Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in Tuesday as Mexico’s first female president, riding the enthusiasm over her predecessor’s social programs but also facing challenges that include stubbornly high levels of violence.
After a smiling Sheinbaum took the oath of office on the floor of Congress, legislators shouted “Presidenta! Presidenta!” using the feminine form of president in Spanish for the first time in over 200 years of Mexico’s history as an independent country.
The 62-year-old scientist-turned-politician receives a country with a number of immediate problems, also including a sluggish economy, unfinished building programs, rising debt and the hurricane-battered resort city of Acapulco.
In her speech, Sheinbaum said that with her arrival come all of the women who have struggled in anonymity to make their way in Mexico, including “those who dreamed of the possibility that one day no matter if we were born as women or men we would achieve our dreams and desires without our sex determining our destiny.”
She made a long list of promises to limit prices for gasoline and food, expand cash hand-out programs for women and children, support business investment, housing and passenger rail construction. But any mention of the drug cartels that control much of the country was brief and near the end of the list.
Sheinbaum offered little change from outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s ‘Hugs not Bullets’ strategy of addressing root causes and not confronting the cartels, apart from pledging more intelligence work and investigation. “There will be no return to the irresponsible drug war,” she said.