Josefina Eugenia Vazquez Mota (born 20 January 1961) was a Mexican businesswoman and PAN politician who ran for President of Mexico in 2012, garnering just 25.4% of the vote, behind the victorious PRI candidate Enrique Pena Nieto's 38.2% and PRD candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's 31.6%.
Biography[]
Josefina Eugenia Vazquez Mota was born in Mexico City, Mexico in 1961, and she was raised in a large working-class family. She worked as an economic journalist and author before entering the business world, and she later entered politics with the conservative PAN party. She served as Secretary of Social Development from 2000 to 2006, as Secretary of Education from 2006 to 2009, and as leader of the PAN parliamentary group from 2009 to 2011, when she ran for President. She became the first female major-party presidential candidate in Mexican history, and she ran on a platform of giving life sentences to politicians linked to drug cartels, granting more scholarships to students, labor-law reforms, combatting discrimination against women, and scaling back the military's involvement in the Mexican Drug War once trustworthy police forces were established. However, she was the least-known candidate from the three major parties (the PRI, PRD, and PAN), and she placed third in the election.