Gustavo Díaz Ordaz Bolaños Cacho (March 12, 1911-July 15, 1979) was President of Mexico from 1964 to 1970. He was the last President of Mexico before the election of Vicente Fox in 2000 to become president after being elected to a previous office.

Political career

Díaz was born in Ciudad Serdán in the state of Puebla. His father was an accountant, while his mother was a school teacher. His great-grandfather, José María Ordaz, a lawyer and a general, had served as the Governor of Oaxaca. Díaz 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 from 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 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 the post following protests from various political figures. On July 15, 1979, he died in Mexico City.

Presidential term

As president, Díaz 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 going on strike. And when students in Mexico City protested the government's actions around the time of the 1968 Summer Olympics, Díaz 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 at least several hundred protestors in the center of Mexico City on October 2, 1968.

Díaz was praised for his handling of the Mexican economy, keeping it stable and prosperous by preventing the devaluation of the peso and controlling inflation. He also worked for agricultural reform, hoping to improve the lot of Mexican farmers through irrigation projects and rural industrialization.

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.