Lawyer by profession, Luis Echeverria Alvarez was also accused of the massacre of two hundred students in the Tlatelolco district just before the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico.
Le Monde With AFP
The former president of Mexico Luis Écheverria Alvarez (1970-1976), who went to posterity for his “dirty war” against political opponents, died on the night of Friday to Saturday July 9 at the age of 100 years, the executive announced. “I send my respectful condolences to family and friends,” said on Twitter The current president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, about his distant predecessor.
Coming from the institutional revolutionary party (PRA, in power for sixty years until 2000), Alderria is accused of being one of the managers of student massacres of October 2, 1968 in Mexico as Minister of the interior, and the repression of another student movement on June 10, 1971, as president.
paid in 2009 for lack of evidence
A lawyer by profession, Echeverria was the first Mexican president pursued in trial, for his responsibility in the massacre of two hundred students in the Tlatelolco district just before the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. Placed under home arrest warrant, he was finally acquitted in 2009 for lack of evidence.
The president was also accused of forced disappearances during the “dirty war” against groups of opponents from the 1960s to the 80s. Alderria died two weeks after the announcement of the opening of the military archives of the ” Dirty war “to relatives of the victims.
On the diplomatic level, he had supported the experience of democratic socialism in Chile, and welcomed Chilean refugees in Mexico after the overthrow of Salvador Allende by General Pinochet, in September 1973.
Father of eight children, Echeverria was Ambassador of Mexico before UNESCO in Paris after leaving the presidency.