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Huatulco, San Miguel de Allende

Four Fashionable Mexican Heads of State

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By Marcia Chaiken and Jan Chaiken —

Fashion statements have been made for millennia by the Heads of State in Mexico. Whether in pre- or post-Columbian eras, the most important political Mexican figures have always signaled their relationship with the common people (and sometimes with their gods) with their attire. Here are the fashion statements made by four of the most known.

King Pakal the Great, (aka K’inich Janaab Pakal), who ruled over Palenque from age 12 for 68 years until his death in 683, may be best known for interpretations of engravings on his sarcophagus that led him to be called the Mayan astronaut or time traveler. The engravings show him sporting paraphernalia that looks like space flight equipment. But whether he was human or extraterrestrial, his funeral dress clearly indicates that he was considered more than a mere mortal. Adorned with a king’s ransom of jade, from his death mask to the multiple ear pieces, necklaces, bracelets, and rings, even in death he was an impressive sight. The jade mask is most startling because of the inlay of obsidian “eyes”.

Many engravings of Mayan rulers show them wearing elaborate headdresses. But anthropologist Alyce de Carteret described the primary fashion piece of Mayan rulers: “A bark-paper headband adorned with a diadem of jade or shell was bound to the heads of rulers the day they acceded to the throne.” However, existing clay figures of Pakal show him wearing a bird mask, a headdress of quetzal feathers and a long elaborate gown decorated with necklaces of jade. We can surmise that the gown was made from finely woven cotton, since only the wealthiest Mayans could afford that material.

Montezuma (aka Moctezuma II) was the 9th ruler of the Aztec Empire and was the head of state for eighteen years until his death in 1520. Unlike Pakal whose living attire requires some conjecture, Montezuma was well known to the conquistador Cortez, who arrested him.

He was an impressive fashion figure on first formal meeting. His headdress alone was spectacular and described as including “the green upper tail coverts of the quetzal bird, the turquoise feathers of the cotinga, brown feathers from the squirrel cuckoo, pink feathers from the roseate spoonbill, and small ornaments of gold.” His mantle or cape was completely embroidered in primary colors, and the designs depended on the day, the audience and the ceremony he was attending. He rarely wore the same outfit twice, keeping a small army of embroiderers constantly busy. His outfit was completed with a loincloth and sandals – some of jaguar skin, most with jewels.

For the most solemn occasions, much of the finery was omitted, and Montezuma wore a simple loincloth and a dark cape decorated with skulls. After his arrest, Montezuma was not required to wear today’s orange jump suit but rather continued as a figurehead under Spanish rule and wore his diminishing costumes until he died of his wounds after an uprising of his former subjects.

Empress Carlota (née Princess Charlotte of Belgium) was the one and only empress of Mexico for a very short reign from 1864 to 1867. She and her husband Maximillian were placed on the throne by Napoleon III. Given their very progressive ideas about educating and raising up the Mexican populace, they were quickly deposed and Maximillian was shot.

Although the royal couple’s ideas about ruling Mexico were violently rejected, Carlota’s fashion sense was much more captivating. Given her wish to become the benefactor of “her people,” she began to combine European fashion with the costume of the hoi polloi of Mexico. Although the wide skirts and rich materials were retained, the bodice of her dresses and overskirt resembled the china poblana traditional dresses worn by Mexican women – especially on occasions celebrating Mexican identity. She also adopted the bright primary colors of Mexican dress.

Her rule was short-lived but her incorporation of Mexico’s traditional styles into high fashion has lived on. Many of the high-fashion designers of Mexico today merge traditional embroidery or decorations into ultra-modern designs. Just walk down Avenida Presidente Masaryk in CDMX today, and fashions based on Carlota’s innovations come alive.

Presidente Claudia Sheinbaum The first woman president in Mexico, who took office almost two years ago, is scrutinized for fashion as no president ever before. She uses this attention to benefit women all over Mexico. For ceremonial occasions, in addition to her presidential sash, she often wears replicas of dresses from different regions of the country including the huipil, the china poblana, the Tehuana (from Oaxaca) and the Chiapaneca. The many artisans who create and decorate her dresses are publicly noted and often find themselves swamped with orders from ordinary citizens and beyond.

Of course, given her intense meeting and travel schedule, she also slips into comfortable pants and blouses. But the styles are business-appropriate. And unlike the wives of many heads of state, she avoids expensive designer clothes and instead wears fashions that are affordable for the majority of working Mexicans.

From Pakal to Sheinbaum, the Mexican heads of state have had distinctive styles worn as political statements. Some such as Carlota and Montezuma have had ruinous careers. Some such as Pakal and hopefully Sheinbaum have made positive contributions to lives of their people. All will likely be remembered for what they wore.

Drs. Marcia and Jan Chaiken have been married for 62 years and have published many justice system research reports together.

 

 

Huatulco

Breaking Machismo’s Hold? Mexico’s Women After One Year of Sheinbaum

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By Kary Vannice

When Claudia Sheinbaum stood on stage last October as the first woman ever elected to lead Mexico, it felt like she had the potential to split open the bedrock of the male-dominated culture that has defined this country for centuries. Could Claudia’s administration be the wedge that finally pries the machismo foundation open and allows women’s rights to get a foothold in a nation long ruled by men?

In 2024, when Sheinbaum finally broke through the ultimate glass ceiling, it seemed like more than a political win. For many women it seemed like a chance to finally be seen, heard, and be granted rights that they had long been denied.

And they had very good reasons for those hopes. During the election Sheinbaum leaned into feminist themes, with slogans like “It’s time for women”, and made many political promises related to women’s rights and equality. Now, a year later, she’s had some wins and some losses on the front of equal rights and protection for women.

Her administration pushed forward a sweeping package of constitutional reforms that inserted the principle of substantive equality into the nation’s legal foundation. From now on, every law must be drafted with women’s rights in mind, and security and justice institutions are required to operate with a gender perspective.

For too long, women have been invisible in legislation and, at the same time, singled out and punished within the judicial system. As activist and lawyer, Patricia Olamendi, has often warned, “laws without gender perspective reproduce inequality.” This reform, at least on paper, is meant to interrupt that cycle.

Sheinbaum also launched a Women’s Rights Charter legislatively and published and publicly distributed a handbook to help women and girls understand their rights. Women now have a clear guide that says: these are my rights, and this is where I go when they are violated. In a country where, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, 70% of women over the age of 15 have experienced violence at least once, that kind of information is more than just symbolic, it’s empowering.

Economically, she made another very significant move on behalf of older women. A pension program for women aged 60 to 64, one that prioritizes Indigenous and Afro-Mexican women first, and over time expands to reach more than three million by 2026. For women who spent their lives raising families, supporting communities, and often working informally without social security, this pension represents long overdue recognition of their contributions to households, and the nation as a whole. It will not erase decades of invisibility and neglect, but it finally acknowledges that their work matters.

These are a few of the “wins” for women in Mexico, but Sheinbaum’s first year has been one of both promise and contradiction. Despite making some movement forward, many of the old patterns remain — underfunded institutions, muted responses to violence, and a tendency to cast women’s activism as disruption rather than democracy.

For this, Sheinbaum has many female critics. “Being a woman does not necessarily embody progressiveness in the women’s rights agenda,” said Friné Salguero, director at the Simone de Beauvoir Leadership Institute, warning that while Sheinbaum’s election was historic, her agenda may not be sufficiently transformative. And there is evidence to back up her criticism.

Despite the promises of reform, the numbers don’t all add up to better days for women ahead in Mexico. Women’s shelters which saw a surge of 75% more users between 2023 and 2024 have had their funding reduced by over 4% in 2025.

The newly created Ministry for Women, designed to give gender policy a permanent place in government, was underfunded at its inception. And even CONAVIM, the agency tasked with preventing violence against women, has faced budget cuts. Women’s support organizations warn that these reductions aren’t just disappointing, the consequences could be deadly for women and girls.

And of course, there is the violence against women itself. Relentless, visible to the point of being overt, and largely unchecked. Like the murder of influencer Valeria Márquez in Jalisco who was shot during a TikTok livestream in May. Shocking? Yes, but hardly unique in a country where 10 women a day are murdered and 13 are reported missing.

On security, Sheinbaum campaigned as the candidate who could “show results.” Yet polls show nearly half of Mexicans believe violence has gotten worse under her leadership, and women remain at the epicenter of this crisis.

So, yes, the presence of a woman in power matters. But when women still feel unsafe, silenced, or dismissed, presence alone cannot be the measure of progress.

But one cannot measure the weight of 200 years of male domination against a single year in office. Cultures and ideologies as deeply rooted as Mexico’s cannot be overturned in twelve months, or even in a single six-year term. But what can be measured is intention. Laws matter, but enforcement matters more. And leadership matters most of all.

The fact that Mexico’s most powerful leader is a woman is not meaningless. It is a rupture in a centuries-old foundation. Whether that rupture becomes the wedge that finally opens space for women’s rights to deeply root themselves into the bedrock of this nation depends heavily on what Sheinbaum chooses to do next.

Huatulco

Mexico-U.S. Issues during Sheinbaum’s First Year

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By Marcia Chaiken and Jan Chaiken

During Claudia Sheinbaum’s first months as president, relations with the U.S. administration were relatively calm. Joe Biden, having stepped aside from a second presidential run, was focused on preserving his legacy of rebuilding cooperative international relationships. Soon after Mexico’s election, Biden issued an official statement:

“I congratulate Claudia Sheinbaum on her historic election as the first woman President of Mexico. I look forward to working closely with President-elect Sheinbaum in the spirit of partnership and friendship that reflects the enduring bonds between our two countries. I express our commitment to advancing the values and interests of both our nations to the benefit of our peoples.”

Even before taking office, Sheinbaum responded warmly, making clear she looked forward to working with Biden until the end of his term. She noted she would be glad to work with another woman president—hinting at Kamala Harris—but emphasized that it was for U.S. voters to decide, and that she would cooperate with whoever was elected.

Biden did not attend Sheinbaum’s inauguration but sent a Presidential Delegation led by First Lady Jill Biden, joined by U.S. officials with close family ties to Mexico. For a moment, things seemed smooth. But only weeks after Sheinbaum took office, the U.S. electorate chose Donald Trump—who had launched his first campaign eight years earlier by declaring that Mexico was sending “drug dealers, criminals, and rapists.” Sheinbaum must have known that the smooth sailing under Biden was about to give way to rougher seas.

Trump’s belligerence toward Latin America was on display immediately—in his inauguration speech and in a flurry of executive orders. These included militarizing the U.S. border with Mexico and even renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” Sheinbaum met these provocations with calm and humor, suggesting tongue-in-cheek that perhaps the U.S. should rename itself “Mexican America.”

As expected from Trump’s campaign rhetoric and the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” three issues dominated: mass deportations and immigration barriers, high tariffs on imports, and the threat of military action against cartels.

By September 2025, Sheinbaum had held 14 substantive conversations with Trump. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio even praised her in Mexico City for raising the level of cooperation between the two countries beyond what the U.S. had achieved with any other democracy.

Drug Interdiction
Early on, Trump reportedly asked Sheinbaum in a phone call whether Mexico had a “drug problem.” She responded that Mexico was not a drug-consuming country, crediting an intensive public campaign that graphically depicted the physical effects of drug use. Trump, who often boasts of his intelligence, admitted he had learned something and ordered a similar campaign in the U.S.

But while Mexico emphasized prevention, Trump cut funding for treatment programs, turning instead to military interdiction. In September, the U.S. destroyed a ship from Venezuela allegedly carrying illicit drugs. Trump also “offered” to send U.S. troops into Mexico to fight cartels—an offer Sheinbaum firmly rejected, calling such an invasion a hostile act.

Still, she welcomed cooperation similar to U.S. support for Colombia in the 1990s, and unlike her mentor AMLO, she has not relied on the slogan “hugs, not bullets.” To meet Trump’s demands without ceding sovereignty, she extradited scores of cartel members to the U.S. for prosecution. More importantly, she reframed the problem: not just drugs flowing north, but also guns flowing south—making clear that both are matters of shared security.

Immigration and the Border
Discussions of border control began even before Trump’s inauguration. Sheinbaum benefited from AMLO’s earlier crackdown, which had already reduced illegal crossings. After one early “perfect phone call,” Trump declared that Sheinbaum had agreed to “close down the border.” She clarified that Mexico’s strategy was to deter migrant caravans while keeping the border open to legitimate traffic.

In September, after meetings between Secretary Rubio and his Mexican counterpart, both nations announced a joint plan: U.S. and Mexican law enforcement would share intelligence and operations—each on their own side—to destroy tunnels used for smuggling drugs north and guns south.

But Trump’s mass deportation initiative looms larger. While he promised to deport only undocumented criminals, ICE sweeps have targeted day laborers, college campuses, and communities with long-standing Latino residents. Even DACA youth—brought to the U.S. as children and promised protection—are under threat.

Anticipating Trump’s actions, Sheinbaum launched the México Te Abraza (Mexico Embraces You) program on the day he took office. Along the border, centers now provide deportees with financial aid, help opening bank accounts, documentation, pensions, scholarships, disability support, and immediate essentials such as food and internet access. As Gandhi said, “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” By this measure, Sheinbaum has placed Mexico in stark contrast to Trump’s America.

Tariffs
Trump also revived the long-abandoned strategy of imposing sweeping tariffs. By mid-summer, Canada faced a 35% tariff. Mexico, however, thanks to Sheinbaum’s calm but firm negotiating style, secured a 90-day pause to seek alternatives that would not raise prices for consumers on either side of the border.

This pause proved critical. Equal tariffs on Mexico would have caused food inflation and hardship for vulnerable populations in both nations. In September, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled that Trump had overstepped his authority by justifying tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The court allowed existing tariffs to remain until October 14 while the issue heads to the Supreme Court in November.

If SCOTUS upholds the ruling, Sheinbaum can turn to other priorities. If not, she will again face Trump at the negotiating table—armed with patience, pragmatism, and her trademark humor.

Domestic Standing
At home, Sheinbaum’s approval ratings remain strong: 79% as of August 2025, twelve points higher than AMLO at the same stage, and far above Trump’s 41% in the U.S. Yet when asked specifically about her dealings with Trump, 57% of Mexicans said “bad” or “very bad.” That reflects not her performance but the disruptive impact of Trump’s policies—especially the decline in remittances from Mexicans in the U.S., which have fallen as deportations and workplace raids intensify.

Families across Mexico feel these changes directly in household income. What many may not see is that compared with other world leaders, Sheinbaum has managed to secure far more productive outcomes in her dealings with U.S., without losing Mexico’s dignity or independence.

Huatulco

PEMEX and President Claudia Sheinbaum

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By Julie Etra

As this issue explores Mexico’s president one year after her remarkable rise to the presidency, I decided to write about one of the many challenges she faces: a perpetually lingering, decades-old economic problem — PEMEX and its viability.

First, a little background. The acronym stands for Petróleos Mexicanos. For a detailed, in-depth analysis of its origins, see the 2022 The Eye archives: https://theeyehuatulco.com/2022/03/28/politics-petroleum-and-the-environmenthow-to-doom-your-countrys-climate-targets. This excellent article was by Deborah van Hoewyk, who sadly recently passed away. Deborah was a long-time contributor to The Eye and a scholar in her own right (a tribute to her by Randy Jackson is included in this issue).

To quote Deborah’s article: “Before expropriation, there were 17 international firms producing oil in Mexico, dominated by the Mexican Eagle Company (a subsidiary of the Royal Dutch/Shell Company, now just ‘Shell’) and various U.S. firms (Jersey Standard, a branch of Standard Oil, and Standard Oil Company of California, SOCAL, now Chevron); together the Dutch and the Americans (basically, the Rockefellers) controlled 90% of the production of Mexican oil; Gulf Oil added another 5%.”

In 1938, President Lázaro Cárdenas expropriated foreign oil assets and created a state oil monopoly. Mexico’s major new refinery project, Olmeca (often called Dos Bocas), is located in Paraíso, Tabasco; it is designed for 340,000 barrels per day and to produce ultra-low-sulfur fuels.

What propelled expropriation was a union strike against the international petroleum consortium and the refusal of foreign companies to accept new contract terms—an inflection point that reshaped Mexico’s energy sector.

PEMEX’s solvency has been a persistent issue, in part because government budgets long relied on PEMEX revenues for far more than exploration, refining, storage, distribution, and maintenance. Expectations were high—perhaps unrealistically so.

President Enrique Peña Nieto’s 2013 energy reform amended the Constitution to allow private participation across the sector; it did not privatize PEMEX. Subsequent policy under Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) reasserted a larger state role and increased support for PEMEX, while also emphasizing “energy sovereignty.”

PEMEX’s profitability remains complex. Factors include insufficient new exploration, aging and poorly maintained infrastructure, spills, vandalism, corruption, and long-term production declines — along with exposure to oil-price cycles. Above all, debt is the headline problem: around US$100 billion in financial debt, with more than US$20 billion owed to suppliers, making PEMEX the world’s most-indebted oil company.

Fuel theft, called huachicol, is a major drag. Recent cases underscore its scale: on Sept. 8, 2025, authorities announced 14 arrests, including customs officials, businesspeople, and members of the armed forces, in a probe into a fuel-smuggling network; in parallel enforcement, authorities have reported large seizures of stolen diesel.

So, what is the Sheinbaum administration proposing?

1) Energy security + cleaner mix.
Mexico imports significant volumes of U.S. natural gas via pipelines from Texas, much of it used for power generation. The administration has signaled plans to bolster domestic gas output while pushing renewables, like solar and wind, and exploring strategic inputs such as lithium for batteries, alongside a national energy plan to expand generation capacity toward 2030.

2) Tax and debt overhauls.
In late 2024, the government simplified PEMEX’s fiscal regime to a single levy, the Derecho Petrolero para el Bienestar (roughly 30% on oil and ~11.6–12% on non-associated gas in 2025), explicitly to reduce PEMEX’s historic tax burden and allow more investment. A broader 10-year plan (2025–2035) aims to lower debt, reprofile maturities, and gradually phase out federal financial support by 2027—a pledge reiterated in August–September 2025 as the government arranged bond issues and buybacks tied to a debt-management strategy.

3) Anti-corruption enforcement.
President Sheinbaum recently said former PEMEX CEO Carlos Treviño was arrested in the U.S. and would be deported to Mexico to face corruption charges linked to the Odebrecht/Braskem case—an extradition request pending for about five years.

Separately, U.S. authorities in August 2025 indicted two Mexico-based businessmen over alleged bribes to obtain PEMEX contracts.

Given the ambition of the 10-year plan and the 2027 support “off-ramp,” it will be worth revisiting this in 2027, when federal support is slated to cease. As Sheinbaum put it: the goal is for PEMEX to stand on its own by 2027.

 

Huatulco

A Land in Between: The Istmo de Tehuantepec

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By Randy Jackson

If you were to drive east from Huatulco for about two hours, you’d arrive at a narrow neck of land where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans nearly meet. You’ll know you’re there when you see a landscape covered by hundreds of windmills and feel and hear the force of wind as it hurtles against your vehicle. These are the Tehuano Winds, born from the clash of cool northern air spilling down from the Gulf of Mexico and the rising heat of the Pacific. Channeled through the Chivela Pass in the Sierra Madre, they come roaring toward the coast, sometimes with the force of a hurricane.

This region, known as the Istmo de Tehuantepec, is one of the eight distinct regions of Oaxaca, and it’s known for far more than wind. It’s a crossroads in every sense: a cultural crossroads between the heartlands of ancient Mesoamerican civilizations, an ecological crossroads bridging diverse geographical zones, and now, with the Interoceanic Corridor project, a potential crossroads for global trade.

Ecological Crossroads

The Istmo de Tehuantepec is an ecological crossroads. While the southern portions near the Pacific are dry and windswept, the northern reaches include part of Mexico’s largest tropical rainforest, the Selva Zoque, home to much of the nation’s biodiversity. This varied topography also gives rise to pine-oak forests and more than 300 species of native orchids.

The Istmo holds an extraordinary range of ecosystems within this relatively narrow band of land. There are cloud forests in the Sierra Madre, coastal lagoons along the Gulf of Mexico, and everything in between. Its geographic position bridges the flora and fauna of North and Central America, creating a vital migratory and evolutionary corridor where species from different regions meet, interact, and adapt.

Cultural Crossroads

For millennia, the Istmo de Tehuantepec has served as a crossroads between the heartlands of the Mesoamerican civilizations. The first of these civilizations was the Olmec, widely recognized for their iconic colossal stone heads. Their civilization was centred just to the north of the Istmo in the lowlands of the Gulf of Mexico. Later, as the Olmec declined, the Zapotec civilization emerged in the Valley of Oaxaca.

Archaeological finds suggest trade between these two civilizations, with goods like obsidian and jade traversing the Istmo between these two powers. Trade also existed in later times between the Maya civilization, located south and east of the Istmo, and the formidable city-state of Teotihuacán in the valley of Mexico.

Today, the Zapotec are the principal indigenous group of the Istmo, and their identity here is distinct. The Zapotec language in the Istmo differs significantly from the version in the Valley of Oaxaca. There are also cultural differences, such as the matrilineal social structures in the Istmo compared to the more patriarchal structures of the Zapotec of the Valley of Oaxaca. Other indigenous groups in the region of Istmo de Tehuantepec are the Mixe, roughly centred around the area of Matías Romero, and the Huave (they call themselves the Ikoots), located around San Mateo del Mar on the Pacific coast.

Global Crossroads – Mexico’s Interoceanic Corridor

Among the defining projects of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), the Interoceanic Rail Corridor may turn out to be the most transformative. Beyond the potential benefits to Mexico overall, the state of Oaxaca, particularly the Istmo de Tehuantepec, could develop into an economic engine. Spanning 303 kilometres (188 miles), this rail link connects the Pacific port of Salina Cruz in Oaxaca with the Gulf port of Coatzacoalcos in Veracruz. Its aim is ambitious: to serve as a land-based alternative, or complement, to the Panama Canal, allowing cargo to be offloaded at one coast, transported swiftly across the Istmo, and reloaded on the other side.

The corridor project aims to stimulate industrial growth in southern Mexico through major infrastructure upgrades, chief among them the modernization of the Salina Cruz and Coatzacoalcos seaports. To draw private investment, the federal government plans to establish ten industrial parks along the route, offering tax incentives to companies willing to build and operate there.

The project is well underway. The expanded seaports are already under construction, and the rail line now has limited passenger service between the two coasts. One of the most high-profile developments tied to the corridor came in December 2024, when President Claudia Sheinbaum announced a $10 billion USD green hydrogen facility to be built by Helax, a subsidiary of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. Scheduled for completion in 2028, the project signals a push toward sustainable industry in the region.

If fully realized, the Interoceanic Corridor could mark a historic shift in Mexico’s economic geography, channeling investment and opportunity toward the poorer southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas. The road ahead, however, isn’t without obstacles: land disputes, environmental concerns, and questions about who truly benefits, especially among local Indigenous communities.

For centuries, the Istmo de Tehuantepec has stood at the intersection of movement and change – a crossroads where two oceans, multiple climate zones, and cultures converge. The Istmo continues in its role as a landscape of transition and is now, possibly, a passageway for global trade.

For contact or comment: box95jackson@gmail.com.

Huatulco

Claudia Sheinbaum: The Next President of Mexico

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By Marcia Chaiken and Jan Chaiken

Unless there is a major political upset in the next eight months, Claudia Sheinbaum is on track to be elected in June 2024 as the next president of Mexico. A poll published in September by El Universal, a major Mexico City newspaper, indicated that she was then far ahead of her four opponents; in a four-way race, she garnered 50% of the vote. Her party, the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), in coalition with other parties, has captured the loyalty of the majority of Mexican voters; MORENA alone received 53% of the vote in the poll. And her champion, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), the current president of Mexico and founder of left-leaning MORENA, has such a high approval rating (60%) that it is a relatively safe bet to start planning to watch her inauguration.

According to The Times of Israel, not only would Sheinbaum be the first woman president of Mexico, she would join a very small number of Jews outside Israel who have become heads of state: Janet Jagan (Guyana), Ricardo Maduro (Honduras), Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (Peru) and, of course, Ukraine’s own Volodymyr Zelensky; she would be the first Jewish person ever to head a country with a population over 50 million people. But Sheinbaum is very quiet about her Judaism, probably partly due to the adamant post-Revolution separation in Mexico between religion and state, the fact that most Jews in Mexico are politically very conservative and unlikely to vote for a MORENA candidate, and the misinformation and smear campaign used against her by her political rivals, notably the former president Vicente Fox. Although antisemitism rears its ugly head less frequently in Mexico than in many other countries, a rumor was started that she wasn’t a viable candidate for president since she was born in Bulgaria – ultimately squelched by the publication of Sheinbaum’s Mexico City birth certificate. And in response to Fox’s intimation that her rival, Gálvez, was a true Mexican (but implicitly not Sheinbaum), Claudia retorted that she was “as Mexican as mole.”

One might say that Sheinbaum has been on track to become the first woman president of Mexico since she was born, 61 years ago. Her parents, two super-achieving scientists affiliated with the National University of Mexico (UNAM), were themselves children of immigrants seeking refuge in Mexico from religious persecution. Her father’s family fled from Russian pogroms and forced conscription of Jews in Lithuania in the 1920s. Her mother’s family escaped the Holocaust, the systematic murder of Jews in Bulgaria in the 1940s. And since young Claudia was close to her grandparents and attended a Jewish secular coed elementary school, there is little doubt that she was imbued with a formative knowledge of the perils of rabid discrimination and the value of helping those who are being oppressed by powerful authoritarians.

After completing her secondary education at Colegio de Ciencias y Humanidades (CCH), a feeder school for UNAM, she matriculated at UNAM studying physics and simultaneously joining other student activists on campus. Her political activism continued throughout her undergraduate and graduate studies, and as a UNAM faculty member in 1998 she was instrumental in the founding of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). After completing her bachelor’s degree in physics in 1989, she went on to complete her master’s degree and Ph.D. in energy engineering, carrying out research at Lawrence Laboratories, UC Berkeley, on comparative international consumption of energy. She returned to UNAM when she accepted a faculty appointment in 1995.

As an undergraduate, Claudia met and briefly dated student Jesús María Tarriba Unger, currently soon to be her second husband; Tarriba completed his dissertation in physics at UNAM in 1987 and began an award-winning career in financial risk-model applied research. After breaking up with Tarriba, Claudia dated and in 1987 married Carlos Imaz Gispert. She became a stepmother to Imaz’s five-year-old son and in 1988 the couple had a daughter, Mariana, who carried out the Sheinbaum family’s multigenerational academic achievement, earning a BA in history from UNAM, a Master’s degree in comparative literature from the University of Barcelona and a master’s and Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Mariana currently is the Academic Coordinator of Humanities at UNAM-Boston. Claudia and Imaz were divorced in 2016 after 29 years of marriage.

One of the closest political ties Sheinbaum made during her political activism was with AMLO. As Mayor of Mexico City (CDMX), he appointed her as his environmental minister in 2000. In that position, she applied her academic knowledge to reshaping the city’s transportation system, including the installation of the highly efficient and easy-to-use MetroBus that quickly whisks passengers along many routes, including trips from the international airport to the central downtown area.

Claudia was once again back on the faculty of UNAM after 2005 when AMLO stepped down from being Mayor of CDMX to unsuccessfully run for President. She quickly shifted gears, but not fields, and became part of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, working on assessment of mitigation approaches; along with former U.S, Vice President Al Gore, the group was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Her absence from the political arena lasted only a few years, and in 2015 she was elected Mayor of Tlalpan, a district of Mexico City. Three years later she was elected Mayor of the City itself, the first woman to hold that office. The processes leading to her election and the reforms she carried out as Mayor were described in The Eye by Carole Reedy (March and November, 2019) – but the bottom line is that she was elected by a large majority based on her platform, and she carried out the measures she promised.

Like all politicians, she has her detractors. She’s been blamed for the outcomes of natural disasters, smeared by some as being too instrumental in the success of her daughter, and accused by others as being simply the puppet of AMLO. Yet, her resume speaks for itself and she remains hugely popular. There is no doubt that she will continue to carry on some of the approaches initiated by AMLO – but given her research in and passion for mitigating climate change and building a sustainable world, one can be quite sure that she will be taking a different direction than AMLO did in supporting Mexico’s petrol industry.

Since we are not citizens of Mexico, we cannot vote for her. But given her past accomplishments, we are looking forward to seeing what successes she will have as President of Mexico.