Ricardo Monreal

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Ricardo Monreal

Ricardo Monreal Ávila (b. September 19, 1960 in Fresnillo, Zacatecas) is a Mexican politician affiliated to the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). He is a former senator, a former governor of Zacatecas and a former member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) being closely identified during his tenure in that party with former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

Monreal Ávila graduated with a bachelor's degree in law from the Autonomous University of Zacatecas (UAZ) and with a Ph.D. in administrative and constitutional law from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He worked as a professor of law for several years and got involved in several agricultural programs and farmers' organizations during most of the 1980s.

In 1991 he became president of the state chapter of the Revolutionary Institutional Party, a political institution he represented twice at the Chamber of Deputies, once at the local congress and twice at the Senate. In 1998, after failing to become the PRI candidate for governor in Zacatecas, he switched sides and joined the left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution, winning the election with 44.6% of the votes.

Monreal left the governorship in September 2004 and briefly considered to compete for the 2006 PRD presidential candidacy. Instead, he joined the presidential campaign of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the former Head of Government of the Federal District. In the general election of 2 July 2006, he was elected to the Senate for the PRD as a national-list PR senator.