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Luis Echeverra LvarezLuis Echeverra lvarez (born 17 January 1922) was the President of Mexico from 1970 to 1976. Echeverra joined the faculty of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1947 and taught political theory. He rose in the hierarchy of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and eventually became the private secretary of the party president, General Rodolfo Snchez Taboada. Echeverra was the Mexican Interior Secretary under President Gustavo Daz Ordaz between 1964 and 1970. He maintained a hard line against student protesters throughout 1968, when the Olympics were held in Mexico City. He ordered the transfer of 15% of the Mexican military to the state of Guerrero to counter guerrilla groups operating there, and under Echeverra's secretaryship, the air force allegedly used napalm against rural communities in Guerrero. Clashes between the government and the protesters culminated in the Tlatelolco massacre in October 1968. At one point during his campaign for the presidency, Echeverra called for a moment of silence to remember the victims of the Tlatelolco massacre, an act which enraged Daz and almost prompted him to call for Echeverra's resignation. Once Echeverría was elected president, he embarked on a far-reaching 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, opposing what he called US American "expansionism," supporting the leftist Chilean leader Salvador Allende, condemning Zionism, allowing the Palestine Liberation Organization to open an office in the capital, and imposing limits on foreign investment, and extending Mexico's patrimonial waters to 200 miles. At the same time, he enraged the left because he did not bring the perpetrators of the Corpus Christi Massacre to justice, and he enraged the business community with his populist rhetoric and his moves to nationalize industries and redistribute land. He was also unpopular within the rank and file of his own party. Later Years On July 23, 2004, a special prosecutor indicted Echeverra and requested his arrest for allegedly ordering the killing of 25 student demonstrators and the wounding of dozens of others during a student protest in Mexico City over education funding on June 10, 1971 (known as the Corpus Christi Massacre for the feast day on which it took place, but also as the Halconazo --Falcon Strike-- since the special unit involved was called Falcons). The evidence against Echeverra appeared to be based on documents that allegedly show that he ordered the formation of special army units that committed the killings and that he received regular updates about the episode and its aftermath from his chief of secret police. At the time, the government argued police forces and civilian demonstrators were attacked (and people con both sides killed) by armed civilians, who were convicted and later freed because of a general amnesty. After the political transition of 2000, Echeverría was charged with genocide by the special prosecutor (an untested charge in the Mexican legal system), partly because the statute of limitations for charges of homicide had expired (charges of genocide under Mexican law have no statute of limitations from 2002). On July 24, 2004, a judge refused to issue an arrest warrant for Echeverra because of statute of limitations problems with the indictment, apparently rejecting the special prosecutor's assertion of genocide-based special circumstances. The special prosecutor said that he would appeal the judge's decision. Echeverra has steadfastly denied any complicity in the killings. On February 24, 2005, the Supreme Court of Justice decided, four votes against one, that the statute of limitations (30 years) had expired by the time the prosecution began, and that Mexico's ratification by Congress in 2002 to an international agreement (an United Nations convention against war crimes from November 26, 1968, signed by the President in July 3, 1969 but ratified by Congress in December 10,2001 and coming into effect 90 days later) stating that genocide has no statute of limitations could not be applied retroactively to Echeverra's case (retroactivity being anticonstitutional), since only Congress can make those agreements part of the legal system. Charges for genocide (which would have been difficult to sustain if accepted) were about the last hope of the prosecution and while the case is still technically open in court it will be difficult to obtain a conviction. The prosecution argued before the Supreme Court that a) political conditions prevented an earlier prosecution, b) the President was constitutionally protected against charges for his full term so the statute of limitations should be extended because of that and c) the UN's convention accepted by Mexico covered past events of genocide. The Supreme Court stated the law doesn't take into account political conditions and presidential inmunity when calculating the statute of limitations, that the prosecution failed to prove earlier charges against the defendants (producing only photocopies with no legal value of supposed legal proceedings from the late 1970's and early 1980's) and that article 14 of mexican constitution states the principle of not retroactivity. Sources - Werner, Michael. (Ed.) (1997). Encyclopedia of Mexico: History, Society, and Culture. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn.
Echeverria Echeverra Echeverra
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