Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum vows ‘it is time for girls’

The passing of the presidential sash each six years is all the time an essential and symbolic event in Mexico.

However on Tuesday, when it was positioned over the shoulder of Claudia Sheinbaum – the primary girl to carry the best workplace within the nation – it was really an historic watershed second in additional than 200 years of contemporary Mexican historical past.

It has been an extended highway which led the primary feminine mayor of Mexico Metropolis to interrupt the glass ceiling in Mexican politics once more, this time at nationwide stage.

To very large cheers of “Presidenta!” ringing out each inside and outdoors the congressional chamber, she raised her fist in victory, savouring the second.

She started her first speech as president by thanking her political mentor and predecessor within the high job, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, calling him “the most important political leader and social warrior in Mexico’s modern history”.

He leaves office, she said, with “the greatest love of his people”.

On that point, she is not wrong. López Obrador is deeply beloved by his supporters and his popularity ratings in his final days in office were higher than those of any other president in Mexican history.

He undoubtedly leaves very big shoes for her to fill, but President Sheinbaum was quick to stress that she was not daunted.

“It is time for women,” she mentioned to applause from the governing celebration’s lawmakers. “Women have arrived to shape the destiny of our beautiful nation.”

As she set out her agenda as president, it was once more clear that López Obrador’s imaginative and prescient for Mexico had offered a broad blueprint.

She urged folks to evaluate – utilizing chilly onerous info – what had been achieved over the previous six years.

“How were 9.5 million Mexicans pulled from poverty?” she requested.

“How was unemployment reduced? Greater well-being created? The minimum wage repeatedly increased, but not inflation?”

Her conclusion was easy: by way of “Mexican humanism” – the title she offers to the political venture she has shared along with her mentor, López Obrador, for the most effective a part of twenty years.

Naturally, her detractors will contest the rosy picture of the Mexican economic system she painted.

However Sheinbaum promised to “consolidate the health service into the highest quality free public healthcare system” and to create an extra 300,000 locations in increased schooling in new public excessive faculties and universities.

“Health and education are rights of the Mexican people, not privileges nor merchandise,” she insisted.

There are clearly going to be major challenges ahead, too.

The drug war in Mexico continues to rage out of control, particularly in the states of Sinaloa and Chiapas.

The fallout from a bitter split in the Sinaloa Cartel has seen gun battles rage in the streets of the northern city of Culiacán and will not be easy for any leader to bring under control.

Sheinbaum’s critics say her experiences in improving the security of the capital city cannot simply be applied at the federal level – especially, they argue, if she follows López Obrador’s approach and opts against tackling the cartels head on.

Certainly the shadow of her predecessor will loom large.

The man she called “brother, friend, compañero” insists he can be stepping again from political life and having fun with his retirement at his ranch in Chiapas.

But some suspect he may be too addicted to politics to walk away from it entirely.

Sheinbaum’s rise to the presidency is the culmination of her time at his side, her stellar career from student activist to climate scientist to mayor of Mexico City now complete that she has been sworn in as the nation’s leader.

It has been an extraordinary journey in and of itself – one which she insists is only just beginning.

“I’m a mother, grandmother, scientist, a woman of faith, and now, president!” she said as she wrapped up her inaugural speech.

She promised to govern for all Mexicans and put her “knowledge, strength, my past and my very life” to work to defend Mexico.

There will pressure on her to succeed in her own right from the very start.

However, the many millions of Mexican men and women who voted for her will surely grant her a little time and the benefit of the doubt.

“I won’t let you down,” she advised them.