Rafael Tovar y de Teresa CEM (April 6, 1954 – December 10, 2016) was a Mexican diplomat, lawyer, scholar and historian. First Secretary of Culture of Mexico in the president's cabinet of Enrique Peña Nieto (2015), he was Mexican ambassador to Italy between 2001 and 2007; He was the second president of the National Council for Culture and the Arts (CONACULTA), a position he held on three separate occasions until this organization became the Secretariat of Culture. He was also president of the 'Organizing Committee for the Commemoration of the Bicentennial of the start of the National Independence movement and the Centenary of the start of the Mexican Revolution' between September 2007 and October 2008.