Michoacán Politics

Lazaro Cardenas Batel, a founding member of the PRD party and current governor of Michoacan de Ocampo elected for the period 2003-2008, is the grandson of former President Lazaro Cardenas del Rio (1934-1940).

This Mexican state, the name of which honors Melchor Ocampo who played a key role in the elaboration of the Plan de Ayutla, is organized into 113 municipalities, as seen in alphabetical order in the following chart.

Regarding policies within the health sector, the State Plan for Development includes the opening of 55 polyclinics to reach the most isolated and marginalized communities. In addition, these communities will receive the so-called Health Basic Package, consisting of a medical doctor, a nurse and a health official, as well as sessions of health education and the provision of nutrition supplements. It also considers the distribution among children of a School Health Booklet, so that both parents and schools can in fact detect individual or group problems in good time and follow up the progress in the health of the children.

According to the Human Development Rate 2000, which considers and ponders on the factors that affect and influence the quality of life in the population such as education, life expectancy, personal income and housing, Michoacan is located in 27th place out of 32 states in the nation. This explains why 89 of its 113 municipalities are described as highly or severely isolated and marginalized, a fact that represents an enormous challenge for the local government as population is dispersed throughout the state in many micro-regions, usually formed by less than 2,000 inhabitants.

And to make things worse, most of the workers in the state of Michoacan earn barely one or two minimum wages, half of them work without ever receiving any type of benefit, and also half of them work in a small business formed by a staff of only between 1 to 5 employees.