One of Claudia Sheinbaum's earliest childhood memories is visiting political prisoners with her parents, a moment that helps explain why she calls herself a 'child of 1968' — the year protest movements erupted around the globe.

In Mexico, mass student protests targeted the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which had governed since 1929. Often described as the 'perfect dictatorship,' the PRI maintained the illusion of democracy through symbolic elections while suppressing dissent.

After months of protests, a crowd of activists assembled in Mexico City's Plaza de las Tres Culturas on October 2, 1968. Helicopters circled overhead, flares were fired, and snipers opened fire from rooftops. Estimates suggest up to 300 were killed and over a thousand arrested.

Sheinbaum's parents took her to visit their friend and protest leader Raúl Álvarez Garín at Lecumberri prison. She considers him one of her mentors. This political inheritance helped shape her path to the presidency in 2024.

'She's the first woman to become president of Mexico – a country that, because of our culture, is very macho; a country that seems eternally in crisis,' said Baltazar Gómez Pérez, an old friend and history professor at UNAM. 'It's a truly Herculean task.'

Before taking office, many assumed Sheinbaum would be a carbon copy of her mentor, populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). A climate scientist by training, she has taken a more pragmatic and security-minded approach.

In January, after Delta Force abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas, Donald Trump suggested the US might expand anti-cartel operations into Mexico. Sheinbaum pushed back firmly: 'We categorically reject intervention in the internal matters of other countries. Cooperation, yes; subordination and intervention, no.'

Weeks later, she showed she could confront cartels. Army helicopters closed in on luxury cabins near Tapalpa, where intelligence suggested Mexico's most-wanted drug lord, 'El Mencho,' was hiding. Special forces stormed the compound; Mencho fled to the woods and was found mortally wounded.

However, the White House has exerted trade pressure, using tariffs and declining to renew USMCA in its current form. Despite fears about security, World Cup matches in Mexico proceeded smoothly.

Sheinbaum was born in Mexico City in 1962. Her paternal grandfather, Chone Sheinbaum, was a Lithuanian Jew who fled anti-communist persecution. Her mother's family fled Bulgaria during the Holocaust.

Raised secular, she attended protests from age 15. She studied physics at UNAM, becoming a student activist. In 1988, she supported Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, but the election was allegedly rigged.

She then turned to academia, earning a master's in energy engineering. In 1991, she protested NAFTA at Stanford. In 2000, AMLO appointed her environmental secretary of Mexico City.

In 2018, she was elected mayor of Mexico City, cutting the homicide rate by half. In 2024, she became president.

Source: www.aljazeera.com