Mexico's oldest living ex-president turned 100, but it wasn't widely celebrated

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Mexico's oldest living ex-president turned 100, but it wasn't widely celebrated¹

Transcript²

Luis Echeverria served as president in the early 1970s during hard economic times. He is most remembered for his repression³ of the country's democracy movement and initiating⁴ Mexico's "Dirty War."

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Mexico's oldest living, former President Luis Echeverria turned 100 yesterday. But the centenarian's birthday wasn't widely celebrated. Instead, he was remembered as an architect of Mexico's brutally⁵ repressive Dirty War. NPR's Carrie Kahn reports.

CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE⁶: Mexican media took much note of former President Luis Echeverria's 100th birthday.

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CARMEN ARISTEGUI: (Speaking Spanish).

KAHN: But much of that attention, like journalist Carmen Aristegui's morning broadcast, focused on his role in some of Mexico's most painful modern moments, especially the 1968 and 1971 massacres⁷ of students and pro-democracy protesters.

ADELA CEDILLO: During more than 10 years, he was the mastermind of repression.

KAHN: And a key architect of Mexico's state terrorism machinery⁸, says Adela Cedillo, a history professor at the University of Houston. As secretary of the interior and then president, she says Echeverria built clandestine⁹ prisons and torture chambers¹⁰, ostensibly to quash a small guerrilla movement in the height of the country's decades-long Dirty War.

CEDILLO: He was really evil. I'm not supposed to do a moral judgment¹¹. But the people that they - that was disappear, the people who were exterminated¹², they were allegedly sympathizers of the guerrilla movements. But that's not necessarily true.

KAHN: In his 1971 presidential address to the nation, Echeverria defended his role against those he called enemies of the state. They are drug-using degenerates¹³ with bad parents, he said...

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LUIS ECHEVERRIA: (Speaking Spanish).

KAHN: ...With a notable propensity¹⁴ for sexual promiscuity¹⁵ and homosexuality, said Echeverria. On the international scene, however, he portrayed¹⁶ himself as a champion of the left, welcoming refugees from South American dictatorships. But Mexican historian Enrique Krauze says the former president has never admitted any wrongdoing.

ENRIQUE KRAUZE: His motto was arriba y adelante - upward and forward. But the truth is, after six years, Mexico went downward and back.

KAHN: Echeverria plunged¹⁷ the country into heavy debt. After Mexico's decades-long one-party rule had ended, he was charged in 2006 with genocide and placed under house arrest. But the case was later dismissed. The last time Echeverria was seen in public was last year. He was wearing a sombrero and slumped¹⁸ in a wheelchair, lined up for a COVID-19 vaccine¹⁹.

Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Mexico City.

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