Former Mexican President Luis Echeverría dies at 100

The former president of Mexico Luis Echeverría Álvarez died on Friday at the age of 100 at his home in Cuernavaca, Morelos, according to several Mexican media reports.

The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, confirmed the news this Saturday on his Twitter account and sent "respectful condolences to the family and friends" of the former president.

Echeverría Álvarez turned 100 years old on January 17.

On November 14, 1969, he was elected as the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for the presidency of the Republic, and triumphed in the 1970 elections.

The Mexican politician was a key actor in the massacres of October 2, 1968 in Tlatelolco and June 10, 1971, known as the "Halconazo", in the streets of Mexico City.

Echeverría is known for his role in the so-called "dirty war" or "state terrorism", when his government supported the Cuban Revolution, Salvador Allende in Chile and Sandinism in Nicaragua, but behind closed doors he persecuted leftist and student movements. .

Former Mexican President Luis Echeverria makes a statement in Mexico City on July 9, 2002. Daniel Aguilar / REUTERS

Echeverría was investigated and put on trial for genocide in the case of the massacre of more than 300 students in Tlatelolco in 1968, when he was Secretary of the Interior of President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-1970), based on the accusation made by the late Special Prosecutor for Social and Political Movements of the Past (Femospp), but the case concluded judicially in 2009 with a resolution that exonerated him and pointed to Ordaz as the only person responsible.

The accusation indicated that Echeverría was "the conceiver and preparer intentionally, knowingly, in his capacity as Secretary of the Interior during the Government of then President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, in the company of other high-ranking officials [... ] forged a plan to partially destroy the national opposition group to the Government called the National Strike Council (CNH), made up of students and supporters of the 1968 student movement," according to the newspaper La Jornada.

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Already as president, he is held responsible for the “Halconazo” or the Corpus Thursday massacre of June 10, 1971, when paramilitaries organized by the government, called “los halcones”, attacked students who were demonstrating and left 17 dead.

After leaving the presidency, he was appointed Mexico's ambassador to UNESCO in Paris until 1979. His last public appearance was in April 2021 to receive his COVID-19 vaccine.

With information from Efe,