Cristóbal Arias Solís

Cristóbal Arias Solís (born 10 August 1954) is a Mexican lawyer and politician, belonging to the National Regeneration Movement. He has been a senator of the Republic three times: from 1988 to 1991, 1994 to 2000, and from 2018 to 2021. He also served as a federal deputy from 1982 to 1985 and from 1991 to 1994. He has been a candidate for governor of the State of Michoacán on three occasions by the Party of the Democratic Revolution and the Fuerza por México party. Since July 5, 2021, he is a senator to the Congress of the Union for Michoacán.

Biography
Born in Churumuco, Michoacán, he studied law at the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences of the Michoacana University of San Nicolás de Hidalgo.

Political career
During Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas's tenure as governor of Michoacán, Cristóbal Arias served as head of the entity's Government Secretariat. In 1982 he was elected federal deputy for the VII Federal Electoral District of Michoacán in the LII Legislature until 1985.

In 1988 together with the Democratic Current, he resigned from the Institutional Revolutionary Party and ran for the National Democratic Front to contend for a seat in the Senate of the Republic for the state of Michoacán in the 1988 federal elections, being elected as one of the first opposition senators in the modern history of the country. He later he formally joined the newly founded Party of the Democratic Revolution.

In 1991 he was appointed federal deputy of proportional representation by the PRD, for the State of Jalisco.

He participated as a candidate for governor in the 1992 Michoacán state elections, coming in second place, the PRI member Eduardo Villaseñor Peña being elected. The PRD denounced fraud on the part of the PRI government,  in the midst of massive mobilizations, Governor Villaseñor requested a license only 21 days after taking office.

In the 1994 federal elections, he was elected senator for the second time.

Due to the death of the constitutional governor Eduardo Villaseñor, the electoral process was brought forward to the 1995 Michoacán state elections. Cristóbal Arias Solís was re-elected to represent the PRD for the government's candidacy after internal difficulties with the pre-candidate Roberto Robles Garnica who alleged fraud and challenged the process.

Once again Arias got second place, beating PAN candidate Felipe Calderón Hinojosa but losing to PRI candidate Víctor Manuel Tinoco Rubí.

In 2001 he supported the candidacy of the Aztec sun of Lázaro Cárdenas Batel who would become governor. Under the argument that the PRD was no longer an instrument for transformation and social justice, and also ceased to be the opposition, he resigned from said political institute in a letter in April 2016.

In March 2018, he became a candidate for senator for the Juntos Haremos Historia alliance headed by Morena, a party founded by Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In the 2018 Mexican federal elections in Michoacán, he was elected in the second formula to integrate the Senate.

In the LXIV Legislature, he chairs the Government Commission of the Senate of the Republic, structurally the most important in the Upper House.