Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, the son of a Mexican president who failed to win the office but whose work helped break the ruling party’s decades-long grip on power, has died. He was 92.
President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico confirmed his death in a social media post on Wednesday. The cause was not immediately clear.
Mr. Cárdenas was a leftist symbol in Mexico and throughout Latin America, and the only son of Gen. Lázaro Cárdenas, a hero of the Mexican Revolution who, as president in the 1930s, became immensely popular for his efforts to redistribute land to farm laborers and nationalize Mexico’s oil fields.
With a last name that evoked the former president and a first that recalled the last Aztec emperor, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas seemed to many destined to lead Mexico.
His sway over the Mexican people was so great that he could have, with a few words, set off a bloody civil war after obvious fraud in the 1988 presidential election robbed him of the victory that many believed was his.
But instead of whipping up their anger, he convinced his followers that they could launch a true revolution, not by taking to the streets but by returning to the polls.
“They would like us to call for a showdown to get them out of power by any means, in a disorganized and unprepared fashion, so they can respond with a blood bath,” he said in a speech before an angry crowd of supporters in Mexico City’s main square in the tumultuous weeks after the 1988 election. With his followers poised to attack the nearby National Palace, he urged calm and outlined a campaign to oust the governing party in the next election.
In 2000, when he made his third presidential bid, an opposition candidate from another party finally won the presidency. The victory ended seven decades of rule by the dominant party, and introducing the peaceful turnover of power among diverse political parties that has continued in Mexico since.
Political scientists and historians have recognized the singular role he played in changing the course of Mexican history, despite never occupying the post that he had once seemed born to occupy.
