From the second former Mayor of Mexico Metropolis Claudia Sheinbaum threw her hat within the ring for the presidency, the outcome was not often doubtful.
All through the lengthy and sometimes gruelling marketing campaign, as she criss-crossed the nation on industrial flights, her double-digit lead within the polls would have reassured her that she was on monitor to make historical past.
She has now achieved so, turning into Mexico’s first lady president by an enormous margin.
It’s a watershed second each for Mexico and her personally. She has already served as Mexico Metropolis’s first feminine mayor. Now, in a number of months, she’s going to occupy the Nationwide Palace, succeeding her mentor, outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, recognized by his initials, Amlo.
It doesn’t matter what else occurs in her political profession or the place her six years in energy lead her, she’s going to at all times be the girl who managed to interrupt the glass ceiling in Mexican politics. Given the nation’s deeply ingrained patriarchy and entrenched machismo, that’s no small feat.
But as soon as the marketing campaign leaflets are binned and the billboards bearing her face taken down, Mexicans may very well be forgiven for questioning precisely what sort of president she might be. In a marketing campaign so stuffed with phrases and speeches, there was treasured little coverage element and few specifics about governance.
On the stump, she usually repeated her primary premise: that she would construct the “second ground” of the “Fourth Transformation” – that’s, the political challenge of her ally, Mr López Obrador.
President López Obrador and his supporters name it the “Fourth Transformation” or “4T” as a result of they put his motion on a par with three transformative moments in Mexican historical past: Independence in 1810, the Reform Struggle (and separation of church and state) of 1858 and the Mexican Revolution in 1910.
Unsurprisingly, opponents say Mr López Obrador and, by extension, Ms Sheinbaum have delusions of grandeur selling such a title. However the 4T has turn into shorthand for a social agenda of common pensions, scholar grants and household stipends which have been massively in style throughout Mexico. The programme has lifted an estimated 5 million individuals from poverty all through the nation, though there may be nonetheless widespread deprivation in lots of areas.
“The essence of this transformation is to separate financial energy from political energy,” she informed the BBC in an interview within the japanese state of Veracruz. “Financial energy has its path, however authorities should be directed in direction of the poor in Mexico.”
President López Obrador laid the foundations and constructed the primary ground of the challenge, she mentioned. “Now, we’re going to construct on the adjustments he made to the nation.”
“It means extra rights, a welfare state, schooling, well being, entry to housing, and {that a} dwelling wage is a proper, not a privilege,” she added. “That’s the distinction between neoliberalism and our mannequin, which we name Mexican Humanism.”
In essence, she stood on a platform of continuity, pledging to double down on President López Obrador’s agenda. Her win exhibits that was a proposal supported by a sizeable majority of the Mexican citizens.
Nonetheless, the accusation from her detractors, specifically the second-placed candidate, Xóchitl Gálvez, is that the 4T is mere populism. Moreover, she urged Ms Sheinbaum wouldn’t be her personal lady and would reside beneath her mentor’s authoritarian shadow.
Vote for Sheinbaum, get Amlo, her critics urged.
However whereas some commentators in Mexico appear to anticipate her to slavishly observe her in style predecessor’s lead, it doesn’t essentially observe that she’s going to. There are various current examples in Latin America the place a supposed disciple has confounded expectations by placing out on their very own.
Ms Sheinbaum herself is dismissive of the accusation. “I’ll govern with the identical rules as Mr López Obrador, and that’s an excellent factor for Mexicans,” she informed the BBC.
An urbane technocrat from a well-heeled Jewish household, whose maternal grandparents fled the Holocaust, she cuts a really totally different determine to Amlo. Their rhetorical types are far aside. He hammers his factors residence with a flourish, enthralling his base, whereas she tends to be extra measured and clipped.
She speaks fluent English, having accomplished her doctoral thesis in California. Earlier than coming into politics, she was an achieved environmental scientist who served on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change (IPCC).
Accordingly, she is more likely to be extra comfy on the world stage than her predecessor, whose success partly stems from his direct reference to extraordinary individuals, notably in indigenous areas and his residence state of Tabasco.
For his half, Mr López Obrador insists he has no intention of meddling in her administration. He’s wanting ahead to retirement at his ranch within the southern state of Chiapas, he claims.
Nonetheless, nonetheless their relationship evolves as soon as he leaves workplace, most individuals wish to see a marked enchancment from Ms Sheinbaum in a single key enviornment: safety.
From the launch of her marketing campaign to her victory celebration – each of which have been held in Mexico Metropolis’s predominant plaza, the Zócalo – even her most ardent supporters say they wish to see extra achieved to deal with violent crime within the drug-violence ravaged nation.
Ms Sheinbaum says she hopes to cut back the homicide fee from 23.3 homicides for each 100,000 residents to about 19.4 per 100,000 by 2027. That might put Mexico on par with Brazil.
She factors to her time period as Mexico Metropolis mayor, throughout which statistics counsel she oversaw a 50% discount within the homicide fee within the capital.
Nevertheless, an educational who labored as a safety adviser to her marketing campaign mentioned her staff acknowledged that methods which labored for operating a metropolis would possibly merely not apply on the nationwide stage.
As if any reminder have been wanted of how excessive the stakes are, this was probably the most violent election in trendy Mexican historical past.
Within the remaining moments of his marketing campaign for mayor of the tiny neighborhood of Coyuca de Benítez, Alfredo Cabrera was shaking palms along with his supporters as he approached the stage to ship his closing speech. Instantly, a gunman appeared from behind him and shot the opposition candidate at the back of the pinnacle, killing him immediately.
As the gang fled in sheer panic, some 15 photographs rang out. The gunman was killed on the scene by the safety forces.
Cabrera was the final of dozens of candidates to be murdered within the marketing campaign. His dying was a bloody, terrifying finish to this most brutal of votes. As he was mendacity in a pool of blood in western Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum was on stage in Mexico Metropolis urging her supporters to “make historical past”.
That step is over. Now, to convey drug cartel violence beneath management, she should succeed the place the boys who went earlier than her have failed.
