This past Sunday, Mexican voters made history, choosing between two frontrunners to make history as the country’s first woman president was elected. Former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, 61, won by a commanding lead, running in the Morena party of term-limited incumbent Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
“We have achieved a plural, diverse, and democratic Mexico,” Sheinbaum said to supporters after the results were announced. “Although many Mexicans do not fully agree with our project, we will have to walk in peace and harmony to continue building a fair and more prosperous Mexico.”
Her rise to the country’s top position signals acceptance of Jews in Mexican society, which is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, historically conservative, but more supportive of progressive politics in recent elections. Prior to her entry into politics, Sheinbaum was an academic, receiving her PhD at Berkeley in energy engineering.
Her support for Obrador’s policies, her background in a field relating to addressing climate change, and appearing as a visible rebuke against sexism earned her 58 percent of the vote, or nearly 30 points ahead of her closest challenger, businesswoman Zochtl Galvez.
For the accolades pouring in on her historic win, Sheinbaum’s Jewish identity appears as a secondary mention. Throughout her life, she had little connection with the country’s Jewish community, never expressing any religious thoughts, and twice marrying out of the faith.
“It’s left me wishing that Sheinbaum would seize the opportunity to stop downplaying her Judaism, and start embracing it, Ben Raab wrote in an opinion piece in Forward. “Her historic victory presents her with an opportunity to meet challenges to her dual identity – 100% Mexican, 100% Jewish – with a sense of pride that celebrates the unique fusion of the two.”
A student at Yale University, Raab was born in Mexico, where he was raised to appreciate both cultures. He argued that showcasing her Jewish identity would contribute towards “the multiple identities and ancestries that comprise Mexican society” as the country tackles its social inequalities.
In many ways, Sheinbaum’s politics and biography resembles Bernie Sanders, the Brooklyn-born Vermont senator who twice ran in the Democratic primary for president in this country. In her own words, written in 2009 as a letter to the editor in the Mexican newspaper The Illustrated Courier, Sheinbaum wrote that her paternal grandfather fled from Lithuania for “political and racial reasons: He was Jewish and a communist.” Her maternal grandparents were Sephardim who fled from the Holocaust in Bulgaria.
Her parents Carlos and Annie also had careers relating to science. He was a chemist who founded a company that produced tanning agents, and she had a doctorate in biochemistry. Their involvement in progressive politics was shaped by the student protests of 1968, in which hundreds of student protesters were killed during the country’s hosting of the Olympic Games.
Claudia was their second child and graduated from UNAM, from which her mother graduated and later taught as a professor. She looked at her Jewish heritage through a cultural frame, noting that her grandparents celebrated all the Jewish holidays.
As she rarely spoke of her Jewish identity on the campaign trail, a few writings speak of where she could position Mexico in regard to the war in Gaza.
“I can only see with horror the images of Israeli state bombings in Gaza,” she wrote in the 2009 letter. “No reason justifies the murder of Palestinian civilians... Nothing, nothing, nothing, can justify the murder of a child.” She also appeared in an undated photograph wearing a keffiyeh, the cloth representing Palestinian people.
Her harsh judgment of Israel in its previous operations against Hamas reflects Obrador’s policies, which included Mexico and Chile calling on the International Criminal Court in January to investigate possible war crimes in Gaza. Last week, Mexico announced it sought to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, filed in December last year at the International Court of Justice. Among Latin American countries, recent elections that brought leftists to power resulted in reduced ties between Israel and Colombia, Chile, and Brazil. Conversely, Argentina’s recently elected president Javier Milei has taken the opposite path in his support for Israel.
Mexico’s Jewish community is as diverse as the general population in its religious outlook and political views. The older families descend from Anusim who hid from the Inquisition, and Sephardic merchants. Most of Mexico’s Ashkenazi families arrived in the early 20th century, fleeing from persecution in eastern Europe. The majority in both communities are politically conservative and support business-friendly policies. As a result, they were as likely to vote for Sheinbaum as most American Jews would for Bernie Sanders. Having a first Jewish president can be a moment of pride, but not when that individual has no connection with her community and its support for Israel.
Other comparisons have been made to Ukrainian president Volodymir Zelenskyy, who is also intermarried and spoke little of his Jewish heritage, but in contrast has attended Jewish events and expressed support for Israel. Both of them demonstrate that their views matter more to voters than their identities, with the presidency as the highest example of acceptance for Jews by society.
By Sergey Kadinsky
