Carlos Salinas de Gortari
Carlos Salinas de Gortari (; born 3 April 1948) is a Mexican economist and politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who served as President of Mexico from 1988 to 1994. He is widely regarded as the most influential politician in Mexico over the last 30 years. Earlier in his career he worked in the Budget Secretariat eventually becoming Secretary. He was the PRI presidential candidate in 1988, and was declared elected on 6 July 1988 after a controversial electoral process and accusations of electoral fraud.
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas served as a senator for the state of Michoacán from 1974 to 1980 and as governor of that same state from 1980 to 1986. He won election to these two posts as a member of the then-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
When President Miguel de la Madrid, a centrist who began policy changes in Mexico that liberalized its economy, designated his presidential successor as Carlos Salinas de Gortari, another technocrat with centrist tendencies, leftist elements within the PRI formed a "democratic current." They demanded democracy and a return to a more leftist, populist stance by the PRI. Cárdenas and Porfirio Muñoz Ledo led this current. There was an informal rule within the PRI called '"el dedazo," the incumbent president's unwritten and exclusive right to designate his successor. (The expression was a reference to the action of pointing with a finger to the successor.) With the designation of Salinas as the official candidate, the democratic current were forced out of the PRI. In an interview with historian Enrique Krauze, De la Madrid said "as far as I'm concerned, let them go! Let them form another party." It was too late to form a new party in advance of the July 1988 elections, but a coalition of small left-wing parties, the Frente Democrático Nacional ("National Democratic Front") supported Cárdenas as their candidate.