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Mexico Elects First Female And Jewish President

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

MEXICO CITY (Worthy News) – In a historic move, Mexico elected its first female and Jewish president, with preliminary results showing Claudia Sheinbaum receiving the most votes.

Sheinbaum, a climate scientist, and Mexico City’s former mayor won the country’s largest election in history, which was overshadowed by the killings of dozens of candidates.

Besides choosing a new president, voters also elected members of the legislature, nine governors, and almost 20,000 local officials.

Just days before Sunday’s voting, a mayoral candidate was shot dead in Mexico’s southwestern state of Guerrero.

Alfredo Cabrera, who was running for mayor in the town of Coyuca de Benítez, was killed by a gunman at a campaign event, witnesses said.

Video footage showed him shaking hands with supporters before his closing rally in Guerrero state. Someone could be seen approaching him when, suddenly, some 15 shots reverberated throughout the area.

Guerrero state officials said that members of Mexico’s National Guard returned fire, killing the gunman at the scene.

DOZENS KILLED

The killing takes the number of assassinated candidates in the 2024 election season to 37, one more than during the 2021 midterm election when 36 candidates were killed, according to security consultancy Integralia.

Tackling violence in a nation where more than 15,000 murders were already reported this year will be a crucial task for Sheinbaum.

She rarely speaks publicly about her Jewish background and has governed as a secular leftist.

Analysts said the climate scientist rode the wave of popularity of her longtime political ally, outgoing leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and their Morena party.

Sheinbaum was set to defeat Xóchitl Gálvez of the opposition coalition in the country’s largest election in history.

Over 98 million voters were registered to cast a ballot, and more than 20,000 positions were set to be filled after the violent campaign cycle.

Besides security and organized crime challenges, energy and immigration will set the tone in the turbulent U.S.-Mexico bilateral relationship.

MARKETS CONCERNED

While her supporters celebrated her victory, financial markets didn’t share that optimism.

The Mexican peso dropped in value by more than 4 percent against the U.S. dollar, while the local stock market tumbled by more than 2 percent after Sheinbaum’s larger victory than expected.

Markets appeared spooked by Claudia Sheinbaum’s promise to continue the political course set by her populist predecessor despite discontent with persistent cartel violence, the perceived weakening of democratic institutions, and fears among investors that an already hostile environment might become much worse.

In trading hours after the election results were announced, the Mexican peso initially dropped 3.5 percent in value to about 17.62 to $1, and the Mexican stock exchange took a dive of over 5 percent, said Gabriela Siller, director of analysis at Nuevo Leon-based Banco Base.

Analysts said Sheinbaum’s victory and an apparent super-majority in Congress for her Morena party opened the possibility of constitutional changes, which could increase her power and cause capital to flee.

The strong peso — which gained steadily against the dollar on the back of increased remittances in the last year — was something outgoing President López Obrador counted as his achievement.

However, analysts have suggested that the Mexican currency has been overvalued for some time.

MOST VOTES

With most votes counted, Sheinbaum had about 60 percent of votes, about twice as many as her nearest competitor, Xóchitl Gálvez, who got around 28 percent.

The long-delayed initial vote counts also gave her a crushing margin of victory, higher even than her outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador won in 2018.

“Even though the majority of the people backed our project, our duty will always be to look out for each and every Mexican, without distinctions,” the president-elect said in her victory speech.

She earlier said she wanted to tackle violence by expanding the quasi-military National Guard created by López Obrador. She also wants to continue his strategy of targeting social ills that make so many young Mexicans easy targets for cartel recruitment.

“Let it be clear, it doesn’t mean an iron fist, wars or authoritarianism,” Sheinbaum stressed, referring to concerns about the status of democracy. She said of her approach to tackling criminal gangs: “We will promote a strategy of addressing the causes and continue moving toward zero impunity.”

Sheinbaum has praised López Obrador and blamed “neoliberal” economic policies for condemning millions to poverty.

She promised a strong welfare state and praised Mexico’s large state-owned oil company, Pemex, while also promising to emphasize clean energy.

MORENA PARTY

The Morena party that López Obrador founded, in which he remains far more personally popular than Sheinbaum, appeared to be on track to win the two-thirds majority needed to change the Constitution.

López Obrador has already outlined 20 constitutional changes he plans to submit, including eliminating independent oversight agencies and stricter limits on private investment.

That worries foreign investors. López Obrador has already cracked down on private and foreign investment in the energy sector and now wants to ban new industrial sites in any area of Mexico suffering water stress — essentially the whole, economically vibrant north of the country.

But other political provisions also worry and divide Mexicans.

The 61-year-old Sheinbaum appeared conscious of the need to heal divisions. But it was unclear how she might go about achieving reconciliation in the violence-ridden nation.