Vicente Lombardo Toledano (July 16, 1894 – November 16, 1968) was one of the foremost Mexican labor leaders of the 20th century, called "the dean of Mexican Marxism [and] the best-known link between Mexico and the international world of Marxism and socialism." In 1936 he founded the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), the national labor federation most closely associated with the ruling party founded by President Lázaro Cárdenas, the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM). After he was purged from the union after World War II, Lombardo Toledano co-founded the political party "Partido Popular" along with Narciso Bassols, which later became known as the Partido Popular Socialista. Early career Lombardo Toledano was born in Teziutlán, Puebla, to middle-class parents of Sephardic Jewish descent from Spain and Italy. After obtaining his law degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 1919, he pursued a master's degree in philosophy and letters there, and he began teaching at both the Popular University and at UNAM. He taught at UNAM until 1933, and it was there that he became a member of an informal group known as los siete sabios (the seven sages). During his tenure at the UNAM, Lombardo Toledano helped to organize a teachers' union. In 1921 he joined the Labor Party. As leader of that teachers' union, Lombardo Toledano entered the Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM), the largest and most powerful union confederation of the day and a key supporter of the regimes of Presidents Plutarco Elías Calles and Álvaro Obregón. Lombardo Toledano served as the house intellectual for CROM, not benefiting directly from its corruption but acquiring access to power instead. Lombardo Toledano then served as interim Governor of Puebla in 1923, was a councilman in the Federal District in 1924 to 1925, and was a congressional deputy from 1926 to 1928. In 1925, during his tenure as a councilman, he met with the colleague Juan Rico and chose the day March 13th to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the founding of Tenochtitlan. CROM lost most of its influence in 1928 after a right-wing Roman Catholic associated with the Cristero movement assassinated Obregón. Lombardo Toledano then left CROM and the Labor Party in 1932. He had organized a faction which he called the "Purified CROM" who left the CROM en masse in 1932. This mass flight left the CROM representing only a few unions in the textile industry.