Francisco Javier García Cabeza de Vaca

Life

García was born in McAllen, Texas and holds dual US and Mexican citizenship; he graduated from McAllen Memorial High School. His family owns Maquinados Industriales de Reynosa and Desarrolladora Cava, companies that have provided service to such clients as Pemex, Caminos y Puentes Federales (CAPUFE), and the National Water Commission (CONAGUA). At the age of 12, he competed as a track and field athlete, the 1979 Tamaulipas state champion. As a result, he was sent to the National Athletic Tournament in Monterrey representing his home state. He received undergraduate degrees in business administration and branding from Houston Baptist University; while at HBU, he played on the school's soccer team. García would also obtain a master's degree from the Universidad de Monterrey and a diploma in project management from a business school in Barcelona.

In the late 1990s, García joined the PAN and began his political career. He served as a regional coordinator for the 1998 Tamaulipas gubernatorial election, and in 2000, he coordinated the Organización Amigos de Fox A.C. Zona Norte de Tamaulipas and was a member of the Consejo Estatal Amigos de Fox, both organizations devoted to the presidential campaign of Vicente Fox. That same year, voters sent him to the LVIII Legislature, where he served as the secretary of the Commission on Population, Borders and Migratory Matters and sat on two work commissions. In 2004, García became a national councilor for the PAN, a position he would hold until 2013.

Around this time, García founded Productos Chamoyada, S.A. de C.V., a Reynosa-based company devoted to the creation of confectionery products. In November 2009, the United States Food and Drug Administration circulated Import Alert 33-12, ordering the seizure of all hard and soft candies containing sweet peppers that Chamoyada and other companies attempted to export into the United States. The alert was issued because a 1997 inspection of similar sweets by the FDA's Dallas Division found them to contain "rodent filth and insect filth".

After a failed bid in 2002, Reynosa voters elected García to the municipal presidency from 2005 to 2007; during this time, he served as the liaison between mayors and the 2006 PAN presidential candidate, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa. He then bounced around in different positions. From 2008 to 2010, he represented Reynosa in the LX Legislature of Tamaulipas, heading the PAN parliamentary group in the state congress. For a time in 2011, he was the Director General of the Commission for the Regularization of Land Holdings (CORETT).

In 2012, García returned to Congress, this time as a senator for the LXII and LXIII Legislatures. He presided over the Agrarian Reform Commission and served on the commissions for the Navy, Communications and Transportation, and Energy; at the start of the LXIII Legislature, he also picked up the presidency of the National Defense Commission. Among his legislative projects were laws that toughened sanctions against judges and politicians involved with organized crime and penalized the improper use of uniforms.

2016 gubernatorial campaign

Effective January 29, 2016, García resigned from the Chamber of Deputies in order to pursue the governorship of Tamaulipas.

During the elections, a video attributed to Anonymous was released claiming that García owned a variety of undeclared properties, including a $2.5 million home in an exclusive Mexico City golf club allegedly acquired in 2015. The Party of the Democratic Revolution claimed that in three municipalities, organized crime threatened all the political parties and ordered them to support García Cabeza de Vaca's election.

In the June 5 elections, García earned 50.1 percent of the vote, making him the first non-PRI governor of the state in 86 years. He beat Baltazar Hinojosa Ochoa, the PRI candidate.