José Woldenberg

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José Woldenberg Karakowski (b. 1952 in Monterrey, Nuevo León) is a Mexican sociologist. He was the first president of the Federal Electoral Institute and serves as the current director of Nexos magazine.

Woldenberg, whose family came from Poland and Lithuania, graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) with a bachelor's degree in Sociology, a master's degree in Latin American Studies and a doctorate in Political Science. During his college years he studied film-making at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos but dropped out after three years.

He was drawn into politics in his twenties, spending five days in jail for his involvement in a university strike and becoming a founding member of the Unified Socialist Party of Mexico (PSUM, 1987), the Mexican Socialist Party (PMS, 1987) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD, 1989) which he left in April 1991.

He has worked as a Political Science professor at the National Autonomous University and has authored several books, including Antecedentes del sindicalismo (1981), Memoria de la izquierda (1998) and La construcción de la democracia (2002).

He was previously married to Julia Carabias, former Secretary of the Environment in the cabinet of Ernesto Zedillo, with whom he had a daughter.