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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2005 
Aguilar Zinser Dies in Crash
 El Universal
| | In this file photo, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, right, with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan at the organization's headquarters in New York (Photo: AP) |
Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Mexico's former ambassador to the United Nations, was killed in a car accident Sunday afternoon in Tepoztlan, Morelos, where he had a weekend home. He was 55.
A Morelos state police official said that Aguilar Zinser was driving a sport utility vehicle with only his dog on board when the vehicle jumped a highway divide and struck a bus traveling in the opposite direction.
The SUV apparently lost control near a sharp curve in the highway that links Mexico City and Tepoztlan, a town 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of Mexico City.
As ambassador, Aguilar Zinser caused a stir in late 2003 with a comment that the United States treated Mexico as its "back yard." That assertion raised hackles in the Bush White House and as a result, Aguilar Zinser was ultimately forced out of his job by President Vicente Fox.
Aguilar Zinser had most recently been appearing on the TV political debate program "Séptimo Día," until the show's producer, Channel 40, went off the air last month amidst a labor dispute.
He was born in Mexico City in 1949 and graduated with a law degree from the National Autonomous University, or UNAM, and a degree in international relations from the Colegio de México. He also received a master's degree in public administration from Harvard University in 1978.
During his early political life in the 1970s, Aguilar Zinser was a member of the then-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. In 1993 he switched his affiliation to the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, and was elected to the lower house of Congress under that party's banner. He finished out his term in 1997 as an independent, however.
In October of 1997, Aguilar Zinser was elected to the Senate as a member of the Green Party. He served as an integral part of the campaign that resulted in Fox's historic victory in 2000, an election that ended 71 years of single-party rule.
Along with former Foreign Relations Secretary Jorge Castañeda, Aguilar Zinser was a key element in the conservative Fox's attempt to attract support from the left. Aguilar Zinser served as Fox's national security adviser in the early days of the administration.
He later was named the nation's ambassador to the United Nations, where he was a vocal critic of the United States' unilateral actions in Iraq. He was eventually forced out of his position amidst a brouhaha which erupted after he told university students in Mexico City that "unfortunately, the understanding that the political and intellectual class of the United States has of Mexico is a country whose position is that of a back yard." |
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