MEXICO CITY (AP) — Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in Tuesday as Mexico’s first feminine president, using the passion over her predecessor’s social applications but additionally dealing with challenges that embrace stubbornly excessive ranges of violence.

After a smiling Sheinbaum took the oath of workplace on the ground of Congress, legislators shouted “Presidenta! Presidenta!” utilizing the female type of president in Spanish for the primary time in over 200 years of Mexico’s historical past as an unbiased nation.

The 62-year-old scientist-turned-politician receives a rustic with quite a lot of instant issues, additionally together with a sluggish economic system, unfinished constructing applications, rising debt and the hurricane-battered resort metropolis of Acapulco.

In her inauguration speech, Sheinbaum stated that she got here to energy accompanied by all the girls who’ve struggled in anonymity to make their means in Mexico, together with “those that dreamed of the chance that sooner or later regardless of if we have been born as girls or males we might obtain our goals and needs with out our intercourse figuring out our future.”

She made an extended checklist of guarantees to restrict costs for gasoline and meals, broaden money hand-out applications for ladies and youngsters, assist enterprise funding, housing and passenger rail development. However any point out of the drug cartels that management a lot of the nation was temporary and close to the tip of the checklist.

Sheinbaum provided little change from outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s ‘Hugs not Bullets’ technique of addressing root causes and never confronting the cartels, other than pledging extra intelligence work and investigation. “There will probably be no return to the irresponsible drug conflict,” she stated.

Sheinbaum romped to victory in June with practically 60% of the vote, propelled largely by the sustained recognition of her political mentor, López Obrador. She has pledged to proceed all his insurance policies, even those who strengthened the ability of the navy and weakened the nation’s checks and balances.

After the inauguration, Sheinbaum was scheduled to look later Tuesday at a mass rally in Mexico Metropolis’s colonial-era essential plaza to take part in an Indigenous ceremony during which an elder will hand her a ‘employees of authority.’

Lucía Ruíz, a 42-year-old mom of three, was one among hundreds attempting to achieve the principle sq. to see the rally. She stated she hopes Sheinbaum will be capable of fight excessive charges of violence towards girls within the nation.

“She goes to characterize us,” stated Ruíz. “We have now at all times been ruled by males, they usually suppose we’re incapable, however we’re not. We’re the pinnacle of our households.”

López Obrador took workplace six years in the past declaring “For the great of all, first the poor,” and promising historic change from the neoliberal financial insurance policies of his predecessors. Sheinbaum promised continuity from his common social insurance policies to controversial constitutional reforms to the judiciary and Nationwide Guard rammed via throughout his last days in workplace.

Regardless of her pledge of continuity, Sheinbaum is a really completely different persona: a cautious scientist and ideological college leftist, versus the outgoing president’s chummy, everyman attraction.

“López Obrador was a tremendously charismatic president and lots of occasions that charisma allowed him to cowl up some political errors that Claudia Sheinbaum won’t have that risk of doing,” stated Carlos Pérez Ricart, a political analyst at Mexico’s Heart for Financial Analysis and Instructing. “So, the place López Obrador was charismatic, Claudia Sheinbaum should be efficient.”

She’s going to wield formidable energy as a result of López Obrador’s Morena get together controls each homes of Congress. However the nation stays deeply polarized between the outgoing president’s fanatic followers and nearly one-third of the inhabitants who deeply resent him.

“If we wish a robust authorities, the checks and balances additionally should be robust,” stated opposition Sen. María Guadalupe Murguía, suggesting that an omnipotent military and unchecked ruling get together may come again to hang-out Mexico. “Bear in mind,” she stated, “no one wins every little thing, and no one loses ceaselessly.”

Sheinbaum will not be inheriting a straightforward scenario.

Drug cartels have strengthened their maintain over a lot of Mexico, and her first journey as president will probably be to the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco, which was flooded final week by Hurricane John, which killed at the very least 17 individuals alongside the coast across the resort. Acapulco was devastated in October 2023 by Hurricane Otis, and had not recovered from that blow when John hit.

Sheinbaum should additionally cope with raging violence within the cartel-dominated northern metropolis of Culiacan, the place factional preventing throughout the Sinaloa cartel broke out after drug lords Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López have been apprehended in the US after they flew there in a small airplane on July 25.

López Obrador has lengthy sought to keep away from confronting Mexico’s drug cartels and has brazenly appealed to the gangs to maintain the peace amongst themselves, however the limitations of that technique have change into obviously obvious in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, the place gun battles have raged on the town’s streets. Native authorities and even the military — which López Obrador has relied on for every little thing — have basically admitted that the preventing will solely finish when the cartel bosses determine to finish it.

However that’s solely the most recent hotspot.

Drug-related violence is surging from Tijuana within the north to Chiapas within the south, displacing hundreds.

Whereas Sheinbaum inherits an enormous funds deficit, unfinished development tasks and a burgeoning invoice for her get together’s money hand-out applications — all of which may ship monetary markets tumbling — maybe her greatest looming concern is the potential for a victory for Donald Trump within the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election.

Trump has already vowed to slap 100% tariffs on autos made in Mexico. Although that may doubtless violate the present U.S.-Mexico-Canada commerce settlement, there are different issues Trump may do to make life tough for Sheinbaum, together with his pledge of large deportations.

Relations with Mexico’s northern neighbor have been already tense after López Obrador stated he was placing relations with the U.S. embassy “on pause” after public criticism of the proposed judicial overhaul.

At her inauguration, Sheinbaum boosted the free commerce settlement with the US and Canada, saying “we all know that financial cooperation strengthens the three nations.”

There are areas the place Sheinbaum may attempt to take Mexico in a brand new course. For instance, she has a Ph.D. in vitality engineering and has spoken of the necessity to handle local weather change.

However on Tuesday, she stated she would cap oil manufacturing at 1.8 million barrels per day, which might be greater than what the troubled state-owned firm at present produces. “We’re going to promote vitality effectivity and the transition towards renewable sources of vitality,” she stated.

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Related Press writers María Verza, Megan Janetsky and Mark Stevenson in Mexico Metropolis contributed to this report.

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Observe AP’s protection of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

Fabiola Sánchez And Mariana Martínez Barba, The Related Press