Carlos María Abascal Carranza was a Mexican lawyer and the Secretary of the Interior in the cabinet of Vicente Fox. He is the son of the writer Salvador Abascal, famous for his synarchist ideas.

The Mexican Secretariat for Home Affairs is the public department concerned with the country's domestic affairs, the presenting of the president's bills to Congress, their publication on the Official Journal of the Federation, and certain issues of national security. The country's principal intelligence agency, CISEN, is directly answerable to the Secretary of the Interior. The Secretary is a member of the President's Cabinet and is, given the constitutional implications of the post, the most important Cabinet Member. Additionally, in case of absolute absence of the President, the Secretary of Interior assumes the executive powers of the President provisionally. The Office is practically equivalent to Ministries of the Interior in most other countries and is occasionally translated to English as Ministry, Secretariat or Department of the Interior.