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.

Echeverría was one of the most high-profile presidents in Mexico's post-war history; he attempted to become a leader of the so-called "Third World", countries unaligned with the United States or the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

[3] 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,[4] 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.

[6][7] 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%.

[8] His presidency was also characterized by authoritarian methods including death flights,[9][10] the 1971 Corpus Christi massacre against student protesters, the Dirty War against leftist dissent in the country (despite Echeverría adopting a left-populist rhetoric),[11][12][13] and an economic crisis that occurred in Mexico near the end of his term due to a devaluation of the peso.

Supporters have praised his populist policies such as a more enthusiastic application of land redistribution than his predecessor Díaz Ordaz, expansion of social security, 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.

[36] 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.

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.

Once inaugurated as president, he embarked on a massive program of populist political and economic reform, nationalizing the mining and electrical industries,[46] redistributing private land in the states of Sinaloa and Sonora to peasants,[47] imposing limits on foreign investment,[48] and extending Mexico's maritime Economic Exclusion Zone to 200 nautical miles (370 km).

[49] State spending on health, housing construction, education, and food subsidies was also significantly increased,[50] and the percentage of the population covered by the social security system was doubled.

[53] On 8 October 1974, Echeverría issued a decree creating the new states of Baja California Sur and Quintana Roo, which had previously been federal territories.

[65] Due to a series of events and an internal conflict in the opposition party PAN, López Portillo was the only candidate in the Presidential election, which he won unopposed.

Also in 1975, the Mexican delegation to the United Nations voted in favour of General Assembly Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with South Africa's apartheid and condemned it as a form of racial discrimination.

[80] This resulted in a tourism boycott by the U.S. Jewish community against Mexico, which made visible internal and external conflicts of Echeverría's politics.

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.

[82] In 1976, Echeverría sought to parlay his Third World credentials and relationship with the recently deceased Mao Zedong into becoming Secretary-General of the United Nations.

[5] Echeverría designated José López Portillo, his finance minister and childhood friend, as the PRI's presidential candidate in the 1976 general election and, in effect, as his successor in the presidency.

The PRI unveiled López Portillo's candidacy on 22 September 1975, choosing him over Porfirio Muñoz Ledo and Interior Minister Mario Moya Palencia.

[89] Shortly after the election, a couple of devaluations of the peso reflected the financial issues of the Echeverría administration, and his last months in office were marked by a general sense of economic malaise.

[92] In this context, in October 1976 Echeverría made an agreement with the International Monetary Fund, which accepted to give Mexico financial aid of up to 1,200 million dollars, and in exchange Mexico committed to correct the imbalances of its balance of payments and to follow an orthodox economic policy for the following three years, which included measures such as increases in public rates and taxes, as well as wage freezes.

Miguel de la Madrid, president from 1982 to 1988, said in his autobiography that the idea for his 1987 Pact of Economic Solidarity [es] to contain inflation came from a suggestion made by Echeverría at a breakfast with him, during which the former president advised De la Madrid to invite the leading figures of the economic sectors to the National Palace so that they could talk to each other and agree on proposals to overcome the crisis.

[100] Echeverría's brother-in-law, Rubén Zuno Arce, was convicted by a California court in 1992 and sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Guadalajara drug cartel and the murder of a U.S. federal agent seven years earlier.

[102] After the defeat of the PRI in the general elections of July 2000, it emerged that Vicente Fox (the president from 2000 to 2006) had met privately with Echeverría at the latter's home in Mexico City numerous times during his presidential campaign in 1999 and 2000.

[105] On 23 July 2006, a special prosecutor indicted Echeverría and requested his arrest for allegedly ordering the attack that killed and wounded many student demonstrators during a protest in Mexico City over education funding on 10 June 1971.

[36] 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 had received regular updates about the episode and its aftermath from his chief of secret police.

[110] 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, on 2 October 1968 Tlatelolco massacre.

"[18] During his campaign and presidency, Echeverría adopted populist policies, attempting to portray himself as a "man of the people", in a similar style to Lázaro Cárdenas.

[136] However, Echeverría did have some support, and was seen by many average Mexican citizens as more receptive to their needs, as during his campaign he personally took thousands of petitions and listened to the concerns of common workers.

[42] Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, who was Secretary of Labor and President of the PRI under Echeverría, defended the latter's administration and stated that Echeverría was very popular in the interior of the country, noting that the devaluation of the peso didn't occur until after the elections, describing the salary of the workers as "good" and highlighting the effusiveness of the Workers' Day parade on 1 May 1976, when Echeverría came down from the balcony of the National Palace to greet the parading workers: "When have you ever seen again the President of the Republic standing alone in the street in front of the great waves of people who come and embrace him, including the independent unions, who paraded and at the end embraced him as well?