1952 Mexican general election

General elections were held in Mexico on 7 July 1952.[1] The presidential elections were won by Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, who received 74.3% of the vote. In the Chamber of Deputies election, the Institutional Revolutionary Party won 151 of the 161 seats.[2] These were the last presidential elections in Mexico in which women were not allowed to vote.

1952 Mexican general election

7 July 1952

Nominee Adolfo Ruiz Cortines Miguel Henríquez Guzmán Efraín González Luna Party PRI FPPM PAN Home state Veracruz Coahuila Jalisco Popular vote 2,713,419 579,745 285,555 Percentage 74.3% 15.9% 7.8%

President before election Miguel Alemán Valdés PRI Elected President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines PRI

Campaign

President Miguel Alemán Valdés appointed his Minister of the Interior, Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, as the PRI's presidential candidate.

Miguel Henríquez Guzmán, a former priísta who left the party in 1951, was nominated as the candidate of the Federation of the Mexican People's Parties. The National Action Party (PAN) nominated Efraín González Luna as their first-ever presidential candidate. Finally, the well-known union leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano ran as the Popular Socialist Party's candidate.

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 a mariachi 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 of former President Lázaro Cárdenas regarding this election has been widely commented: Amalia Solórzano and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas -respectively the wife and son of the former President- reportedly supported Henríquez Guzmán's candidacy, while Dámaso Cárdenas (brother of Lázaro and then-governor of Michoacán) emphatically campaigned in favour of Ruiz Cortines; Lázaro himself was rumoured to be a simpatizer of Henríquez Guzmán, although officially he supported Ruiz Cortines -albeit in a rather discreet manner-.[3]

The former governor of Baja California Sur, Francisco J. Múgica (by then estranged from the PRI) made some statements during the campaign accusing Ruiz Cortines of having collaborated with the Americans during the 1914 US occupation of Veracruz. Ruiz Cortines denied the accusations and claimed that at the time he was in Mexico City in service of the Revolution under the command of Alfredo Robles Domínguez and Heriberto Jara Corona. Later in the campaign, during a visit to Veracruz on 7 June, the Municipality of Xalapa honoured him with a parchment denying the accusations and naming him a "Patriot and Illustrious Son of Veracruz".[4]

Results

President

Candidate	Party	Votes	%
Adolfo Ruiz Cortines	Institutional Revolutionary Party	2,713,419	74.3
Miguel Henríquez Guzmán	Federation of the Mexican People's Parties	579,745	15.9
Efraín González Luna	National Action Party	285,555	7.8
Vicente Lombardo Toledano	Popular Socialist Party	72,482	2.0
Other candidates		282	0.0
Invalid/blank votes			–
Total		3,651,483	100
Source: Nohlen

Chamber of Deputies

Party	Votes	%	Seats	+/-
Institutional Revolutionary Party	2,713,419	74.3	151	+9
Federation of the Mexican People's Parties	579,745	15.8	¹	New
National Action Party	301,986	8.3	5	+1
Popular Socialist Party	32,194	0.9	2	+1
Mexican National Party	24,139	0.7	¹	New
Invalid/blank votes		–	–	–
Total	3,651,483	100	161	+14
Source: Nohlen

¹ Between them, the Federation of the Mexican People's Parties and the Mexican National Party won three seats.[1]

Aftermath

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 of Miguel Alemán Valdés. Among those calling for justice were the former Mexican ambassador to Honduras, José Muñoz Cota Ibáñez, and Alicia Pérez Salazar.

Some military chiefs, sympathizers of Henríquez Guzmán and aligned with former president Lázaro Cárdenas, seized the opportunity and proposed to carry out a Coup 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.[5] 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 a surgery to get rid of a hernia; to keep the surgery as a secret from the media, an operating room was temporally installed in Ruiz Cortines' Mexico City residence.[6][7] After the successful surgery, Ruiz Cortines took office as scheduled on 1 December.

References

1. Nohlen, D (2005) Elections in the Americas: A data handbook, Volume I, p453 ISBN 978-0-19-928357-6
2. Nohlen, p468
3. Aguilar de la Parra, Hesiquio (2012). Adolfo Ruiz Cortines: El poder con honradez. Editores e Impresores Profesionales EDIMPRO. p. 176. ISBN 978-607-7744-44-3.
4. Aguilar de la Parra, Hesiquio (2012). Adolfo Ruiz Cortines: El poder con honradez. Editores e Impresores Profesionales EDIMPRO. pp. 172, 180. ISBN 978-607-7744-44-3.
5. Aguilar Garcia, Juan Carlos. "Henríquez Guzmán, el general que evitó un baño de sangre en 1952". Crónica. Retrieved 28 August 2018.
6. Aguilar de la Parra, Hesiquio (2012). Adolfo Ruiz Cortines: El poder con honradez. Editores e Impresores Profesionales EDIMPRO. p. 183. ISBN 978-607-7744-44-3.
7. Ortega, Eduardo (26 June 2015). "Nunca estuvo en peligro la vida del presidente: médicos". El Financiero. Retrieved 30 March 2020.