Mexico Elects Claudia Sheinbaum as First Woman President

Let's take you to another election happening or has happened all the way in Mexico. Claudia Sheinbaum has been elected as Mexico's first female president. The former mayor of Mexico City had the support of the outgoing president. The election campaign was marked by unprecedented levels of violence, often carried out by organized crime gangs. Well, Ms. Sheinbaum has promised to reduce the violence and improve the lives of women in a country, one of the world's highest rates of femicide. Well, our Mexico correspondent, Will Grant, has more on the significance of that result, as well as how the new president will work with the US administration.

We are at the point where the country's electoral authorities have announced that Claudia Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City, is Mexico's first woman president. A piece of history, an extraordinary piece of history in a country which has been so dominated by men, by machismo in the political sphere for decades, centuries in fact. Here she has broken through. She's broken the metaphorical glass ceiling for generations of women and girls in Mexico to come. But for her, this is a watershed moment and for Mexico too. (01:21) I think they'll look at her record in Mexico City and be buoyed by that in Washington. But of course, there are very, very thorny issues between the two nations. The most obvious one being immigration and undocumented immigration through Mexico on its way to the US. We don't know, of course, what the political landscape in the United States is going to look like with the election looming there too. (01:46) A moment of flux, and we'll have to see how she gets on with whoever it is who takes over in the White House, or if there's continuity with the Biden administration. But let's just take a moment to just underline how important this is. Yes, other nations in Latin America have had women presidents, Brazil, Argentina, Chile. But Mexico now has its first female president, an extraordinary moment.

That's Will Grant there in Mexico-