López Mateos assumed the presidency on December 1, 1958. As president of Mexico, along with his predecessor, Ruiz Cortines (1952–1958), López Mateos continued the outline of policies by President
Miguel Alemán (1946–1952), who set Mexico's postwar strategy. Alemán favored industrialization and the interests of capital over labor. All three were heirs to the legacy of the
Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), but Alemán Valdés and López Mateos were too young to have participated directly. In the sphere of foreign policy, López Mateos charted a course of independence from the U.S. but cooperated on some issues despite his opposition to the hostile U.S. policy toward the 1959
Cuban Revolution.
Domestic policy Labor López Mateos sought the continuation of industrial growth in Mexico, often characterized as the
Mexican Miracle, but it required the cooperation of organized labor. Organized labor was increasingly restive. It was a sector of the Institutional Revolutionary Party and controlled through the
Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), led by
Fidel Velázquez. Increasingly, however, unions pushed back against government control and sought gains in wages, working conditions, and more independence from so-called
charro union leaders, who followed government and party dictates. López Mateos had mainly success when he served as his predecessor's Secretary of Labor, but as president, he was faced with major labor unrest. The previous strategy of playing off one labor organization against another, such as the CTM, the Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants (CROC), and the General Union of Workers and Peasants of Mexico (UGOCM), ceased to work. In July 1958, the militant railway workers' union, under the leadership of
Demetrio Vallejo and
Valentín Campa, began a series of strikes for better wages, which culminated in a major strike during
Holy Week 1959. The Easter holiday was when many Mexicans traveled by train and so the choice of the date was designed for maximum impact on the general public. López Mateos depended on the forceful cabinet minister
Gustavo Díaz Ordaz to deal with the striking railway workers. The government arrested all of the leaders of the union and filled Lecumberri Penitentiary. Valentín Campa and Demetrio Vallejo were given lengthy prison sentences for violating Article 145 of the Mexican Constitution for the crime of "social dissolution". The article empowered the government to imprison "whomever it decided to consider an enemy of Mexico". 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. López Mateos depended on Díaz Ordaz as the enforcer of political and labor peace to allow president to attend to other matters. "Throughout the years of López Mateos, in every situation of conflict, Díaz Ordaz was directly involved." The government attempted to reduce labor unrest by setting up a National Commission for the Implementation of Profit Sharing which apportioned between 5% and 10% of each company's profits to organized labor. In 1960, Article 123 of the
Constitution of 1917 was amended. There were guarantees written into the constitution concerning salaries, paid holidays, vacations, overtime, and bonuses to government civil servants. For instance, government employees would now be safeguarded by minimum-wage legislation. However, government workers were required to join the Federation of Union Workers in Service to the State (FSTSE) and forbidden to join any other union. Tight price controls and sharp increases in the minimum wage also ensured that the workers' real minimum wage index reached its highest level since the presidency of
Lázaro Cárdenas.
Conflict with Lázaro Cárdenas Although Cárdenas had set a precedent for the ex-president to turn over complete government control to his successor, he re-emerged from political retirement to push the López Mateos government more toward leftist stances. The January 1959 taking of power by
Fidel Castro gave Latin America another example of revolution.
Cárdenas went to Cuba in July 1959 and was with Castro at a huge rally at which Castro declared himself to be prime minister of Cuba. Cárdenas returned to Mexico with the hope that the ideals of the Mexican Revolution could be revived, with land reform, support for agriculture, and an expansion of education and health services to Mexicans. He also directly appealed to López Mateos to free jailed union leaders. López Mateos became increasingly hostile to Cárdenas, who was explicitly and implicitly rebuking him. To Cárdenas he said, "They say the Communists are weaving a dangerous web around you." Cárdenas oversaw the creation of a new pressure group, the National Liberation Movement (MLN), composed of a wide variety of leftists, which participants considered a way to defend the Mexican Revolution was to defend the Cuban Revolution. According to one study, López Mateos found a way to counter Cárdenas's criticisms, by emulating his policies. The president nationalized the electric industry in 1960. 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. Other reformist policies of his presidency can be seen as ways to counter the left's criticism, such as land reform, education reform, and social programs to alleviate poverty in 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.
Land reform Land reform was implemented vigorously, with 16 million hectares of land redistributed. It was the most significant amount of land distributed since the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas. The government also sought to improve the lives of
ejidatarios. The government expropriated land that had been owned by U.S. interests in the extreme south, which helped to reduce land tension in that part of the country. Rural colonization projects for sparsely-settled Quintana Roo and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec were also initiated.
Public health and social welfare programs Public health campaigns were also launched to combat diseases such as polio, malaria, and tuberculosis. Typhus, smallpox, and yellow fever were eradicated, and malaria was significantly reduced. Tackling poverty became one of the priorities of his government, and social welfare spending reached a historical peak of 19.2% of total spending. A number of social welfare programs for the poor were set up, and the existing social-welfare programs were improved. Health care and pensions were increased, new hospitals and clinics were built, and the IMSS programme for rural Mexico was expanded. A social security institute was established, the
Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores al Servicio del Estado (ISSSTE), to provide childcare, medical services, and other social services to workers, especially state employees. That same year, a food distribution system known as the National Company of Popular Subsistence was set up; designed to ensure a stable market for basic farm products while also meeting the nutritional needs of people living on lower incomes. Large-scale low-rent housing projects were also built in many cities, with one vecindad in Mexico City accommodating 100,000 people. During the course of López Mateos's presidency, over 50,000 low-income housing units were built, while the percentage of Mexicans covered by social security (which included health care) rose from 7.7% to 15.9% in 1964.
Museums and historical memory López Mateos opened a number of major museums during his presidency, the most spectacular of which was the
National Museum of Anthropology in
Chapultepec Park. Also opened in Chapultepec Park was the Museum of Modern Art. His Minister of Education
Jaime Torres Bodet had played a major role in realizing the projects. 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. The Historical Museum of Mexico City was situated in Mexico City.
Educational reform 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. In 1959, the National Commission of Free Textbooks (
Comisión Nacional de Libros de Textos Gratuitos) was created. The textbook program was controversial since the content would be created by the government, and the textbooks' use would be obligatory in schools. It was opposed by the
Unión Nacional de Padres de Familia, a conservative organization, and the Roman Catholic Church, which also saw education as a private family matter. New schoolrooms were also built, surpassing the total number constructed prior to the Mexican revolution of 1910. By 1964, expenditure on education has risen to $362 million per year; three times the amount that was spent in 1958. In addition, more than 100 free school textbooks had been distributed, 30,200 new classrooms had been built, and salaries for teachers had gone up by as much as 160.% As a result of the educational initiatives carried out during López Mateos's presidency, the rate of illiteracy fell from 50% to 28.9.% The scale of the phenomenon would become much larger later in the 1960s, when Díaz Ordaz became president, but the early 1960s marked the beginnings of the antagonism.
Electoral reform 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. The electoral reform of 1963 introduced so-called "party deputies" (
diputados del partido) in which opposition parties were granted five seats in the Chamber of Deputies if they received at least 2.5 percent of the national vote and one more seat for each additional 0.5 percent (up to 20 party deputies). In the
1964 elections, for instance, the
Popular Socialist Party (PPS) won 10 seats, and the
National Action Party (PAN) won 20. By giving opposition political parties a greater voice in government, the country, controlled by the
Institutional Revolutionary Party, had the appearance and greater legitimacy as a democracy.
Armed forces The army was the enforcer of government policy and intervened to break strikes. López Mateos created more social security benefits for the military in 1961. The army had been incorporated as a sector into the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM) under Lázaro Cárdenas, and when the
Institutional Revolutionary Party was formed in 1946, the army was no longer sector, but remained loyal to the government and enforced order. During the presidency of López Mateos, the peasant leader
Rubén Jaramillo, an ideological heir to peasant revolutionary
Emiliano Zapata was murdered along with his family in 1962, "apparently at the instigation or with the foreknowledge of General Gómez Huerta, chief of the Presidential General Staff" under the president's personal command. 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.
Foreign policy and the President
John F. Kennedy, during their visit to Mexico in 1962 An important position for López Mateos's foreign policy was its stance on the
Cuban Revolution. As Cuba moved leftward, the U.S. pressured all Latin America to join it to isolate Cuba, but Mexican foreign policy was to respect Cuba's independence. The U.S. had imposed an economic blockade on Cuba and organized Cuba's expulsion from the
Organization of American States (OAS). Mexico took on principle the "nonintervention in the internal affairs of countries" and the "respect for the self-determination of nations". 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. During the
Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, when the Soviet Union placed missiles on Cuban territory, Mexico voted in favor of an OAS resolution for the removal of the weapons, but it also called for a ban on invading Cuba. Mexico supported Cuba's sovereignty but had its government begun a crackdown on demonstrations at home in solidarity with Cuba, which begun fomenting revolutionary movements abroad in Latin America and Africa, and Mexico could potentially have been fertile ground. Recently released documentation shows that Mexico's stance toward Cuba allowed it to claim solidarity with another Latin American revolution and raise its profile in the Western Hemisphere with other Latin American countries, but its overall support for revolution was weak for fear of destabilization at home. López Mateos welcomed U.S. President
John F. Kennedy to Mexico for a highly-successful visit in July 1962 although Mexico's relationship with Cuba differed from what U.S. policy sought.
Official international trips This is a list of
official trips abroad made by López Mateos during his presidency. According to Article 88 of the
Constitution of Mexico, the president may leave the country for up to seven days by informing the
Senate or, where applicable, the
Permanent Commission in advance of the reasons for the absence, as well as of the results of the measures carried out. For absences longer than seven days, permission from the Senate or the Permanent Commission is required. ==Later years, death and burial==