Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, three-time Mexican presidential candidate, dies at 92

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced Wednesday that Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas has died at the age of 92. Cárdenas, a civil engineer by training, was a central figure in modern Mexican politics and a three-time candidate for the presidency.

He is the son of Gen. Lázaro Cárdenas, the president who nationalized the oil industry in 1938 and welcomed refugees from the Spanish Civil War. The younger Cárdenas began his career within the Institutional Revolutionary Party, serving as a senator and later as governor of Michoacán. In the late 1980s, he led a democratic faction that eventually broke away from the party to form the Democratic Revolution Party in 1989.

Cárdenas first ran for president in 1988, a campaign that ended in a defeat many attributed to electoral fraud. He returned to the race in 1994 and again in 2000, losing both times. In 1997, he became the first popularly elected mayor of Mexico City. In 2014, he resigned from his own party, citing its governance in Guerrero during the disappearance of 43 students.

Sheinbaum described Cárdenas as a man of firm principles who led a peaceful democratic movement. She noted that the 1988 election, where he should have been recognized as president, marked the start of Mexico's democratic transformation. She stated that his dignity remains a reference point for the nation.

Former leaders across the political spectrum mourned his passing. Vicente Fox, who served as president from 2000 to 2006, wrote that they were political adversaries united by the conviction that Mexico deserved complete democracy. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who served from 2018 to 2024, called Cárdenas a pioneer of the democratic movement. López Obrador noted that without Cárdenas, the country's political reality would be different, and that his ideals never die.

Cárdenas had three children with his wife, Celeste Batel, who has since passed away. One of their sons, Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, is also a politician.

The death concludes a long political career that spanned from the late 1980s through the 2020s, marking the end of an era for Mexico's left-wing leadership.