MEXICO CITY—Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in Tuesday as Mexico’s first female president.
After a smiling Sheinbaum took the oath of office on the floor of Congress, legislators shouted “Presidenta! Presidenta!” using the feminine form of president in Spanish for the first time in over 200 years of Mexico’s history as an independent country.
The 62-year-old scientist-turned-politician receives a country with a number of immediate problems, also including a sluggish economy, unfinished building programs, rising debt and the hurricane-battered resort city of Acapulco.
In her inauguration speech, Sheinbaum made a long list of promises to limit prices for gasoline and food, expand cash hand-out programs for women and children, support business investment, housing and passenger rail construction. But any mention of the drug cartels that control much of the country was brief and near the end of the list.
After the inauguration, Sheinbaum appeared at a mass rally in Mexico City’s colonial-era main plaza to participate in a ceremony involving an all-women committee representing Mexico’s approximately 70 Indigenous groups.
Sheinbaum was blessed and brushed with herbs and incense by Ernestina Ortiz, a “spiritual guide,” who told Sheinbaum “You are a voice for all of us who had no voice for a long time.” An Indigenous elder then handed Sheinbaum a wooden Indigenous “staff of authority,” like those carried by community leaders.
After the ceremony, Sheinbaum said she would push for a total ban on any public servant being reelected to office—a tall promise, given that her party has now passed a law making all judges stand for election. That would suggest Mexico may have a new crop of inexperienced judges every few years.
At her inauguration, Sheinbaum boosted the free trade agreement with the United States and Canada, saying “we know that economic cooperation strengthens the three nations.”