He campaigned for the PRI presidential candidate, Adolfo López Mateos, in 1958 and, after the latter had won, became deputy interior minister under Díaz Ordaz. Having joined the PRI, he went to work for the party, receiving his first government post in 1952 in the navy ministry. He completed a law degree at the University of Mexico in 1945 and returned there two years later to teach in the law faculty. Luis Echeverría Álvarez was born in Mexico City on Januto Rodolfo Echeverría and Catalina Álvarez.
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Speaking to The Washington Post, Kate Doyle, a veteran analyst at the National Security Archive in Washington, described him as “a failed, tragic figure in Mexican history”, a man of wide possibilities who “was ultimately destroyed by his inability to see beyond, or his inability to rescue himself from, the political apparatus that created him”. A prisoner of the system which had nurtured him, he overreached himself after he had emerged on top. His career was a paradoxical mixture of reform and repression. He was defeated by a large margin and Waldheim went on to serve a second term.Įcheverría was a creature of the PRI who believed that the party should carry the torch of the Mexican revolution into every corner of the nation’s life. Looking for a role after the presidency, Echeverría campaigned to succeed Kurt Waldheim as UN Secretary-General in 1976. “He’s strong, he wants to play the right games,” was how Richard Nixon described him. Led to a costly tourism boycott of Mexico by the Jewish community in America.Īt the same time Echeverría maintained good relations with the United States. In 1975 the Mexican delegation to the UN General Assembly voted in favour of equating Zionism with apartheid, a move which The final humiliation came in the last months of his administration, when the peso was twice devalued against the dollar.Įcheverría was no less active on the international stage, opening an embassy in Beijing, allowing the Palestine Liberation Organisation to set up an office in Mexico City, strengthening ties with the socialist governments of Cuba and Chile and, when Salvador Allende was overthrown in 1973, granting asylum to his widow Hortensia Bussi. Despite higher earnings from oil and brisk economic growth, state spending vastly outpaced revenue.ĭuring Echeverría’s six-year term foreign debt rose from $4.1 billion to $24.1 billion and inflation reached 27 per cent. The expropriation of private companies alienated business interests and led to a flight of capital and an unsustainable balance of payments deficit. Yet they were enraged by the failure to prosecute the perpetrators of the 1971 massacre and the continued use of extrajudicial measures to crush armed dissent. These changes would seemingly appeal to the Left. Other reforms included the nationalisation of the mining and electrical industries, redistribution of land to the peasants and increased state spending on health, education, housing, social security and public works. The voting age was lowered and tertiary education expanded. When he became head of state in 1970, Echeverría, no doubt aware of the national trauma provoked by Tlatelolco, promised democracy and social justice. He was finally cleared of all charges by a federal court in 2009. He denied responsibility for the killings and refused to testify. After the 2000 general election had put an end to the 71-year rule by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), legal proceedings were opened against the former president, who was charged with genocide. The Tlatelolco and Corpus Christi massacres, the second named after the Roman Catholic feast day on which it took place, would haunt Echeverría for the rest of his life. At least 23 demonstrators were killed and hundreds more wounded. This time the students faced a government-organised paramilitary group called Los Halcones, or the Falcons. The second, again in the capital, occurred during the first year of Echeverría’s presidency. Official figures gave the death toll as 30. Students protesting against the government and the holding of the Games were confronted by the army, which opened fire. The first took place, while Echeverría was interior minister, in the Tlatelolco district of Mexico City, which 10 days later would host the 1968 Olympic Games.
Luis Echeverría, who has died aged 100, was a president with immense ambitions at home and abroad who ended up a pariah because of his part in two massacres during the so-called Dirty War between the Mexican government and its Left-wing opponents.