Emilio Cándido Portes Gil (Spanish pronunciation: [eˈmiljo ˈpoɾtes xil]; 3 October 1890 – 10 December 1978) was a Mexican politician, lawyer and diplomat who served as the 48th President of Mexico from 1928 to 1930, one of three to serve out the six-year term of president-elect General Álvaro Obregón, who had been assassinated in 1928. Since the 1917 Constitution forbade re-election of a serving president, incumbent President Plutarco Elías Calles could not formally retain the presidency. Portes Gil replaced him, but Calles, the "Jefe Máximo", retained effective political power during what is known as the Maximato.

Portes Gil was of Dominican descent and was born in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the state of Tamaulipas, in northeastern Mexico. He was a relative of Trina de Moya, a Dominican poet and former first lady of the Dominican Republic.

Although his grandfather had been a prominent politician in Tamaulipas, Portes Gil's father died when Emilio was young. He lived with his widowed mother in straitened circumstances, but a state grant helped Portes Gil receive certification as a schoolteacher. He sought to study law.

He was in law school during the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution and in late 1914, he allied himself with "First Chief" Venustiano Carranza, head of the Constitutionalist faction, who assumed the presidency of the country the following May. When Portes Gil graduated from law school in 1915, he had already begun his career in the public administration with a posting in the Constitutionalist faction's Department of Military Justice.

Portes Gil became part of the Northern leadership of the Constitutionalist Army, particularly Álvaro Obregón, who had defeated Pancho Villa's forces and eliminated them as a political or military factor in Mexico after 1915. Key to his subsequent political career was Sonoran general Plutarco Elías Calles. Portes Gil demonstrated skills as a lawyer and administrator, which catapulted him into the presidency of Mexico when Obregón was assassinated in 1928.

Over the ensuing years, he continued to serve the government in both a legal capacity (state supreme court justice in Sonora; legal advisor to the Ministry of War) and in elective office: he was elected to Congress in 1917, 1921, and 1923, and he served as governor of his native Tamaulipas on two occasions (1920 and 1925).

Between 28 August and 30 November 1928, he was Minister of the Interior (Gobernación) in the cabinet of Plutarco Elías Calles. When president-elect Álvaro Obregón was assassinated on 17 July 1928 by a Catholic opponent, a political solution to the crisis that did not include Calles returning to the presidency was necessary. Portes Gil, with the agreement of Calles, assumed office as interim president for a period of 14 months, when fresh elections were called.

Portes Gil inherited a widespread religious rebellion, the Cristero War, which Calles had provoked by aggressively enforcing anticlerical laws. As president, Portes Gil secretly negotiated the end to the conflict between the Catholic Church and the Mexican government, which created a modus vivendi that lasted decades. He had reassured the Catholic Church that its officials could petition congress to amend laws that it found to be offensive and that the government would not interfere with its internal operations. The government also granted a general amnesty to Cristero fighters. In 1929 Paramahansa Yogananda, founder of Self-Realization Fellowship, spent two months in Mexico, during which time President Portes Gil hosted the great guru. President Portes Gil afterwards became a longtime admirer of Yogananda’s teachings and later served as ambassador to India.