Mexico's First Female President Faces Persistent Challenges: Drug Cartels, Border Issues, Repairing Relations With US

Claudia Sheinbaum, a Nobel Prize-winning climate scientist was elected Mexico's first female president by an overwhelming majority. She has pledged to continue the work of her mentor and outgoing leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO).

In 2018, Sheinbaum became the first female mayor of Mexico City, a position she held until 2023 when she resigned to run for president.

Sheinbaum secured between 58.3% and 60.7% of the vote, marking the highest level of support for a presidential candidate in Mexico since the end of one-party rule in 2000.

As she prepares to take office, Sheinbaum faces significant challenges, including dealing with powerful drug cartels and navigating a tense relationship with the United States, where some GOP politicians, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have proposed military intervention in Mexico as part of their own electoral campaigns.

Negotiations with the U.S. will be critical, particularly regarding the large numbers of migrants crossing Mexico on their way to the U.S. and cooperation on drug trafficking issues amid the U.S.'s ongoing fentanyl epidemic.

Mexico’s violent drug cartels, which have a history of targeting local candidates and officials who threaten their control, will be a major focus for Sheinbaum’s administration. These cartels often influence local police and siphon funds from municipal budgets.

Although Sheinbaum has pledged to improve security, details on her specific plans remain sparse. This election cycle, noted as the most violent in Mexico’s modern history, saw 38 candidates murdered, underscoring the severity of the security issues she must address. Analysts have observed that organized crime groups expanded their influence during López Obrador’s term.

“Unless she commits to making a game-changing level of investment in improving policing and reducing impunity, Sheinbaum will likely struggle to achieve a significant improvement in overall levels of security,” said Nathaniel Parish Flannery, an independent Latin America political risk analyst.

“So far Sheinbaum has released relatively little information in terms of concrete details about her security plans. What we have are signals about what she would like to do, but we don’t have specific concrete dollar amounts of what she plans to devote to these initiatives,” Flannery said.

Sheinbaum’s advisors told Reuters that she's intending to reduce by 2027 Mexico’s murder rate from 23.3 homicides for every 100,000 residents to around 19.4 per 100,000 – putting it on par with Brazil.

The Mexican cartels have consistently resisted government control, extending their violent reach into various sectors, including small businesses and local politics, with at least 30 mayoral or town council candidates murdered just this year.

Sheinbaum has indicated that addressing the root causes of violence is essential; she’s promised to invest in social programs to prevent impoverished young Mexicans from being recruited by cartels and other criminal groups.

On international relations, particularly with the United States, Sheinbaum has committed to fostering a relationship characterized by friendship, mutual respect, and equality, which was often strained under her predecessor.

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