Jewish Heritage Claudia Sheinbaum Is Set To Be The Next President of Mexico

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Tues. June 4, 2024: A Mexican woman with Jewish heritage is set to be the next President of Mexico. Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo won the presidential election in Mexico on June 2, making her the first female president of the country of 127.5 million people and the first with Jewish heritage.

The scientist, public servant, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and longtime activist ran with the “Let’s Continue Making History” Coalition composed of the Movement for National Regeneration (MORENA), the Labor Party (PT), and the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico.

With between 58.3 percent and 60.7 percent of votes (the highest percentage in the history of Mexican democracy), Sheinbaum defeated Xóchitl Gálvez Ruíz who was the candidate of the right-wing Force and Heart for Mexico coalition of PRI-PAN-PRD.

Sheinbaum has vowed to continue the project of the “Fourth Transformation” inaugurated by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), led by the principle of “Mexican Humanism.” The anti-neoliberal project has had success in raising the standard of living for the majority in the country through an increase in the minimum wage, and an expansion of social and economic programs to increase access to key rights of education, housing, and health care. AMLO will finish his term in office with an 80 percent approval rating, according to Gallup polls.

Sheinbaum spoke about the 4T project in an interview with Peoples Dispatch and BreakThrough News in April 2023, “You have to measure investment, public and private, in wealth for the people. And that’s the big difference with neoliberalism that believed that everything was going to be solved by the market.” Though Sheinbaum isn’t religious and describes her Jewish heritage in cultural terms, her election is a “benchmark” for Jews in Latin America, a scholar notes.