Manuel Clouthier
Encyclopedia
Mexican people
Mexican people refers to all persons from Mexico, a multiethnic country in North America, and/or who identify with the Mexican cultural and/or national identity....
businessman and politician affiliated to the conservative National Action Party
National Action Party (Mexico)
The National Action Party , is one of the three main political parties in Mexico. The party's political platform is generally considered Centre-Right in the Mexican political spectrum. Since 2000, the President of Mexico has been a member of this party; both houses have PAN pluralities, but the...
(PAN). His staunch opposition to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party
Institutional Revolutionary Party
The Institutional Revolutionary Party is a Mexican political party that held power in the country—under a succession of names—for more than 70 years. The PRI is a member of the Socialist International, as is the rival Party of the Democratic Revolution , making Mexico one of the few...
and his sudden death in a car crash a year after the 1988 presidential elections
Mexican general election, 1988
General elections were held in Mexico on July 6, 1988. The presidential elections were won by Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who received 50.7% of the vote, the lowest for a winning candidate since direct elections were introduced for the presidency in 1917...
(where he was the PAN nominee) transformed him into a somewhat iconic figure for the Mexican.
Clouthier was born into the wealthy Clouthier family of Culiacán
Culiacán
Culiacán is a city in northwestern Mexico, the largest city in the state of Sinaloa as well as its capital and capital of the municipality of Culiacán. With 675,773 inhabitants in the city , and 858,638 in the municipality, it is the largest city in the state of Sinaloa...
, Sinaloa
Sinaloa
Sinaloa officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sinaloa is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 18 municipalities and its capital city is Culiacán Rosales....
. He graduated from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in 1957 as an agricultural engineer and co-founded a Catholic Family Movement (Movimiento Familiar Cristiano) with his wife Leticia Carrillo, with whom he had 11 children.
His leadership traits were formed back in the days when he attended Brown Military Academy in the United States. After that, he presided the Students Association while in college in Monterrey, Mexico, and when he graduated and began working, he spearheaded several business initiatives in his hometown Culiacán
Culiacán
Culiacán is a city in northwestern Mexico, the largest city in the state of Sinaloa as well as its capital and capital of the municipality of Culiacán. With 675,773 inhabitants in the city , and 858,638 in the municipality, it is the largest city in the state of Sinaloa...
that included among others the well being of his workers and the families of them.
After chairing several business chambers both locally and nationally, he joined the National Action Party and ran an unsuccessful bid for the Sinaloa governorship in 1986. Two years later he ran for president but officially came third after Carlos Salinas de Gortari of the long ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano of the National Democratic Front
National Democratic Front (Mexico)
The National Democratic Front was a coalition of left-wing Mexican political parties created in 1988 presidential elections, and that is the immediate antecedent of the Party of the Democratic Revolution. It was result of an agglutination of small political left and center-left forces with a...
(nowadays PRD
Party of the Democratic Revolution
The Party of the Democratic Revolution is a democratic socialist party in Mexico and one of 2 Mexican affiliates of the Socialist International...
).
He is credited in the greater part of bringing down the power of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), after decades of being in power.
Clouthier died in a controversial car accident while in the Culiacán
Culiacán
Culiacán is a city in northwestern Mexico, the largest city in the state of Sinaloa as well as its capital and capital of the municipality of Culiacán. With 675,773 inhabitants in the city , and 858,638 in the municipality, it is the largest city in the state of Sinaloa...
, Sinaloa
Sinaloa
Sinaloa officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sinaloa is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 18 municipalities and its capital city is Culiacán Rosales....
- Mazatlán
Mazatlán
Mazatlán is a city in the Mexican state of Sinaloa; the surrounding municipio for which the city serves as the municipal seat is Mazatlán Municipality. It is located at on the Pacific coast, across from the southernmost tip of the Baja California peninsula.Mazatlán is a Nahuatl word meaning...
, Sinaloa
Sinaloa
Sinaloa officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sinaloa is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 18 municipalities and its capital city is Culiacán Rosales....
highway. Some people claim that Clouthier's death was not an accident, but a planned attempt on his life by the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who had just officially won the presidential race in 1988 on one of the most controversial elections in Mexico's history, and on which Cuauhtémoc Cardenas was thought to had been the winner.
He was honored with a life-size statue in Los Pinos
Los Pinos
Los Pinos is the official residence and office of the President of Mexico. Located in the Bosque de Chapultepec in central Mexico City, it became the presidential seat in 1934, when Gen...
and several streets and plazas across the country.