MEXICO CITY (AP) — By mid-2024, Claudia Sheinbaum will most likely become Mexico’s first female president. She would also be its first leader with a Jewish background in a country that’s home to nearly 100 million Catholics.
On June 2, voters will choose a new president, 628 congressmen and thousands of local positions — Mexico’s largest election ever, according to the National Electoral Institute.
Sheinbaum, a former mayor of Mexico City and the governing party’s candidate, has kept a comfortable lead in all polls against opposition candidates Xóchitl Gálvez and Jorge Álvarez Máynez.
What role has religion played in the ongoing campaign that will elect the successor to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador? The answers are nuanced.
Does Sheinbaum identify herself as Jewish?
The 61-year-old candidate has approached the question with caution: While she is of Jewish ancestry, she is not religiously observant.
Her four grandparents were Jews who immigrated from Lithuania and Bulgaria. She was born in Mexico City and her parents did not raise her under any religion. According to her campaign team, Sheinbaum considers herself a woman of faith, but she is not religiously affiliated.
Being Jewish can be an identity, but not necessarily a religious one, said Tessy Schlosser, director of the Jewish Documentation and Research Center of Mexico.
And Jewish identity is multifaceted, Schlosser said. It can be aligned with history, society, spirituality, geography and ideology. Even within the same Jewish community, for example, there may be conflicting views on Zionism or genealogy.
“For some, if you are born to a Jewish mother, you are Jewish,” Schlosser said. “For others, if you are born to a father. For others, if you have a grandfather. So, even in terms of lineage or racialization there are many debates.”
How big is the Mexican Jewish community and what is its relationship with Sheinbaum?
The first Jews arrived in Mexico in 1519, along with the Spanish colonization. The community began to grow substantially by the early 20th century, as thousands of Jews fled from the Ottoman Empire to escape instability and antisemitism.
To date, the Mexican Jewish community is formed by Ashkenazi Jews, from Central and Eastern Europe, and Sephardic Jews, mainly from Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain and Syria.
According to Renee Dayan — director of Tribuna Israelita, which serves as a link to the Central Committee of Mexico’s Jewish community — there are now about 50,000 Jews in the country. The majority are settled in Mexico City and its surroundings, with small communities in the cities of Monterrey, Guadalajara, Tijuana, Cancún, San Miguel de Allende and Los Cabos.
As a general practice, the Jewish community maintains relationships with a broad range of local authorities and does not endorse any particular candidate or party, Dayan said. However, it is open to meeting with politicians who wish to discuss their proposals and recently met with Sheinbaum, Gálvez and Álvarez Máynez.
While welcoming the dialogue with Sheinbaum, members of the Jewish community do not consider her to be part of their ranks, in part because Sheinbaum herself has rejected any such connection.
“Claudia has actively tried to say: ‘This is not me,” Schlosser said. “It must be respected when a person does not want to be identified in one way or another.”
More broadly, Schlosser said, Mexico’s political world does not extend any special benefits to high-ranking politicians who represent social or religious diversity.
Has Sheinbaum’s Jewish identity had any impact in the electoral process?
In mid-2023, former Mexican president Vicente Fox wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Sheinbaum was “Jewish and foreigner at the same time.”
That comment — denounced as “antisemitic, racist and xenophobic” — was not isolated. Fox was responding to criticism made by another user who said that Sheinbaum was “fake” for using a rosary…
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