Luis Echeverría | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 1970 | |
| 57th President of Mexico | |
| In office 1 December 1970 – 30 November 1976 | |
| Preceded by | Gustavo Díaz Ordaz |
| Succeeded by | José López Portillo |
| Secretary of the Interior of Mexico | |
| In office 16 November 1963 – 11 November 1969 | |
| President |
|
| Preceded by | Gustavo Díaz Ordaz |
| Succeeded by | Mario Moya Palencia |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Luis Echeverría Álvarez (1922-01-17)17 January 1922 Mexico City, Mexico |
| Died | 8 July 2022(2022-07-08) (aged 100) Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico |
| Political party | Institutional Revolutionary |
| Height | 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m)[1] |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 8 |
| Relatives |
|
| Education | National Autonomous University of Mexico (LLB) |
Luis Echeverría Álvarez (Spanish pronunciation:[ˈlwisetʃeβeˈri.aˈalβaɾes]; 17 January 1922 – 8 July 2022) was a Mexican lawyer, academic, and politician affiliated with theInstitutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who served as the 57thpresident of Mexico from 1970 to 1976. Previously, Echeverría wasSecretary of the Interior from 1963 to 1969. He was the longest-lived president in Mexican history and the first to reach theage of 100.
Echeverría was a long-timeCIA asset, known by the cryptonym, LITEMPO-8.[2] His tenure as Secretary of the Interior during theDíaz Ordaz administration was marked by an increase in political repression. Dissident journalists, politicians, and activists were subjected to censorship, arbitrary arrests, torture, andextrajudicial killings. This culminated with theTlatelolco massacre of 2 October 1968, which ruptured theMexican 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 theMexican Army. The following year, Díaz Ordaz appointed Echeverría as his designated successor to the presidency, and he won in the1970 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 theCold War.[3] He offered political asylum toHortensia Bussi and other refugees ofAugusto Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile, establisheddiplomatic relations and a close collaboration with the People's Republic of China after visiting Beijing and meeting with ChairmanMao Zedong and PremierZhou Enlai,[4] and tried to use Mao's influence among Asian and African nations in an ultimately failed attempt to becomeSecretary-General of the United Nations.[5] Echeverría strained relations with Israel (andAmerican Jews) after supporting a UNresolution that condemnedZionism.[6][7]
Domestically, Echeverría led the country during a period of significant economic growth, with the Mexican economy aided byhigh oil prices, and growing at a yearly rate of 6.1%. He aggressively promoted the development of infrastructure projects such as new maritime ports inLázaro Cárdenas andCiudad Madero.[8] His presidency was also characterized by authoritarian methods includingdeath flights,[9][10] the1971 Corpus Christi massacre against student protesters, theDirty War against leftist dissent in the country (despite Echeverría adopting aleft-populist rhetoric),[11][12][13] and a financial crisis that started near the end of his term (partly as result ofoverspending during his administration) which led to a devaluation of thepeso.[14] In 2006, he was indicted and ordered under house arrest for his role in the Tlatelolco and Corpus Christi massacres,[15] but the charges against him were dismissed in 2009.[16]
Echeverría is one of the most controversial presidents in the history of Mexico.[17][18][19] Supporters have praised his populist policies such as a more enthusiastic application ofland redistribution than his predecessor Díaz Ordaz, expansion of social security, the creation of theINFONAVIT, his intense diplomatic activity and Mexico's presence at the international stage during his administration, and instigating Mexico's first environmental protection laws. 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, as well as his constant conflicts with theprivate sector. His suspected role in the Tlatelolco Massacre prior to his presidency has also damaged his reputation.
Shortly after his presidential term ended, Echeverría was a candidate for the position ofSecretary General of the United Nations in the1976 UN election, being defeated by incumbentKurt Waldheim fromAustria. So far, Echeverría has been the last Mexican to have contended for the UN Secretary-Generalship.
Luis Echeverría Álvarez was born on 17 January 1922 inMexico City to Rodolfo Echeverría Esparza and Catalina Álvarez Gayou.[20][21] His paternal grandfather was Francisco de Paula Echeverría y Dorantes, a military doctor.[22] He was the brother of actorRodolfo Landa.[23][24] He was ofBasque descent.[25] One of his childhood friends wasJosé López Portillo, who would eventually succeed him as president of Mexico.[26][27]
Echeverría metMaría Esther Zuno at the home of the artistsDiego Rivera andFrida Kahlo, with whom they were friends.[28][29] The couple's social circle also included the artistsDavid Alfaro Siqueiros andJosé Clemente Orozco. After a five-year engagement, Zuno and Echeverría, a law student at the time, were married on 2 January 1945.[30] José López Portillo served as their witness.[31]
Echeverría studied law at theNational Autonomous University of Mexico, and obtained his degree in 1945.[32] Echeverría joined the university's faculty in 1947 and taughtpolitical theory andconstitutional law.[33]
Echeverría joined theInstitutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 1944.[32] 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.[34][35][32]
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Echeverría was Deputy Secretary of the Interior duringAdolfo López Mateos's presidency, withGustavo Díaz Ordaz asSecretary of the Interior.[36] After Díaz Ordaz left the Secretariat in November 1963 to become the presidential candidate of the PRI for the1964 elections, Echeverría was appointed Secretary of the Interior to serve during the remainder of the López Mateos administration.[36] Once Díaz Ordaz took office as president, he confirmed Echeverría as Secretary of the Interior, where he remained until November 1969.[36] He was one of four ministers retained by Díaz Ordaz from López Mateos' cabinet.[37]
Known as the "assassin of Tlatelolco" in student circles, Echeverría maintained a hard line against student protesters throughout 1968. Clashes between the government and protesters culminated in theTlatelolco massacre in October 1968, a few days before the1968 Summer Olympics were held inMexico City.[38][39] To combat this, Echeverría worked to portray himself as a reformer, and sometimes even a revolutionary, in order to win approval back of students. As U.S. officials wrote, Echeverría urged "a posture of conscious rebellion" as part of a "concentrated effort" to capture youth discontent.[40]
On 22 October 1969, Díaz Ordaz summonedAlfonso Martínez Domínguez—the PRI party president—and other party leaders to his office inLos Pinos to reveal Echeverría as his successor. Martínez Domínguez asked the president if he was sure of his decision and Díaz Ordaz replied, "Why do you ask? It's the most important decision of my life and I've thought it over well."[41] On 8 November 1969, Echeverría was officially announced as the presidential candidate of the PRI. Although Echeverría was a hardliner in Díaz Ordaz's administration and considered responsible for the Tlatelolco massacre, he became "immediately obsessed with making people forget that he had ever done it."[42]
During his campaign, Echeverría adoptedpopulist rhetoric, personally campaigning in over 850 municipalities, and is believed to have been seen by around 10 million people of Mexico's then-population of 48 million. He avoided criticizing Díaz Ordaz's administration, and barely mentioned his main opponent, thePAN'sEfraín González Morfín. He also stated that his government would avoid attempting to curb Mexico's population growth, which was expected to double in the coming decade, stating it was a personal matter, not the state's.[43] In 1969, he defined his position as "neither to the right, nor to the left, nor in a static center, but onward and upward."[44]
In defining his ideological stance, various observers have described Echeverría as left-leaning,[45] leftist[46] or left-wing.[47]
Echeverría won the election with over 80% of the popular vote,[48] as was entirely expected by international observers.[43][44]
Echeverría assumed the presidency on 1 December 1970.[49]
Echeverría was the first president born after theMexican Revolution. Once inaugurated as president, he embarked on a massive program ofpopulist political and economic reform, nationalizing the mining and electrical industries,[50] redistributing private land in the states ofSinaloa andSonora to peasants,[51] imposing limits on foreign investment,[52] and extending Mexico's maritimeEconomic Exclusion Zone to 200 nautical miles (370 km).[53] Various social initiatives were undertaken,[54][better source needed] with state spending on health, housing construction, education, and food subsidies significantly increased,[55] and the percentage of the population covered by the social security system doubled.[56] Government spending almost quadrupled between 1971 and 1975[57] under Echeverría's left-wing government,[58] while public spending rose from 22% to 32% of GDP during his presidency.[59]
Shortly after his term began, he issued an amnesty to all those arrested during the 1968 protests, which is believed to have been an attempt to disassociate himself with the massacre.[32] The last 20 prisoners from the protests were released on 20 December 1971.[60] He enraged the left because he did not bring the perpetrators of the 1971Corpus Christi massacre to justice.[61]
On 8 October 1974, Echeverría issued a decree creating the new states ofBaja California Sur andQuintana Roo, which had previously beenfederal territories.[62][63][64][65]
After decades of economic growth under his predecessors, the Echeverría administration oversaw an economic crisis during its final months, becoming the first in a series of governments that faced severe economic crises over the ensuing two decades.[66]
During his period in office, the country's external debt soared from US$6 billion in 1970 to US$20 billion in 1976.[14] By 1976, for every dollar that Mexico received from exports, 31 cents had to be allocated to the payment of interest and amortizations on the external debt.[67]
The balance of services, which traditionally had registered surpluses and had been used to partly finance the negative trade balance, entered into deficit for the first time in 1975 and 1976.[68]
Despite this, the Mexican economy grew by 6.1%, and important infrastructure and public works projects were completed after stalling for decades.[8]
Echeverría nationalized thebarbasco industry during his tenure.[69] Wild barbasco was the natural source of hormones that were the key component in thecontraceptive pill.[69] Nationalization and the creation of the state-run company PROQUIVEMEX came as the importance of Mexico to the industry was waning.[69]
During Echeverría's administration, a new Federal Election Law was approved which lowered the number of members a party needed to become officially registered from 75,000 to 65,000,[70] introduced a permanent voting card,[71] andestablished the minimum age for candidacy for elected office at 21 (down from the previous age of 30).[72]
Following PRI tradition, Echeverría handpicked his successor for the Presidency, and chose his Finance Minister and childhood friend,José López Portillo, to be the PRI's presidential candidate for the1976 elections.[73] Due to a series of events and an internal conflict in the opposition partyPAN, López Portillo was the only candidate in the Presidential election, which he won unopposed.[66]
The Echeverría government adopted the first national environmental law in 1971.[74] Attention on the environmental impacts came from academics at theNational Autonomous University, theNational Polytechnic Institute, and theColegio de México as well as interest in the 1969 U.S.National Environmental Policy Act.[74] The government enacted a series of regulations to control atmospheric pollution, as well as issuing new quality standards for surface and coastal waters.[74] As a structural matter, the government created a new agency to deal with the environment, which in later administrations became a full cabinet-level ministry.[74]
The Echeverría administration was characterized by growingpolitical violence:
In addition to those taken by the Federal government,State Governors (all of whom belonged to thePRI) also undertook repressive measures of their own. One of the most notorious cases was that ofGonzalo Bautista O'Farrill [es], Governor of theState of Puebla; during his short tenure as Governor, many leftist student leaders and activists from theAutonomous University of Puebla were assassinated. President Echeverría asked Bautista O'Farrill to resign after the latter ordered the State Police to take theCarolino building of the Autonomous University of Puebla by force on 1 May 1973, leaving at least three dead.[77][78]
As a consequence of numerous student and youth protest movements during his administration, President Echeverría attempted to neutralize politicized youth. In late 1971, after the Corpus Christi massacre and theAvándaro Rock Festival, Echeverría famously issued a ban on almost every form ofrock music recorded by Mexican bands.[79] The ban (also known as "Avandarazo" because it was in response to the Avándaro Rock Festival, which had been criticized by the conservative sectors of the PRI) included forbidding the recording of most forms of rock music by national groups and the prohibition of its sales in retail stores, as well as forbidding live rock concerts and the airplay of rock songs.[79] International rock music was initially not as affected by this ban, but after a 1975 concert at theAuditorio Nacional in Mexico City by the bandChicago ended with turbulence (due to oversold tickets) and police repression, president Echeverría issued a temporary ban on all concerts by American musicians in Mexico.[80] The ban on domestic rock music lasted for many years, and it only began to be gradually lifted in the 1980s.[79][81][82][83]
Under the banner oftercermundismo ("Third Worldism"), a reorientation took place in Mexican foreign policy during Echeverría's presidential term.[84] He showed his solidarity with the developing nations and tried to establish Mexico as the defender of Third World interests.[84] The aims of Echeverría's foreign policy were to diversify Mexico's economic links and to fight for a more equal and just international order.[85]
He visited a total of 36 countries[86] and had strong ties with the communist and socialist governments of Cuba and Chile respectively. Echeverría visited Cuba in 1975.[87] Also, Mexico provided political asylum to many political refugees from South American countries who fled their country's repressive military dictatorships; among themHortensia Bussi, the widow of former Chilean PresidentSalvador Allende.[88] Moreover, he condemnedZionism and allowed thePalestine Liberation Organization to open an office in the capital.[89]
Echeverría used his position as president to promote theDeclaration of Mexico on the Equality of Women and Their Contribution to Development and Peace, which was adopted by the1975 World Conference on Women held in Mexico City. Also in 1975, the Mexican delegation to the United Nations voted in favour ofGeneral Assembly Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with South Africa'sapartheid and condemned it as a form of racial discrimination.[90] This resulted in a tourism boycott by the U.S. Jewish community against Mexico, which made visible internal and external conflicts of Echeverría's politics.[90]
Echeverría's presidency rode a wave of anger by citizens in Northwestern Mexico against the United States for its use (and perceived misappropriation) of water from theColorado River, which drains much of theAmerican Southwest before crossing into Mexico.[91][92] The established treaty between the U.S. and Mexico called for the U.S. to allow a specified volume of water, 1.85 cubic kilometres (0.44 cu mi), to pass theU.S.-Mexican border, but it did not establish any quality levels.[91] Throughout the 20th century, the United States, through its water policy managed by theUnited States Bureau of Reclamation, had developed wide-rangingirrigation along the river, which had led to progressively higher levels ofsalinity in the water as it moved downstream. By the late 1960s, the high salinity of the water crossing into Mexico had resulted in the ruin of large tracts of theirrigated land along the lower Colorado.[92]
In 1976, Echeverría sought to parlay his Third World credentials and relationship with the recently deceasedMao Zedong into becomingSecretary-General of the United Nations.[5] Secretary-GeneralKurt Waldheim of Austria was running for a second term in the1976 Secretary-General selection. Although Secretaries-General usually run unopposed, thePeople's Republic of China expressed dissatisfaction that a European headed an organization that had a Third World majority.[93] On 18 October 1976, Echeverría entered the race against Waldheim.[94] He was defeated by a large margin when theSecurity Council voted on 7 December 1976. The PRC did cast one symbolicSecurity Council veto against Waldheim in the first round, but voted in the Austrian's favor in the second round. Echeverría received only 3 votes to Waldheim's 14, with onlyPanama abstaining.[5]
Echeverría designatedJosé López Portillo, his finance minister and childhood friend, as the PRI's presidential candidate in the 1976 general election and, in effect, as his successor in the presidency. The PRI unveiled López Portillo's candidacy on 22 September 1975, choosing him overPorfirio Muñoz Ledo and Interior MinisterMario Moya Palencia. López Portillo and Echeverría were in the same age cohort, but López Portillo was not a practiced politician. He had been groomed from early on in Echeverría's term to be his successor and had no power base himself, whereas Moya Palencia and Muñoz Ledo had the support of many senior PRI politicians and office holders, as well as independent power bases.[95]
López Portillo ran unopposed, since thePopular Socialist Party (PPS) and theAuthentic Party of the Mexican Revolution (PARM), both PRI satellite parties, supported his candidacy, while the right-wingNational Action Party (PAN) was unable to nominate a presidential candidate due to internal conflicts.[96][97]TheMexican Communist Party (PCM) nominatedValentín Campa as its presidential candidate, but this party had no official registry and was barred from elections at the time, so Campa's candidacy was not officially recognized and he ran as awrite-in candidate.[98]
In private, López Portillo's aides expressed their hope that president Echeverría could become Secretary-General of the United Nations so that he would be out of the country for most of López Portillo's term and therefore would be unable to try to influence the latter's administration.[99]
Shortly after the election, a couple of devaluations of thepeso reflected the financial issues of the Echeverría administration, and his last months in office were marked by a general sense of economic malaise. Between 1954 and 1976, successive governments had maintained the value of thepeso at 12.50 to the U.S. dollar.[100] On 30 August 1976, as a result of the mounting economic problems, the Echeverría administration devalued the peso by 59.2%, leaving it with a value of 19.90 to the dollar. Two months later, the peso was devalued for a second time, now down to a rate of 26.60 to the dollar.[101] Future PresidentMiguel de la Madrid, who was then Subsecretary of Finance, stated in his autobiography that in those last months President Echeverría had an "unstable" mood and would sometimes fall asleep during cabinet meetings; De la Madrid also recounted that, at one of such meetings in that period,Fausto Loredo Zapata –then Subsecretary of the Presidency of the Republic– told Echeverría that he possessed a list of the forty most important men in Mexico and that it was necessary to "declare war on them" and arrest them that night, but Echeverría rejected the suggestion.[102]
In this context, in October 1976 Echeverría made an agreement with theInternational Monetary Fund, which accepted to give Mexico financial aid of up to 1,200 million dollars, and in exchange Mexico committed to correct the imbalances of its balance of payments and to follow anorthodox economic policy for the following three years, which included measures such as increases in public rates and taxes, as well as wage freezes.[103] There is some controversy as to whether the President-elect López Portillo was informed of this agreement with the IMF, which was essentially dictating key aspects of his economic policy before he could take office, and it was reported thatJulio Rodolfo Moctezuma, his first Minister of Finance, even denied the existence of such an agreement with the IMF shortly after he was appointed.[104] In any case, on 23 December 1976 the López Portillo government ratified the agreement with the IMF after a heated debate with his cabinet.[105]
Echeverría imposed appointees on the new president, such asHermenegildo Cuenca Díaz [es] for governor of Baja California.[106] López Portillo's Minister of the Interior,Jesús Reyes Heroles, kept the president abreast of Echeverría's overstepping boundaries, such as use of the presidential telephone network, visits to ministers, and meetings with political elites at his residence.[106] Reyes Heroles took a series of steps to outflank Echeverría, including recording his conversations on the presidential telephone network and suggesting the replacement of officials supportive of Echeverría.[106]
Echeverría was ambassador to Australia and New Zealand from 1978 to 1979.[107][108]
Despite not keeping influence over López Portillo after their break, Echeverría continued to have some influence in Mexican politics.Miguel de la Madrid, president from 1982 to 1988, said in his autobiography that the idea for his 1987 Pact of Economic Solidarity[es] to contain inflation came from a suggestion made by Echeverría at a breakfast with him, during which the former president advised De la Madrid to invite the leading figures of the economic sectors to theNational Palace so that they could talk to each other and agree on proposals to overcome the crisis.[109]
After leaving office,Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the president from 1988 to 1994, publicly accused Echeverría of inspiring the March 1994 murder of their party's presidential candidate,Luis Donaldo Colosio, and of leading a conspiracy against Salinas's reformist allies in the party, which had led to a systemic political and economic crisis.[110] Salinas claimed that Echeverría pressed him to replace the murdered candidate Colosio with an old-guard figure.[110]
Echeverría's brother-in-law,Rubén Zuno Arce, was convicted by aCalifornia court in 1992 and sentenced to life in prison for his role in theGuadalajara drug cartel and the murder of a U.S. federal agent seven years earlier.[111] Echeverría repeatedly requested PresidentCarlos Salinas to pressure Washington for Zuno Arce's release, but to no avail.[112]
After the defeat of the PRI in the general elections of July 2000, it emerged thatVicente Fox (the president from 2000 to 2006) had met privately with Echeverría at the latter's home inMexico City numerous times during his presidential campaign in 1999 and 2000.[18]
Fox appointed several Echeverría loyalists to top positions in his government, includingAdolfo Aguilar Zínser, who headed Echeverría's "Third World University" in the 1970s, as national security advisor, andJuan José Bremer [es] (Echeverría's personal secretary) as ambassador to the United States.[73] The most controversial wasAlejandro Gertz Manero, who had been accused by the Mexican press of bearing responsibility for the suicide of a museum owner in 1972, as Gertz, then working for Echeverría's attorney general, attempted to confiscate his private collection ofpre-Hispanic artifacts (Echeverría also had a collection of such artifacts).[113] Fox appointed Gertz as chief of theFederal Police.[114]
In 2002, Echeverría was the first political official called to testify before the Mexican justice system for theTlatelolco massacre of students in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco in 1968.[115] On 23 July 2006, a special prosecutor indicted Echeverría and requested his arrest for allegedly ordering the attack that killed and wounded many student demonstrators during a protest inMexico City over education funding on 10 June 1971.[116] The incident became known as theCorpus Christi massacre for the feast day on which it took place, but also as theHalconazo ("Falcon Strike") since the special unit involved was calledLos Halcones ("The Falcons").[36] The evidence against Echeverría appeared to be based on documents that allegedly show that he ordered the formation of special army units that committed the killings and that he had received regular updates about the episode and its aftermath from his chief of secret police.[117] At the time, the government argued police forces and civilian demonstrators were attacked and people on both sides killed by armed civilians, who were convicted and later freed because of a generalamnesty.[117]
After the political transition of 2000, Echeverría was charged withgenocide by the special prosecutor, an untested charge in the Mexican legal system, partly because thestatute of limitations for charges ofhomicide had expired (charges of genocide under Mexican law have no statute of limitations since 2002).[36] On 24 July 2004, a judge refused to issue an arrest warrant for Echeverría because of the statute of limitations, apparently rejecting the special prosecutor's assertion of genocide-based special circumstances.[36] The special prosecutor said that he would appeal the judge's decision.[118]
On 24 February 2005, theSupreme Court of Justice decided 4–1 that the statute of limitations (30 years) had expired by the time the prosecution began and that Mexico's ratification by Congress in 2002 of the convention on 26 November 1968, signed by the president on 3 July 1969 but ratified byCongress on 10 December 2001 and coming into effect 90 days later, which states that genocide has no statute of limitations, could not be applied retroactively to Echeverría's case since only Congress can make such agreements part of the legal system.[119][clarification needed]
While difficult to obtain a prosecution, the prosecution argued before the Supreme Court that political conditions prevented an earlier prosecution, the president was constitutionally protected against charges for his full term so the statute of limitations should be extended, and the UN convention accepted by Mexico covered past events of genocide.[73]
The Supreme Court said that the law did not take into account political conditions and presidential immunity in calculating the statute of limitations, the prosecution failed to prove earlier charges against the defendants (producing only photocopies, with no legal value, of supposed legal proceedings from the late 1970s and early 1980s), and Article 14 of theConstitution bansretroactivity of laws.[120]
On 20 September 2005, the special prosecutor for crimes of the past filed genocide charges against Echeverría for his responsibility, as interior minister at the time, on 2 October 1968 Tlatelolco massacre.[121] Again, the assigned criminal judge dismissed the file and held that the statute of limitations had expired and that the massacre did not constitute genocide.[122] An arrest warrant for Echeverría was issued by a Mexican court on 30 June 2006, but he was found not guilty of the charges on 8 July 2006. On 29 November 2006, he was charged with the massacres and ordered under house arrest by a Mexican judge.[123]
Finally, on 26 March 2009, a federal court ordered Echeverría's absolute freedom and dismissed the charge of genocide for the events of Tlatelolco.[124]
On 2 January 1945, Echeverría marriedMaría Esther Zuno, whom he was married to until her death in 1999,[125][28] and they had eight children:[126][127][128]
Echeverría outlived three of his eight children.[129] His son Rodolfo Echeverría Zuno drowned in a pool owned by his parents in 1983 due toembolism.[126] Son Luis Vicente Echeverría Zuno died in Mexico City on 13 March 2013, after a failed heart operation.[126] SonÁlvaro Echeverría Zuno [es], an economist in the administration ofErnesto Zedillo,[126] committed suicide on 19 May 2020, at age 71.[129][130][131] As of 2019, he had 19 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.[127]
His brother, actorRodolfo Landa, died on 14 February 2004, inCuernavaca.[132]
On 15 January 2018, it was reported that he had died, but this was soon discounted. On 17 January, he celebrated his 96th birthday in a hospital and was discharged a day later.[133][134] He was hospitalized again on 21 June 2018[135] and was discharged on 10 July.[136]
Previously, the longest-lived Mexican president wasPedro Lascuráin, who died at age 96.[137] By 2019, Echeverría, then aged 97, had passed Lascuráin's record and became the longest-lived president of Mexico.[127]
On 21 April 2021, Echeverria, aged 99, made his last public appearance at theEstadio Olímpico Universitario, where he received his second dose of theCOVID-19 vaccine.[138][139]
Echeverríaturned 100 on 17 January 2022,[140] making him the longest-lived Mexican head of state. He died at his home inCuernavaca on 8 July.[141][142] He was cremated in a private memorial service held on 10 July.[143]
ReporterMartin Walker notes that "Echeverria is hated by Mexico's left, who have sought to bring genocide charges against him as the minister of the interior responsible for the 1968 Olympic Games massacre of students and other protestors near downtown Mexico City. The Right in Mexico blames Echeverría for an economic disaster whose effects are still felt. When Echeverría took office, the Mexican peso was trading at just over 12 to the dollar and there was little foreign debt. He sharply increased indebtedness and eventually the peso collapsed to about one-thousandth of its 1970 exchange rate, wiping out the savings of the middle classes."[18]
During his campaign and presidency, Echeverría adoptedpopulist policies, attempting to portray himself as a "man of the people", in a similar style toLázaro Cárdenas.[144] Cárdenas's son,Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, distinguishes Echeverría from his father by noting that after Echeverría left the presidency he was unable to retain much of the popularity that he developed.[145] HistorianEnrique Krauze speculates that Echeverría adopted populism to disassociate himself with the Tlatelolco massacre.[42] Despite his efforts, Echeverría's legacy remains rooted in the political violence of and the economic crash that occurred during his tenure.[146] However, Echeverría did have some support, and was seen by many average Mexican citizens as more receptive to their needs, as during his campaign he personally took thousands of petitions and listened to the concerns of common workers.[43]
Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, who wasSecretary of Labor and President of the PRI under Echeverría, defended the latter's administration and stated that Echeverría was very popular in the interior of the country, noting that the devaluation of the peso didn't occur until after the elections, describing the salary of the workers as "good" and highlighting the effusiveness of theWorkers' Day parade on 1 May 1976, when Echeverría came down from the balcony of theNational Palace to greet the parading workers:
"When have you ever seen again the President of the Republic standing alone in the street in front of the great waves of people who come and embrace him, including the independent unions, who paraded and at the end embraced him as well? So let's not extrapolate. That his government was unpopular is a huge lie."[147]
Several other members of the PRI, particularly older members, disliked and criticized Echeverría's populist policies,[148] including his predecessor Gustavo Díaz Ordaz. Díaz Ordaz once said of Echeverría, "He is out of control. He doesn't know what he is saying. He insists he's going to make changes, but he doesn't say to what end."[149]
In a national survey conducted in 2012 about former presidents, 27% of the respondents considered that the Echeverría administration was "very good" or "good", 16% responded that it was an "average" administration, and 46% responded that it was a "very bad" or "bad" administration. He was the second-worst rated former president in the survey, with onlyCarlos Salinas de Gortari receiving a lower approval rating.[17]
Grand Master of theOrder of the Aztec Eagle, Mexico (1970–1976)[150]
Honorary Knight Grand Cross of The Most HonourableOrder of the Bath (1973)[151][152]
Knight Grand Cross with Collar of theOrder of Merit of the Italian Republic, Italy (8 February 1974)[153]
Great Star of theDecoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria (1974)[154].png)
Honorary Member of theOrder of Jamaica[155]
Order of the Yugoslav Great Star (13 February 1974)[156]Echeverría later condemned Zionist expansion at the United Nations, criticising Israel's further incursion into Palestinian territory and its repression of the Palestinians, and allowed the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to open an office in Mexico City.
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