Francisco Labastida Ochoa

Francisco Buenaventura Labastida Ochoa (Los Mochis, Sinaloa, August 14, 1942) is a Mexican economist and politician.

Labastida graduated in economics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He also completed postgraduate studies in Santiago de Chile at the Latin American Institute for Economic and Social Planning of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean on Educational Planning.

He has been a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) since 1964, he was a member of the cabinet of President Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) as Secretary of the Interior; Secretary of Agriculture, Livestock and Rural Development, and General Director of Federal Roads and Bridges for Income and Related Services (CAPUFE). He has also been Mexico's ambassador to Portugal. He was also Governor of his native Sinaloa (1987-1992), Secretary of Energy, Mines and Parastatal Industry, and Undersecretary of Programming and Budget.

He was the first PRI presidential candidate to have lost in an election, his opponent being the former governor of Guanajuato, Vicente Fox Quesada, who would win the contest, immediately accepting his defeat after the publication of the first preliminary data.

He is president of the Center for Studies for the Development of Mexico and was a Senator for Sinaloa during the six-year term 2006-2012, of which he was present in the LX and LXI Legislature of the Congress of the Union of Mexico of the Senate of Mexico.

He is the brother of the Mexican philosopher Jaime Labastida.