Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first female president: ‘I will not let you down’

Mexico celebrated a historic day on Tuesday, as Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo was officially sworn in as the first female president of Mexico. After 200 years and 65 male leaders, Sheinbaum has become the first woman to take office in the country.

Sheinbaum, 62, won the Mexican elections on June 2, and on Tuesday officially received the presidential sash. Tuesday’s ceremony was more than just an inauguration, it was a historic event, held seven decades after women in Mexico won the right to vote and to run for office. In her address, Sheinbaum focused on women’s rights, as the crowd cheered “presidenta” — the feminine form of the word president in Spanish.

Sheinbaum paid tribute to the anonymous women “who fought for their dreams and achieved them, and to those who did not achieve them, to those who had to keep quiet and shout alone, to the Indigenous women, the domestic workers who leave their villages to support us all, to the great-grandmothers who did not learn to read and write because that was not for girls, to the mothers who first gave us life and then everything else, the sisters, the aunts, the beautiful daughters. I am not alone, we are all here.”

She concluded: “I am a mother, grandmother, scientist and woman of faith, and as of today, by the will of the people, the constitutional president of the United Mexican States. I will not let you down.”

The ceremony was loaded with symbolism, with women dominating the stage. Ifigenia Martínez, 94, — one of the great icons of the Mexican left and a fierce advocate for women’s freedoms and rights — was in charge of placing the presidential sash on Sheinbaum.

The president’s speech was more political than institutional. She began by praising the work of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who she described as “the best president” in contemporary history and compared to General Lázaro Cárdenas, one of Mexico’s best-loved heroes.

Her next words were for Mexico’s Indigenous peoples, with the president reflecting on the greatness of the civilizations that existed “before the Spanish invaded.” She then reviewed her government’s program, from the price of gasoline to the minimum wage, a speech that varied little from her election campaign speeches and the addresses she has given since being elected.

Sheinbaum — who is from the leftist party Morena, founded by López Obrador — promised to continue her predecessor’s legacy, with some key changes. With advanced degrees in Physics and Environmental Engineering, the president was part of the intergovernmental panel against climate change that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Sheinbaum — the daughter of Europeans of Jewish origin, who were also scientists and academics — has a lot of experience behind her: she got her start in politics as a member of the student movement of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) that opposed the privatization of public education.

With the exception of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) administrations, she is the first person to come to power without ever having had any relationship with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which governed Mexico for decades. Quite the opposite, it was against the PRI, which now has nearly no power, that she fought her first political battles.

Representatives from 105 countries and 23 international organizations attended Sheinbaum’s inauguration. Noticeably absent, however, was Spain, which boycotted the ceremony after Sheinbaum refused to invite Spain’s King Felipe over his refusal to answer López Obrador’s 2019 letter requesting an apology for the Spanish conquest of the Americas.

The crowds of supporters were so large that it was difficult for the car carrying Sheinbaum and her husband, Jesús María Tarriba, to reach Congress for the ceremony. López Obrador, who left the seat of government, the National Palace, for good on Monday, encountered similar problems as he was driven to Congress to hand over the presidential sash. He received the warmest farewell of a president in decades. “Farewell brother, friend, companion,” said Sheinbaum, calling the former president the ”most beloved” politician.

In the Zócalo, the central square in Mexico City, there was singing, dancing and women playing mariachi music. Even today, it is not common for women to be mariachis. At the inauguration, Sheinbaum, like López Obrador before her, was welcomed by many of Mexico’s Indigenous people. But in this case, they were also many Indigenous women. In some remote mountain villages, the community punishes mayors for poor performances by parading them in women’s clothing through the streets. Mexico is a very sexist country, but on October 1, it inaugurated its first female president. And the celebrations lasted for hours.

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