Quintana Roo Founder Mario Ramírez Canul Dies at 81

CANCÚN — Mario Bernardo Ramírez Canul, a constituent deputy and politician whose career was indelibly linked to the legal and political history of the state of Quintana Roo, has died at the age of 81 after a long illness.

Born in Chetumal on August 20, 1944, Ramírez Canul earned a law degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), graduating in 1970. In 1972, he served as president of the Local Conciliation and Arbitration Board of what was then the Territory of Quintana Roo. Concurrently, he taught classes in economics, Mexico's political and social problems, and introduction to the study of law at the "Eva Sámano de López Mateos" Center for Technical High School Studies, an institution he also directed in Chetumal.

That same year, he began his political career as secretary general of the Territorial Committee of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a position he held until 1976.

On November 10, 1974, he was elected as a constituent deputy. He was part of the group of seven legislators who drafted the first Political Constitution of the State of Quintana Roo, which was approved on January 9 and promulgated on January 12, 1975. The only surviving members of that group are former governor Pedro Joaquín Coldwell and Sebastián Estrella Pool, a two-time former mayor of Felipe Carrillo Puerto.

Subsequently, beginning in 1975, he worked in the first state administration as chief administrative officer and private secretary to Jesús Martínez Ross, the state's first governor.

In 1987, he received his notary public license and took charge of Notary Public Office Number 11, based in Cancún, which in recent years he passed on to one of his daughters.

He also served as secretary general of the Benito Juárez municipality (Cancún) during the first part of the administration of Carlos Cardín Pérez (1993-96). Cardín Pérez was among the first to express his condolences on social media.

Although he never renounced his PRI affiliation, he also held the same municipal secretary general position during part of the administration of Gregorio Sánchez Martínez, who was nominated by an alliance of the PAN and PRD parties in 2008.

He is survived by his wife, Norma Ordóñez Gómez, and four children. A wake will be held beginning at 11:00 p.m. at Jardines de Paz.