Luis Echeverria, Mexico leader blamed for massacres, dies

MEXICO CITY — Former Mexican President Luis Echeverria, who tried to cast himself as a progressive world leader but was blamed for some of Mexico’s worst political killings of the 20th century, has died at the age of 100.

Current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador confirmed the death Saturday on his Twitter account and sent condolences to Echeverria’s family and friends “in the name of the government of Mexico,” but did not express any personal sadness about the death.

López Obrador did not provide a cause of death for Echeverria, who governed Mexico from 1970 to 1976. He had been hospitalized for pulmonary problems in 2018 and also had neurological difficulties in recent years.

Echeverria positioned himself as a left-leaning maverick allied with Third World causes during his presidency, but his role in the notorious massacres of leftist students in 1968 and 1971 made him hated by Mexican leftists, who for for decades tried unsuccessfully to have him put on trial.

In 2004, he became the first former Mexican head of state formally accused of criminal wrongdoing. Prosecutors linked Echeverria to the country’s so-called “dirty war” in which hundreds of leftist activists and members of fringe guerrilla groups were imprisoned, killed, or simply disappeared without a trace.

Special prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo asked a judge to issue an arrest warrant against Echeverria on genocide charges in the two student massacres, the first of which occurred when served as interior secretary, overseeing domestic security affairs.

On Oct. 2 1968, a few weeks before the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, government sharpshooters opened fire on student protesters in the Tlatelolco plaza, followed by soldiers posted there. Estimates of the dead have ranged from 25 to more than 300. Echeverria had denied any participation in the attacks.

According to military reports, at least 360 government snipers were placed on buildings surrounding the protesters.

In June 1971, during Echeverria’s own term as president, students set out from a teacher’s college just west of the city center for one of the first large-scale protests since the Tlatelolco massacre. They didn’t get more than a few blocks before they were set upon by plainclothes thugs who were actually government agents known as the “Halcones,” or “Falcons.” Prosecutors say that group that participated in the beating or shooting deaths of 12 people.

That attack was depicted in the Oscar-winning 2018 movie…