Javier Corral Jurado

Javier Corral Jurado (born 2 August 1966, in El Paso, Texas) is a Mexican politician affiliated with the National Action Party (PAN), and the current Governor of Chihuahua, assuming office on October 4, 2016. He has served in politics since the early 1980s, including six terms between the Chamber of Deputies and Senate. Corral also specializes in communications and has a long career as a columnist and founder of various publications; he also was instrumental in the successful constitutional challenge that struck down the Televisa Law.[3]

Corral was born on 2 August 1966 in El Paso, Texas, United States but spent much of his childhood across the border in Ciudad Juárez; in a 2016 interview, he noted that “although I was born on the other side of the border, I am 100 percent juarense”.[4] His mother, Socorro Jurado Ríos, sought to protect her children by giving birth to them in the United States.[4] Javier was named for Javier Solís, an actor who had died several months before his birth.[4] In 1978, Corral’s mother died when a gas tanker exploded on the Mexico City-Querétaro highway and killed 200 people; by this time, she was selling jewelry and clothing in order to support her six children, and she had already separated from Corral’s father.[4]

At the age of 11, Corral worked for El Diario de Juárez newspaper and was referred to as “the kid journalist”.[4] In 1979, he traveled to the White House to receive the International Youth Journalism Award from President Jimmy Carter.[4] Not long after, Arnoldo Cabada de la O, then an employee at XEJ-TDT, invited him to work on his newscast; when Cabada had a falling out with station owner Pedro Meneses Hoyos, Corral followed Cabada to the new XHIJ-TDT.