Gustavo Díaz Ordaz Bolaños (Spanish pronunciation: [ɡusˈtaβo ˈði.as oɾˈðas]; 12 March 1911 – 15 July 1979) was a Mexican politician and member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). He served as the President of Mexico from 1964 to 1970. Previously, he served as a member of the Chamber of Deputies for Puebla's 1st district, a senator of the Congress of the Union for Puebla, and Secretary of the Interior.
Díaz Ordaz was born in San Andrés Chalchicomula, and obtained a law degree from the University of Puebla in 1937 where he later became its vice-rector. He represented Puebla's 1st district in the Chamber of Deputies from 1943 to 1946. Subsequently, he represented the same state in the Chamber of Senators from 1946 to 1952 becoming closely acquainted with then-senator Adolfo López Mateos. Díaz Ordaz was a CIA asset, known by the cryptonym, LITEMPO-2.
Díaz Ordaz joined the campaign of Adolfo Ruiz Cortines for the 1952 election and subsequently worked for the Secretariat of the Interior under Ángel Carvajal Bernal. He became the secretary following López Mateos' victory in the 1958 election, and exercised de facto executive power during the absences of the president, particularly during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1963, the PRI announced him as the presidential candidate for the 1964 election, he received 88.81% of the popular vote.
His administration is mostly remembered for the student protests that took place in 1968, and their subsequent repression by the Army and State forces during the Tlatelolco massacre, in which hundreds of unarmed protesters were killed. His presidency also took place during a period of high economic growth known as the Mexican Miracle, as well as hosting both the 1968 Summer Olympics and 1970 FIFA World Cup, the first country to have organized both showpiece events two years apart.
After passing on the presidency to his own Secretary of the Interior Luis Echeverría, Díaz Ordaz retired from public life. He was briefly the Ambassador to Spain in 1977, a position he resigned from after strong protests and criticism by the media. He died of colorectal cancer on 15 July 1979 at the age of 68.
Despite high economic growth during his presidency, Díaz Ordaz is considered one of the most unpopular and controversial modern Mexican presidents, largely for the Tlatelolco massacre and other repressive acts, which would continue into the presidencies of his successors.
Gustavo Díaz Ordaz Bolaños was born on 12 March 1911 in San Andrés Chalchicomula (now Ciudad Serdán), Puebla. His family was of mixed Spanish and Indigenous ancestry. He had two older siblings, Ramón (born 1905) and María (born 1908), and two younger siblings, Ernesto and Guadalupe. In his later years his father, Ramón Díaz Ordaz Redonet, worked as an accountant. However, for a decade he served in the political machine of President Porfirio Díaz, becoming the jefe político and police administrator of San Andrés Chilchicomula. When Díaz was ousted by revolutionary forces in May 1911 at the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution, he lost his bureaucratic post in the regime change. Subsequently, the family's financial situation was insecure, and Díaz Ordaz's father took a number of jobs and the family frequently moved. He claimed ancestry with conqueror-chronicler Bernal Díaz del Castillo. Gustavo's mother, Sabina Bolaños Cacho de Díaz Ordaz, was a school teacher, described as "stern and pious". Gustavo, as well as his elder brother Rámon, had a weak chin and large protruding teeth and was skinny. "His mother would freely say to anyone, 'But what an ugly son I have!'" His lack of good looks became a way to mock him when he became president of Mexico.
The comedian Chespirito (real name Roberto Gómez Bolaños) was his first cousin once removed.
When the family lived for a time in Oaxaca, the young Díaz Ordaz attended the Institute of Arts and Sciences, whose alumni included Benito Juárez and Porfirio Díaz. He was a serious student, but due to his family's financial circumstances, he could not always buy the textbooks he needed. At one point, the family lived as a charity case with a maternal uncle in Oaxaca, who was a Oaxaca state official. The family had to absent themselves when powerful visitors came to the residence. While Gustavo attended the institute, his elder brother Ramón taught there after studies in Spain, teaching Latin. A student mocked Professor Ramón Díaz Ordaz's ugliness, and Gustavo defended his brother with physical force. Díaz Ordaz graduated from the University of Puebla on 8 February 1937 with a law degree. He became a professor at the university and served as vice-rector from 1940 to 1941.
His political career had a modest start. He had not fought in the Revolution and his father had been part of Porfirio Díaz's regime, so his political rise was not straightforward. He served in the government of Puebla from 1932 to 1943. In the latter year he became a federal politician, serving in the Chamber of Deputies for the 1st federal electoral district of Puebla, and he served as a senator for the same state from 1946 to 1952. He came to national prominence in the cabinet of President President Adolfo López Mateos from 1958 to 1964, as Minister of the Interior (Gobernación). On 18 November 1963, he became the presidential candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Despite facing only token opposition, Díaz Ordaz campaigned as if he were the underdog. He won the presidential election on 5 July 1964, with 88.8% of the popular vote, while his main opponent, José González Torres of the National Action Party garnered only 10.9%.
Díaz Ordaz assumed the presidency on 1 December 1964 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. There, he took the oath before the Congress of the Union presided over by Alfonso Martínez Domínguez. Former president Adolfo López Mateos turned over the presidential sash, and Díaz Ordaz delivered his inaugural address. The address lasted almost an hour, which was long for an inauguration speech in Mexico at the time. In his address, he promised to defend Mexico's constitution, submit to the will of Mexico's people, to prioritize the needs of Mexico's farmers, and (in response to criticism of the government's heavy involvement in business) that the government would not compete or supplant private investment. On foreign policy, he stated that Mexico would not break off relations with Fidel Castro's Cuba, and that foreign investment was always welcome in Mexico as long as laws were followed. He announced the members of his cabinet, retaining four ministers from López Mateos. Also at the inauguration were former presidents Emilio Portes Gil, Abelardo L. Rodríguez, Lázaro Cárdenas, Miguel Alemán Valdés, and Adolfo Ruiz Cortines.
As president, Díaz Ordaz was known for his authoritarian manner of rule over his cabinet and the country in general. His strictness was evident in his handling of a number of protests during his term, in which railroad workers, teachers, and doctors were fired for taking industrial action. A first demonstration of this new authoritarianism was given when he used force to end a strike by medics. Medics of the Institute for Social Security and Services for State Workers, especially residents and interns, had organized a strike to demand better working conditions and an increased salary.
His authoritarian style of governing produced resistance such as the emergence of a guerrilla movement in the state of Guerrero. Economically, the era of Díaz Ordaz was a time of growth. He established the Mexican Institute of Petroleum in 1965, an important step, for oil has been one of Mexico's most productive industries.
The government of Díaz Ordaz promoted the economic development of Mexico, continuing the model of the “stabilizing development”. National GDP maintained growth between 6 and 8%, and inflation remained at low levels at 2.7%, which would contrast with that of his successor, Luis Echeverría Álvarez, averaging 15%. Despite said economic growth, income inequality between the country's social classes and urban and rural environments, as well as levels of unemployment, were not contained.