Concept
Nicolás Cámara Vales (1875 — 1956) was a Mexican liberal politician, diplomat and physician who served as governor of Yucatán on two occasions between 1911 and 1913 during the Mexican Revolution. After graduating from the University of Berlin as a Doctor of Medicine, he returned to Mérida where he specialized in pediatrics, opening the first children's hospital in the Yucatán Peninsula. After 1909, he joined José María Pino Suárez, his brother-in-law, campaigning in favor of Francisco I. Madero who wanted to democratize Mexico. After Madero and Pino Suárez were elected to the presidency and vice-presidency, Cámara served twice as governor of Yucatán, first on an interim basis before being elected to his own term. After the Ten Tragic Days, a military putsch, the Madero administration was overthrown and Madero and Pino Suárez were assassinated. Cámara spent several years in exile in Europe and the United States were he continued to practice medicine. During the interwar years, he served as Consul-General in Berlin and Vienna. Having founded the Henequen Regulatory Commission during his governorship, he later served as its chairman. Born in Mérida, Yucatán on 25 April 1875, the eldest son of Raymundo Cámara Luján, a wealthy landowner and businessman who made a fortune during the henequen boom, and María del Carmen Vales Castillo. His maternal uncle was Agustín Vales Castillo, a Yucatecan industrialist and banker who served as the Mayor of Mérida between 1902 and 1907. A member of the Pino-Cámara family, an old patrician family which could claim descent from several of the military commanders who had participated in Spanish Conquest of Yucatán. He was a direct-line descendant of Juan de la Cámara, the Spanish conquistador and nobleman who had been one of the founders of Mérida in 1542. He was also a descendant of Francisco de Montejo, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Gaspar and Melchor Pachecho, among others. María Cámara Vales, his elder sister, earned the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor in 1969.
