BY A.S. VALEN
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo was born on June 24, 1962, in Mexico City, to a secular Jewish family of Lithuanian and Bulgarian origin. She is the second daughter of the marriage of Carlos Sheinbaum Yoselevitz who was part of the Ashkenazi Jewish community originally from Lithuania that arrived in Mexico in the 1920s. He was chemist and a jewelry merchant and was active in the Mexican Communist Party. Annie Pardo, Claudia’s mother, is a biologist, is part of the National System of Researchers and in 2023 received the National Science Award.
Claudia’s parents were active in left-wing circles in Mexico during the 1960s, in protests, labor movements, and student revolts and in the 1968 student movement.
In their home, important meetings were often held with other political leaders, witnessed by that girl who 55 years later would become the first woman to govern the country. Following in the footsteps of her parents, Sheinbaum became involved in political groups and movements from a very young age.
Claudia completed her college studies at the Faculty of Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where she obtained, in 1989, a degree in physics with her thesis “Thermodynamic study of a domestic wood-burning stove for rural use.” In 1994, she obtained a master’s degree in Energy Engineering with her thesis "Economics of the efficient use of electrical energy in lighting." In 1995, she was the first woman to enter the doctorate program in "energy engineering" at the UNAM Faculty of Engineering and obtain a doctorate degree with her thesis "Trends and perspectives of residential energy in Mexico." That same year, she traveled to California for 4 years to carry out her research work for her doctorate at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, with a scholarship from UNAM. During this stay, she wrote numerous scientific articles, including studies on energy use and carbon dioxide emissions in the iron and steel industry in Mexico. Also in 1995, she joined the academic staff of the UNAM Engineering Institute, focusing her work on research to document the link between energy and climate change.
Climate change is one of her passions and she has developed methodologies that have allowed us to measure pollution and create warning systems on the emission of greenhouse gases.
Her political career began, when this trajectory, led to the president being recommended in 2000 to Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who at that time took over as head of government of Mexico City.
Sheinbaum was 37 years old when she became Secretary of the Environment of the Federal District, her first political position.
In fact, during those years she was a member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel of Experts on Climate Change (IPCC), a team of more than 600 academics who in 2007 won the Nobel Peace Prize for disseminating knowledge on the subject.
In the 1980s, as a physics student at UNAM, Sheinbaum became involved in the workers' struggle and in the strikes of those years. Even when she was outside the country, she continued to participate in protests, such as one that took place before the visit to California of then-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, in which the expansion of democracy in Mexico and "fair trade" between both countries was demanded.
She actively participated in the student movement of 1986 and 1987, which confronted “neoliberal policies,” and was part of the University Student Council (CEU) that also fought to improve the academic quality of professors and researchers. In records from the time, she is seen leading assemblies and giving speeches to the rest of her classmates.
On election night, Sheinbaum recognized the importance of becoming the first woman to hold the most important position in the country and stated that she will look after the future of Mexicans regardless of their political preferences.
Claudia Sheinbaum will have the reins of the country for the period 2024-2030 after a resounding victory. Morena, her political party and its allies have a majority in Congress, which will give Sheinbaum a boost to carry out priority reforms of her government. Her victory gives her a secure place in the country's history. Now her challenge will be to govern the different sectors of the population and promote profound reforms so that she is remembered as one of the great presidents of Mexico.
