Manuel Camacho Solís

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Manuel Camacho Solís (b. March 30, 1946 in Mexico City) is a Mexican politician who served with President Carlos Salinas. He currently belongs to the Frente Amplio Progresista.

[edit] Political career

Manuel Camacho joined the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 1965 and in 1988 he became that party's general secretary.

Manuel Camacho met Carlos Salinas at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where they became close friends. Camacho followed Salinas's trajectory in the Planning Ministry under the administration of Miguel de la Madrid. In 1985 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the first occasion, and in 1986, he was appointed to the cabinet as Minister of Urban Development. When Salinas took over the presidency in 1988, Camacho was appointed Head of Government of the Federal District (until 1997, the Federal District's Heads of Government, Regentes, were appointed by the President of the Republic).

On November 13, 1993 Camacho was designated Secretary of Foreign Affairs. In January 1994, and due to the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, he was assigned as the government commissioner for the peace in Chiapas. Following the assassination of the PRI's presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio in March 1994, and a failed attempt to clench the party's presidential nomination, Camacho broke with the PRI on October 13, 1995.

During Ernesto Zedillo's presidency Camacho stayed away from politics until 1999 when he announced his candidacy for the presidency for the Party of the Democratic Center, a party that he had founded along with Marcelo Ebrard.

Changing his stratey, in 2003 he became a federal deputy in the Chamber of Deputies representing the Party of the Democratic Revolution. He was selected to serve as a plurinominal deputy through an indirect election.

In 2004 he joined Andrés Manuel López Obrador's political campaign. He currently writes a column in a El Universal Newspaper.