Heberto Castillo

Who was Heberto Castillo?

Heberto Castillo Martínez was a Mexican civil engineer and political activist.

Castillo was born in Ixhuatlán de Madero, Veracruz, and received a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the National Autonomous University. An accomplished engineer, he taught several courses at the UNAM and at the National Polytechnic Institute, wrote several textbooks and invented the tridilosa.

He became a political activist and got involved in several workers' rights struggles, leading to imprisonment by the federal government in the infamous Lecumberri Penitentiary. Castillo was one of the first among leading left-wing politicians to express dismay at the dictatorial nature of Soviet-bloc governments, starting a movement towards a social democracy-based left wing and away from a Moscow-based left leaning opposition in Mexico.

During his lifetime he co-founded three political parties: the Mexican Workers' Party, the Mexican Socialist Party and the Party of the Democratic Revolution. In his last years in politics he became a staunch critic of the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas and, crucially, voluntarily withdrew from the presidential race in 1988 to support the unified candidacy of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas.