On June 2nd, 2024, Claudia Sheinbaum won
the Mexican presidential election.
She is scheduled to take office as president
on October 2nd, as Mexico’s first
woman president and first Jewish president.
A Mexican presidential term is 6 years. Thus
her term should go from 2024 to 2030.
Who is Claudia Sheinbaum and what kind of
president will she be?
GENERAL BIOGRAPHY
Claudia Sheinbaum was born in 1962 in Mexico City, the daughter of Carlos Sheinbaum and Annie Pardo. Her father was a chemical engineer and her mother a biologist.
Claudia Sheinbaum is an ethnic Jew, though she does not practice Judaism as a religion.
A scientist, Sheinbaum studied physics at Mexico’s UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) and earned her PhD in energy engineering at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California in the U.S.A.
Dr. Sheinbaum has written more than 100 articles and two books dealing with energy, environment and sustainable development.
In 2007, Dr. Sheinbaum was on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at the United Nations in the field of energy and industry and was part of a group that won the Nobel Peace Prize.
From 2000 to 2006, Dr. Sheinbaum was Mexico City’s Secretary of the Environment. From 2015 to 2017 she was mayor of Tlalpan, a borough in Mexico City.
From 2018 to 2023, Claudia Sheinbaum was Mayor of Mexico City.
POLITICS
Claudia Sheinbaum is a member of the leftist MORENA party, now the most powerful party in Mexico.
She is a protege of current President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO).
Sheinbaum has pledged to continue AMLO’s Cuarta Transformación, the “Fourth Transformation”. This agenda refers to the fourth historical transformation of the country after three previous transformations: (1) The Independence Struggle (1810-1821; (2) The Reform War 1857-1861; and (3) the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920).
JEWISH ETHNICITY
Claudia Sheinbaum is an ethnic Jew.
Her father was an Ashkenazi Jew. Ashkenazis descend from the German Jews of the Middle Ages. Her mother is a Sephardi Jew. Sephardis descend from Spanish Jews of the Middle Ages.
Her father’s parents migrated to Mexico in the 1920s, from Lithuania. Her mother’s parents migrated to Mexico from Bulgaria, escaping the Holocaust, in the 1940s.
Claudia Sheinbaum participated in Jewish religious celebrations with her grandparents, but her parents were secular.
There are about 50,000 Jews in Mexico, mostly in Mexico City. While American Jews tend to vote for the Left, in Mexico the Jews tend to vote Center-Right. Therefore, it’s likely that most Mexican Jews did not vote for Sheinbaum.
While Claudia Sheinbaum is the first ethnic Jew to be President-elect, she is not the first Mexican president to have some Jewish ancestry.
Most Mexican presidents have substantial Spanish ancestry, and some Spaniards have some Jewish ancestry. This is due to Jews in Spain converting to Catholicism in the Middle Ages and the early Modern Period.
Carlos Salinas, president of Mexico from 1988 to 1994, had some Sephardic Jewish ancestry and on that basis acquired Spanish citizenship in 2021.
President Francisco I. Madero (1911-1913) had some Jewish ancestry, and President Plutarco Elias Calles (1924-1928) was said to have Jewish ancestry. There were probably others.
As far as Claudia Sheinbaum’s election in Mexico, a majority Catholic country, there is nothing surprising about that. The Mexican political world is very secular-oriented, much more so than that of the United States.
CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM’S FAMILY LIFE
Claudia’s father, Carlos Sheinbaum, passed away in 2013. Her mother, Annie Pardo, is still living.
Claudia’s brother Julio is a physicist and oceanographer. Her sister Adriana, a teacher, resides in the United States.
In 1987, Claudia married Carlos Imaz. They had a daughter, Mariana Imaz, born in 1988. Claudia also raised Rodrigo, son of Carlos from a previous marriage.
Claudia and Carlos divorced in 2016.
In November of 2023
Claudia Sheinbaum
married Jesús María Tarriba,
who had been her old college boyfriend
back in the 1980s.
When Sheinbaum assumes the presidency,
Tarriba will probably be known as the
Primer Caballero, the “First Gentleman”.
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