Cardenas, Quautemock

Early life and career

Born in Mexico City and was named after the last Aztec Emperor Cuautemoc . The only son of the leader of the Mexican revolution and the popular politician Lazaro Cardenas and Amalia Solorsano. When he was seven months old, his father took office as president of Mexico . He graduated from Williams English College and preparatory courses at the College of San Nicolas de Hidalgo. Received a civil engineering degree at the National Engineering School of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) . He also attended special courses at the ministries of construction in France and Italy (1957). In 1958, he worked for some time at the Krupp company in Germany, after returning to Mexico, as an assistant director of a steel plant in Las Truchach (Michoacan state). In 1976-1980 - assistant secretary of state for forest resources and wildlife.

Ex-President's Son: First Steps in Politics

He began his political activity in 1951, when, on the eve of the 1952 presidential election, he supported the candidate from the opposition Federation of Mexican People’s Parties, General Miguel Enriques Guzman. At that time, Quautemock Cardenas often served as an assistant to his father in later years, when the ex-president remained an influential political figure ^[3] in the Institutional Revolutionary Party (IRP), which he tried in vain to return to more left-wing positions.

In 1954, as a student, he led a committee in support of the Guatemalan revolution , supporting the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz against the American invasion of this country. In 1959, together with his father, he organized the National Liberation Movement ( Movimiento de Liberación Nacional ), which called for support for the Cuban Revolution and domestic political reforms in Mexico, in particular, for the democratization of the ruling IRP and decentralization of power ^[4]

From the 1960s to the early 1980s, Cardenas Jr. held important posts in the Institutional Revolutionary Party and its affiliated organizations (in 1967-1968 - Chairman of the Technical Advisory Council of the National Peasant Confederation). As a member of the IRP, Kuautemok Cardenas was elected senator from Michoacán (from 1976 to 1980) and governor of the state (from 1980 to 1986).

1988 Election: A Stolen Victory

Already dissatisfied with the undemocratic ruling party, Cardenas sharply opposed the neoliberal policy of President Miguel de la Madrid (1982-1988), focused on the interests of big capital within the country and in the United States. When President de la Madrid appointed Carlos Salinas de Gortari , another pro-market technocrat, as his successor, the leftist elements inside the IRP created an opposition faction in 1986, the Democratic Movement, led by Cuautemoc Cardenas and Porfirio Munoz Ledo, another left-wing reformist leader.

With the designation of Salinas as an official candidate in 1987, Cardenas and other members of the Democratic Movement were expelled from the IRP. In an interview with historian Enrique Krause de la Madrid, he said: “let [the excluded] form a new party” ^[5] , but there was no time for its creation and registration on the eve of the July 1988 election. However, Cardenas could rely on the National Democratic Front - a coalition of many small left parties (People’s Socialist, Socialist Mexican, Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution, etc.), which stated that it intends to support his candidacy in the presidential election and against Salinas de Gortari ^{[ 6]} .

In his election program, Cardenas proposed to impose a moratorium on the payment of Mexico’s large external debt and on the privatization of a number of industries - the distinguishing features of the policies of the current authorities. On July 6, 1988, on election day, the system from IBM AS / 400 computers used by the government to count votes was “broken.” When it was restored, Carlos Salinas was declared the official winner with a result of 50.5% of the votes (Cardenas, according to official figures, had 31%).

These elections were not only the first in 59 years (since the creation of the IRP in 1929), in which the pro-government candidate did not receive a convincing victory, but also the most scandalous. Many Mexicans and foreign observers said the election results were unceremoniously rigged. Adherents of Quautemock Cardenas and the third candidate, Manuel Cloutier, took to the streets with massive protests. However, in September 1988, the Mexican Congress , which was dominated by the IRP, formally approved Salinas as president.

Democratic Revolution Party

After the 1988 election, dozens of DA activists were imprisoned or killed. The local elections of 1989 and 1990 were also accompanied by allegations of complete falsification of their results. On May 5, 1989, Cardenas, other leaders of the National Democratic Front and other leading center-left and left-wing politicians (including Francisco Arellano Bellock) established a new Democratic Revolution Party (PDR), in which Cardenas's followers merged with the Mexican Socialist Party (merged a number of communist and left-wing socialist forces) and smaller groups. Cardenas was elected the first president of the DA and was planned by her candidate in the 1994 presidential election.

The election year was accompanied by violent events, including the January 1 uprising of the Zapatista National Liberation Army in Chiapas , the March assassination of pro-presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio Murieta and his replacement with Ernesto Zedillo . In the August elections, Cardenas took only third place after candidates from the Institutional Revolutionary Party and the National Action Party , collecting an incomplete 17% of the vote. His unsuccessful performance in the presidential election could reflect the instability fears of the electorate, which decided to leave the “tested” and “stable” IRP in power.

In 1995, Cardenas played an important role in the peace talks with the Zapatista ^[7] In 1996, the Democratic Party elected a new party president - an ally of Cardenas Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador ^[8]

Mexico City Mayor

On July 6, 1997, Cardenas was a candidate for the newly created post of head of government (Jefe de Gobierno) in the Federal District - in fact an analogue of the mayor of Mexico City and the state governor . He defeated the government candidate, receiving 47.7% of the vote.

He resigned as mayor of the capital in 1999 (one of his allies, Rosario Robles, became his successor) to run for president in 2000, but in the presidential election he again took third place after the IRP candidate and the victorious National Action Party candidate Vicente Fox .

In 2002, Kuautemok Cardenas abandoned all party posts. November 25, 2014, he announced that he was leaving the DA, whose moral leader he had been considered for a long time. Many in Mexico saw in his departure from the party a manifestation of its internal contradictions and a growing crisis of identity. His former protege Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the same year created a new left-wing party - the National Revival Movement .

Kuautemok Cardenas remains a well-known opponent of neoliberalism , advocating state control over strategic enterprises, especially in the energy sector. He is the honorary president of the Socialist International .

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• Bruhn, Kathleen. Taking on Goliath: The Emergence of a New Left Party and the Struggle for Democracy in Mexico . University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press 1997.
• Carr, Barry and Steve Ellner, editors. The Left in Latin America: From the fall of Allende to Perestroika . Boulder CO: Westview Press 1993.
• Castañeda, Jorge. Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War . New York: Knopf 1993.
• Gilly, Adolfo, ed. Cartas a Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas . Mexico City: Era 1989.
• Taibo, Paco Ignacio II. Cárdenas de cerca: Una entrevista biográfica . Mexico City: Editorial Planeta 1994.