por Who is Luis Echeverria Alvarez?
Luis Echeverria Alvarez (1922–present) is a lawyer and politician who ruled Mexico from 1970 to 1976, as a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). He is currently the longest-serving former Mexican president in the country’s history. In January 2022 he turned 100 years old.
He was characterized by maintaining an authoritarian government, and as Undersecretary of the Interior in the presidency of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, he was implicated in the Tlatelolco massacre.
Under his tenure, the Corpus Christi massacre (also called “El Halconazo”) took place against student protesters.
In addition, during his government the Dirty War against leftist uprisings in the country was brewing while he adopted a rhetorical left-wing populist position and worsened the economic crisis that occurred in the country towards the end of his term.
On the other hand, he established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China after visiting the country and forced relations with Israel after supporting a UN resolution. He also unsuccessfully tried to become UN Secretary General when he finished his term.
Over the next few years an investigation was opened and he was charged and even sentenced to house arrest for his role in the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre and the 1971 Corpus Christi massacre. freedom.
Biography of Luis Echeverria Alvarez
Beginnings in politics
Luis Echeverría Álvarez was born on January 17, 1922 in Mexico City, Mexico. His parents were Rodolfo Echeverría and Catalina Álvarez. Echeverría remained in Mexico City during his primary and secondary studies.
Although there is little information about his childhood, it is known that at the age of 22 he began his political career and became the private secretary of the leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), General Rodolfo Sánchez Taboada.
Then, in 1945, he managed to obtain his law degree at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and, in addition, he taught classes in political theory.
He quickly rose through the ranks of political circles and held several important positions in the government and in the PRI. That same year he married María Esther Zuno.
In 1957 he was appointed administrative director of the Central Executive Committee of the PRI and was chosen to give the main nomination speech for the next president of Mexico, Adolfo López Mateos, for the period (1958-1964).
In 1964, he served as Secretary of the Interior under President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz. During that time and subsequent years he took a hard line against student protesters that ended in the Tlatelolco massacre.
Participation in the Tlatelolco massacre
The event of the Tlatelolco massacre occurred on October 2, 1968, in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, in the Tlatelolco area of Mexico City. It consisted of the murder of students and civilians by the military and police.
The massacre took place ten days before the opening of that year’s Summer Olympics in Mexico City, an event for which Díaz Ordaz had invested a significant amount in dollars.
Echeverría was chosen by the Díaz Ordaz government to negotiate with the leftist student movement, which was threatening to disrupt the opening of the Olympic Games, as the students were dissatisfied with the PRI regime and were fighting to restore democracy in Mexico.
Echeverría’s negotiations were unsuccessful, resulting in extreme violence and several hundred deaths. Echeverría took much of the blame for the breakdown in negotiations.
In this sense, he had been strongly criticized for his severe handling of the student demonstrations. It is estimated that approximately 300 students were killed or injured and thousands were arrested.
Campaign and presidency
One year after the incident, in 1969, he secured his election to the office of President of Mexico to begin the term from 1970. Consequently, he developed a vigorous campaign in which he visited approximately 900 municipalities and covered more than 56,000 kilometers in 29 Mexican states.
In addition, he had the opportunity to debate with the students and criticize the United States. At one point during his presidential campaign, Echeverría called for a few minutes of silence to remember the victims of the Tlatelolco massacre.
The intention on the part of Echeverría was an act that angered President Díaz Ordaz and almost forced him to request the resignation of his candidacy. Although Echeverría wanted to break away from the 1968 repression, he had begun his presidential term bearing the consequences of the Tlatelolco massacre.
When Echeverría assumed the presidency in 1970, he embarked on a far-reaching program of populist political and economic reforms, nationalizing the mining and electrical industries and redistributing private land to peasants.
On the other hand, his administration was plagued by runaway inflation, along with high unemployment and illiteracy.
His leftist policy caused a reduction in foreign investment. On the other hand, he opened diplomatic relations with China and supported Latin American solidarity.
End of his term
As the end of his term neared, Echeverría tried to maintain a high public profile.
Finally, in 1976, Echeverría handed over the presidency to José López Portillo. The successor’s advisers held out the hope that Echeverría would be out of the country during López Portillo’s term.
In this sense, Echeverría aspired to the position of secretary of the Organization of the United Nations, without success.
Echeverría did not want to disappear from public life after his term as president, so he remained the local political chief, retaining his position as president for life of the Center for Economic and Social Studies of the Third World.
after the presidency
In the 1990s, Echeverría began to be formally investigated for his involvement in both the Tlatelolco massacre in 1968 and the police killing of more than a dozen protesters in 1971.
Then, in 2000, he was charged with genocide for both incidents. In 2004, a judge refused to issue an arrest warrant for Echeverría, and the prosecutor accepted the judge’s decision. Echeverría had denied any complicity in the murders.
In 2006, he was charged again, for which his arrest was requested for having participated in the murder of the students in 1971.
The evidence against Echeverría was based on documents that appear to show that he had ordered the formation of special army units.
These units committed countless assassinations under his orders. The group was known as «Los Halcones» and it is presumed that they trained with the US military.
After several years and numerous legal maneuvers to protect the former president, in 2009 a federal court ruled that he could not be tried for both murders.
On June 21, 2018, he was hospitalized until July 10 of that same year. On January 17, 2022, he turned 100 years old. He is the longest-serving Mexican president in the country’s history.
Characteristics of the government of Luis Echeverría Álvarez
Repression
Having only a few days in government and after pronouncing the new measures and reforms for the country’s democracy, on June 10, 1971, a student demonstration took place in Mexico City.
The students were surprised by a paramilitary group at the service of the state known as “Los Halcones”. Although it is presumed that the president was the one who ordered the repression against the protesters, he publicly distanced himself from the events.
From 1972 to 1976 he ordered several sabotages against the newspaper excelsiordirected by the journalist Julio Scherer García, who made strong criticisms of the Echeverría government.
Based on these events, the president ordered a strategy to censor the freedom of expression of the newspaper, achieving a crisis for the media outlet and the forced expulsion of Scherer and his team.
During his tenure, the so-called Dirty War took place, in which a large number of people were tortured and disappeared; in fact, the guerrillas Genaro Vázquez and Lucio Cabañas were assassinated during this period.
In the six years that Echeverría lasted as president of Mexico, a large number of kidnappings and bank robberies were unleashed by leftist guerrilla groups. Despite this, almost at the end of his term, the situation with the guerrillas managed to normalize.
Nationalization of companies
Echeverría came to the presidency with the intention of applying political, economic and social programs with ideas of nationalizing many private companies and redistributing private land to peasants in the states of Sinaloa and Sonora.
In addition, state spending on health, housing construction, education, and food increased. However, the business community disagreed with his populist rhetoric and his ideas of nationalizing private companies and redistributing land; he was unpopular, even within his own party.
Economic crisis
After several years of economic growth by Echeverría’s predecessors, his government presented a severe economic crisis during its last months in office. In addition, he was accused of irresponsible government spending.
On the other hand, the country presented a shortage of electrical energy and steel, which generated a decrease in economic growth and, in addition, inflation and unemployment increased considerably.
According to various references, in 1976, rumors began to circulate that for the first time in 22 years, Mexico would have to devalue the peso. Echeverría tried to convince the Mexicans that this was not contemplated.
Even so, hundreds of millions of Mexican pesos were exchanged for the US dollar, mostly by wealthier Mexicans.
The inevitable devaluation ensued and the peso fell from 12.50 to 20.50 to the dollar, a 60% decline. However, Echeverría blamed multinational companies for the economic problems.
rock ban
As a consequence of the numerous student protests during the Echeverría administration, both the president and the PRI tried to neutralize the youth after the events of “the hawk strike” and the Avándaro Rock Festival.
In this sense, Echeverría issued a ban on all forms of rock music recorded by Mexican bands. The ban was known as “Avandarazo”, in response to the rock festival that had been heavily criticized by the PRI.
It not only banned recordings by Mexican rock bands, but also banned live rock concerts as well as rock songs from public places. The ban on rock lasted several years, from…