Luis Echeverría Álvarez (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈlwis etʃeβeˈri.a ˈalβaɾes]; 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. Previously, Echeverría was Secretary of the Interior from 1963 to 1969. He was the longest-lived president in Mexican history and the first to reach the age of 100.
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. 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. 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 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 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 a financial crisis that started near the end of his term (partly as result of overspending during his administration) which led to a devaluation of the peso. 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 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, the creation of the INFONAVIT, 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 the private 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 of Secretary General of the United Nations in the 1976 UN election, being defeated by incumbent Kurt Waldheim from Austria. 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 in Mexico City to Rodolfo Echeverría Esparza and Catalina Álvarez Gayou. 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. 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.
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 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. 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.
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 the Tlatelolco massacre in October 1968, a few days before the 1968 Summer Olympics were held in Mexico City. 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.
1970 presidential succession and campaign
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. 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." 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."
During his campaign, Echeverría adopted populist 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, the PAN's Efraín 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. In 1969, he defined his position as "neither to the right, nor to the left, nor in a static center, but onward and upward."
In defining his ideological stance, various observers have described Echeverría as left-leaning, leftist or left-wing.
Echeverría won the election with over 80% of the popular vote, as was entirely expected by international observers.