Jorge Castañeda Gutman

Infobox US Cabinet official
name=Jorge Castañeda


order=
title=Secretary of Foreign Affairs
term_start=December 1, 2000
term_end=January 10, 2003
president=Vicente Fox
predecessor=Rosario Green
successor=Luis Ernesto Derbez
birth_date=birth date and age|1953|05|24
birth_place=Mexico City
death_date=
death_place=
party="Independent"
religion=
alma_mater=Princeton University
profession=Professor, Politician

Jorge Germán Castañeda Gutman (b. May 24, 1953) is a Mexican politician and academic who served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs (2000 – 2003).

Castañeda was born in Mexico City. He received the French Baccalauréat from the Lycée Franco-Mexicain in Mexico City. Then after receiving his B.A. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the University of Paris I (Panthéon-La Sorbonne) he worked as a professor at several universities, including the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University, the New York University, and the University of Cambridge. He also authored more than a dozen books, including a biography of Che Guevara, and he regularly contributes to newspapers such as "Reforma" (Mexico), "El País" (Spain), "Los Angeles Times" (USA) and "Newsweek" magazine.

Castañeda's mother worked as a Soviet diplomat at the United Nations in New York for the government of Joseph Stalin, while his father Jorge Castañeda y Álvarez de la Rosa is Mexican of Spanish-European descent. His father served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs (1979 – 1982), during the administration of José López Portillo. His half brother is Andrés Rozental Gutman [http://www.radioformula.com.mx/programas/LopezDoriga/articulos.asp?ID=212] , he was married to Miriam Morales (a Chilean citizen) and he has one son, Jorge Andrés.

Academic Books

Among his books is a highly readable assessment of leftist politics, "Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War" (Vintage Books, 1993). The book has had a wide readership in Latin America and elsewhere for its intelligent, sometimes controversial, overview of leftist politics in Latin America, after the fall of the Soviet Union; see History of the Soviet Union (1985–1991). The book provides a reliable historical account of leftist movements in Latin America, often spiked with lively anecdotes. The main theme is a shift from politics based on the Cuban Revolution to broad-based new social movements, from armed revolutions to elections. Another well known work of his is , which offers a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the Cuban revolutionary.

Political career

Castañeda's political career began as a member of the Mexican Communist Party but he has since moved to the political center. He served as an advisor to Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas during his (failed) presidential campaign in 1988 and advised Vicente Fox during his (successful) presidential campaign in 2000. After winning the election, Fox appointed Castañeda as his Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Following a number of disagreements with other cabinet members he left the post in January 2003 and began traveling around the country, giving lectures and promoting his ideas.

On February 4, 2008, Mexico City daily "El Universal" brought to light archival documents from the former Mexican intelligence service (DFS or Dirección Federal de Seguridad) documenting Castañeda’s espionage activities on behalf of Cuban intelligence (Dirección General de Inteligencia) from 1979 to 1985. According to the DFS document, his main tasks apparently were to channel sensitive government information to the Cubans, and to pressure his father (then foreign minister) to adopt policies beneficial to the Fidel Castro regime. [http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/primera/30399.html]

Presidential candidacy

On March 25, 2004, Castañeda officially announced his presidential campaign by means of a prime-time campaign advertisement carried in all major Mexican television stations.

Castañeda presented himself as an independent "citizens' candidate", a move which was contrary to Mexico's electoral law that gives registered parties alone the right to nominate candidates for election.

Castañeda's Court appeal

In 2004 Castañeda started to seek Court authorization to run in the country's 2006 presidential election without the endorsement of any of the registered political parties. In August 2005 the Supreme Court ruled against Castañeda's appeal. The ruling essentially put an end to Castañeda's bid to run as an independent candidate, however soon after this ruling took his case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in order to defend his political rights; as of 2008, the case is pending before the IACHR.

Bibliography

*"Nicaragua: Contradicciones en la Revolución." (1980)
*"Los últimos capitalismos. El capital financiero: México y los "nuevos países industrializados" (1982)
*"México: El futuro en juego." (1987)
*"Limits on friendship: United States and Mexico." (1989) Co-authored with Robert A. Pastor.
*"La casa por la ventana." (1993)
*"The Mexican Shock." (1995)
*"Utopia unarmed." (1995)
*"The Estados Unidos Affair. Cinco ensayos sobre un "amor" oblicuo." (1996)
*"La vida en Rojo, una biografía del Ché Guevara." (1997)
*"La Herencia. Arqueología de la sucesión presidencial en México." (1999)
*"Somos Muchos: Ideas para el Mañana." (2004)
*"Ex Mex." (2008)

ee also

*Mexican general election, 2006

External links

*en icon [http://www.nyu.edu/voices/rsvp?action=4&projectid=3 NYU: Voices of Latin American Leaders]
*en icon [http://www.project-syndicate.org/contributors/contributor_comm.php4?id=640 Jorge Castaneda's op/ed commentaries in the series "Statesman's Debate"] for Project Syndicate