Engineer Cuauhtemoc Cardenas Solorzano died on October 28 in Mexico City at the age of 92. A victim of an oncological illness, he was the first elected head of government of the capital.
Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas inherited that cause and devoted more than six decades to it, along with the defense of the rights of the working classes and the structural transformation of Mexico’s political system. He became established as a reference point for the country’s progressive, patriotic and transformative struggles.
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The engineer was the son of General Lazaro Cardenas del Río, who carried out the 1938 nationalization of Mexico’s oil industry, a decision that placed crude oil under state control and became a milestone of national sovereignty.
His remains are being mourned on October 29 at the Panteón Francés in the capital, the mausoleum where his life partner, Celeste Batel, also rests. He is survived by three children: Lázaro, Cuauhtémoc and Camila Cárdenas Batel.
🇬🇧 The Socialist International mourns the passing of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, our Honorary President, a tireless champion of democracy and social justice in Mexico and Latin America. Our heartfelt condolences to his family, his comrades and the people of Mexico.
📷 “Cuauhtémoc… pic.twitter.com/JEsGQyNnKf
— Socialist International (@Soc_Intl) October 29, 2026
From PRI to PRD
Cárdenas began his political activity in 1954 through the National Liberation Movement (MLN, in Spanish) and served as governor of Michoacán from 1980 to 1986. In 1987 he led the deepest break in contemporary Mexican politics. Together with Ifigenia Martínez, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo and César Buenrostro, he founded the Democratic Current within the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, in Spanish) to fight the imposition of the presidential candidate and the shift toward the neoliberal model.
He left the PRI that year and was nominated by the Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution, later building the National Democratic Front with a range of social forces. The July 6, 1988 presidential election was marked by the scandalous fraud of the “system crash,” which imposed Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Cárdenas led the peaceful protest, together with other candidates, to avoid violence and bloodshed in the country. That day marked a turning point in the struggle for clean elections.
After the fraud was carried out, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas drove the founding in 1989 of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), a platform oriented toward rejecting privatizations and budget austerity, and defending secularism and state control of strategic industries.
After his presidential bids in 1988 and 1994, on July 6, 1997 he became the first elected head of government of what was then the Federal District. His victory dismantled the direct control of the executive branch over the capital and established an administration with a social emphasis, transparency and priority attention to vulnerable sectors.
In May 1994 he met in Chiapas with the leadership of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), , in a gesture of rapprochement with the movement.
At 90, at the tribute paid to him by National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), he firmly recalled that winning democracy in Mexico cost the lives of between 600 and 800 activists who fell in various days of struggle. Their killings remained unpunished under the governments of the regime.
🕊️ Un encuentro que quedó para la historia. El 3 de julio de 2018, dos días después de su triunfo electoral, @lopezobrador_ se reunió con Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, a quien reconoció como precursor del movimiento democrático que daría paso a la 4T.
Así el momento. 👇#OnceNoticias 🔻 pic.twitter.com/ZkUXFx1lpP
— Once Noticias (@OnceNoticiasTV) October 29, 2026
Text reads: “A meeting that has gone down in history. On July 3, 2018, two days after his electoral victory,
@lopezobrador met with Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, whom he recognized as the precursor of the democratic movement that would lead to the 4T (4th transformation).”
Final Years and Honors
In his last years, Cárdenas defended strategic resources against transnational capital. On March 18, 2026, at the ceremony for the 88th anniversary of the oil expropriation in Pueblo Viejo, Veracruz, President Claudia Sheinbaum named him head of the Advisory Commission of the state oil company Pemex.
He received an honorary doctorate from the National Polytechnic Institute in January 2026, and in September 2026 the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) created the Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Chair in recognition of his contribution to sovereignty and self-determination.
He ran for president a third time in 2000. The defense of strategic resources was his last great cause, which he upheld uncompromisingly in his final years against the appetites of transnational capital.
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