Miguel Ángel Barberena Vega
Miguel Ángel Barberena Vega (4 August 1928 – 16 June 1999) was a Mexican Naval officer and politician. Early life Miguel Ángel Barberena Vega was born in Jesús María, Aguascalientes, the capital city of the Free and Sovereign State of Aguascalientes, Mexico, on August 4, 1928. (One source asserts he was born in Madrid, Spain, on that same date).) He spent his childhood in an old Hacienda called "Los Cuartos". He died at Pabellón de Arteaga, Aguascalientes in June 1999. Barberena Vega attended the municipal school of Jesús Maria and the "Sons of the Army" school in Cuernavaca Morelos. He performed his middle school as well as high school studies at the Autonomous Institute of Sciences, now called Autonomous University of Aguascalientes. Barberena Vega finished high school in 1946, and in 1947, he joined the Mexico Navy. He received the degree of Geographical Engineer of the Heroic Naval Military School, graduating in 1951, earning the class' highest grades. Military career He was commissioned for various units of the Mexican Navy as a midshipman and served on the Gulf coast and in the Pacific. In January 1953, he passed his professional examination for the title of Geographer Engineer and obtained the rank of Lieutenant Commander General of the Mexican Army Corps. He was commissioned to various units of the Navy as a gunnery officer and Chief of Navigation. Academic career In May 1955, he won a scholarship given by the University of Veracruz to study at the University of Michigan, where he completed graduate studies in Nuclear Engineering. In 1958, he was commissioned into the Navy Department at the University of Veracruz where he became a full-time professor in its School of Engineering at the Port of Veracruz. That same year, he lectured at the Heroic Naval Academy and was appointed Secretary of the Engineering Faculty. In 1961, when the Veracruzana University created its Institute of Science, he was appointed Founding Director. In December 1962 he was invited by the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) to take over the National Computer Center in Mexico City and set up an IBM-709, the largest computer in Latin America in its time (1963). Politician On December 1, 1964 he was appointed General Director of Railways in Operation, under the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation, by agreement of the President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz. (1964–1970). In 1970, during the presidential campaign of Luis Echeverría Álvarez, he was appointed Officer of the Institute of Political, Economic and Social Studies (IEPES in Spanish) in the state of Veracruz. In 1970, he occupied a [curule] seat as Senator, representing his home state in the XLIX and XLVIII Legislatures. He joined a partisan task committee, first in 1971, as the officer of the National Confederation of Popular Organizations (CNOP in Spanish) in the State of Nuevo León, and then as General Delegate to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI in the State of Baja California Norte. In March 1973, he became Secretary General of the National Executive Committee (CEN) of the PRI),