Esteban Moctezuma


Esteban Moctezuma Barragán is a Mexican politician formerly affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party and is currently a member of MORENA. He is a former senator and served as secretary of social development and secretary of the interior in the cabinet of President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León. From that position, early in January 1995, he pursued peace talks in Chiapas with the EZLN insurgents; in February the government pursued a strategy of military intervention, followed by a resumption of peace talks with the insurgents. In 2018, he was appointed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador as Secretary of Education.

1995 Zapatista Crisis

With President Carlos Salinas de Gortari economic and political reforms, the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico was getting propelled as an important player in world economy. When un solved ethnic situation was brewing in the Mexican county, that is when the Zapatistas uprising happen. The Mexican Government started immediate peace talks. In the early days of the new government administration, President Zedillo took a series of erratic decisions that completely broke with the previous administration agreements and with his own action plan previously defined.
On January 5 of 1995 the Secretary of Interior Esteban Moctezuma started a secret meeting process with Marcos called "Steps Toward Peace" They took place in the village of Guadalupe Tepeyac, belonging to the municipality of Pantelho, Chiapas. Important specific agreements that both parties agreed to comply where reached. In which the Mexican army withdraw of certain points, such as San Andres Larrainzar and Marcos accepted that a group of citizens to be involved in a formal negotiation to start in a couple of weeks. Because of the fast progress of the negotiations in the steps toward peace, the possibility of an agreement look very close, because of that Marcos wrote “I am being threaten by 'unemployment“.

Personal life

Esteban Moctezuma is the son of architect Pedro Moctezuma Diaz Infante and María Teresa Barragán Álvarez. He is married to Cecilia Barbara Morfín. Esteban Moctezuma received a bachelor's degree in economics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and a master's degree in economic policy from Cambridge University.
Esteban Moctezuma joined TV Azteca in 2002 and currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of :es:Fundación Azteca of the Grupo Salinas. and is a columnist for El Universal and :es:El Economista |El Economista.