With the Left in retreat across Europe and the Anglosphere, Mexicans have decided to move in a different direction. Elected with 60 per cent of the vote, leader of the leftist National Regeneration Movement (Morena), Claudia Sheinbaum swept to power on 2 June, and will become Mexico’s first ever woman president. Her success in the polls was undoubtably built on the enduring popularity of her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, who presided over a dramatic realignment of Mexican politics that sent traditional parties –particularly the once dominant and hideously corrupt PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) – into the political wilderness. But Sheinbaum, unlike AMLO (a disillusioned former member of the PRI), represents a new generation of leftist activists.
The president-elect has credentials that put her in good stead to guide Mexico into a brighter and greener future. A third generation immigrant from an Eastern European Jewish family, 61-year-old Sheinbaum began her career as a climate scientist, obtaining a doctorate in energy engineering and sitting on a Nobel Peace Prize-winning UN panel of climate researchers. After turning to politics in 2000, Sheinbaum went on to head the Mexico City government in 2018. Her record as mayor included reducing the capital’s murder rate, and winning the World Mayor Prize in 2021 for her management of the Covid-19 crisis in the city.
