José Woldenberg

Who is José Woldenberg?

Isaac José Woldenberg Karakowski is a Mexican political scientist and sociologist who served as the first president of the Federal Electoral Institute and currently works as director of Nexos magazine.

Woldenberg was born in Monterrey into a family that had immigrated from Eastern Europe. His father, originally from Poland, arrived to Veracruz at the age of two and lived a few years in San Luis Potosí while his mother had been born in the northern state of Chihuahua into a family originally from Lithuania.

He graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico with a bachelor's degree in Sociology, a master's degree in Latin American Studies and began a doctorate in Political Science, but didn't complete it. During his college years he also studied film-making at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos, but dropped out after three years.

He was drawn into politics in his twenties, spending five days in jail for his involvement in a university strike and becoming a founding member of the Unified Socialist Party of Mexico, the Mexican Socialist Party and the Party of the Democratic Revolution which he left in April 1991.