Porfirio Muñoz Ledo 1933 – 2023, D.E.P.

It was inevitable that Porfirio Muñoz Ledo would be a politician. His mother helped him overcame his stuttering by forcing him to speak and read faster and faster until he could clearly articulate 300 words per minute. And it seems, he never shut up afterwords.

As a small child, his political inclinations might already be seen. One of his playmates was his life-long friend Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, even before he attended the Rosa Luxemburg Elementary School, where he was considered a “rebellious” child who excelled at oratory… And, as a teenager attending a Catholic prep school, he picked up another talent for dispute settlement… boxing.

He obtained a law degree from UNAM, and considering the possibility of a diplomatic career, did post-graduate study at the Sorbonne. At UNAM, he had become president of the student body, indicating he would be having a political career as well, although much of his early actitity was in academia, working in Mexico, France (where he met his first wife), Britian, and Morocco, and in various government positions. Which, of course, meant being in politics… specifically the PRI at the time, evntually rising to Secretary of Education, and party chair.

The PRI was, in the words of Mario Vargas Llosa, a “perfect dictatorship” in his time. In 1976, Muñoz was a “pre-candidate” for President, and as party chair had a good claim to the position given the leftist-progressive image outgoing president Echivierra had tried to present to the world. Muñoz would later date the beginning of what would be his break with the old system to Echivierra’s “dedazo” (finger pointing) — the personal selection of his successor — José Lopez Portillo. Still, Muñoz stayed on as party chair while simultaneously serving as Mexico’s permanent representative to the United Nations, including a stint as chair of the Security Council. He was considered a contender for the Secretary General’s position, although, he joked that a Mexican Secretary General was as unlikely as a Mexican Pope.

All the time, despite… or perhaps because of… his privilged position within the ruling circles, he had doubts about the validity of the “Mexican system”. Despite the world prestige that Mexico enjoyed at the end of the 1970s, Muñoz Ledo recalled in a later interview that the country was not well served as a de facto one party state “I had participated in the system, having been president of the government party (Institutional Revolutionary Party), it was evident to me that despite the efforts that had been made to open up, it was a state party, we lived a system of state parties”.

Together with his childhood friends Cuauhtemoc Cardenas and Ifigenia Martínez. Muñoz Ledo, founded what was called the Democratic Current and then the National Democratic Front (FDN), joining dissident PRI members (including the young Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador), and the smaller left-leaning parties in a thwarted attempt to break the PRI’s hold on power. Although the cobbled together front only failed to gain the presidency through what is pretty well documented to be fraud, the new force, joining with the right-wing PAN, forced through constitutional changes that opened up (at least somewhat) a multi-party, more transparent political system.

While the FDN was unable to hold itself together, and some parties have come and gone… Muñoz was hardly alone in jumping from one to another party into the 2010s, he was a constant office holder.. in the Mexico city assembly, the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies … the grand old man of the left, and at when he passed away over the weekend, President of the Chamber (roughly equivalent to the US Speaker of the House).

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