Mexico is selecting a brand new president. Right here’s why the election is historic.

Sheinbaum is dealing with Xóchitl Gálvez, 61, a tech entrepreneur with Indigenous origins. She’s promised to spur financial progress and curb the rising energy of organized crime teams, evident within the scores of assaults on candidates and their aides in the course of the marketing campaign. Gálvez represents a coalition of conventional events which have struggled to catch as much as the juggernaut that’s López Obrador’s Morena motion.

The election in the US’ most populous neighbor has vital penalties. Mexico is the No. 1 U.S. buying and selling companion, and key sectors of the nations’ economies — from auto manufacturing to the cultivation of berries and avocados — are intertwined. Mexico can be an important funnel for migrants and medicines resembling fentanyl and cocaine sure for the U.S. border.

“It is a very important election as a result of the 2 most important candidates signify two contrasting visions of presidency and radically totally different visions of the world,” mentioned Luis Rubio, chairman of the coverage suppose tank México Evalúa.

Gálvez has blasted López Obrador for weakening establishments resembling the federal electoral company and eroding checks and balances. “We’re going to carry freedom, whereas an authoritarian authorities desires to impose its selections,” she mentioned final week.

Sheinbaum has promised to broaden the social packages of López Obrador, who is proscribed to at least one time period by the structure. She’s pledged to take care of the North American free-trade treaty when it comes up for renegotiation in 2026, however says the financial modifications of latest a long time have created “hunger wages.”

“After 36 years, it’s clear {that a} nation can’t advance when it favors essentially the most affluent,” she mentioned.

Voters on Sunday can even select 500 federal deputies and 128 senators, the mayor of Mexico Metropolis, eight governors and greater than 20,000 officers on the state and native degree.

Mexico can have a feminine president earlier than the U.S.

The election will virtually actually give Mexico its first feminine president. The lone man within the race — Jorge Álvarez Máynez, 38, from the small, center-left Residents’ Motion occasion — is working a distant third in polls.

Ladies on this historically macho nation didn’t win the correct to vote till 1953, three a long time after their American counterparts. However with the adoption of gender quotas and a gender-parity legislation throughout Mexico’s transition from a one-party state to democracy, girls now maintain half of the seats in Congress, and almost one-third of the governorships.

Beginning in October, one will occupy the presidency.

“This can have an infinite influence,” predicted the author Sabina Berman, a outstanding feminist. “Girls and boys will now know that women can grow to be something they need, relying on their expertise, their efforts. And that, in a rustic as violent and traditionally machista as Mexico, is a gigantic factor.”

If Sheinbaum wins, she’ll even be Mexico’s first Jewish president.

Election raises considerations about Mexican democracy

Whereas two girls have headlined the presidential race, essentially the most urgent challenge entails a person — López Obrador. The folksy, silver-haired president shook up Mexico with what he referred to as the Fourth Transformation, a program aimed toward serving to the decrease lessons and defending symbols of nationwide satisfaction resembling oil and corn from international competitors.

López Obrador has doubled the minimal wage, elevated advantages for the aged and susceptible, and poured cash into Mexico’s closely indebted state oil firm. In a rustic of huge earnings inequality, he received over unusual Mexicans with visits to villages and hardscrabble neighborhoods, urgent the flesh and promising public works. At day by day information conferences, he blasted his perceived enemies — old-school politicians, journalists and critics.

The share of Mexicans expressing confidence within the nationwide authorities doubled in 5 years, reaching 61 p.c final yr, in accordance with Gallup. That’s twice as excessive as in the US.

The opposition accuses López Obrador of re-creating the kind of imperial presidency that dominated Mexico for a lot of the twentieth century, and demonizing the center class and the rich. Of specific concern are his efforts to decrease the facility of establishments which have opposed him, together with the judiciary. He’s proposed changing the Supreme Court docket with judges picked by fashionable vote, an concept Sheinbaum has embraced.

“What’s in danger with a Morena triumph is our democracy,” mentioned Carlos Bravo Regidor, a political analyst.

Sheinbaum has dismissed such considerations. “Our mission is to defend democracy, liberty and the dignity of the folks,” she mentioned in a closing rally Wednesday.

How Mexico’s subsequent president will work with the U.S.

Mexico’s subsequent president will play a big function on points vital to Washington, resembling migration and drug trafficking.

López Obrador turned an vital ally of presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden in making an attempt to lower the move of U.S.-bound migrants. Bilateral efforts on medication have been rockier; López Obrador scaled again cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, accusing it of violating Mexico’s sovereignty, and did not rein within the trafficking of lethal fentanyl to the US.

Sheinbaum and Gálvez each have pledged to take care of good relations with the US and to prioritize the struggle towards violent cartels and gangs. Sheinbaum’s platform consists of beefing up the intelligence capabilities of safety forces and rising cooperation between police and prosecutors. Gálvez says she’d work extra carefully with U.S. authorities, and improve assets for native police.

Each candidates speak of selling near-shoring, the pattern of firms shifting manufacturing from China and different nations to Mexico to be nearer to the U.S. market. However the energy grid right here is already overwhelmed, and worldwide companies have accused López Obrador of discriminating towards them within the technology of power, significantly renewables.

The cartels’ struggle for territory threatens Mexico’s stability

Voters’ greatest critique of López Obrador is his failure to halt the growth of organized crime exercise. Whereas homicides have dipped since he took workplace, in accordance with official statistics, crime teams are taking de facto management of extra land and financial exercise. They’ve moved past drug trafficking to a number of different unlawful enterprises, together with the extortion of companies starting from sprawling cattle ranches to tiny tortilla retailers.

Greater than 230 candidates, their kin and aides have been assassinated in the course of the present electoral cycle, the consulting agency Integralia has reported, as cartels have fought to put in allies in mayors’ workplaces.

The subsequent president will face one other problem: sustaining political stability. López Obrador, a savvy political operator, has stored Morena’s competing factions in verify. Sheinbaum doesn’t have the identical affect within the occasion, which was based as a car for López Obrador’s ambitions.

“Claudia goes to have this downside” if she wins, mentioned Alejandro Rojas Díaz Durán, a senator who not too long ago broke from Morena. “She’s not Andrés. She is an environment friendly administrator, however not a political administrator like Andrés.”

Lorena Ríos in Monterrey, Mexico, and Isabel Maney in Mexico Metropolis contributed to this report.