Adolfo Aguilar Zínser

Who was Adolfo Aguilar Zínser?

Adolfo Aguilar Zínser was a Mexican scholar, diplomat and politician who served as a National Security Advisor to President Vicente Fox and as a UN Security Council Ambassador in the midst of the US invasion of Iraq.

Born in Mexico City into an upper-class family, Adolfo Aguilar was the son of Adolfo Aguilar y Quevedo a criminal lawyer and Carmen Zínser, a philanthropist. He was also the grandson of Miguel Ángel de Quevedo El apóstol del árbol, considered the first environmentalist in Mexico and Ángela Quevedo de Aguilar a philanthropist.

Aguilar studied law at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, international relations at El Colegio de México and completed a master's degree in international and public affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. During the early seventies he briefly subscribed to Marxist ideology, and he headed Luis Echeverría's Center for Economic and Social Studies of the Third World during the mid-1970s.

He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, representing the Party of the Democratic Revolution in 1994 and served until 1997. From 1997 to 2000 he served in the Senate, representing the Green Ecological Party of Mexico.