Josefina Vázquez Mota

Josefina Eugenia Vázquez Mota ( [xo̞.se̞'fi.na'βas.ke̞s'mo̞.ta]) (born 20 January 1961, in Mexico City) is a businessperson and politician who was the presidential candidate of the National Action Party (PAN) for the 2012 elections. Vázquez Mota was trained as an economist and began her working career in family businesses and with various business organizations and conferences, also working as a journalist and writing books. She began her political career with the PAN by becoming involved in Mexico's federal Chamber of Deputies and then in the administrations of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón. She was the PAN's first female candidate for president.

Background Vázquez Mota was born in Mexico City on 20 January 1961. Her parents, Arnulfo Vázquez and Josefina Mota, are from the Sierra Norte de Puebla region of Mexico, and she has seven brothers and sisters. She says she is closest to her sister Lupita. When they were children they use to sell chocolate shakes on the street with a blender Josefina received for Day of the Magi.

Vázquez Mota spent the first five years of her childhood in a working-class neighborhood called Colonia 20 de Noviembre in Mexico City, began her education in public school, and started at La Patria es Primero School, in the Azcapotzalco borough. She was studious in school with an affinity for mathematics. Other university studies included courses in management at the Instituto Panamericano de Alta Dirección de Empresas, as well as a program called "Ideas e Instituciones" ("Ideas and Institutions") at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.

Vázquez Mota maintains a very strict diet and exercise regimen, as evidenced by an unusually thin physique. She has consistently denied speculation that she suffers from either bulimia or anorexia. She was the first female candidate for PAN president

She was elected to the Senate from the PAN's national list in the 2018 general election.

In the 2024 general election she stood for the Chamber of Deputies in the State of Mexico's 18th district (Huixquilucan) but was narrowly defeated by Claudia Sánchez Juárez of the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico (PVEM).