Claudia Sheinbaum

Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo (born 24 June 1962) is a Mexican politician, scientist, and academic. Sheinbaum served as Head of Government of Mexico City, a position equivalent to that of a state governor, from 2018 to 2023. Elected as the candidate of the leftist Juntos Haremos Historia coalition, she was both the first woman and first Jewish person to be elected to the position. She is a candidate for President of Mexico in the 2024 Mexican general election.
From 2000 to 2006, Sheinbaum served as Secretary of the Environment under future president Andrés Manuel López Obrador during his tenure as Head of Government. Sheinbaum served as Delegational Chief of the Tlalpan borough from 2015 to 2017 and was elected to lead the Federal District in the 2018 election. Sheinbaum was elected Head of Government in the 2018 election, where she ran a campaign that emphasized curbing crime and enforcing zoning laws.
A scientist by profession, Sheinbaum received her Ph.D. in energy engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). As an academic, she authored over 100 articles and two books on the topics of energy, the environment, and sustainable development. Sheinbaum contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. In 2018, she was listed as one of BBC's 100 Women.
On 12 June 2023, Sheinbaum resigned from her mayoral position to seek Morena's presidential nomination in the 2024 election. If elected, Sheinbaum would be the first woman to serve as President of Mexico. On 6 September, Sheinbaum secured the party's nomination over her nearest rival, former foreign secretary Marcelo Ebrard. Polling conducted in 2023 has found Sheinbaum to be favored in the 2024 election.
Early life
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo was born to a secular Jewish family in Mexico City. Her father's Ashkenazi parents emigrated from Lithuania to Mexico City in the 1920s; her mother's Sephardic parents emigrated there from Sofia, Bulgaria, in the early 1940s to escape the Holocaust. She celebrated all the Jewish holidays at her grandparents' homes.
Both of her parents are scientists: her mother, Annie Pardo Cemo, is a biologist and professor emeritus of the Faculty of Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and her father, Carlos Sheinbaum Yoselevitz, is a chemical engineer. Her brother is a physicist.
Academic career
Sheinbaum studied physics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where she earned an undergraduate degree ('89), followed by a master's ('94) and a PhD ('95) in energy engineering. She completed the work for her doctoral thesis in four years (1991–94) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the U.S. state of California, where she analyzed the use of energy in Mexico's transportation, published studies on the trends of Mexican building energy use, and obtained a PhD in energy engineering and physics.
In 1995 she joined the faculty at UNAM's Institute of Engineering. She was a researcher at the Institute of Engineering and is a member of both the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores and the Mexican Academy of Sciences. In 1999 she received the prize of best UNAM young researcher in engineering and technological innovation.
In 2006 Sheinbaum returned to UNAM, after a period in government, publishing articles in scientific journals.
In 2007, she joined the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at the United Nations in the field of energy and industry, as a contributing co-author on the topic "Mitigation of climate change" for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. The group won the Nobel Peace Prize that year. In 2013, she co-authored the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report alongside 11 other experts in the field of industry.
Early political career
During her time as a student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, she was a member of the Consejo Estudiantil Universitario (University Student Council), a group of students that would become the founding youth movement of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
She was the Secretary of the Environment of Mexico City from 5 December 2000, having been appointed on 20 November 2000 to the cabinet of the Head of Government of Mexico City, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. During her term, which concluded in May 2006, she was responsible for the construction of an electronic vehicle-registration center for Mexico City. She also oversaw the introduction of the Metrobús, a bus rapid transit system with dedicated lanes, and the construction of the second story of the Anillo Periférico, Mexico City's ring road.
López Obrador included Sheinbaum in his proposed cabinet for the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources as part of his campaign for the 2012 presidential election. In 2014 she joined López Obrador's splinter movement which broke away from the mainstream left-wing party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution. She served as Secretary of the Environment in 2015.
Mayor of Tlalpan
From the end of 2015, Sheinbaum served as the Mayor of Tlalpan. She resigned from the position upon receiving the nomination for the candidacy of the mayor of Mexico City for the Juntos Haremos Historia (Together We Will Make History) coalition, consisting of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), the Labor Party (PT), and the Social Encounter Party (PES).
Mayor of Mexico City
2018 election
In August 2017, Sheinbaum was selected as Morena's candidate in the 2018 election for Mayor of Mexico City over Ricardo Monreal and Martí Batres. As a candidate, Sheinbaum named fighting crime and enforcing zoning laws to prevent overdevelopment as policy priorities.
During her term in office, Sheinbaum was accused by the PAN of being culpable for the collapse of an elementary school in a 7.1-level earthquake that killed 19 children in 2017.
On 1 July 2018, Sheinbaum was elected to a six-year term as the head of the government of the Federal District of Mexico City, defeating six other candidates. She became both Mexico City's first elected female mayor and its first Jewish mayor.
Tenure
In June 2019, Sheinbaum announced a new six-year environmental plan. It includes reducing air pollution by 30%, planting 15 million trees, banning single-use plastics and promoting recycling, building a new waste separation plant, providing water service to every home, constructing 100 kilometers of corridors for the exclusive use of trolleybus lines and the Mexico City Metrobús system, and constructing and installing solar water heaters and solar panels.
In September 2019, Sheinbaum announced a 40 billion peso (US$2 billion) investment to modernize the Mexico City Metro over the next five years, including modernization, re-strengthening, new trains, improving stations, stairways, train control and automation, user information, and payment systems. The construction of 200 kilometers of bicycle paths, six bicycle stations, 2,500 new bicycles for the Ecobici system, subsidies for public transportation, and the introduction of the Cablebús cable car system in the Iztapalapa borough have aimed to alleviate traffic congestion and improve transit.
As part of her administration's education policy, the "Mi Beca para Empezar" scholarship program was created for 1.2 million students from preschool to secondary education, later elevated to constitutional law in Mexico City. The Rosario Castellanos Institute of Higher Studies and the University of Health were created. In addition, community centers called Pilares ("Pillars") were established in marginalized neighborhoods and towns to promote arts, sports, education, and cultural activities. Sheinbaum was nominated by the City Mayors Foundation for the World Mayor Prize in 2021 in North America for her handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico.
In 2021, Sheinbaum removed a Christopher Columbus statue in Mexico city.
2024 presidential candidacy
Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, it was announced on 12 June 2023 that she would resign her post as Mexico City's mayor on 16 June. On 6 September 2023, she was officially chosen for the party's nomination in the 2024 election, defeating former foreign secretary Marcelo Ebrard. Sheinbaum has criticized the neoliberal economic policies of past presidents of Mexico, arguing that they have contributed to inequality in the country.
Political views
Social issues
Sheinbaum has described herself as a feminist. A supporter of LGBT rights, Sheinbaum presided over Mexico City instituting a gender-neutral policy for school uniforms. In 2022, she became the first Head of Government of Mexico City to attend the city's pride march.
Personal life
In 1986, Sheinbaum met politician Carlos Ímaz Gispert, to whom she was married from 1987 to 2016. She has one daughter from this marriage (Mariana, born in 1988, who in 2019 was studying for a doctorate in philosophy at the University of California at Santa Cruz), and also became stepmother to Rodrigo Ímaz Alarcón (born in 1982; now a filmmaker).
During the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico, Sheinbaum tested positive for COVID-19 on 27 October 2020, but was asymptomatic.
Controversies
Demolition of a chapel in the Colonia Cultura Maya, Tlalpan
On 29 April 2016, during Sheinbaum's tenure as Delegational Chief of Tlalpan, city staff authorized by the Deputy Director of the Legal Bureau and Government, José Edwin Cerón, demolished the Capilla del Señor de los Trabajos (Chapel of the Lord of the Works), a shed with a metal sheet roof that parishioners had placed years ago, on a piece of land located between Tapakan and Yobain Streets, in the Colonia Cultura Maya borough of Mexico City that was part of the parish temple of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Parish priest Juan Guillermo Blandón Pérez alleged that Sheinbaum was responsible for the demolition, claiming that the demolition was carried out without prior notification. This last church is located one block away north of the chapel, by Hopelchén Street, in the same neighborhood.
In the same block as the chapel is the Maya Culture Community Center. Days after the demolition of the chapel, Sheinbaum met with the bishop of the VI Vicariate of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico, Monsignor Crispín Ojeda Márquez; Armando Martínez, president of the Universidad del Pedregal; and Manuel Santiago, General Director of Works in the demarcation. They agreed to divide the property in half and build a chapel and a community art center.
Enrique Rébsamen Private School
Journalist Eduardo Ruiz-Healy accused Sheinbaum during her tenure as Delegational Chief of Tlalpan of a lack of transparency due to a failure to deliver a complete account of the authorizations and permits for land use, construction, and approval of maintenance, security and operation of the property that the Enrique Rébsamen Private School occupied, and neither, on the expansion of the building located at 19 Rancho Tamboreo Street up until 19 September 2017, the day on which the 2017 Puebla earthquake occurred, which mainly affected Mexico City, Morelos, Puebla, Tlaxcala, and the State of Mexico. The earthquake caused the total or partial fall of numerous buildings, including a part of the estate occupied by the Enrique Rébsamen Private School, located at 11 Rancho Tamboreo Street, in Colonia Nueva Oriental Coapa, where 19 children and seven adults died, in Tlalpan, when Claudia Sheinbaum was the borough mayor. In September 2016, during the Sheinbaum delegational government, the Institute for Administrative Verification ruled that the private school's building infringed on the use of land and exceeded the number of levels allowed, and denounced that the owner, Mónica García Villegas, had shown apocryphal documents. Enrique Fuentes, a lawyer for the group "Angels against Impunity" (Ángeles contra la Impunidad), integrated by parents of the deceased children, pointed out that the Tlalpan Delegation was notified as a "third party involved". He said the delegational chief had an obligation to act, but abstained, allowing the school to continue activities.
Background
On 31 August 1983, the Urban Planning Office of the Tlalpan Delegation, through the Construction Licensing Section, issued a construction permit on the land located at the address indicated above, for a Kindergarten school, two departments on four levels (the Enrique Rébsamen Private School), when the head of the Federal District Department was the Institutional Revolutionary Party member Ramón Aguirre Velázquez, and the delegational chief in Tlalpan, Guillermo Nieves Jenkin.
In 2014, after an earthquake of 7.2 magnitude, the architect and engineer Juan Mario Velarde Gámez, who presented himself as Director Responsible of the Construction [of the Enrique Rébsamen Private School], stated that the building had "the necessary equipment and security systems for emergency situations provided for in the Construction Regulations for the Federal District".
Collapse of Line 12 of the Mexico City Metro
At around 10:22 p.m. on 3 May 2021, several girders, part of the tracks, and two wagons of Line 12 ("Golden Line") of the Mexico City Metro collapsed, between the Olivos and Tezonco metro stations, on Tláhuac Avenue, which also serves as the boundary between the Iztapalapa and Tláhuac boroughs. The casualties were 26 dead, 80 injured, and five missing. Line 12 of the Mexico City Metro had been inaugurated on 30 October 2012 by the then Head of Government of Mexico City, Marcelo Ebrard, and the then President of Mexico, Felipe Calderón.
Engineering flaws which had existed since before the line's inauguration, became worse over time, necessitating maintenance repairs over the next three years, including an unprecedented closure of the line in order to re-shape some sections of tracks, and to replace the rails; most of these improvements were carried out during the term of Miguel Ángel Mancera as Head of the Government of Mexico City. On 4 May 2021, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, Marcelo Ebrard, said that the work was definitively delivered in July 2013, after reviews carried out for seven months, and expressed his willingness to respond and collaborate in the event of any request from the authorities.
The Norwegian company Det Norske Veritas (DNV), in charge of investigating the causes of the collapse of Metro Line 12, detected that one of the beams that collapsed already had structural failures since before the earthquake of 19 September 2017, a factor that had caused problems in the elevated section of the line that collapsed. On 28 June 2021, the general director of the Mexico City Metro who was appointed on 5 December 2018, was removed from her position by Sheinbaum.
Some critics said Sheinbaum and other leaders should have worked harder to improve the Metro's infrastructure. Some political observers have suggested that the political fallout from the crash may harm Sheinbaum's potential candidacy in the 2024 presidential election. The editor of the Mexico City daily newspaper El Financiero, Alejo Sánchez Cano, considered that the responsibility of Sheinbaum is unavoidable, stating that after having been in office for two and a half years she was negligent by not maintaining the metro system.
Selected bibliography
Sheinbaum is the author of over 100 articles and two books on the topics of energy, the environment, and sustainable development. A selection follows:
Consumo de energía y emisiones de del autotransporte en México y Escenarios de Mitigación, Ávila-Solís JC, Sheinbaum-Pardo C. 2016.
Decomposition analysis from demand services to material production: The case of emissions from steel produced for automobiles in Mexico, Applied Energy, 174: 245–255, Sheinbaum-Pardo C. 2016.
The impact of energy efficiency standards on residential electricity consumption in Mexico, Energy for Sustainable Development, 32:50–61 Martínez-Montejo S.A., Sheinbaum-Pardo C. 2016.
Science and Technology in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals, World Journal of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, 14:2 – 17. Imaz M. Sheinbaum C. 2017.
Assessing the Impacts of Final Demand on -eq Emissions in the Mexican Economy: An Input-Output Analysis, Energy and Power Engineering, 9:40–54, Chatellier D, Sheinbaum C. 2017.
Electricity sector reforms in four Latin-American countries and their impact on carbon dioxide emissions and renewable energy, Ruíz- Mendoza BJ, Sheinbaum-Pardo C. Energy Policy, 2010
Energy consumption and related emissions in five Latin American countries: Changes from 1990 to 2006 and perspectives, Sheinbaum C, Ruíz BJ, Ozawa L. Energy, 2010.
Mitigating Carbon Emissions while Advancing National Development Priorities: The Case of Mexico, C Sheinbaum, O Masera, Climatic Change, Springer, 2000.
Energy use and emissions for Mexico's cement industry, C Sheinbaum, L Ozawa, Energy, Elsevier, 1998.
Energy use and emissions in Mexico's iron and steel industry, L Ozawa, C Sheinbaum, N Martin, E Worrell, L Price, Energy, Elsevier, 2002.
New trends in industrial energy efficiency in the Mexico iron and steel industry, L Ozawa, N Martin, E Worrell, L Price, C Sheinbaum, OSTI, 1999.
Mexican Electric end-use Efficiency: Experiences to Date, R Friedmann, C Sheinbaum, Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, 1998.
Incorporating Sustainable Development Concerns into Climate Change Mitigation: A Case Study, OR Masera, C Sheinbaum, Climate Change and Development, UDLAP, 2000.
References
External links
1962 births
Living people
National Autonomous University of Mexico alumni
Academic staff of the National Autonomous University of Mexico
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory people
Members of the Mexican Academy of Sciences
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change contributing authors
20th-century Mexican engineers
Politicians from Mexico City
Party of the Democratic Revolution politicians
Morena (political party) politicians
Women mayors of places in Mexico
Mayors of places in Mexico
Jewish Mexican politicians
Mexican Ashkenazi Jews
Mexican Sephardi Jews
Mexican people of Bulgarian-Jewish descent
Mexican people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent
Heads of Government of Mexico City
Women governors of States of Mexico
Jewish women politicians
21st-century Mexican scientists
Jewish women scientists
Mexican women physicists
Scientists from Mexico City
Women climatologists
Jewish mayors
21st-century Mexican engineers
21st-century Jews
21st-century women engineers