Mexico's First Female President and a Crisis of Democracy

Homar Paez reports on the violence, confusion and myriad accusations of irregularity during a truly historic Mexican election

Claudia Sheinbaum, incoming President of Mexico, 27 June 2024. Photo: Carlos Tischler/ Sipa US/Alamy

In the late hours of 2 June, headlines and push notifications blazed with news announcing Claudia Sheinbaum, from the ruling Morena party, as the winner of the 2024 Mexican elections. The elections were the biggest in Mexico’s history, with around 20,000 public service roles up for grabs. In an historic move, Mexico elected its first woman president. While her win shattered glass ceilings in a nation wrestling with rising violence against women, doubts lingered both about what this meant for Mexico's future, and about the integrity of an election dictated by State intervention, a violent electoral season, and alleged irregularities.

---

The Electoral Season

Throughout the campaign, current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), who officially founded Morena, consistently endorsed Sheinbaum on his daily morning show, while regularly discrediting the opposition. Critics demanded sanctions from Mexico’s National Electoral Institute (INE), citing his involvement in the ongoing presidential campaign as unlawful. By February, there were 330 cases of complaints lodged against the President for violating electoral laws. The State continued launching disinformation campaigns, claiming that the opposition would revoke social programmes and benefits if they won the election.

Fearing electoral interference, opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez – a businesswoman and senator backed by a coalition of rival parties – travelled to Washington DC, in February, to seek international election observers. The plea came after Morena lawmakers passed a law last year to cut the INE’s budget, and Guadalupe Taddei, whose closeness to Morena has been criticised, was later appointed as the INE’s new president.

The electoral season was the deadliest in its modern history, with a total number of 37 assassinated candidates in the lead-up to the elections on 2 June. More than 400 candidates asked the INE for protection and security for their campaigns. The opposition criticised AMLO's 'hugs, not bullets' approach to tackling organised crime, pointing to the rise in violence across the country as evidence of its ineffectiveness. A prominent newspaper in Spain, El Mundo, reported that AMLO’s failure to curb violence tainted Mexico's elections.