Adolfo López Mateos (Spanish pronunciation: [aˈðolfo ˈlopes maˈteos] ⓘ; 26 May 1909 – 22 September 1969[1]) was a Mexican politician who served as President of Mexico from 1958 to 1964.

Beginning his political career as a campaign aide of José Vasconcelos during his run for president, López Mateos encountered repression from Plutarco Elías Calles, who attempted to maintain hegemony within the National Revolutionary Party (PNR).

[2] He briefly abandoned politics and worked as a professor at the Autonomous University of Mexico State, becoming a member of the PNR (renamed Party of the Mexican Revolution) in 1941.

López Mateos served as senator for the State of Mexico from 1946 to 1952 and Secretary of Labor during the administration of Adolfo Ruiz Cortines from 1952 to 1957.

Declaring his political philosophy to be "left within the Constitution", López Mateos was the first self-declared left-wing politician to hold the presidency since Lázaro Cárdenas.

An advocate of non-intervention, he settled the Chamizal dispute with the United States and led the nationalization of the Mexican electrical industry during a period of economic boom and low inflation known as Desarrollo Estabilizador.

López Mateos engaged with revolutionary Marcos Ignacio Infante, leader of the Zapatista Movement (Political ally of John F.

[dubious – discuss] Shortly before the killing of Jaramillo, Infante would visit the UN Demanding President López Mateos to step down or face a revolution.

[4] López Mateos has been praised for his policies including land redistribution, energy nationalization, and health and education programs, but has also been criticized for his repressive actions against labor unions and political opponents.

[8] In 1929, he graduated from the Scientific and Literary Institute of Toluca, where he was a delegate and student leader of the anti-re-electionist campaign of former Minister of Education José Vasconcelos, who ran in opposition to Pascual Ortiz Rubio, handpicked by former President Plutarco Elías Calles.

After Vasconcelos's defeat, López Mateos attended law school at National Autonomous University of Mexico and shifted his political allegiance to the PNR.

He organized the presidential campaign of PRI candidate Adolfo Ruiz Cortines and was subsequently appointed Secretary of Labor in his new cabinet.

[12] As the candidate for the dominant party with only weak opposition, López Mateos easily won election, serving as president until 1964.

López Mateos sought the continuation of industrial growth in Mexico, often characterized as the Mexican Miracle, but it required the cooperation of organized labor.

López Mateos depended on the forceful cabinet minister Gustavo Díaz Ordaz to deal with the striking railway workers.

[11][16] Valentín Campa and Demetrio Vallejo were given lengthy prison sentences for violating Article 145 of the Mexican Constitution for the crime of "social dissolution."

Also imprisoned for that crime was the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, who remained in Lecumberri Penitentiary until the end of López Mateos's presidential term.

[17] López Mateos depended on Díaz Ordaz as the enforcer of political and labor peace to allow president to attend to other matters.

There were guarantees written into the constitution concerning salaries, paid holidays, vacations, overtime, and bonuses to government civil servants.

[23] It was not as dramatic an event as Cárdenas's expropriation of the oil industry in 1938, but it was nonetheless economic nationalism and the government could claim it as a victory for Mexico.

Cárdenas came back into the political fold of the PRI, when he supported López Mateos's choice for his successor in 1964, his enforcer, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz.

Health care and pensions were increased, new hospitals and clinics were built, and the IMSS programme for rural Mexico was expanded.

Works from the colonial era were moved from the Historic Center of Mexico City to north of the capital in the former Jesuit colegio in Tepozotlan, creating the Museo del Virreinato.

In an effort to reduce illiteracy, the idea of adult education classes was revived, and a system of free and compulsory school textbooks was launched.

An attempt was made at political liberalization, with an amendment to the constitution that altered the electoral procedures in the Chamber of Deputies by encouraging greater representation for opposition candidates in Congress.

Young writer and intellectual, Carlos Fuentes wrote a report of the murder for the magazine Siempre!, recording for an urban readership the grief of the peasant residents of Jojutla.

The use of the army against a government opponent and the concern of a young urban intellectual about such an act being committed in his name were indicators marking a change in the political climate in Mexico.

"[39] However, Mexico supported some U.S. foreign policy positions, such as barring China, as opposed to Taiwan, from holding a seat in the United Nations.