Adolfo López Mateos

Early life and education

Adolfo López Mateos was born on 26 May 1909, according to official records, in Atizapán de Zaragoza – a small town in the State of Mexico, now called Ciudad López Mateos – to Mariano Gerardo López y Sánchez Roman, a dentist, and Elena Mateos y Vega, a teacher. His family moved to Mexico City upon his father's death when López Mateos was still young. However, there exists a birth certificate and several testimonies archived at El Colegio de México that place his birth on 10 September 1909, in Patzicía, Guatemala.

In 1929, he graduated from the Scientific and Literary Institute of Toluca, where he was a delegate and student leader of the anti-re-electionist campaign of former Minister of Education José Vasconcelos, who ran in opposition to Pascual Ortiz Rubio, handpicked by former President Plutarco Elías Calles. Calles had founded the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR) in the wake of the assassination of President-elect Alvaro Obregón. After Vasconcelos's defeat, López Mateos attended law school at National Autonomous University of Mexico and shifted his political allegiance to the PNR.

Career

Political career

Early in his career, he served as the private secretary to Col. Filiberto Gómez, the governor of the state of Mexico. In 1934, he became the private secretary of the president of the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR), Carlos Riva Palacio.

He filled a number of bureaucratic positions until 1941, when he met Isidro Fabela. Fabela helped him into a position as the director of the Literary Institute of Toluca after Fabela resigned the post to join the International Court of Justice. López Mateos became a senator of the state of Mexico in 1946, while at the same time serving as Secretary General of the PRI. He organized the presidential campaign of PRI candidate Adolfo Ruiz Cortines and was subsequently appointed Secretary of Labor in his new cabinet. He did an exemplary job, and for the first and only time, a Secretary of Labor was tapped to be the PRI's candidate for the presidency. As the candidate for the dominant party with only weak opposition, López Mateos easily won election, serving as president until 1964.

Presidency (1958–1964)

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

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.

Foreign policy

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. Mexico's firm stance on Cuba's independence despite U.S. pressure meant that Mexico had bargaining power with the U.S., which did not want to alienate Mexico, both of which had a long land border. At that juncture, the Chamizal conflict with the U.S. was resolved and a majority of the Chamizal area was granted to Mexico. Negotiations led to the successful conclusion of the Chamizal dispute, which had festered since the aftermath of the mid-19th-century Mexican–American War, a success for the López Mateos government.

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

In the last year of his presidency, López Mateos was visibly unwell. He looked worn-out and increasingly thin. On his very last months as president, a friend, Víctor Manuel Villegas, went to see him and later remembers asking him how he was; he replied that he was "screwed up". It turned out that López Mateos had seven aneurysms.

After finishing his presidential term, he briefly served as head of the Olympic Committee, responsible for the organization of the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico and called the meeting that led to the creation of the World Boxing Council. He had to resign because of failing health. Manuel Velasco Suárez quoted him as saying, "In every way, life has smiled at me. Now I must accept whatever may come."

He eventually became unable to walk, and after an emergency tracheotomy, he lost his voice. Enrique Krauze exclaimed in one of his books, "Gone was the voice of a once great orator."

Plagued with migraines during his adult life, he was diagnosed with several cerebral aneurysms, and after falling into a coma, he died in Mexico City 1969 of an aneurysm.

López Mateos was initially buried in the Panteón Jardín in Mexico City, and his wife, Eva Sámano, was buried next to him, after her death in 1984. When Carlos Salinas de Gortari became president of Mexico (1988–1994), however, he had the remains of López Mateos and his wife exhumed and moved to López Mateos's birthplace in Mexico State. A monument to the late president was erected there. This unusual step was likely due to Salinas' family animus toward López Mateos. Salinas's father Raúl Salinas Lozano had been a cabinet minister in López Mateos's government and was passed over for the party nomination to be the next president of Mexico. The town is now formally named Ciudad López Mateos.