Manuel de Jesús Clouthier del Rincón (June 13, 1934 – October 1, 1989)[1][2] was a Mexican agriculturalist, businessman and politician.

His 1988 presidential campaign challenged the dominance of Mexico's PRI party in the nation's politics, with rhetoric and protests before, during and after the elections.

Although officially coming in third, he remained a prominent political force in Mexico until his death in a car accident a year after the elections.

His mother remarried in Guadalajara, after which Manuel and his brother Marco Antonio were enrolled in the Instituto de Ciencias.

[1] In 1947, the boys’ father sent them to the United States to study middle school at the Brown Military Academy in Los Angeles.

He believed in democracy, in the social economy of the market, respecting the dignity of the individual, in solidarity and in subsidiarity.”[2] In his free time, he liked sports, singing, and playing poker and dominos.

[1] Clouthier died on October 1, 1989, in a car accident on the Mexico City-Nogales highway (KM158+100) in Culiacan, while on the way to a rally for a PAN candidate for mayor of Mazatlán.

[8] Thousands of people attended Clouthier's funeral at the Culiacán cathedral including Dionisio Garza Sada, Mauricio Fernández Garza, Concepción Guadalupe Garza, Ingrid Fiehn, Fernando Canales, Raúl Monter, Alberto Fernández Ruiloba, Javier Livas, Rafael Rangel Sostmann, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Luis H. Álvarez, Elías Villegas, Vicente Fox and Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios.

Tatiana is currently economy secretary by Morena, Rebeca recently quit the party after contending for Mayor of San Pedro Garza García, NL.

From then on, Clouthier shifted his focus to opposing the agrarian policies of then president Luis Echeverría, who expropriated lands during the last months of his term.

Although unknown at the time, he was instrumental in the founding of the newspaper El Noroeste with Enrique Murillo and Jorge del Rincón.

[1] In 1982, after the nationalization of the banks, he started the México a la libertad movement against authoritarianism, interventionism and increasing control of state of the economy.

[7] As a stump speaker, he relied on a stock of earthy stories, puns, jokes, anecdotes and analogies to get his points across.

In response, Clouthier organized a boycott of Jacobo Zabludousky's show “24 Horas” to protest the lack of opportunities for opposition candidates.

At the Federal Electoral Commission a PAN official got ahold of a computer file with the real returns and when discovered, was evicted.

[1][7] Clouthier and PAN affiliates took to the streets in protest in Mexico City, including a rally to the Angel of Independence that drew about 20,000 people.