Mexico Has Its First Presidenta

After two centuries of presidentes, Mexico has its first presidenta. There were cries of "Long live Claudia! Long live Mexico!" on Tuesday as Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in as the country's first female president, Le Monde reports. Foreign dignitaries including Jill Biden were present as the 62-year-old former mayor of Mexico City took the oath of office. Sheinbaum—who is also the overwhelmingly Catholic country's first president with a Jewish background—won a landslide victory in June. She succeeds her political mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the most recent of Mexico's 65 male presidents.

• Background. Sheinbaum is a climate scientist who was part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change team that shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore in 2007, NPR reports. She got her start in politics as López Obrador's environmental minister when he was mayor of Mexico City. She was elected mayor in 2018.

• Her speech. "For the first time, we women have arrived to lead the destinies of our beautiful nation," she said during her inauguration ceremony, per the New York Times. "And I say we arrived because I do not arrive alone. We all arrived."
• Policies. Sheinbaum, a leftist like her predecessor, promised Tuesday that she would limit gas and food prices, support housing and infrastructure projects, and expand payments to women and children, the AP reports. She also plans to promote renewable energy projects that López Obrador blocked, reports NPR.
• Challenges. The long list of challenges Sheinbaum faces includes surging drug cartel violence, which she mentioned only briefly in her speech. The country also has one of the world's highest rates of violence against women, which Sheinbaum plans to address by creating an anti-femicide prosecutor's office, NPR reports. Mexico also has a huge budget deficit. Sheinbaum could face further challenges if Donald Trump returns to office and makes good on his promise to massively increase tariffs. Relations with the US will likely be smoother if Kamala Harris is elected as her country's first female president.

(More Claudia Sheinbaum stories.)