultz)
But nor did he shy away from holding his ground on key issues.
For example, as president, AMLO was one of the strongest voices on topics which directly contradict U.S. policy such as Washington’s blockade of Cuba, the imprisonment and persecution of WikiLeaks Publisher Julian Assange, and the subordination of the region to corporate and imperialist interests.
Mexican Pres Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in his speech on Friday honoring Mexican Independence Day, called for release of Julian Assange. Assange’s brother & father were invited guests to the ceremony along w/the families of Cesar Chavez, Nelson Mandela & Martin Luther King Jr. pic.twitter.com/58KQudNu1k
— Daniel Medina (@dmedin11) September 18, 2022
AMLO was also a driving figure in reinvigorating spaces of regional integration and served as pro-tempore president of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). How Sheinbaum relates to her northern neighbor and the rest of the region will be a defining feature of her presidency.
Zoe Alexandra is a correspondent for Peoples Dispatch.
This article is from Peoples Dispatch.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Ms. Alexandra is a lot more impressed with AMLO than his record deserves. He talked big about unifying Latin America against overreach and sanctions of the US on Cuba, Venezuela, etc., but accomplished nothing. And he didn’t even make an effort to take a stand on the Gaza genocide. Glad to see him go, and I hope the new president actually departs from his blindness to cartel growth and propensity to give asylum to convicted politicians of other Latin American countries. We don’t need safe havens for corruption.
Mexico signed on to the ICJ Genocide suit against Israel about two weeks ago. How can you unify LA, when over the years the U.S. has consistently put down one popular movement after another and sanctioned (or worse) any nation friendly toward our “enemies”?
Do you know that Mexico just recently signed onto the ICJ suit against Israel? Oh, and how could anyone “unite Latin America” with the U.S constantly blocking, sanctioning (or worse) any popular independence movement it labels as “our enemies”?
Who are the ‘we’ whose mouthpiece you have arbitrarily assigned yourself?
With the election of Claudia Sheinbaum as president-elect of Mexico, the country is already 6 years into a new era, so why is the BBC news belatedly attempting to infuse such a redundant question into the narrative: is this a new era for Mexico?
Not only is Dr. Sheinbaum the first female president of Mexico in its history, she is the first woman ever to be elected to this office on the North American continent.
And to boot, she is of the Jewish religious faith, in an overwhelmingly Catholic nation where the entire Jewish population does not make up even 0.0004% (60,000) of the entire population.
So much for the Israeli prime ministers absurd and fallacious claim that Israel is the sole embodiment of but one global community representing the interests of what he sees as one ‘Jewish people’.
In a country where 99.5% of the population is Christian…..they somehow elect a Jewish women as President….
The story is a bit sloppy. Sheinbaum is not, as People’s Dispatch claims, “now the country’s first female president.”
She’s president-elect and won’t take office — as the story omitted before Consortium News inserted it — until October 1.
Also, what is the point of reporting that “Jorge Álvarez Máynez came in third with around 10 percent
of the total vote share” without stating what other parties’ candidates got?
Just in case you’re in over your head, a reminder: In the American national election for president, the person who obtains the most votes (wink-wink) becomes the president-elect, from the beginning of November through January 20th.
Ms. Sheinbaum is in fact “now the country’s first female president.”
Unlike in the American system, a parliamentiary system takes into account, even minority’s results, such as 10%, when distributing seats in the congress..
“It’s now probably broadly accurate to say that all of Latin America, with the exception of Cuba, consists of crony capitalist nations with powerful oligarchies.”
-Vincent Bevins
The Jakarta Method p.241
“The United States won. Here in Indonesia, you got what you wanted, and around the world, you got what you wanted”
-Ibid p.233 quoting Winsaro
“The Cold War was a conflict between Socialism and capitalism, and capitalism won. Moreover, we all got the US-centered capitalism that Washington wanted to spread. Just look around you,” he said, gesturing to his city, and the entire Indonesian archipelago around him.
How did we win, I asked.
Winarso stopped fidgeting. “You killed us”
-Ibid p.233,234
Sadly there’s doom and gloom in the comments of this RT article. They see red in her gender and her “Jewish” surname.
h**ps://www.rt.com/news/598681-mexico-election-first-female-president/
Thoughts?
Watch your back Madam President – the West will come for you if you don’t do their bidding!!