Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, (born May 1, 1934, Mexico City, Mex.), Mexican politician who was the first elected mayor of Mexico City (1997–99).
Cárdenas was born the year that his father, Gen. Lázaro Cárdenas, became president of Mexico, and he was raised within the confines of Los Pinos, the presidential palace. He earned a civil engineering degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and worked for almost 20 years in engineering. In 1976 Cárdenas launched a political career and was elected to the Senate. In 1980, as a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional;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, as a member of the National Democratic Front (Frente Democrático Nacional)—a coalition mainly composed of socialists and former communists—he 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 and declared PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari president. Later in 1988 Cárdenas launched the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Democrática; PRD). In retaliation for Cárdenas’s outspoken stand against privatization and the North American Free Trade Agreement, both embraced by Salinas, the government targeted Cárdenas and his supporters. From 1988 to 1994, about 500 activists affiliated with the PRD were murdered. Despite the persecution, Cárdenas ran for president again in the general elections of 1994. He came in third, but the PRD gained additional seats in the legislature.
In 1997 Cárdenas ran for mayor of Mexico City in the city’s first-ever mayoral election. (Previously, the president of Mexico had appointed the mayor.) Promising to tackle problems left unaddressed by PRI leaders, Cárdenas campaigned against poverty, corruption, crime, and pollution—issues that had plagued the city for years. His campaign trips into some of the poorest areas gained him favour in the eyes of the poor and the middle class, who were discouraged by the lack of progress within the city and by the criminal allegations—including charges of drug trafficking, bribery, and political assassination—surrounding the PRI. On July 6 of that year, Cárdenas clinched the mayoralty with 47 percent of the vote; it was the largest margin of victory by an opposition leader in any general election since the PRI was founded in 1929. As mayor, Cárdenas succeeded in paving new roads, improving the city’s water system, and distributing free textbooks. However, many of his broad campaign promises were not fulfilled, and he lost his popularity.
Cárdenas stepped down as mayor in October 1999 to prepare for his third attempt at the presidency, in the 2000 election. Again he finished in third place. Cárdenas remained an influential member of the PRD, which had become Mexico’s major leftist party.