Víctor Manzanilla Schaffer
Víctor Manzanilla Schaffer was a Mexican politician and diplomat who served as governor of the state of Yucatán. He was a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Early life and education
Manzanilla Schaffer was born on 13 November 1924 in Mexico City. His was the son of Rosa Schaffer Acevedo and Víctor Manzanilla Jiménez, the latter of whom was a revolutionary politician in Yucatán, the founder of the Anti-Reelection Party and a congressman. Manzanilla Jiménez was originally from Cansahcab, Yucatán, while Schaffer Acevedo was from Progreso, Yucatán. Manzanilla Schaffer's paternal grandparents were Filomena Jiménez and Guillermo Manzanilla, who was a public notary official. His maternal great-grandfather was Enrique V. Schaffer, a German jeweler.Manzanilla Schaffer earned an undergraduate degree from the School of Law of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, a master's degree in sociology from The New School for Social Research in New York, and a doctorate in law.
Career
He served as a legal assistant in the United Nations division of narcotics, as Mexico's ambassador to China and its first to North Korea, and for two terms as a member of the Senate and two as a member of the Chamber of Deputies for Yucatán's second district. He exerted unusual independence as a congressman, on one occasion voting against President José López Portillo's amendment of Article 27 of the Constitution.He won the 1987 Yucatán gubernatorial election in a landslide with 85.4% of the vote, or 280,130 votes in total. He succeeded Víctor Cervera Pacheco. He served as the governor of Yucatán from 1 February 1988 to 14 February 1991. Manzanilla Schaffer in 1989 began to consider privatizing Cordemex, the state rope company. He cited unproductivity as the reason, and began the privatization and restructuring the state's henequen industry in 1990, which was completed the following year in his successor's term. He also created the Directorate of Ecology of the Ministry of Urban Development, Public Works, Ecology and Housing of the Government of the State of Yucatán.
The term he was elected to was to last until 1994, but in 1991 he resigned three years before his term was to have ended, it is presumed at the urging of Cervera Pacheco and of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Manzanilla Schaffer was succeeded on an interim basis by Dulce María Sauri Riancho, the state's first female governor.