Mexico's first Jewish president: Who is Claudia Sheinbaum

Claudia Sheinbaum was elected as Mexico's next president on Monday, the first female or Jewish president Mexico has ever had.

Sheinbaum is not religiously observant, however she does identify with Judaism in a cultural capacity.

“I grew up without religion. That’s how my parents raised me,” Sheinbaum, 61, said in 2018 at a gathering hosted by a Jewish organization in Mexico City, NBC News reported. “But obviously the culture, that’s in your blood.”

Sheinbaum’s maternal grandparents immigrated from Bulgaria to Mexico before the Holocaust, while her paternal grandparents had fled from Lithuania in the 1920s due to pogroms. Sheinbaum's parents were born in Mexico. 

Prior to her election as president she was the Mayor of Mexico City. Before entering politics, Sheinbaum was a physicist and climate scientist. Her father was a chemical engineer, and her mother was a cell biologist, according to NBC.

Sheinbaum is affiliated with the left-wing party, Morena, the same party which outgoing President Andres Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) belongs to. The party itself is described as an anti-neoliberal, populist party.

Sheinbaum has said she believes the government has a responsibility to address economic inequality and provide a social safety net, similar to AMLO, who was known for his welfare program. 

Achievements as mayor of Mexico City

As mayor of Mexico City, the president-elect cut the homicide rate by half by boosting security spending on an expanded police force with higher salaries.

She has pledged to replicate the strategy across Mexico in order to combat the widespread influence of cartels, according to Reuters.

Impact on Mexico's Jewish community

Mexico City is home to a large Jewish population, numbering approximately 50,000 people, NBC noted. As the community is largely conservative, however most did not vote for her. 

In a conversation the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Mexico City resident, who wished to only go by his first name, Federico, he said his main concern with her presidency is that if she commits a mistake, society will see her Jewish identity as a factor.

He added that people will think "If I can critique the president for being Jewish, it's also politically correct to be antisemitic at least in a subtle way, in public."

Most Jewish Mexicans did not vote for her, mostly because “she’s representing a political party that’s trying to build an authoritarian regime in Mexico with no balance of powers,” Federico added. 

Another Jewish resident of Mexico City who also wished to only be identified by his first name, Shlomo, told the Post that since Morena won the majority in congress, all the power now goes to her and her party.

He claimed that this will allow them to change laws without any opposition and compared the situation to what happened “in other Latin American countries like Venezuela,” in terms of "balance of power in only one big party." He added though that still "Mexico is far from being like Venezuela." 

Shlomo also shared that “a lot of people in Mexico and in the [Jewish] community think she will be a puppet of the actual president AMLO.”

Regardless, Shlomo said that he did not feel that her presidency will at all impact the Jewish community in Mexico. 

Both Federico and Shlomo added that she is not part of the Jewish community in Mexico despite being Jewish on both sides.