Mexico City”s first Jewish mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, has stepped down from her post and will make a bid to become Mexico”s President in the 2024 election, AFP reported.
Sheinbaum and Mexico”s Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, both announced within minutes of each other on Monday that they were stepping down as they seek to become the Morena party’s candidate to succeed President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the June 2024 vote.
Sheinbaum, 60, said she wants to be “the first woman in the history of Mexico to lead the fates of the nation.” Her resignation takes effect Friday.
Ebrard said last week he would be leaving the foreign ministry and made it official Monday in a meeting with the president.
The Morena party is scheduled to choose its candidate through a national poll over the course of several days in late August and early September.
Sheinbaum has been mayor of Mexico City since 2018. If she wins, she would become the first woman to govern the country.
Sheinbaum worked as an environmental engineer at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She spent four years as a PhD student in California.
As of 2018, when Sheinbaum took office, between 40,000 and 50,000 Jews resided in Mexico, about 75% of them in Mexico City. The current Jewish population in Mexico mostly consists of those who have descended from immigrants from the 19th and early 20th centuries.