Mexico's new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has been famously quiet about her Jewish ancestry. Yet she will live and govern Latin America's second-largest economy from the Palacio Nacional, three blocks from Mexico's first synagogue and a neighborhood where Jewish immigrants first found refuge here.

Presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum arrives at her closing campaign rally at the Zocalo in Mexico City, May 29, 2024. Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and former Mexico City mayor, will be sworn in as Mexico’s first woman president on Oct. 1. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

Mexico’s first female president in more than 200 years of independence promises to protect an expanded social safety net and fight for the poor like her predecessor.