Echeverría Álvarez, Luis (1922–)

Luis Echeverría was president of Mexico from 1970 to 1976. To the surprise of most analysts, Echeverría, although a disciple of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, was a president in the populist mold, reintroducing, in certain respects, a style similar to that of Lázaro Cárdenas.

Echeverría was born on January 17, 1922, in the Federal District, as were so many leading politicians of his and succeeding generations. He was the son of an army paymaster. Echeverría attended school in Mexico City and Ciudad Victoria, then, after graduating from the National Preparatory School, he enrolled in the National Law School in 1940, completing his degree in August 1945. He married the daughter of José Zuno Hernández, a former governor of Jalisco and a member of an important political family. A political disciple of division general Rodolfo Sánchez Taboada, the president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), he first held positions in the party, including press secretary and oficial mayor, before following his mentor to the navy secretariat. In 1954 he became oficial mayor of public education, after which he attached himself to the career of another influential political mentor, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, as undersecretary of the government secretariat (1958–1964). Upon his mentor's nomination as the PRI presidential candidate, Echeverría replaced Díaz Ordaz as secretary, a position that he held from 1963 to 1969, when he resigned to become himself a presidential candidate, designated by his mentor. He was the last official party presidential candidate to come from this influential cabinet agency and to have held important positions in the PRI. The new generation of top politicians he helped to spawn were career bureaucrats from economically oriented agencies.

Echeverría's regime was characterized by greater levels of economic and political uncertainty than were those of his immediate predecessors. He tried to placate opposition within and outside his party by recruiting an important generation of younger politicians in their thirties. Early in his administration he faced strong internal opposition within his own cabinet, led by Alfonso Martinez Domínguez, the head of the Federal District Department. Martínez Domínguez used a paramilitary force in 1971 to suppress student demonstrators, after which the president removed him from office. Echeverría also faced what had not happened for many years: the formation of well-organized guerrilla opposition groups. They emerged in both urban and rural settings, most notably the band of Lucio Cabañas in Guerrero, which the army eventually eliminated. Significant human rights violations were committed by the government and the armed forces against the guerrillas.

On the economic front, Echeverría was responsible for the rapid growth of state-owned enterprises and the alienation of many elements of the Mexico's private-sector leadership. He exacerbated divisions between the state and the private sector by nationalizing agrarian properties in northwest Mexico immediately before leaving office and by presiding over the first devaluation of the peso in many years. Given his anti-private sector posture and a more assertive nationalist posture in the United Nations, relations with the United States became more difficult. He left the presidency further delegitimized than when he took office, passing on to his successor, José López Portillo, a difficult set of economic and political problems, some of which were not addressed until the administration of Carlos Salinas (1988–1994).

After leaving the presidency in 1976, Echeverría served as ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) from 1976 to 1978, then briefly to Australia. He also directed a third world studies institute upon his return to Mexico in 1979. He subsequently retired from all public activities. During the presidency of Vincente Fox (2000–2006), a special prosecutor who explored human rights abuses committed during Echeverría's administration sought, without success, to bring legal charges against Echeverría personally. Only two high-ranking generals, both involved in the Guerrero campaign, have been convicted on these human rights charges.

See alsoMexico, Political Parties: Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI); Mexico: Since 1910.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cosío Villegas, Daniel. El estilo personal de gobernar, 4th edition. Mexico City: J. Mortiz, 1974.

Hellman, Judith Adler. Mexico in Crisis. 2nd edition. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983.

Krauze, Enrique. El sexenio de Luis Echeverría. Mexico City: Clío, 1999.

Schmidt, Samuel. El deterio del presidencialismo mexicano: Los años de Luis Echeverría. Mexico City: EDAMEX, 1986.

                                         Roderic Ai Camp