How to get rid of a nosy ex-president
History says so. The facts confirm it. The supreme leader of the Mexican Revolution, General Plutarco Elías Calles , had a decisive influence on the government of General Lázaro Cárdenas , and imposed more than half of his cabinet. He had already done so with Pascual Ortiz Rubio and with Abelardo L. Rodríguez .
But it was the support of groups and political forces that acted outside the National Revolutionary Party — the grandfather of what remains of the PRI today — created and controlled by Calles, which caused the breakup.
Cárdenas had strengthened a “left wing” in the Chamber of Deputies, made up of union, agrarian and social leaders, which caused the confrontation between the two military officers.
Thus, three years after taking office as head of state, in the early hours of April 10, 1936, Cárdenas, accompanied by a military corps, took Calles out of his bed and house in his pajamas and led him to a Mexican Army plane that would take him to California. He then asked for the resignation of all the Callistas in his government.
Plutarco Elías Calles took up residence in San Diego, California, and did not return to Mexico until President Manuel Ávila Camacho , at the end of his term, allowed him to reside in the country again, to which he returned seriously ill. He died on October 19, 1945 in Mexico City.
Trying to emulate Calles, Luis Echeverría Álvarez also surrounded his successor, Don José López Portillo .
To begin with, he kept the red telephone of the so-called presidential network in his residence in San Jerónimo to continue ordering from there.
Just as AMLO now does with Sheinbaum, LEA inherited to JLP the leadership of the Lower House with Augusto Gómez Villanueva , the leadership of the PRI with Carlos Sansores Pérez , and even that of the PRI-DF with Hugo Cervantes del Río . Among others, the first and the third had been mentioned as possible successors of LEA.
Not only that. When Echeverría began to notice flashes of originality in JLP, he circulated the version that he would be assassinated.
Journalist Blanche Petrich reported it years later in that other newspaper La Jornada:
“ Thinking the unthinkable .” That was the title of the dispatch that the United States ambassador to Mexico, Joseph John Jova , sent on August 6, 1976, to the then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger . He warned: “Rumors are growing that President Luis Echeverría could be plotting to assassinate President-elect José López Portillo in order to extend his term in power.”
These rumors, Petrich says, which he had begun to hear at dinner parties and cocktail parties, possibly also at the golf clubs frequented by the diplomat, came mainly from businessmen belonging to the inner circle of the man who was Echeverría’s successor. He says that he began to hear these versions as soon as López Portillo was “uncovered” in September of the previous year. But once he was elected, the circle of rumors widened and concerns about such an event began to reach the academy and the world of intellectuals. Versions and fears in this sense are becoming more frequent, Jova states in that text.
“We continue to view the rumors as mere symptoms of the suspicion with which Mexicans perceive the president, rather than concrete warnings. However, they are consistent enough to support the speculation I present in this report in order to define a possible scenario and its implications for the United States government.”
Echeverria, ambassador
According to the first volume of My Times , López Portillo’s autobiographical work, in early May 1977, six months after taking office, he reflected:
“Now I am reminded of those silver platters on which friends and strangers presented me with the demonized head of Echeverría, so that I would place the blame for the crisis on him. And to my credit, although it sounds like self-praise, I can say that I have never taken advantage. Perhaps out of vanity or pride. I never took advantage. I have given them before and I do not regret it. To enlighten time, there is nothing like time itself.”
And just 15 years later, Echeverría was appointed by JLP as extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador of Mexico, on a special mission, to carry out analytical studies in institutions that relate to countries in the process of development.
That same afternoon, the nosy former president embarked on his first mission trip to England, France, Yugoslavia and China.
According to the text of the statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which announced the appointment of the new traveling ambassador, Echeverría will also carry out missions “for all those matters of special interest that the president or this Ministry of Foreign Affairs deem necessary to entrust.”
Chronicles of the time indicate that, although smiling and in good physical shape, former President Echeverría, when answering questions from journalists, could not hide a tone of ironic bitterness. Because, in effect, as was estimated in diplomatic circles, the hasty appointment of the former president for a mission as vast as it was ambiguous, is equivalent to an imposed displacement of the Mexican political terrain.
There were also rumours in those days that López Portillo had offered Echeverría the embassy in Paris, which had been vacant since Carlos Fuentes resigned from the post in protest against the appointment of former President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz as ambassador to Spain . Sources close to Echeverría confirmed the basis of such rumours, adding, however, that Echeverría did not want the embassy.
Would you really not have wanted to go live in Paris?
“The Devil’s Kiss”
Although she is responsible for the crisis that Mrs. Claudia Sheinbaum faces in all areas , it is not about offering her, on a platter, the head of Andrés Manuel López Obrador .
But she could gradually get rid of the positions that the Tabasco native left her.
López Portillo “promoted” Gómez Villanueva to Secretary of the Presidential Office in matters of Agrarian Reform and, as coordinator of the PRI steamroller in the L Legislature of the Chamber of Deputies, he had the serious Sinaloa native Rodolfo González Guevara elected .
At the PRI’s NEC, two years later, Gustavo Carvajal Moreno , a former student of Don José, began to work , and as second-hand, in Press and Propaganda, Rodolfo El Güero Landeros , who had been his spokesman in the Treasury.
As a formal leader of the PRI, Carvajal demonized those who approached the residence of Echeverría, who had returned to the country to direct his Third World University, saying that “they had received the devil’s kiss.”
The breakup of the two friends since childhood was total.
Upon the death of Don José, the long-lived Echeverría did not even attend the funeral.
Will Sheinbaum begin by getting rid of the chamber leaderships headed by Adán López and Ricardo Monreal , both in open conflict, to start being herself?
And what will happen to those who go to visit AMLO at “La Chingada” house?
Will they also receive “the devil’s kiss”?
Clues
“Who cares? Let them continue to believe it,” said President Claudia Sheinbaum, downplaying opposition claims that former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador continues to govern, as she assured that Mexicans know that there is a government that responds to the people and to the principles of the Fourth Transformation. * * * That’s all for today. Thank you for reading this Political Index. And I wish you, as always, good luck and many, many days!
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