List of heads of government of the Mexican Federal District

Head of Government of Mexico City Jefe de Gobierno de la Ciudad de México
Seal of the Head of Government Office
Flag of Mexico City
Incumbent Miguel Ángel Mancera since December 5, 2012
Appointer	Party of the Democratic Revolution
Inaugural holder	Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas
Formation	December 5, 1997
Website	www.df.gob.mx (Spanish)

The Head of Government (Spanish: Jefe de Gobierno) wields executive power in Mexico City. The Head of Government serves a six-year term, running concurrently with that of the President of the Republic. The federal district, or D.F., is the seat of national executive, legislative, and judicial power, and is largely contiguous with the core of the sprawling Mexico City conurbation.

According to Article 122 of the Constitution, "the Head of Government of the Federal District shall be responsible for executive power and public administration in the district and shall be represented by a single individual, elected by universal, free, direct, and secret suffrage."

The title is commonly rendered in English as "Mayor of Mexico City" or (less frequently) as "Governor of the Federal District" (as the position was known in the early post-Revolution years), but in reality the position does not correspond exactly to either the mayor of a municipality (presidente municipal) or the governor of a state (gobernador) as they are understood in Mexican law.

For the greater part of the 20th century, the D.F. was administered directly by the President of the Republic, who delegated his authority to an appointed Head of the Federal District Department, known more commonly (and tersely) as the Regente ("Regent" in English). This non-democratic imposition was a source of constant and often bitter resentment among the inhabitants of Mexico City. Under the reforms of the state introduced by presidents Carlos Salinas and Ernesto Zedillo, the Regent was replaced by the first directly elected Head of Government in 1997.

On July 6, 1997, with a 47.7% share of the vote in an eight-horse race, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas won the first direct Head of Government election (this first term was to last only three years, to bring the office into line with the presidential succession). Cárdenas, a former presidential candidate who was, according to many, cheated out of victory in the closely fought 1988 presidential election, later resigned to compete in the 2000 presidential campaign and left in his place Rosario Robles, who served out the remainder of his term as the first woman to govern Mexico City.