The elected president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, presented this Thursday a part of what will be her Government team, which will take office as of October 1. These are men and women who will continue the project initiated by Andrés Manuel López Obrador for this six-year term that is now ending and that was promised as a historic transformation of the country. But the own stamp has not been lacking. Sheinbaum has created a new Secretariat [ministerio] of Science, Technology, Humanities and Innovation, a notable gesture for a group with which the current president had not maintained the best of relations. In addition, he has placed Alicia Bárcena in the Environment and Natural Resources portfolio, who will leave the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that she now represents. Both women have an extensive academic and senior administrative management resume. In a short time, what is missing from the Cabinet will be presented, crucial portfolios such as Security, National Defense and the Navy, but also Education and Health.
The continuity with the policies of this six-year term promised in the electoral campaign is reflected, for now, in two names, Alicia Bárcena and Marcelo Ebrard, both of whom have been foreign ministers with López Obrador. Ebrard abandoned that position to seek the presidential candidacy for his party, an internal contest won by Claudia Sheinbaum and which strained relations between them for a time. He will now be Secretary of the Economy, a key department for development with Mexico’s main trading partner, the United States, from where some of the hopes for economic prosperity for the coming years come. Diplomatic in nature, Ebrard must deal with the Free Trade Agreement that has been renewed with the United States and Canada.
Also coming from the current Administration is Rogelio Ramírez de la O, who will continue to hold the Ministry of Finance, a position that has been known for days, when Sheinbaum communicated it in one of the attempts to reassure the markets and recover the price of the currency. , which was devalued after the elections. In addition to this, Julio Berdegué will be in charge of Agriculture.
The creation of a Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation, which elevates the former Mexican Science Council, is the most significant gesture of the president-elect. She herself is a scientist, with a degree in Physics and a doctor in Environmental Engineering. This ministry is a declaration of intentions about its priorities and comes to heal open wounds with the scientific sector during López Obrador’s mandate. Likewise, placing a woman like Bárcena, with an environmentalist background and political experience, in the Environment portfolio, promises solidity to one of the issues that has caused the most friction in the current six-year term. López Obrador has greatly criticized the “pseudo-environmentalists” who opposed his projects.
The half-cabinet presented so far is made up of men and women attached to the president-elect, who have drawn up the electoral program with her and who have political experience. This is the case of Juan Ramón de la Fuente, who will occupy the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A surgeon, he is well known to Mexicans, since he was rector of the great public university, UNAM. He has served as Mexico’s representative to the UN and has “up to 20 Honoris Causa doctorates,” praised Sheinbaum. With a moderate and negotiating character, he is the man who is commanding the transfer of powers between the current Administration and the next.
Another woman, faithful to the Obradorista project and with a feminist profile, is Ernestina Godoy, who will now be the Legal Counsel, a position of maximum trust with Sheinbaum. Both have worked together in the capital when the elected president was the mayor and Godoy was the prosecutor of Mexico City.
The cabinet, which is being presented in doses, needs to be completed with key portfolios, such as the Secretariat of Security, the National Defense and the Navy, all of them concerned in the fight against the violence that the country is experiencing. For Security, the name of Omar García Harfuch, who already held that position alongside Sheinbaum in the capital’s Government, has been heard for some time. For the Secretariat of National Defense, Sedena, and the Navy, names of two military personnel are expected, something traditional in the Mexican Government. It is not mandatory, but traditionally the military has been in charge of these portfolios. The big change would be that Sheinbaum opted for the first time to put a civilian in charge of the Army.
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