The Woman Inheriting AMLO’s Revolution

At the time, many observers argued that Sheinbaum, now 61, lacked the charisma to replace her political patron, the wildly popular President Andrés Manuel López Obrador; her apparent restraint contrasted with his gabby personality. López Obrador was elected in 2018 and describes his government as carrying out the “Fourth Transformation,” a period of progressive renewal on par with just a few other periods of significant change in Mexican history.

The Fourth Transformation seeks the “eradication of neoliberalism” in Mexico. López Obrador considers privatization and corruption to be outgrowths of deregulation in the 1980s and has called neoliberalism the “main cause of economic and social inequality [in Mexico].” The president cannot run for reelection, and Sheinbaum has become his unlikely heir apparent. Ahead of Mexico’s elections on June 2, Morena has labeled Sheinbaum the “defense coordinator of the Fourth Transformation.” She says that she will build its “second floor.”

Sheinbaum is now leading presidential polls with an overwhelming 57 percent of projected ballots. Although much attention has been paid to her gender in a country known for its machismo, Sheinbaum’s rise is singular for other reasons, including her professional background and data-driven approach to politics. Sheinbaum should expect equally unprecedented governing challenges: She will face enormous expectations while Mexican society is becoming more fragmented than ever.

Gerardo Fernández (center) and Sheinbaum (left) shout slogans of support for leftist presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador after leaving the home of right-wing candidate Felipe Calderón with boxes of evidence that, according to them, reveal Calderón provided his brother-in-law with government contracts in Mexico City on June 9, 2006. Alfredo Estrella/AFP via Getty Images

Sheinbaum’s own political awakening came in the mid-1980s, when she studied physics at the prestigious National Autonomous University of Mexico. She was part of a student movement to defend public education from reforms that would result in tuition fees and an increase in administrative costs, among other changes. The movement prevented the university from privatizing, in the activists’ words, and succeeded in establishing democratic mechanisms to discuss matters that affected the student body. The protests were among the first concerted anti-neoliberal movements in Mexico and created a training ground for politicians on the left.

Sheinbaum’s political discourse today traces back to her university activism. Like López Obrador, she condemns neoliberalism for transforming welfare “into a commodity.” On the campaign trail, Sheinbaum has declared that she wants to be remembered as the “president of public education.” She aims to ensure that more students finish high school by building schools, issuing financial aid, and improving teachers’ working conditions. (López Obrador’s government has been criticized for its shortcomings on education and health care.)

In the student movement, Sheinbaum met Carlos Ímaz, her first husband. Ímaz helped found the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which López Obrador presided over between 1996 and 1999, and he was elected mayor of Mexico City’s Tlalpan borough in 2003. After just a few months, Ímaz resigned from office and admitted wrongdoing amid a corruption scandal. Sheinbaum defended him, and they remained married until 2016. Meanwhile, her political career flourished: In 2015, she herself was elected mayor of Tlalpan, and became the first female head of government of Mexico City in 2018, the same year López Obrador won the presidency.

Leading López Obrador’s political and social movement is a natural continuation of Sheinbaum’s activism. Although the president has not succeeded in eliminating neoliberalism—to the disappointment of some, he has defunded government institutions and been accused of corruption and influence peddling—his government has undeniably prioritized poverty eradication in a way his predecessors did not.

Throughout his presidency, López Obrador has substantially increased Mexico’s minimum wage and invested in infrastructure projects in the poorest regions of the country. He has expanded social programs for people over 65 years old and people with disabilities, created new scholarships, and provided resources to farmers and fishermen. Today, cash transfers of some form reach 71 percent of Mexican households.

Mexico’s National Council for the Evaluation of Social Policy reports that 5 million Mexicans left poverty between 2018 and 2022, although the number of people experiencing extreme poverty increased by almost half a million. Even Sheinbaum’s main opponent for the presidency, Xóchitl Gálvez, who identifies with the center-right, has pledged to maintain López Obrador’s cash transfers.

On the campaign trail, Sheinbaum has sought to mimic some of López Obrador’s talking points, but her geeky affect chafes next to that of the boisterous president. Sheinbaum often falls back on her academic tendencies during political rallies, sometimes asking rhetorical questions that can sound schoolish. “What are the principles that gave birth to our movement? You are familiar with them,” she tells the crowd, which then bellows a part of López Obrador’s 2018 slogan: “First the poor!”

Sheinbaum explains the drop in crime rates in Mexico City during a press conference on Jan. 20, 2023. Alfredo Estrella/AFP via Getty Images

Although awkward at large events, Sheinbaum is visibly comfortable when explaining numbers. She often repeats that she is a “lover of data” in reference to how she makes public policy decisions. The term “data” has become oddly politicized in Mexico under López Obrador, who immortalized the saying “I have other data” to respond to criticisms and questions about his policies. Sheinbaum, on the other hand, is a scientist. Before becoming a full-time politician, she was a researcher at the Institute of Engineering of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where, after completing a doctorate in energy engineering, she dedicated herself to studying energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

In a country where leading politicians traditionally boast degrees in law or economics, Sheinbaum has made her scientific background one of her hallmarks. She says that she began her days as Mexico City’s mayor by reading spreadsheets on a laptop that she kept under the bed. Dulce Colín, the director of equality and attention to gender violence in the Mexico City government, described Sheinbaum as “technical without being bureaucratic.”

Sheinbaum speaks during the planting of an ahuehuete tree where La Palma used to be at Reforma Avenue on World Environment Day in Mexico City on June 5, 2022. Alfredo Estrella/AFP via Getty Images

Sheinbaum’s climate-focused background hints at one policy area where she may diverge from López Obrador. The president has shunned environmental issues, investing in refineries and the so-called Mayan Train that traverses the jungle of the Yucatán Peninsula while stigmatizing environmental activists. Seeking energy sovereignty, López Obrador’s administration has—to much criticism—invested heavily in state-owned oil company Pemex and state-owned electricity company CFE.

Although Sheinbaum wants to maintain Mexico’s energy sovereignty, she has announced a renewables strategy. She has proposed that Pemex also participate in lithium extraction, produce thermal and electric energy from renewable energy sources, and engage in petrochemical and fertilizer production. Following moves in Mexico City, Sheinbaum has promised to promote electric vehicles for public and private transportation as well as the use of solar panels. She also has an ambitious plan for the management of Mexico’s water resources in the face of drought. Still, some activists have criticized Sheinbaum’s environmental proposals as potentially harmful, including her plans for industrial agriculture in heavily deforested areas.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador raises the hand of Sheinbaum after her swearing-in ceremony as the head of government in Mexico City on Dec. 5, 2018. Alfredo Estrella/AFP via Getty Images

Analysts place Sheinbaum within a faction of Morena known as the “pure ones”: those who have an ideological affinity with López Obrador’s anti-neoliberal project and are social leaders, old communist militants, or intellectuals. But others have found political shelter within Morena, too—including local leaders, athletes, TV commentators, and former opponents of the party. Many are pragmatists who do not subscribe to the movement’s leftist ideology. López Obrador is the glue holding them all together.

After Sheinbaum was tapped as Morena’s presidential candidate last year, cracks in the party’s diverse coalition began to appear. Some members—including Marcelo Ebrard, López Obrador’s former foreign affairs secretary, who was also shortlisted for the presidential nomination—questioned the party’s opaque primary process. A recent report from Mexican news site Nexos confirmed that Morena is facing internal turbulence, an omen of what may be to come if Sheinbaum wins because “she will not be able to exercise the personal and disciplining leadership of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.” Sheinbaum has called for unity.

Sheinbaum will also have to navigate Mexico’s polarized political landscape. López Obrador has played a part in dividing the country, lashing out at those who criticize his actions. Some government critics have claimed that democracy is at stake in the June 2 elections. By doing so, they have fed unfounded accusations against Sheinbaum, ranging from claims that she will impose communism in Mexico to allegations that she is linked to drug cartels. This discourse is closely linked to the expansion of the far right across Latin America.

Mexico’s largest opposition parties have formed a coalition to unseat Morena. The group is so ideologically checkered that it would have long been unfathomable. It includes the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century; the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution; and the center-right National Action Party. Gálvez, the opposition’s presidential candidate, hails from the last party. Like Sheinbaum, she is an engineer by training; she now describes herself as a businesswoman.

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That the two leading contenders for Mexico’s presidency are women who define themselves as feminists is a product of widespread feminist mobilization in the country. Sheinbaum describes her convictions as “social feminism” that takes Mexico’s marginalized women into account; the feminist she quotes most frequently is Angela Davis. Feminism in Mexico has grown in response to gender violence—approximately 10 femicides occur per day in the country—as well as broader inequality, including in politics. A 2019 constitutional reform mandates “parity in everything,” which translates into gender quotas for all popularly elected offices.

However, the effects of parity have been mixed. Although many women have assumed power across all levels of government, gender-based political violence has increased, especially at the local level. Women politicians say they face inequalities within their parties, including limited access to financial resources. They are judged differently by the court of public opinion, too. Even before Sheinbaum was named Morena’s presidential candidate, some commentators began to spread a narrative that she would be nothing more than López Obrador’s “puppet.”

On the campaign trail, the press has tended to portray Sheinbaum and Gálvez as facing off in a war of gender stereotypes. Sheinbaum loses every time. She is serious, while Gálvez is nice. Commentators have described her as the insecure “nerd who tries too hard” versus the wild personality who usually gets her way, or the one disciplined to her party’s discourse versus the one who brings “fresh” air to the conversation. One comparison is particularly tricky: Sheinbaum is of Jewish descent, while Gálvez is of Indigenous descent. Although Sheinbaum’s Eastern European Jewish heritage has attracted the attention of the international press, she has said that she is religiously nonobservant.

Among Sheinbaum’s critics, there is an effort underway to prove that she lacks nurturing traits traditionally associated with women. Gálvez calls her opponent “cold and heartless,” alleging that Sheinbaum was not moved by the victims of a 2017 earthquake when she was mayor of Tlalpan or by a subway accident as mayor of Mexico City. After the first presidential debate in April, where Sheinbaum brushed off her opponents’ attacks, political talk shows depicted her as an “automaton.” She has accused rival parties of speaking about her differently than if she were a man.

In Mexico City, however, Sheinbaum’s government handled gender-related issues differently than the federal government. While López Obrador defunded day care centers—proposing to send money directly to mothers to pay for child care instead—Mexico City created more. Sheinbaum implemented a neutral uniform in the capital’s public schools, a matter López Obrador refused to comment on. Most notably, lethal violence against women in the capital decreased by 32 percent under Sheinbaum, according to feminist organization Intersecta. (The group calculated these numbers using public records; counts can be hard to confirm.)

The drop in femicides came in response to actions Sheinbaum took in the capital that she now promises to implement nationally. Colín, of the Mexico City government, said the reforms included staffing prosecutors’ offices with more female lawyers trained to work with a gendered perspective. She said that she finds two other initiatives novel: a six-month stipend equivalent to the minimum wage for women victims of domestic violence, and a program that allows these victims to stay in their homes while the men move out, regardless of who owns the property.

In addition to reducing gender-based violence in Mexico City, Sheinbaum expanded and invested in the capital’s transportation network, constructed universities and hospitals, established new educational and cultural centers in impoverished communities, and measurably improved the city’s security. High-impact crimes in Mexico City registered an overall decrease of more than 50 percent in the most recent available data, comparing January to May 2019 with the same period in 2021. Violence is one of Mexican voters’ main concerns, and Sheinbaum’s security strategy in Mexico City differs radically from López Obrador’s militarized approach.

Some observers see Sheinbaum’s probable victory as a path to reconciliation between the Mexican government and its opponents, specifically the small-business owners, intellectuals, and journalists who have felt alienated by López Obrador’s anti-elitist discourse and could feel better represented by Sheinbaum’s urban middle-class origins.

But it is Sheinbaum’s policy successes in Mexico City that bode well for her presidency. She will face a panorama of challenges, including weakened public finances with no prospect of tax reform; she will also be subject to harsh public scrutiny. To weather it all, Mexico’s first female president will need all her skills as a politician—and as a scientist.