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 Mexico portal |
General elections were held inMexico on 7 July 1952.[1] The presidential elections were won byAdolfo Ruiz Cortines of theInstitutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who received 74.3% of the vote. In the Chamber of Deputies election, the PRI won 151 of the 161 seats.[2] These were the last presidential elections in Mexico in which women were not allowed to vote.
PresidentMiguel Alemán Valdés appointed hisSecretary of the Interior,Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, as the PRI's presidential candidate. The coordinator of Ruiz Cortines's campaign wasAdolfo López Mateos, who later succeeded him as president.[3]
Miguel Henríquez Guzmán, a former priísta who left the party in 1951, was nominated as the candidate of theFederation of the Mexican People's Parties (FPPM). TheNational Action Party (PAN) nominatedEfraín González Luna as their first-ever presidential candidate. Finally, the well-known union leaderVicente Lombardo Toledano ran as the candidate of thePopular Party (PP).
The 1952 campaign season saw the model of political advertising aimed at praising the virtues of a party's candidate adopted. It was also the first time in Mexican history that market research was used in a political campaign.
Among the opposition candidates, Henríquez Guzmán became particularly popular. His campaign used amariachi tune composed for him by Manuel Ramos Trujillo to promote his candidacy. Though this use of campaign jingles was condemned by critics who saw it as taking away the seriousness of politics, the success of the song throughout many regions of the country led to widespread adoption of this and other marketing techniques in future campaigns.
The alleged role of the family ofLázaro Cárdenas (president in 1934–1940) in this election has been widely commented:Amalia Solórzano andCuauhtémoc Cárdenas — respectively the wife and son of the former president — reportedly supported Henríquez Guzmán's candidacy, whileDámaso Cárdenas (brother of Lázaro andgovernor of Michoacán at the time) emphatically campaigned in favour of Ruiz Cortines; Lázaro himself was rumoured to be a sympathizer of Henríquez Guzmán, although officially he supported Ruiz Cortines, albeit in a rather discreet manner.[4]
FormerGovernor of Baja California SurFrancisco José Múgica (by then estranged from the PRI) made some statements during the campaign accusing Ruiz Cortines of having collaborated with the invaders during the1914 US occupation of Veracruz. Ruiz Cortines denied the accusations and claimed that at the time he was in Mexico City in service of theRevolution under the command of Alfredo Robles Domínguez andHeriberto Jara Corona. Later in the campaign, during a visit to Veracruz on 7 June, the Municipality ofXalapa honoured him with a parchment denying the accusations and naming him a "Patriot and Illustrious Son of Veracruz".[5]
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adolfo Ruiz Cortines | Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) | 2,713,419 | 74.31 | |
| Miguel Henríquez Guzmán | Federation of Parties of the Mexican People (FPPM) | 579,745 | 15.88 | |
| Efraín González Luna | National Action Party (PAN) | 285,555 | 7.82 | |
| Vicente Lombardo Toledano | Popular Party (PP) | 72,482 | 1.99 | |
| Other candidates | 282 | 0.01 | ||
| Total | 3,651,483 | 100.00 | ||
| Registered voters/turnout | 4,924,293 | – | ||
| Source: Nohlen | ||||
| Party | Seats | |
|---|---|---|
| Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) | 60 | |
| Total | 60 | |
| Source:UNAM | ||
| Party | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) | 2,713,419 | 74.31 | 151 | +9 | |
| Federation of the Mexican People's Parties (FPPM) | 579,745 | 15.88 | 2 | New | |
| National Action Party (PAN) | 301,986 | 8.27 | 5 | +1 | |
| Popular Party (PP) | 32,194 | 0.88 | 2 | +1 | |
| Nationalist Party of Mexico (PNM) | 24,139 | 0.66 | 1 | New | |
| Total | 3,651,483 | 100.00 | 161 | +14 | |
| Registered voters/turnout | 4,924,293 | – | |||
| Source: Nohlen,Chamber of Deputies,UNAM | |||||
In the official election count, Ruiz Cortines won with more than 74 percent of the popular vote, followed by Henríquez Guzmán with 16 percent. These results set off a wave of protests in several states by Henríquez supporters, which were violently suppressed by the administration ofMiguel Alemán Valdés. Among those calling for justice were the former Mexican ambassador to Honduras,José Muñoz Cota Ibáñez, andAlicia Pérez Salazar.
Some military chiefs, sympathizers of Henríquez Guzmán and aligned with former presidentLázaro Cárdenas, seized the opportunity and proposed to carry out acoup d'état so that Henríquez would become president. However, it was Henríquez himself who rejected the plan, and instead he asked his supporters to stop the violent protests.[6] Despite the intensity of the protests, the results stood, and as a result Henríquez Guzmán then retired from public life.
Many years after the election, Ruiz Cortines revealed that only five weeks before he was scheduled to take office, he underwent asurgery to get rid of a hernia; to keep the surgery as a secret from the media, anoperating room was temporally installed in Ruiz Cortines's Mexico City residence.[7][8] After the successful surgery, Ruiz Cortines took office as scheduled on 1 December.
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