In the early 1990s, a young scientist named Claudia Sheinbaum moved with her family from Mexico City to Northern California to study at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
She lives in housing provided by Stanford University with her two young children and her husband, who is working on his Ph.D. There. For four years, Ms. Sheinbaum immersed herself in her new life as an immigration scholar in the United States.
She sat in on a course taught by the future Mexican foreign minister. Her protest against NAFTA made the front page of the Stanford Daily student newspaper. She found friends who missed Mexico as much as she did. To those who knew her, she seemed completely at ease in California, swimming in American academia.
“They could have been professors, they could have made a living here,” said Alma González, a close friend of Ms. Scheinbaum’s in California. “But they decided to come back.”
Now, thirty years later, she has been elected as Mexico’s next president, becoming the first woman to lead the country. She took office in October. Next month, Americans will vote to either retain a president with a stable relationship with Mexico or return to office a leader who threatens and belittles the country.
At such a defining moment, Ms. Sheinbaum’s experience in the United States and her interactions with American officials throughout her career provide important clues about how she will approach the biggest issue in her relationship with Washington.
Here are five things you need to know.
Sheinbaum lives a comfortable life in California.
From 1991 to 1994, Ms. Sheinbaum lived in the Bay Area and conducted research on energy use in Mexico. Ms. Sheinbaum, her husband and two children lived in a modest home among students from various countries, according to her biographer and two people who knew her at the time.
“She told me it was the best time of her life,” said Arturo Cano, a journalist who wrote Ms. Scheinbaum’s biography. “Her back door leads to a common area where her children play with children from all over the world.”
At the time, Mexican leftists like Ms. Scheinbaum had reason to be wary of the United States. The Bush administration had just invaded Panama, part of the history of U.S. intervention in Latin America. Bush also supported Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who was widely accused of fraud when he defeated a left-wing challenger in the 1988 election.
But the lab’s location in the hills above the campus of the University of Berkeley, known for its social activities, gave Ms. Sheinbaum a window into another side of American life.
“At Berkeley, this is where the free speech movement began,” said Harley Shaiken, president of Berkeley’s Center for Latin American Studies from 1998 to 2021. public participation and social movements.
She protested NAFTA.
While in the lab, Ms. Scheinbaum audited a UC Berkeley course on U.S.-Mexico relations, according to Jorge Castañeda, who teaches the course. Castañeda later became foreign minister in the center-right government of President Vincent Fox, but he said he was close to Scheinbaum and her husband at the time.
“They love the Bay Area,” Castañeda said in an interview. “At the same time, they are typical Mexican leftists who are dissatisfied with the United States.”
In class, Scheinbaum and her classmates studied “tensions, disagreements and conflicts” between the two countries and “the strengthening of economic ties,” according to a copy of the syllabus provided by Castañeda.
Castañeda said the most pressing dispute at the moment was the North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations, which have been criticized by the Mexican left because they believe “it will end Mexican industry and agriculture.”
When Mr. Salinas DeGotari was speaking at Stanford University, the university’s newspaper published a photo of Ms. Scheinbaum protesting with a sign that read “Fair Trade and Democracy Now.” !
The trade agreement, which came into effect in 1994, was revised under current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and will be announced by Ms. Sheinbaum will be reviewed during the term of office. The president-elect this year expressed doubts about the long-term benefits of the original agreement, telling a group representing U.S. private interests in Mexico that “development is based on low wages and cheap labor,” local media reported, calling the agreement ” Not producing the well-being we want.
But Ms. Sheinbaum appears to have no intention of breaking the deal she protested two decades ago. In April, she publicly stated that “this review is feasible and there will be no major problems.”
She understands the immigrant experience.
Sheinbaum told her biographer that one of her best friends in California was Alma González, an educator who moved to the United States in search of better-paying work.
Now, Ms. Gonzalez is a clinical researcher at Stanford University, but at the time she was cleaning houses for a living. She told The New York Times that Ms. Sheinbaum and her husband “did not engage in any derogatory or disparaging behavior.”
Both women miss their hometown. They sang boleros together and spent their afternoons searching for authentic Mexican food in the Bay Area’s immigrant neighborhoods, Ms. Gonzalez said.
“She knew all about coming here and wanting to come to Mexico,” said Ms. Gonzalez, who had undocumented family members at the time. “I think it weighs heavily on her that people have to come here to work and not be able to go back and see their families.”
Ms Gonzalez said the pair regretted “that there was no policy to allow people to come and go legally” and “if that was a priority for both countries, we would have had it.”
Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, said the experience may be part of the reason Ms. Scheinbaum “views the fate of Mexican immigrants in the United States as the most important immigration issue she needs to deal with.” .
“Cautiously optimistic” about her security strategy.
Experts say Mexican criminal groups have expanded their dominance across the country in recent years, smuggling vast amounts of synthetic opioids across the U.S. border while killing Mexicans at will.
U.S. officials have said privately they believe security coordination with Ms. Sheinbaum can be improved. As mayor of Mexico City, she took a different approach from Mr. López Obrador, who relied heavily on the military, by investing heavily in civilian police forces.
She has increased police pay and her administration has partnered with U.S. law enforcement agencies to target criminal groups, according to U.S. officials and experts. Homicides and other violent crimes dropped sharply.
“They actually work very well with U.S. agencies on security in Mexico City,” said Lila Abed, acting director of the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute. She said there was “cautious optimism” about Scheinbaum’s strategy “manner. Fight violence.
Juan Ramon de la Fuente, who was just appointed foreign minister in Scheinbaum’s future government, said in an interview that he saw the potential for greater security cooperation with the United States under Ms. Scheinbaum’s leadership.
“We all acknowledge that we need to work together, and we need to work together more effectively,” Mr. de la Fuente said.
She can speak English.
When Sheinbaum spoke to President Biden for the first time this month, the translator unexpectedly hung up, according to two officials briefed on the call.
So Ms. Sheinbaum decided to address Mr. Biden in English, and from that point on, the two leaders were able to speak directly, no longer relying on an interpreter.
This is a stark contrast to her mentor, Mr. López Obrador. López Obrador is a nationalist leader who has developed a smooth working relationship with President Donald J. Trump and Biden, largely because of his help in securing the border.
But López Obrador also relies on translators to communicate with U.S. officials, rarely travels abroad and rails against Washington’s “interventionist” foreign policy.
“The U.S.-Mexico relationship is so deep and multifaceted that being able to communicate directly rather than through an interpreter is really important,” said Shannon O’Neill, a Mexico expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Having close personal relationships is really important, and it all starts with language.”
Emiliano Rodriguez Mejia Contributed reporting. Christine Noyce Contributed research.
