Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum vows ‘it’s time for women’

She began her first speech as president by thanking her political mentor and predecessor in the top 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 said to applause from the governing party’s lawmakers. “Women have arrived to shape the destiny of our beautiful nation.”

As she set out her agenda as president, it was again clear that López Obrador’s vision for Mexico had provided a broad blueprint.

She urged people to assess – using cold hard facts – what had been achieved over the past six years.

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

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

Her conclusion was simple: through “Mexican humanism” – the name she gives to the political project she has shared with her mentor, López Obrador, for the best part of two decades.

Naturally, her detractors will contest the rosy image of the Mexican economy she painted.

But Sheinbaum promised to “consolidate the health service into the highest quality free public healthcare system” and to create a further 300,000 places in higher education in new public high schools and universities.

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