Manuel de Jesús Clouthier del Rincón (June 13, 1934 – October 1, 1989) was a Mexican agriculturalist, businessman and politician. His 1988 presidential campaign challenged the dominance of Mexico's PRI party in the nation's politics, with rhetoric and protests before, during and after the elections. Although officially coming in third, he remained a prominent political force in Mexico until his death in a car accident a year after the elections.
Life
Clouthier was born on June 13, 1934, in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico to Manuel Clouthier Martínez de Castro and María Cristina del Rincón Bernal. He is a descendant of French Canadian doctor Jean Auguste Clouthier, who settled in Sinaloa in 1851.
He became known to friends and family, and later as a political figure, by the nickname "Maquío" which he was given during childhood.
He spent his early childhood in Culiacán, attending primary school at Colegio Cervantes. In 1942, his parents divorced and he moved with his mother and two brothers to Guadalajara. His mother remarried in Guadalajara, after which Manuel and his brother Marco Antonio were enrolled in the Instituto de Ciencias. Manuel was expelled from the school for bad behavior.
In 1959, he married Leticia Carrillo. The couple had eleven children, six daughters and five sons. According to his son, "Maquío was raised in the social doctrine of the Catholic Church and believed that wealth created a social obligation. He believed in democracy, in the social economy of the market, respecting the dignity of the individual, in solidarity and in subsidiarity." Thousands of people attended Clouthier's funeral at the Culiacán cathedral including Dionisio Garza Sada, Mauricio Fernández Garza, Concepción Guadalupe Garza, Ingrid Fiehn, Fernando Canales, Raúl Monter, Alberto Fernández Ruiloba, Javier Livas, Rafael Rangel Sostmann, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Luis H. Álvarez, Elías Villegas, Vicente Fox and Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios. Clouthier is buried at the Jardines del Humaya cemetery.
Agro-industry career
After graduating from Monterrey Tech, he worked for a time with Paul Williams in Mexicali. He then returned to Culiacán, where his father gave him seventy hectares of land to farm. Here he grew tomatoes, chili peppers, cucumbers and rice. Clouthier was successful with this, increasing his land holdings to 270 hectares and starting fourteen businesses in agroindustry.
In 1986, he was slated as the PAN candidate as governor of Sinaloa against Francisco Labastida Ochoa. He lost but PAN did not accept the results.