Claudia Sheinbaum is sworn in as Mexico’s first female president

“López Obrador was an enormously charismatic president and that charisma often allowed him to cover up political mistakes that Claudia Sheinbaum would not be able to do,” said Carlos Pérez Ricart, a political analyst at the Mexican Center for Economic Research and Education. “So where López Obrador was charismatic, Claudia Sheinbaum will have to be effective.”

She will wield formidable power because López Obrador’s Morena party controls both houses of Congress. But the country remains deeply polarized between the outgoing president’s rabid fans and nearly a third of the population who deeply resent him.

“If we want a strong government, the checks and balances must also be strong,” said opposition Senator María Guadalupe Murguía, suggesting that an all-powerful military and an out-of-control ruling party could come back to haunt Mexico. “Remember,” she said, “no one wins everything, and no one loses forever.”

Sheinbaum does not inherit an easy situation.

Drug cartels have tightened their grip on much of Mexico, and her first trip as president will be to the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco, which was swamped last week by Hurricane John, killing at least 17 people along the coast around the resort. cost my life. Acapulco was devastated by Hurricane Otis in October 2023 and had not yet recovered from the blow when John struck.

Sheinbaum also faces intense violence in the cartel-dominated northern city of Culiacan, where faction fighting within the Sinaloa cartel broke out after drug lords Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López were captured in the United States after fleeing . there in a small plane on July 25.