Luis Echeverría Álvarez Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
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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 PRI and eventually became the private secretary of the party president, General Rodolfo Sanchez 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. 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 military allegedly used napalm against rural communities in Guerrero. Clashes between the government and the protesters culminated in the Tlatelolco massacre in October 1968.
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 Díaz 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 American "expansionism," supporting the 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.
On July 23, 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 June 10, 1971 (known as the Corpus Christi Massacre for the feast day on which it took place). 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. 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). On July 24, 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.