Luis Echeverría Álvarez: facts that marked his mandate

This January 17, Luis Echeverría Álvarez, who was president of Mexico from 1970 to 1976, celebrated his 100th birthday. This former president became the only one to reach that age. These were some of the 10 events that marked his mandate.

The former president has remained anonymous since he left the Presidency of Mexico and has rarely appeared in the spotlight, the most recent being when he received his Covid-19 vaccine at the University Stadium.

Accused of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre

Although Luis Echeverría Álvarez was not yet the President of Mexico, since 1968 he was under public scrutiny for his responsibility in the Tlatelolco student massacre in 1968.

In that year, Luis Echeverría Álvarez held the position of Secretary of the Interior and is accused of being one of those responsible for repressing the students.

El Halconazo or “Corpus Christi Thursday”

Luis Echeverría did not escape public opinion again, after on June 10, 1971, just two years after the Tlatelolco massacre, another massacre occurred against students, who were seeking more resources for education.

This event was known for the religious festival in which it occurred, but it also received the name of the group that perpetrated the massacre, the Halcones, that is, members of the state security forces dressed in civilian clothes.

As recently as 2002, a federal judge summoned the former president to testify about the massacres of Tlatelolco and Corpus Christi, but Echeverría obtained an injunction to avoid his arrest, becoming the first official summoned for these events.

Rock ban

Luis Echeverría's mandate was also characterized by policies aimed at youth, in 1973 he prohibited massive rock concerts, he even sanctioned stations that were dedicated to transmitting this genre of music.

The origin of this measure was the Avándaro rock festival, held in the State of Mexico on December 11 and 12, 1971.

With an attendance of approximately 300,000 young people, the Avándaro rock festival, also known as the Mexican Woodstock, caught the attention of the media and the government.

Enforced disappearance

The term of Luis Echeverría is also remembered for the increase in the forced disappearance of political opponents.

According to the Report on Historical Cases of the Disappeared from the 1970s and 1980s, “it was during the six-year terms of Presidents Luis Echeverría Álvarez and José López Portillo that the greatest number of disappeared was concentrated: 347 cases reported with Echeverría and 156 with Lopez Portillo.”

Attacks on Excelsior

Luis Echeverría Álvarez is also blamed for a series of attacks against the media that criticized his policies, such as the newspaper Excelsior, which experienced a series of attacks from 1972 to 1976.

According to the CNDH, Luis Echeverría promoted a group to take control of the media cooperative and remove those who made him uncomfortable.

Devaluation and inflation

In the time of Luis Echeverría, the first economic crisis occurred since the period known as the “Mexican Miracle.”

Although the production of electricity, oil and steel doubled, the external debt also increased, since the former president refused to implement exchange controls, which brought the devaluation of the peso to less than half of the exchange rate it had held since 1954. This caused further inflation, which reached 27% in the last year of his term. (Azteca News)