Lombardo Toledano, Vicente

Lombardo Toledano, Vicente (vēsān`tā lōmbär`dō tōlāthä`nō), 1894–1968, Mexican labor leader. A successful lawyer, he became (1920) governor of the state of Puebla. In 1921 he joined the Mexican Regional Confederation of Workers (CROM). After the CROM lost the support of Plutarco Elías Calles it collapsed (1929), and Lombardo Toledano, a zealous Marxist, later founded (1936) the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) and became its first secretary. With the backing of President Lázaro Cárdenas the CTM soon rose in power and promoted urgent labor and welfare reforms. Under the conservative regime (1940–46) of Manuel Ávila Camacho, Lombardo Toledano was stripped of most of his power in the Mexican labor movement. He left the CTM in 1948 and founded the Popular party (later the Popular Socialist party), which he headed until his death. In 1949 he organized the Latin American Confederation of Labor (CTAL). He ran unsuccessfully for president in 1952.

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Lombardo Toledano, Vicente 

Born July 16, 1894, in Teziutlan; died Nov. 16, 1968, in Mexico City. Figure in the Mexican and international workers’ movement. A graduate of the faculty of law of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1919 and a professor at the university from 1919 to 1933.

Lombardo Toledano was governor of the state of Puebla in 1923. He was a deputy to the congress of Mexico from 1926 to 1928. He organized a number of national Mexican trade unions in the early 1930’s and organized a workers’ university in 1936. From 1936 to 1940 he was general secretary of the Confederation of Workers of Mexico. He was chairman of the Confederation of Latin American Workers from 1938 to 1963 and vice-president of the World Federation of Trade Unions from 1945 to 1965. The founder and ideologist of the Socialist People’s Party of Mexico (founded in 1948; up to 1960 it was called the People’s Party of Mexico), he was a member of the National Committee of Partisans of Peace of Mexico and from 1950 a member of the World Peace Council. In 1964 he became a congressional deputy. He wrote a number of works on political and social issues.