Carlos Payán Velver (2 February 1929 – 17 March 2023) was a Mexican writer, journalist and politician. He was a senator from 1997 to 2000, elected by the proportional representation mechanism for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). He was the founder of La Jornada.In 2018, the Senate awarded him its Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honour for his "unwavering defence of free expression and human rights".
Ricardo García Sainz Lavista (9 June 1930 – 23 August 2015) was a Mexican politician and administrator. He was director of the Mexican Social Security Institute between 1982 and 1991. He served in the Chamber of Deputies for the Party of the Democratic Revolution between 1997 and 2000 as part of the LVII Legislature of the Mexican Congress.
Francisco Epigmenio Luna Kan (3 December 1925 – 23 November 2023) was a Mexican politician who served as the Governor of Yucatán from 1976 to 1982.
Luna Kan was born on 3 December 1925 in the town of Noc Ac in the municipality of Mérida. He earned his medical degree from the National Polytechnic Institute's Higher School of Rural Medicine, writing his thesis on epidemiology and social characteristics of tubercular patients, before earning a master's degree in health sciences. Luna Kan was a practicing doctor of medicine then taught as a Professor of Medicine before first obtaining political office, at first being overseer of the state's rural medical system.Luna Kan was the first person of pure Maya ancestry to govern the state since the Spanish conquest of Yucatán. (In the early 1920s, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, who was partly Maya, had been governor.) For centuries the political elite had been Criollos (Yucatecans of pure Spanish ancestry). It was widely said that party officials of Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) took the unusual step of selecting a person of Maya descent as their candidate in 1975 because the opposition National Action Party (PAN) had been getting many votes in Yucatán, and PRI candidates had been getting a poor showing in the state's predominantly Maya towns and villages. It was said that PAN got the majority of votes in the previous governor's race, and the PRI managed to maintain control of the state only through fraud in counting votes.After his term as governor Luna Kan resigned from the PRI and joined the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). He unsuccessfully ran as that party's candidate for municipal president of Mérida in 1998. Francisco Luna Kan held a seat in the federal Chamber of Deputies as a PRD deputy for Yucatán.Francisco Luna Kan died on 23 November 2023, at the age of 97.
Heberto Castillo Martínez (August 23, 1928 – April 5, 1997) was a Mexican civil engineer and political activist.Castillo was born in Ixhuatlán de Madero, Veracruz, and received a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the National Autonomous University. An accomplished engineer, he taught several courses at the UNAM and at the National Polytechnic Institute, wrote several textbooks and invented the tridilosa.
He became a political activist and got involved in several workers' rights struggles, leading to imprisonment by the federal government in the infamous Lecumberri Penitentiary. Castillo was one of the first among leading left-wing politicians to express dismay at the dictatorial nature of Soviet-bloc governments, starting a movement towards a social democracy-based left wing and away from a Moscow-based left leaning opposition in Mexico.
During his lifetime he co-founded three political parties: the Mexican Workers' Party (Partido Mexicano de los Trabajadores, PMT), the Mexican Socialist Party (Partido Mexicano Socialista, PMS) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Democrática, PRD). In his last years in politics he became a staunch critic of the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas and, crucially, voluntarily withdrew from the presidential race in 1988 to support the unified candidacy of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas.
He died on April 5, 1997 at the age of 68, in Mexico City and received the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor (postmortem) that same year.
María del Rosario Ibarra de la Garza (24 February 1927 – 16 April 2022), also known by her marital name Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, was an activist and prominent figure in the politics of Mexico. She was a presidential candidate and was the serving president of Comité Eureka at the time of her death.In March 2006, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) designated Ibarra as its candidate to the Senate via proportional representation to serve during the LX (2006–2009) and LXI Legislatures (2009–2012); she won.
Arnoldo Martínez Verdugo (12 January 1925 – 24 May 2013) was a Mexican socialist politician and democracy activist. A long-standing leader of the Mexican Communist Party and the Unified Socialist Party of Mexico (PSUM), Martínez promoted political self-criticism, refused to support regional guerrilla movements, condemned the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and promoted the unification of the political left.