Inauguration Echeverría assumed the presidency on 1 December 1970.
Domestic policy Echeverría was the first president born after the
Mexican Revolution. Once inaugurated as president, he embarked on a massive 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, imposing limits on foreign investment, and extending Mexico's maritime
Economic Exclusion Zone to 200 nautical miles (370 km). Various social initiatives were undertaken, with state spending on health, housing construction, education, and food subsidies significantly increased, and the percentage of the population covered by the social security system doubled. Government spending almost quadrupled between 1971 and 1975 under Echeverría's left-wing government, while public spending rose from 22% to 32% of GDP during his presidency. Shortly after his term began, he issued an amnesty to all those arrested during the 1968 protests, which is believed to have been an attempt to disassociate himself with the massacre. He enraged the left because he did not bring the perpetrators of the 1971
Corpus Christi massacre to justice. 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.
Economic issues After decades of economic growth under his predecessors, the Echeverría administration oversaw an economic crisis during its final months, becoming the first in a series of governments that faced severe economic crises over the ensuing two decades. During his period in office, the country's external debt soared from US$6 billion in 1970 to US$20 billion in 1976. The balance of services, which traditionally had registered surpluses and had been used to partly finance the negative trade balance, entered into deficit for the first time in 1975 and 1976. Despite this, the Mexican economy grew by 6.1%, and important infrastructure and public works projects were completed after stalling for decades.
Changes in the electoral system During Echeverría's administration, a new Federal Election Law was approved which lowered the number of members a party needed to become officially registered from 75,000 to 65,000, introduced a permanent voting card, and established the minimum age for candidacy for elected office at 21 (down from the previous age of 30). Following PRI tradition, Echeverría handpicked his successor for the Presidency, and chose his Finance Minister and childhood friend,
José López Portillo, to be the PRI's presidential candidate for the
1976 elections. 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.
Dirty War and political violence The Echeverría administration was characterized by growing
political violence: • On one hand, several leftist guerrilla groups appeared throughout the country (the most important being those led by
Lucio Cabañas and
Genaro Vázquez in
Guerrero, as well as the urban guerrilla
Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre) in response to the government's authoritarianism and increasing social inequalities. • And on the other hand, the Government itself violently repressed political dissent. The aforementioned guerrilla leaders Cabañas and Vázquez, both of whom officially died in clashes with the army, are widely suspected of actually having been extrajudicially executed by the armed forces.
Ban on rock music As a consequence of numerous student and youth protest movements during his administration, President Echeverría attempted to neutralize politicized youth. In late 1971, after the Corpus Christi massacre and the
Avándaro Rock Festival, Echeverría famously issued a ban on almost every form of
rock music recorded by Mexican bands. The ban on domestic rock music lasted for many years, and it only began to be gradually lifted in the 1980s.
Foreign policy (left) and Luis Echeverría reviewing US troops (1972) Under the banner of
tercermundismo ("
Third Worldism"), a reorientation took place in Mexican foreign policy during Echeverría's presidential term. The aims of Echeverría's foreign policy were to diversify Mexico's economic links and to fight for a more equal and just international order. during his visit to Rome in 1974. He had strong ties with the communist and socialist governments of Cuba and Chile respectively. Echeverría visited Cuba in 1975. Also, Mexico provided political asylum to many political refugees from South American countries who fled their country's repressive military dictatorships; among them
Hortensia Bussi, the widow of former Chilean President
Salvador Allende. Moreover, he condemned
Zionism and allowed the
Palestine Liberation Organization to open an office in the capital. Echeverría used his position as president to promote the
Declaration of Mexico on the Equality of Women and Their Contribution to Development and Peace, which was adopted by the
1975 World Conference on Women held in Mexico City. 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. during his visit to Washington D.C. in 1975. Echeverría's presidency rode a wave of anger by citizens in Northwestern Mexico against the United States for its use (and perceived misappropriation) of water from the
Colorado River, which drains much of the
American Southwest before crossing into Mexico. The established treaty between the U.S. and Mexico called for the U.S. to allow a specified volume of water, , to pass the
U.S.-Mexican border, but it did not establish any quality levels.
Failed campaign for United Nations Secretary-General 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. Secretary-General
Kurt Waldheim of Austria was running for a second term in the
1976 Secretary-General selection. Although Secretaries-General usually run unopposed, the
People's Republic of China expressed dissatisfaction that a European headed an organization that had a Third World majority. On 18 October 1976, Echeverría entered the race against Waldheim. He was defeated by a large margin when the
Security Council voted on 7 December 1976. The PRC did cast one symbolic
Security Council veto against Waldheim in the first round, but voted in the Austrian's favor in the second round. Echeverría received only 3 votes to Waldheim's 14, with only
Panama abstaining. López Portillo ran unopposed, since the
Popular Socialist Party (PPS) and the
Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution (PARM), both PRI satellite parties, supported his candidacy, while the right-wing
National Action Party (PAN) was unable to nominate a presidential candidate due to internal conflicts. The
Mexican Communist Party (PCM) nominated
Valentín Campa as its presidential candidate, but this party had no official registry and was barred from elections at the time, so Campa's candidacy was not officially recognized and he ran as a
write-in candidate. In private, López Portillo's aides expressed their hope that president Echeverría could become Secretary-General of the United Nations so that he would be out of the country for most of López Portillo's term and therefore would be unable to try to influence the latter's administration. 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. Between 1954 and 1976, successive governments had maintained the value of the
peso at 12.50 to the U.S. dollar. On 30 August 1976, as a result of the mounting economic problems, the Echeverría administration devalued the peso by 59.2%, leaving it with a value of 19.90 to the dollar. Two months later, the peso was devalued for a second time, now down to a rate of 26.60 to the dollar. Future President
Miguel de la Madrid, who was then Subsecretary of Finance, stated in his autobiography that in those last months President Echeverría had an "unstable" mood and would sometimes fall asleep during cabinet meetings; De la Madrid also recounted that, at one of such meetings in that period,
Fausto Loredo Zapata –then Subsecretary of the Presidency of the Republic– told Echeverría that he possessed a list of the forty most important men in Mexico and that it was necessary to "declare war on them" and arrest them that night, but Echeverría rejected the suggestion. 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. There is some controversy as to whether the President-elect López Portillo was informed of this agreement with the IMF, which was essentially dictating key aspects of his economic policy before he could take office, and it was reported that
Julio Rodolfo Moctezuma, his first Minister of Finance, even denied the existence of such an agreement with the IMF shortly after he was appointed. In any case, on 23 December 1976 the López Portillo government ratified the agreement with the IMF after a heated debate with his cabinet. ==Post-presidency==