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Template:Infobox MexicanPresident
Gustavo Díaz Ordaz Bolaños Cacho (March 12, 1911 – July 15, 1979) was President of Mexico from 1964 to 1970. He was the last president before the election of Vicente Fox in 2000 to become president after being elected to a previous office.
Political career
Díaz Ordaz was born in Ciudad Serdán (then known as San Andrés Chalchícomula) in the state of Puebla. His father, Ramón Díaz Ordaz Redonet, was an accountant, while his mother, Sabina Bolaños Cacho de D.O., was a school teacher. His great-grandfather, José María Díaz Ordaz, a lawyer and a general, had served as the Governor of Oaxaca. Díaz Ordaz graduated from the University of Puebla on February 8, 1937 with a law degree and became a professor at that university, and served as vice rector from 1940–1941. In 1943, he became a federal deputy for the first district of the state of Puebla, and from 1946–1952, served as a senator for the same state. Following that term, he served as the Secretary of Government in the cabinet of president Adolfo López Mateos from 1958–1964. On December 1, 1963, he was named the candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and was declared winner of the presidential election on September 8, 1964. In 1977 he was named the first Ambassador to Spain in 40 years, but several months later he resigned, following protests, on health grounds. On July 15, 1979, he died in Mexico City.
Presidential term
As president, Díaz Ordaz was known for his authoritarian manner of rule over his cabinet and the country in general. His strictness was evident in his handling of a number of protests during his term, in which railroad workers, teachers, and doctors were fired for taking industrial action. When students in Mexico City protested the government's actions around the time of the 1968 Summer Olympics, Díaz Ordaz oversaw the occupation of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the indiscriminate arrests of hundreds of students, and the Tlatelolco massacre, in which the Mexican military killed several hundred protestors in Tlatelolco in downtown Mexico City on October 2, 1968.
Díaz Ordaz was praised for his handling of the Mexican economy, keeping it stable, growing and prosperous by preventing the devaluation of the peso and warding off inflation; during his mandate, the Mexican gold peso was one of the most reliable forms of bullion in the world. He also worked for agricultural reforms and improved the lot of Mexican farmers through irrigation projects and rural industrialization. He also enacted the Labor Law as it currently stands and began work on the Mexico City Metro.
References
- Concise Biography (http://members.fortunecity.es/historiamisael/diazordaz.html) (Spanish)
- Biography on Monografias.com (http://www.monografias.com/trabajos/diazordaz/diazordaz.shtml) (Spanish)
- Camp, Roderic A. Mexican Political Biographies. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona, 1982.
| Preceded by: Adolfo López Mateos | President of Mexico 1964–1970 | Succeeded by: Luis Echeverría Álvarez Template:End boxde:Gustavo Díaz Ordaz es:Gustavo Díaz Ordaz nl:Gustavo Díaz Ordaz |