Cardenas Solorzano, Cuauhtemoc

▪ 1998

      In December 1997 Mexican leftist-opposition leader Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) was sworn in as mayor of Mexico City, the first-ever elected mayor of North America's largest city. Previously, the president of Mexico had appointed the mayor. Having won the July 6 election in a landslide, with 47% of the vote, he had the largest margin of victory by an opposition leader since 1929. The governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) polled 26% of the vote, followed by the right-wing National Action Party, which registered 16%. His election represented an opportunity for change, especially to dispel the criminal reputation that the ruling PRI government had acquired for alleged drug trafficking, bribery, and political assassination.

      Cárdenas was born on May 1, 1934, the year that his father, Gen. Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, became president of Mexico. Raised within the confines of Los Pinos, the presidential palace, he led a privileged life. Later, after having worked almost 20 years in engineering, Cárdenas launched a political career and was elected (1976) to the Senate. In 1980, as a member of the PRI, he began a six-year term as governor of Michoacán, his father's native state.

      Disillusioned with PRI maneuvers to undo reforms instituted by his father, Cárdenas split with the party in 1987. The following year he headed a coalition comprising Socialists and former Communists and made a bid for the presidency. In what Cárdenas believed to be an act of intimidation, his top campaign aide was murdered shortly before the election. While ballots were being tabulated, the government abruptly ended the count, declaring PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari president. Cárdenas continued to campaign during Gortari's six-year presidency, however, but ran third in the 1994 presidential election. In retaliation for Cárdenas's outspoken stand against government privatization and the North American Free Trade Agreement, Salinas's government targeted Cárdenas and his supporters. From 1988 to 1994 approximately 500 activists affiliated with the PRD were murdered.

      Cárdenas returned, however, to clinch the 1997 Mexico City race for mayor. Promising to tackle problems never before addressed by PRI leaders, he campaigned against poverty, corruption, crime, and pollution—issues that had plagued Mexico City for years. His campaign trips into some of the poorest districts in Mexico City gained him favour in the eyes of the poor and middle class, who were discouraged by the lack of progress within the city and the criminal allegations surrounding the PRI.

HEATHER A. BLACKMORE

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