In October 1953, after a reform of the Political Constitution, Mexican women were allowed, for the first time, the right to vote, as well as to be elected to popular positions. However, it took 71 years and five presidential elections in which women ran for one to assume the reins of political power in Mexico.
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Now, from thisand October 1stand, when Claudia Sheinbaum takes office as the president of Mexico, the second economy in Latin America It will be led by a woman, which represents a watershed for a traditionally sexist country with high rates of femicides.
“It is good news that, in Mexico, a country of great political importance, the presidency is held by a woman. Sheinbaum’s election is important for the entire region. That said, it is key that her leadership also translates into greater rights for women. We hope that it complies with having an agenda based on a feminist vision of politics,” Carolina Jiménez, the president of the Washington Office for Latin American Affairs (Wola, for its acronym in English), explained to this newspaper.
It is good news that, in Mexico, a country of great political importance, the presidency is held by a woman. Sheinbaum’s election is important for the entire region. That said, it is key that her leadership also translates into greater rights for women. Let’s hope that it complies with having an agenda based on a feminist vision of politics.
Sheinbaum, a scientist who was mayor of Mexico City between 2018 and 2023, was elected this June 2, promoted by the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), the same one that brought the outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Amlo), to power. , who governed the country in the last six-year term.
Thus things,The new president receives from Amlo a country immersed in uncertainty due to his new judicial reform that threatens to disrupt the Mexican economy, with challenges still pending in terms of violence and crime, with the border with the United States that continues to be a focus of tension due to the migration crisis and with the diplomatic scuffle between Madrid and Mexico City.
Its first great challenge comes due to the approval of the judicial reform in Congress Mexican during the second week of September. Among the new changes is the election of judges by popular vote, the reduction of Supreme Court justices and there will be “faceless judges” for cases of drug trafficking and organized crime.
With this reform, starting in June 2025, citizens will have to go to the polls to elect a total of 1,688 positions in the Judicial Branchsomething that analysts consider could undermine the division of powers in Mexico.
“The recent judicial reform approved with very questionable procedures made it clear that it will be up to Sheinbaum to implement it, and it is a reform that we have warned about on repeated occasions. The popular election of thousands of judges will probably lead to the loss of judicial independence, to the fact that it is the government party that ends up nominating the majority of judges,” explains Jiménez, mentioning that the Mexican Justice system could fall into a spiral of politicization. with the new reform.
In addition to bringing political consequences, the reform would also shake the economy if the impartiality of Justice is not guaranteed. The reform bothered the United States, Mexico’s main partner through the USMCA, the North American free trade agreement, which also includes Canada.
“It threatens the relationship (…) that we have built, which depends on the trust of investors in the Mexican legal framework,” said US ambassador Ken Salazar.
In fact, chapters of T-MEC demand “fair and equitable treatment” to resolve judicial controversies, a condition that may be breached if the elected judges depend on political parties or interest groups. Furthermore, the reform that eliminates energy, telecommunications and competition regulators contravenes obligations of the T-MEC and could stop investments in infrastructure.
Eliminating “independent regulatory bodies (…) would increase uncertainty around rules and procedures, and make Mexico’s infrastructure sector less attractive” for investment, rating agency Moody’s noted. It is worth mentioning that this sector generated numerous jobs during the López Obrador government and, together with vast social programs and historic wage increases, allowed 8.9 million Mexicans to be lifted out of poverty.
“Once the constitutional reforms are approved, it will be the responsibility of the new government to prepare and promulgate the secondary laws necessary to implement said reforms. These laws must be formulated with care that no provision contradicts the legal instruments signed by the Mexican State, in particular, those related to human rights and free trade agreements,” Joel Peña, an academic at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Unam.
Crime and migration
In its security balance, the outgoing Amlo administration assured that the six-year term will conclude with a total of 12,319 members of organized crime arrestedalmost 2,600 drug trafficking laboratories destroyed and a 19 percent drop in the monthly number of homicides, positive figures for a country plagued by organized crime. Another achievement was to reduce the perception of insecurity by 15 points to 59.4 percent of the population.
However, despite the improvements in recent months, the López government will end with a cumulative record of 193,612 homicides from 2019 to 2024, an increase of 23.16 percent compared to the 157,198 committed from 2013 to 2018 under Enrique Peña Nieto. . This adds to the fact that organized crime continues to be perhaps one of the pending issues. In recent weeks, Culiacán, capital of the State of Sinaloa, has been the epicenter of bloody battles between cartels that broke out after the capture of Ismael ‘Mayo’ Zambada in the United States. In fact, in the last 15 days several people have died in shootings.
Regarding violence against women, Wola warns that the six-year period is ending with 20,861 women murdered in the country. Of those cases, about 5,000 were classified as femicides. “We are facing a country where women are murdered for the simple fact of being women. Although the Amlo government showed a reduction, the numbers are still unacceptably high,” Jiménez said. The other ‘hot potato’ will be migration, an issue that has always been part of the bilateral agenda between Mexico and the US and that could cause new friction, especially when in November it is decided who will occupy the White House between Donald Trump. and Kamala Harris.
According to Peña, although arrest numbers have been reduced in recent months – 40% according to official data – this may be a challenge for the president-elect. “The ideal would be for the relationship between Mexico and the United States to adopt a vision of strategic and effective cooperation to promote policies and programs of mutual benefit, although we know that this will depend, to a certain extent, on the person who is elected to assume ownership of the Executive Branch in the United States as of January 20, 2025,” said Peña.
And he added: “Likewise, Close attention will need to be paid to the issue of lawsuits filed by Mexico against gun manufacturers and distributors in the United States.as well as the issue of fentanyl, since both Harris and Trump will seek, with their respective nuances and levels of cooperation, to secure the border, which is where more than 80% of the seizures of this drug are recorded.
Beyond that, the doubts that have been raised about Sheinbaum have to do with how independent he can be from the omnipresent figure of Lopez Obrador. For several analysts, much of the success of his six-year term will depend on whether he manages to separate himself from his influence. Perhaps that will be your biggest challenge.
Fixing tension with Spain will be one of the first tasks
Regarding the possession of Claudia Sheinbaum as elected president of Mexico this October 1st, The Foreign Ministry refrained from inviting King Felipe VI, who has represented the Spanish monarchy in some 80 investitures as part of his diplomatic duties.
After the exclusion, the government of the president Pedro Sanchezdeclined to participate in the inauguration ceremony and sent a note of complaint to Mexico Citywhich further raised tensions and opened an unprecedented chapter between these two countries that share extensive cultural, political and commercial ties.
Sheinbaum justified the exclusion of Felipe VI from his investiture due to the lack of response to a letter, sent in 2019, in which his predecessor in the Mexican presidency, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, asked that the monarch apologize for the “abuses” of the conquest.
For his part, López Obrador supported the decision of the new president, and recalled that he himself put on “pause” the relations between both countries in February 2022 due to his differences with the “political elites” and the abuses that he denounces that they committed. Spanish companies in Mexico, particularly in the energy sector.
Although at the moment there does not seem to be a solution in sight to this tension, Joel Peña, an academic at the UNAM Faculty of Political Sciences, recognizes that this will be one of the first tasks that the new Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Economy of Sheinbaum.
“It is well known that, due to various situations, both in the distant and recent past, this European country has been a very important ally for Mexico, as well as an interlocutor to establish and strengthen quasi-interregional relations with the European Union,” he explained. Peña to this newspaper.
However, the outgoing Mexican Foreign Minister, Alicia Bárcena, on Friday, made the normalization of relations with Madrid subject to a “ceremony of reparations.”
“In Mexico, when an archaeological ruin was discovered, for example, Petén or Palenque, what the communities asked for was a ceremony of reparations because we were entering their territory, land and culture. That is what Mexico requested, a kind of redress meeting from 500 years ago,” Bárcena said at a press conference at the United Nations.
On the Spanish side, the issue has caused friction. The right-wing opposition (PP), although it has described the socialist government’s decision not to attend as “logical”, did criticize that diplomacy had not worked to avoid the crisis. On the other hand, the left will attend the ceremony with legislators who are active in Sumar, a partner of the socialist government, EH Bildu, Basque nationalists, and Podemos, a former partner of the Executive.
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