Claudia Sheinbaum waves at supporters in the Zocalo plaza in Mexico City, Mexico on June 3, 2024. Daniel Becerril/Reuters

Claudia Sheinbaum’s election as president of Mexico is a momentous turn in the history of the country. She is the first woman to be elected as head of state, something which had happened in Latin America but not in the Anglo-Saxon democracies of North America, which include the United States and Canada.

Mexico, which is largely a Roman Catholic country, with its traditional views about the role of women has broken a traditional barrier by electing a woman. And she is also the first person of Jewish parentage to be elected to the highest political office in a conservative Christian country.

And most importantly, she is an environmental scientist committed to the issues of climate change, who was a member of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2007. It is laudable that for the first time anywhere in the world when climate crisis looms large on the horizon, an environmental scientist takes over the reins of power in an emerging market economy like Mexico.

These are indeed heady facts. Both Sheinbaum and Mexicans are celebrating the moment without hesitation. But there are political challenges ahead, and Sheinbaum has an uphill task facing her. She has been a trusted confidante of outgoing Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the populist leftist leader who had led the country for a decade. Cynics feel that Sheinbaum has won this election on the basis of the widespread popularity of Obrador, and that she will have a tough time filling the shoes of the big man as it were.

She has been an unabashed admirer of Obrador, and she has declared that she will continue with the policies of her political mentor. Observers and critics say that it is easier said than done because Mexico is reeling under huge deficit, a result of Obrador’s welfare programmes. Another major challenge is that of the violence that has marred these elections, and it is said that 185,000 people had been killed in the decade of Obrador’s presidency. Critics of the outgoing populist president – Sheinbaum will be sworn in as president on October 1 – say that Obrador is responsible for the rise in violence by the drug cartels. So, Sheinbaum faces the unenviable task of curbing violence in the country.

Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Nicaragua have had women heads of state, and they performed creditably. But Mexico will draw greater scrutiny because Sheinbaum will have to deal with the big brother to the north, the United States. The US-Mexico relations have always been on tenterhooks, mainly because of illegal migration into the richer and prosperous northern neighbour, and secondly because of the drug cartels operating from Mexico. Both are serious problems.

Sheinbaum will have to deal with a hostile Washington, especially if the presumed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump were to win in the November election because Trump has been the most hostile leader in his approach towards Mexico.

Obrador has been emphasising the public sector, and despite her environmental credentials it seems Sheinbaum will not have much elbow room in handling the state-owned oil company, Pemex, which will continue to dominate the energy market in the country. Obrador has been strengthening the public sector in the economy and that has made the business class in Mexico quite uneasy.

It appears that Sheinbaum shares many of Obrador’s economic assumptions, and she is unlikely to swerve much from his economic policies. It appears that the Mexican economy cannot sustain any more of the welfarism that Obrador has spawned. But it is to be expected that Sheinbaum will walk out of Obrador’s shadow once she is in office, and she will use her rational scientific approach to dealing with the problems of Mexico, Now is the time for celebration, and she and Mexico are celebrating.