MEXICO CITY — Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, a leftist gadfly who campaigned for democracy during Mexico's era of one-party rule and later mobilized diplomatic resistance to the U.S. invasion of Iraq while serving as his country's ambassador to the United Nations, died Sunday in an automobile accident.
Police in Morelos state said the 55-year-old academic and politician apparently lost control of a sport utility vehicle on a curve, jumped a highway divider and collided with a bus traveling in the opposite direction. The accident occurred between Mexico City and Tepoztlan, 45 miles to the south where he had a home.
Aguilar Zinser was a leading figure in the opposition movement that broke the Institutional Revolutionary Party's 71-year grip on the presidency in 2000. But he became better known as the diplomat whose criticism of Mexico's powerful northern neighbor grew too strident for his boss, President Vicente Fox, who pushed him out in late 2003.
In a speech that infuriated American officials and helped prompt his dismissal, Aguilar Zinser declared that the U.S. considered Mexico "its backyard" and treated it as an inferior.
Like many politically ambitious Mexicans of his generation, Aguilar Zinser gravitated to the PRI-led establishment as a young man. After getting his law degree in Mexico and a master's in public administration at Harvard, he became a protege of President Luis Echeverria, heading a think tank set up by the Mexican leader to promote his vision of the nation as a Third World bulwark against U.S. influence.
But during the 1980s, Aguilar Zinser moved away from the PRI and was drawn to Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, a leftist who split from the PRI to run for president in 1988. By 1991, Aguilar Zinser was organizing anti-PRI, pro-democracy citizens groups. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1994 as a member of Cardenas' Democratic Revolution Party and to the Senate in 1997 as an independent.
As Fox mounted his campaign for the presidency, Aguilar Zinser found himself attracted by the conservative rancher's brash campaign style, even though the two men had little in common ideologically. Aguilar Zinser teamed with Jorge Castaneda, another influential leftist academic, to work for Fox, and the two helped him draw support across the political spectrum.
"Aguilar Zinser played a crucial role in the struggle for democracy in Mexico," political commentator Denise Dresser said. "He was on the right side of that battle, however strident, passionate and difficult he was."
