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Luis Echeverría Álvarez (born 17 January 1922) was the President of Mexico from 1970 to 1976.
Echeverría joined the faculty of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1947 and taught political theory. He rose in the hierarchy of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and eventually became the private secretary of the party president, General Rodolfo Sánchez Taboada. Echeverría was the Mexican Interior Secretary under President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz between 1964 and 1970. He maintained a hard line against student protesters throughout 1968, when the Olympics were held in Mexico City. Clashes between the government and the protesters culminated in the Tlatelolco massacre in October 1968. In a separate incident, he ordered the transfer of 15% of the Mexican military to the state of Guerrero to counter guerrilla groups operating there, and under Echeverría's secretaryship, the air force allegedly used napalm against rural communities in Guerrero.
At one point during his campaign for the presidency, Echeverría called for a moment of silence to remember the victims of the Tlatelolco massacre, an act which enraged former president Díaz Ordaz and almost prompted him to call for Echeverría's resignation. Once Echeverría was elected president, he embarked on a far-reaching program of populist political and economic reform, nationalizing the mining and electrical industries, redistributing private land in the states of Sinaloa and Sonora to peasants, opposing what he called US American "expansionism," supporting the leftist Chilean leader Salvador Allende, condemning Zionism, allowing the Palestine Liberation Organization to open an office in the capital, and imposing limits on foreign investment, and extending Mexico's patrimonial waters to 200 miles. At the same time, he enraged the left because he did not bring the perpetrators of the Corpus Christi Massacre to justice, and he enraged the business community with his populist rhetoric and his moves to nationalize industries and redistribute land. He was also unpopular within the rank and file of his own party.
Echeverría's candidacy also rode a wave of anger by citizens in northwestern Mexico against the United States for its use (and perceived misappropriation) of water from the Colorado River, which drains much of the U.S. southwest before crossing into Mexico. The established treaty between the U.S. and Mexico called for the U.S. to allow a specified volume of water 1.5 million acre-feet (1.9 km³) to pass the U.S.-Mexican border, but it did not establish any quality levels. Throughout the 20th century, the United States, through its water policy managed through the United States Bureau of Reclamation, had developed wide-ranging irrigation along the river which had led to progressively higher levels of salinity 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 the irrigated land along the lower Colorado. The sudden increase in oil prices in 1973 coupled with the possibility of new Mexican oil deposits in the Bay of Campeche, gave Echeverría a strong bargaining position against the Nixon Administration in the United States. Echeverría threatened to bring the issue to the World Court, prompting the Nixon Administration to renegotiate the treaty to include a salinity-control agreement. The implementation of salinity control at the border (specified to be at U.S. expense) has been on-going and slow, however, and the lower Colorado remains largely a desolate shadow of what it once was.
He has one of the most negative reputations of any Mexican president. He is accused, apart from his populist tendencies, of irresponsible government spending, galloping inflation, and cronyism-- which is symbolised by appointing his good friend and eventual succesor Josè Lòpez Portillo as Finance Minister-- violent devaluations of the peso, from 12.50 MXN per dollar in 1954 to 20 per dollar in late 1976, as well as for rising debt. During his period, the country's external debt soared from $6 billion in 1970 to $20 billion in 1976. This caused the ruling party, at least in terms of its economic policies, to gradually lose prestige at home and aborad.
Later years
On 23 July 2004, a special prosecutor indicted Echeverría and requested his arrest for allegedly ordering the killing of 25 student demonstrators and the wounding of dozens of others during a student protest in Mexico City over education funding on 10 June 1971; the incident became known as the Corpus Christi Massacre for the feast day on which it took place, but also as the Halconazo — "Falcon Strike" — since the special unit involved was called Los Halcones ("The Falcons"). 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 received regular updates about the episode and its aftermath from his chief of secret police. 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 general amnesty.
After the political transition of 2000, Echeverría was charged with genocide by the special prosecutor (an untested charge in the Mexican legal system), partly because the statute of limitations for charges of homicide had expired (charges of genocide under Mexican law have no statute of limitations from 2002). On 24 July 2004, a judge refused to issue an arrest warrant for Echeverría because of statute of limitations problems with the indictment, apparently rejecting the special prosecutor's assertion of genocide-based special circumstances. The special prosecutor said that he would appeal the judge's decision. Echeverría has steadfastly denied any complicity in the killings.
On 24 February 2005, the Supreme Court of Justice decided, four votes against one, that the statute of limitations (30 years) had expired by the time the prosecution began, and that Mexico's ratification by Congress in 2002 to an international agreement (a United Nations convention against war crimes from 26 November 1968, signed by the President on 3 July 1969 but ratified by Congress on 10 December 2001 and coming into effect 90 days later) stating that genocide has no statute of limitations could not be applied retroactively to Echeverría's case (retroactivity being anticonstitutional), since only Congress can make those agreements part of the legal system. Charges for genocide (which would have been difficult to sustain if accepted) were about the last hope of the prosecution and while the case is still technically open in court it will be difficult to obtain a conviction. The prosecution argued before the Supreme Court that (a) political conditions prevented an earlier prosecution, (b) the president was constitutionally protected against charges for his full term so the statute of limitations should be extended because of that and (c) the UN convention accepted by Mexico covered past events of genocide. The Supreme Court said that the law did not take into account political conditions and presidential immunity when calculating the statute of limitations, that 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 that article 14 of the Mexican constitution establishes the principle of non-retroactivity.
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, in the 2 October 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre. Again, the assigned criminal judge dismissed the filing, holding, first, that the statute of limitations had expired and, second, that the massacre did not constitute genocide.
Sources
- Werner, Michael. (Ed.) (1997). Encyclopedia of Mexico: History, Society, and Culture. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn.
- Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner (regarding lower Colorado water issues)
| Preceded byGustavo Díaz Ordaz | President of Mexico 1970–1976 |
Succeeded byJosé López Portillo |