Manuel Clouthier

Manuel Clouthier

Manuel de Jesús Clouthier del Rincón, also known as Maquío (June 13, 1934 – October 1, 1989) was a Mexican businessman and politician affiliated to the conservative National Action Party (PAN). His staunch opposition to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and his sudden death in a car crash a year after the 1988 presidential elections (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, Sinaloa. 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 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 (nowadays PRD).

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, Sinaloa - Mazatlán, Sinaloa 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 and several streets and plazas across the country.

External links

• (Spanish) National Action Party: Manuel J. Clouthier
• (Spanish) Manuel J. Clouthier "Maquío": Historical File

Party political offices
Preceded by Pablo Emilio Madero	PAN presidential candidate 1988 (lost)	Succeeded by Diego Fernández de Cevallos

Persondata
Name	Clouthier, Manuel J
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	June 13, 1934
Place of birth
Date of death	October 1, 1989
Place of death