The shadow of Trump looms over the woman set to be Mexico’s next president

Campaigning for Mexico’s biggest election in history is underway and the country looks set to get its first female president – at a crucial moment in its history as the prospect of Trump 2.0 looms ever closer across the border.

Frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum, a former mayor of Mexico City, is the candidate of the ruling leftist National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party, and protégé of populist current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

“Many Mexicans see in Sheinbaum what they believe she is instead of what she is constantly telling them she really is,” Emiliano Polo, Latin America political analyst and associate at the Mexican Council of Foreign Relations, told i.

With less than a month until the election, Ms Sheinbaum has increased her lead. In an April poll for the newspaper El Economista, she had 51.4 per cent of support, with her closest rival Xochitl Galvez on 26.7 per cent.

Ms Sheinbaum, 61, is of Jewish descent, her grandparents having fled Bulgaria to escape the Holocaust. If elected, she will become Mexico’s first leader with Jewish heritage in a country that is home to nearly 100,000 Catholics.

A former climate scientist, Ms Sheinbaum embarked on her political career in 2000, spearheading sustainability initiatives and working as Mexico City’s environment secretary. She contributed to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and became the capital’s mayor in 2018, improving public transport, water problems, and enhancing quality of life.

Ms Sheinbaum with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at a rally in Mexico City’s main square in 2019 (Photo: Fernando Llano/ AP)

She is seen by millions of Mexicans as a symbol of hope for transformative change in a country suffering with corruption, drug trafficking and violence.

However, if Ms Sheinbaum wins Mexico’s June election, she may face her greatest challenge yet come November: another Trump presidency.

Donald Trump has for years deployed vicious rhetoric against Mexican immigrants, describing them as “rapists” who are “bringing crime” to the US, and pledging to build the infamous border wall to keep them out.

While Mr López Obrador maintained a seemingly warm relationship with Mr Trump, there are concerns over what a Trump win could mean for Mexico with Ms Sheinbaum in charge. She has said “there is going to be a good relationship” with the US no matter who wins in November. “We’re now the principal trading partner, and that requires us to have a good relationship,” she said.

Armando Vargas, senior consultant at Integralia Consultores and professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told i: “For Mexico, Trump’s return would mean dealing with an unpredictable and volatile president, who could be willing to condition Mexico’s actions on migration, security and trade, through the imposition of tariffs, massive deportation of migrants, partial border closures, threats to use force and constant rhetorical attacks.”

Mr López Obrador, Mexico’s president, and Donald Trump at a news conference at the White House in 2020 (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

There are fears that US-Mexico relations could get even worse during a second Trump term.

“A Trump presidency would likely signal a return to personalistic politics and the abandonment of bilateral institutions,” Diego Marroquín Bitar, of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, told i.

The hand-picked successor of Mr López Obrador, Ms Sheinbaum has vowed to adopt his priorities, reinforcing a “political transformation” of Mexico, including ending corruption, growing the economy, reducing violence, building infrastructure, and expanding social programmes to reduce poverty and inequality in a country facing a record number of homicides at the time of his landslide election win in 2018.

Over six years as president, Mr López Obrador invested in public works and cash assistance, but violence worsened, the pandemic was badly managed, and there was an economic recession. In 2023, Mexico registered 30,000 murders, making it one of the most violent periods in the country’s recent history.

It is unclear what Ms Sheinbaum will do to address this. She has a track record of reducing “high-impact” crime in Mexico City and took measures to combat violence against women. But as the leader of the Morena party, Ms Sheinbaum is expected to minimise the extent of the problem, just as her predecessor did.

The Mexican leftist presidential candidate for the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party (centre) with supporters during a campaign rally in Xochimilco on 29 April (Photo: Yuri Cortez / AFP)

“Thus far, Claudia Sheinbaum has largely echoed López Obrador’s stance on the issue [of violence], often citing alternative facts or slogans like ‘otros datos’ or ‘vamos bien’ [we’re doing okay],” Mr Bitar said. “They assert that Mexico’s war on drugs is over and that homicides are declining. However, it’s crucial to acknowledge that the current security policy approach has contributed to making Mexico one of the most violent countries globally.”

Last month, Ms Sheinbaum’s car was stopped by masked men was she travelled between campaign stops in the southern state of Chiapas. The men urged her to save their town from “disaster” wrought by drug cartels at the Guatemala border. Though she played down the incident, saying she did not believe the men were part of an organised crime group, it came after more than 170 attacks against politicians in the lead-up to the June elections.

In an effort to keep the peace amid rising drug cartel violence, Mr López Obrador created a national guard run by the army, to replace the disbanded federal police.

“There is no longer federal police,” Luis Gomez Romero, senior lecturer in law at Australia’s University of Wollongong and Mexican political adviser, told i. “It’s only the army, run by soldiers. When the army becomes this powerful, it is very difficult to constrain it.”

Mr Polo said one of Mexico’s main challenges was that rife insecurity could only be addressed with institutions.

“Building professional and efficient institutions requires time, political capital, a departure from partisan interests, and strategic thinking,” he said. “None of these traits exemplify Mexican politics at the moment. The placebo that the government is using right now is the militarisation of the country, which is not a strategy but a reaction that gives the impression of action and government power. Given that the military is not trained nor created to address public security, it is only a smokescreen to alleviate the political repercussions of irresponsibility and incompetency.”

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The only federal administration in modern Mexican history without a security strategy, the Morena party has “disregarded the problem [of growing insecurity and organised crime] but also partnered with organised crime for electoral purposes”, according to Mr Polo.

“The last six years have been nirvana for the criminal world, and Sheinbaum’s presidency will not alter this trend,” he added, saying the political movement she belonged to believed it could use crime to advance its objectives, while most of its leaders, including Ms Sheinbaum, were not believers in institutions but in personal power.

“And personal power is never enough to create long-lasting positive change in security matters or any other lasting policy,” he said.

Mr Romero is also “fearful” that Ms Sheinbaum’s alignment with Mr López Obrador’s transformation promise implies “continuation of the military in law enforcement”. Hr is even more concerned about what her presidency means for the country’s democratic status.

In February 2024, Mr López Obrador proposed 20 constitutional reforms, including giving the public power to openly vote for the Supreme Court, formalising the militarisation of police forces, and disbanding independent regulatory agencies.

Experts fear these would “severely downgrade Mexican democracy”. Mr López Obrador lacked majority in Congress to approve the amendments, but Ms Sheinbaum and her newly elected Congress are expected to propel them forward.

“There will be an undermining of checks and balances,” Mr Romero said. “Mexico will lose whatever democratic achievements and go back to an authoritarian state with an imperial presidency.”

He remains optimistic. “I’m hopeful she returns to the diagnosis of the inequality and becomes the leftist president Mexico has not yet had,” he concluded. “That she will maintain her independence from López Obrador and make her own decisions to address the very serious problems in this country.”