José López Portillo

José Guillermo Abel López Portillo y Pacheco was born on 16 June 1920 in Mexico City, to his father, José López Portillo y Weber (1888–1974), an engineer, historian, researcher, and academic, and his mother, Refugio Pacheco y Villa-Gordoa. He was the grandson of José López Portillo y Rojas, a lawyer, politician, and man of letters. Another ancestor was a Royal Judge in the Audiencia de Nueva Galicia in the eighteenth century. He was the great-great-great-grandson of José María Narváez (1768–1840), a Spanish explorer who was the first to enter the Strait of Georgia, in present-day British Columbia, and the first to view the site now occupied by Vancouver. He studied law at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) before beginning his political career.

After graduating, he began his political career with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 1959. He held several positions in the administrations of his two predecessors before being appointed to serve as finance minister under Luis Echeverría, a close friend from childhood, between 1973 and 1975. An ideological centrist, López Portillo frequently asserted that he was "neither of the right or the left".

Domestic policy U.S. President Jimmy Carter (left) and Mexican president José López Portillo (right) toast during a luncheon hosted by the president of Mexico. López Portillo was elected unopposed in 1976, though in any event the PRI was so entrenched that he was effectively assured of victory when Echeverría chose him as the PRI's candidate. To date, he is the last Mexican president to run unopposed. When he entered office, Mexico was in the midst of an economic crisis. He undertook an ambitious program to promote Mexico's economic development with revenues stemming from the discovery of new petroleum reserves in the states of Veracruz and Tabasco by Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the country's publicly owned oil company. In 1980, Mexico joined Venezuela in the Pact of San José, a foreign aid project to sell oil at preferential rates to countries in Central America and the Caribbean. The economic confidence that he fostered led to a short-term boost in economic growth, but by the time he left office, the economy had deteriorated and gave way to a severe debt crisis and a sovereign default. One of his last acts as president, announced during his annual State of the Nation address on 1 September 1982, was to order the nationalization of the country's banking system. Heads of State at the Cancún North–South Summit in 1981 During his presidential term, his critics accused him of corruption and nepotism. An electoral reform conducted during his presidential term increased the number of members of the Chamber of Deputies to 400: 300 being elected single-member districts by plurality voting (uninominales) and 100 being elected according to proportional representation (plurinominales). The reform furthermore opened the electoral process for small opposition parties. Former Bulgarian leader, Todor Zhivkov (right) and Mexican president José López Portillo (left) official visit in Plovdiv – the second-largest city in Bulgaria. Lopez Portillo’s administration was regarded as more moderate than that of Echeverria’s, with one observer noting in 1978 how “The independent labor movement gained momentum during the final years of the President Luis Echeverria administration, generally considered to the left of the current government.” During the course of Lopez Portillo’s presidency, public spending as a percentage of GDP rose from 32% to 46.% Nepotism The López Portillo administration was notorious, more than previous administrations, for the number of relatives of the President who held public office. He appointed his sister Margarita López Portillo head of the General Directorate of Radio, Television and Cinematography (RTC), his cousin Guillermo López Portillo as the first -and only- head of the newly created National Institute of Sport (INDE, which was dissolved in 1981), and his son José Ramón López Portillo (who was described by the President as "the pride of my nepotism") was appointed Subsecretary of Programming and the Budget. His daughter Paulina López P

José López Portillo and U.S. President Jimmy Carter at the Mexican National Palace presidential office in 1979. In the year leading to the end of his term as president on 1 December 1982, López Portillo personally chose two candidates as possibilities to replace himself, following the succession ritual established by his party. One, Javier García Paniagua, would have been appointed if a man of greater political skill were needed. The other, ultimately his successor, was Miguel de la Madrid, who was chosen for his financial and administrative skills, which were deemed much more necessary after the devaluation of the peso in February 1982 and the subsequent economic crisis. On 1 September 1982, at his final annual Address to the Congress ("Informe de Gobierno"), López Portillo gave a famous speech where he condemned businessmen and bankers responsible for capital flight, claimed that the crisis was not his fault ("I'm responsible for the helm, but the storm is not my fault"), announced the nationalization of the banks ("They have looted us, but Mexico is not finished, they won't loot us again!"), and asked for forgiveness for his mistakes as president and the economic crisis. He famously broke into tears during his speech after asking for the forgiveness of Mexico's poor. This passionate speech, however, did little to repair his image, and he remains one of the most unpopular Mexican presidents in recent history. López Portillo was the last economic nationalist president to emerge from the ranks of the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Subsequent presidents supported free trade (librecambismo).

López Portillo's first wife was Carmen Romano. After leaving the presidency, López Portillo divorced Romano and married in 1995 his longtime partner, the Yugoslavian-born actress Sasha Montenegro. They had two children (Nabila and Alejandro) but later separated. He was the brother of late Mexican novelist Margarita López Portillo, who died on 8 May 2006, of natural causes. He died in Mexico City when he was 83 years old. He was the victim of a cardiac complication generated by pneumonia. He was buried at the Mexico City Military Cemetery.