A month ago in Chiapas, a Mexican state caught in a bloody battle between criminal groups, a car carrying the frontrunner to be the country’s next president was stopped by a group of masked men.
The men filmed Claudia Sheinbaum through the window as they begged her to do something about the violence in the region. It was a tense, off-script moment in a carefully planned campaign: the men claimed to be locals, but could have been anyone. Yet Sheinbaum kept her cool.
After hundreds of events and three debates where rival candidates tried to get a rise out of her, Sheinbaum has emerged almost without a slip-up, and all but sure to become Mexico’s president on 2 June.
Her election would be a landmark, making her Mexico’s first female president, and its first to come from a Jewish background.
Yet Sheinbaum remains an enigma to many Mexican voters, who wonder how her presidency would differ from that of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the charismatic leader of Sheinbaum’s party, Morena, and her great political benefactor.
Oraculus, a poll of polls, puts Sheinbaum at 55% voting intention, well ahead of her main opposition challenger, Xóchitl Gálvez, who trails at 33%.
Throughout the campaign, Sheinbaum, 61, has portrayed herself as a continuity candidate, capitalising on López Obrador’s high approval rating, which is consistently around 65%.
López Obrador, best known as Amlo, forged a bond with many voters who were disenchanted with democracy, but is constitutionally unable to run again.
Sheinbaum has promised to maintain his social programs and finish his flagship infrastructure projects, such as the Mayan Train – despite criticism for their questionable economic logic and great environmental cost – and has defended the greatly expanded role of the military, which is now involved in domestic security, building infrastructure and customs management.
“She is so disciplined that not one of her speeches strays far from [those of López Obrador],” said Guadalupe Correa, a political scientist.
Yet as her experience in Chiapas showed, she would also inherit a grievous security panorama. Amlo’s less confrontational security strategy has allowed criminal groups to deepen their territorial control, and some regions are terrorised by violent power struggles between rival factions.
Mexico has seen more than 30,000 murders each of the last six years, and its homicide rate is among the highest in Latin America. Meanwhile, more than 100,000 people remain missing.
The campaign ahead of the 2 June election – where more than 20,000 posts other than the presidency are in play – has been exceptionally deadly: more than two dozen candidates have been killed and hundreds more forced to drop out.
Yet Sheinbaum has avoided any criticism of Amlo’s “hugs not bullets” strategy. Loyalty has shaped her political career, all of which has been by his side.
“I pledge to give my soul, my life and the best of myself for the wellbeing of the people of Mexico and the dignity of the republic,” said Sheinbaum, during the speech that closed her campaign on Wednesday. “I pledge to uphold the legacy of president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.”
Sheinbaum started out as a climate scientist – though even then she was involved in Mexico City’s student politics. She first met Amlo when he visited her house to meet her ex-husband, Carlos Imaz, a leftist student leader.
“From the moment I met her she was involved in student politics,” said Manuel Martínez, Sheinbaum’s doctoral supervisor. “Her academic career was very good. But at the same time, she carried this political vein within her.”
Starting in 2000, she mixed research with roles under Amlo, first as environment secretary of his Mexico City government, then as spokesperson for his first presidential campaign in 2006. Amlo alleged fraud after losing that vote, setting up a protest camp in Mexico City and naming his own “parallel government”.
“After that election, when López Obrador set up his ‘legitimate cabinet’, Claudia was one of his ministers,” said Martínez. “And at the same time she was coming here to Temixco to give classes. That is a level of commitment I see as important.”
It was only in 2015 that Sheinbaum got her first experience of governance, as mayor of Tlalpan, a borough in Mexico City, for the newly founded Morena party.
Three years later, she became head of government for Mexico City – one of the world’s biggest cities, and one of the biggest political platforms in the country.
During the pandemic, Sheinbaum’s scientific background was in evidence. While Amlo refused to wear a face mask, Sheinbaum offered free, widespread testing, required face masks on public transport and bought ventilators to convert beds into intensive care units.
The outcome was still grim, as it was across Mexico. But without such measures, it would have been worse.
Sheinbaum’s chief claim to success in Mexico City was her security strategy, which put money into police training and investigation and appeared to cut homicides by half.
Though the official data have been questioned, few doubt that security improved.
“Sheinbaum represents the more professional and credentialed wing of Morena,” said Humberto Beck, a historian. “She mixes a social sensibility with administrative and technical knowledge – that’s what her career could represent.”
But there were also blemishes on Sheinbaum’s record in Mexico City.
Her credibility was hit in 2021 when Line 12 of the city’s metro system collapsed, killing 26 people. Independent investigators found flaws in the construction and that auditors had warned for over a decade that it was unsafe.
Sheinbaum had a tense relationship with activists throughout her time in Mexico City, alienating parts of Mexico’s influential feminist movement with police repression of their protests.
“I see myself as a feminist,” said Sheinbaum after one such episode. “What we don’t agree with is violence. We cannot accept violence of any kind.”
“I think she lacked a certain amount of sensitivity and closeness with women in general,” said Blanca Heredia, a political analyst. “The feminist movements in Mexico are a source of immense social energy. And I don’t think [Sheinbaum] made the most of that.”
These veins of discontent fed through into the local elections in 2021, when the boroughs of Mexico City – the preserve of the left since the last 1990s – split almost equally between Morena and the opposition.
Such a political defeat might have dented Sheinbaum’s prospects to be Morena’s presidential candidate for 2024 were it not for Amlo’s support.
With his support and the platform of Mexico City, “Sheinbaum had everything in her favour”, said Correa.
For that reason, critics question whether Sheinbaum will truly be independent of Amlo.
“It would bother me if I weren’t sure of myself,” said Sheinbaum, responding to such criticisms in an interview with El País. “It is partly the result of a macho culture and partly the usual criticism of the opposition.”
“It will be me who governs,” she emphasised.
Aside from continuity, Sheinbaum’s proposals include investing in clean energy, taking her security strategy from Mexico City nationwide, and improving Mexico’s foundering education system.
But her close adherence to Amlo in the past has put her in awkward positions, making her the climate scientist who backs Mexico’s state oil company to the hilt, and the former student activist who now embraces the military – the same institution that massacred students in 1968.
“Really, her political career is inseparable from the direct support of López Obrador,” said Beck. “But that could change once she gets to power. It wouldn’t be the first time a figure who has grown in the shadow of another breaks with them and cuts their own path.”
“If we look at what she did in Mexico City, I think she picked her battles,” said Heredia. “She won’t break with López Obrador openly on any issue, but rather will progressively mark her own path in matters she considers priorities.”
How Amlo would react is an open question. Despite his insistence that he will retire to his ranch in the rural south on leaving power, few believe he really wants – or will be allowed – to leave politics.
“He’s the most important figure in Mexican politics of this century so far,” said Beck. “It’s inevitable that he intervenes.”
