Claudia Sheinbaum takes office as Mexico’s first female president on Tuesday at the start of a six-year term, succeeding her mentor, the leftist populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador. López Obrador’s popularity helped the 62-year-old physicist and former mayor of Mexico City to a clear victory in the June elections. She will be the country’s first president of Jewish origin. Sheinbaum plans to continue her predecessor’s policies, although with her own emphases, pursuing his social programmes and expanding the rail network. The powerful drugs cartels form one of the greatest challenges facing th…