Luis Echeverría

Luis Echeverría Álvarez (17 January 1922 – 8 July 2022) was a Mexican lawyer, academic, and politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who served as the 57th president of Mexico from 1970 to 1976.

Echeverría was born in Mexico City to Rodolfo Echeverría Esparza and Catalina Álvarez Gayou on 17 January 1922.

His paternal grandfather was Francisco de Paula Echeverría y Dorantes, a military doctor.

He was the brother of actor Rodolfo Landa.

He was of Basque descent.

One of his childhood friends was José López Portillo, who would eventually succeed him as president of Mexico.

Echeverría met María Esther Zuno at the home of the artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, with whom they were friends.

The couple's social circle also included the artists David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco.

Echeverría joined the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 1944.

He eventually became the private secretary of the party president, Rodolfo Sánchez Taboada, which allowed him to rise in the hierarchy of the party and acquire his first political offices.

Echeverría was Deputy Secretary of the Interior during Adolfo López Mateos's presidency, with Gustavo Díaz Ordaz as Secretary of the Interior.

After a five-year engagement, Zuno and Echeverría, a law student at the time, were married on 2 January 1945.

José López Portillo served as their witness.

Echeverría studied law at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and obtained his degree in 1945.

Echeverría joined the university's faculty in 1947 and taught political theory and constitutional law.

Previously, he was Secretary of the Interior from 1963 to 1969.

At the time of his death in 2022, he was his country's oldest living former head of state.

Echeverría was a long-time CIA asset, known by the cryptonym, LITEMPO-8.

His tenure as Secretary of the Interior during the Díaz Ordaz administration was marked by an increase in political repression.

Dissident journalists, politicians, and activists were subjected to censorship, arbitrary arrests, torture, and extrajudicial killings.

After Díaz Ordaz left the Secretariat in November 1963 to become the presidential candidate of the PRI for the 1964 elections, Echeverría was appointed Secretary of the Interior to serve during the remainder of the López Mateos administration.

This culminated with the Tlatelolco massacre of 2 October 1968, which ruptured the Mexican student movement; Díaz Ordaz, Echeverría, and Secretary of Defense Marcelino Garcia Barragán have been considered as the intellectual authors of the massacre, in which hundreds of unarmed protestors were killed by the Mexican Army.

Echeverría maintained a hard line against student protesters throughout 1968.

Clashes between the government and protesters culminated in the Tlatelolco massacre in October 1968, a few days before the 1968 Summer Olympics were held in Mexico City.

Once Díaz Ordaz took office as president, he confirmed Echeverría as Secretary of the Interior, where he remained until November 1969.

He was one of four ministers retained by Díaz Ordaz from López Mateos' cabinet.

On 22 October 1969, Díaz Ordaz summoned Alfonso Martínez Domínguez—the PRI party president—and other party leaders to his office in Los Pinos to reveal Echeverría as his successor.

The following year, Díaz Ordaz appointed Echeverría as his designated successor to the presidency, and he won in the 1970 general election.

Echeverría was one of the most high-profile presidents in Mexico's post-war history; he attempted to become a leader of the so-called "Third World", countries unaligned with the United States or the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

He offered political asylum to Hortensia Bussi and other refugees of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile, established diplomatic relations and a close collaboration with the People's Republic of China after visiting Beijing and meeting with Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai, and tried to use Mao's influence among Asian and African nations in an ultimately failed attempt to become Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Echeverría strained relations with Israel (and American Jews) after supporting a UN resolution that condemned Zionism.

Domestically, Echeverría led the country during a period of significant economic growth, with the Mexican economy aided by high oil prices, and growing at a yearly rate of 6.1%.

He aggressively promoted the development of infrastructure projects such as new maritime ports in Lázaro Cárdenas and Ciudad Madero.

His presidency was also characterized by authoritarian methods including death flights, the 1971 Corpus Christi massacre against student protesters, the Dirty War against leftist dissent in the country (despite Echeverría adopting a left-populist rhetoric), and an economic crisis that occurred in Mexico near the end of his term due to a devaluation of the peso.

Detractors have criticized institutional violence such as the Dirty War and Corpus Christi massacre, and his administration's economic mismanagement and response to the financial crisis of 1976.

His suspected role in the Tlatelolco Massacre prior to his presidency has also damaged his reputation.

Numerous opinion polls and analyses have ranked him as one of the worst presidents in the modern history of Mexico.

In 2006, he was indicted and ordered under house arrest for his role in the Tlatelolco and Corpus Christi massacres, but the charges against him were dismissed in 2009.

Echeverría is one of the most controversial and least popular presidents in the history of Mexico.

Supporters have praised his populist policies such as a more enthusiastic application of land redistribution than his predecessor Díaz Ordaz, expansion of social security, and instigating Mexico's first environmental protection laws.