Antonio Ortiz Mena

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Antonio Ortiz Mena (born September 22, 1908 in Hidalgo del Parral , state of Chihuahua ; † March 13, 2007 in Mexico City ) was a Mexican politician of the Party of Institutionalized Revolution PRI ( Partido Revolucionario Institucional ) and bank manager who, among other things, from 1952 Until 1958 General Director of the Institute for Social Security IMSS ( Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social ) , between 1958 and 1970 Minister of Finance ( Secretarío de Hacienda ) and from 1971 to 1988 President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). During his tenure as finance minister, he was one of the fathers of the Mexican economic miracle . In 2009 he was posthumously awarded the Medalla Belisario Domínguez del Senado de la República , the highest honor of the government of Mexico.

Life

Degree, lawyer and general director of the IMSS

Ortiz Mena, son of the Finance Minister of the Federal District of Mexico City Antonio R. Ortiz and his wife María Mena, was a nephew of Eduardo Ortiz, who was temporarily Deputy Minister for Public Works, and of Carlos Rodrigo Ortiz, who was governor between 1881 and 1883 of the state of Sonora was. He completed his school education at the Colegio Alemán , the Colegio Franco-Inglés and the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria and then began studying law at the Faculty of Law (Escuela Nacional de Jurisprudencia) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), which he did in 1928 graduated with a licentiate (Licenciado) . This was followed by postgraduate studies in economics and philosophy at UNAM, and between 1930 and 1932 he worked as an assessor in the government of the federal district. In 1932 he completed his PhD for Doctor of Law at the UNAM with a thesis entitled La suspensión del acto en el juicio de amparo reclamado from. In the following years he became head of the legal department there, then a legal assessor at the Attorney General of the Republic and finally head of the professional department in the Ministry of Public Education. He then worked for the National Bank for Urban Mortgages and Public Works (Banco Nacional Hipotecario Urbano y de Obras Públicas) from 1936 to 1940, and finally, between 1940 and 1945, head of the property nationalization department at the Attorney General.

Ortiz Mena then returned to Banco Nacional Hipotecario Urbano y de Obras Públicas in 1946 , where he was director until 1952. In 1952 he took over the post of General Director of the Institute for Social Security IMSS ( Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social ) from Antonio Díaz Lombardo and held this position until he was replaced by Benito Coquet Lagunes in 1958. He also served as President of the Standing Committee on Inter-American Social Security between 1955 and 1959.

Minister of Finance 1958 to 1970 and the Mexican economic boom

After Adolfo López Mateos was elected president , Ortiz Mena was appointed Minister of Finance ( Secretarío de Hacienda ) on December 1, 1958, succeeding Antonio Carrillo Flores . Prior to that, he worked on the PRI's political election program. He also held the post of finance minister under López Mateos' successor, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz , from December 1, 1964 to August 13, 1970, after which he was replaced by Hugo B. Margáin .

During his twelve-year tenure as Minister of Finance, he had lasting responsibility for economic growth in the 1960s. Despite the above-average population growth from 34,994,000 inhabitants in 1960 to 50,695,000 inhabitants in 1970, per capita income grew by 3.4 percent annually during that period. The annual economic growth rate was around 5 percent, while inflation averaged less than percent per year. This brought millions of Mexicans into the middle class and the country changed from a predominantly agricultural economy to an industrialized one. At the same time, the public deficit of the gross domestic product remained comparatively low at 0.41 percent in 1958, 1.57 percent in 1960 and 1.84 percent in 1970. The total public sector deficit in 1960 was 2.7 percent and 3.8 percent of the gross domestic product. Compliance with the economic goals to achieve growth was achieved through tight management and control of the nationalized companies such as the oil company PEMEX , the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México (FNM) railway company , the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE) and the Compañía Nacional de Subsistencias food company Populares (CONASUPO). At the same time, prices for petrol, diesel, electricity and public transport increased while subsidies for agriculture were reduced.

The increased income was used to reduce the number of schools abroad. In 1961, for example , the liabilities resulting from the revolution that began in 1910 were paid off. In 1970, the foreign debt amounted to 3.2 billion US dollars, 9.2 percent of the gross domestic product. The import-substituting industrialization and structural economic policy pursued by Ortiz Mena promoted local companies such as the mining company Peñoles , the fertilizer manufacturer Fertilizantes Mexicanos (FERTIMEX), the steel company Altos Hornos de México (AHMSA) and the electricity company Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LyFC) in contrast to companies foreign owned.

Despite the reduction in state agricultural subsidies, the lending of the National Agricultural Bank (Banco Nacional Agropecuario) and the National Land and Livestock Insurance (Aseguradora Nacional Agrícola y Ganadera) achieved an annual increase in agricultural production of 3.2 percent per year. This also led to an annual increase in per capita income of 2.2 percent for farmers. At the same time, the increase in agricultural production now also allowed the export of corn, beans and wheat. In addition, loans from the Banco de México were used to promote tourism, which resulted in the development of the tourist areas of Puerto Escondido , Huatulco , Ixtapa and Cancún . On the basis of his experience in social security systems, which he gained while working as Director General of the IMSS, he was instrumental in founding and organizing the Institute for Social Security and Services for State Workers ISSSTE ( Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado ) in 1959 .

When the Partido Comunista Mexicano (PCM) organized unrest in the late 1960s and the Tlatelolco massacre on October 2, 1968 , Ortiz Mena tried to improve the criticized living conditions for farmers, workers and parts of the lower middle class through further economic reforms. At the end of his tenure as Minister of Finance in 1970, GDP growth was 6.8 percent and per capita income 3.4 percent, while the inflation rate was 2.6 percent. The exchange rate was 12.5 pesos for one US dollar at the 1954 level. Real wage increases were 6 percent and actual per capita income was from 300 US dollars in 1958 to 700 US dollars in 1970 grown.

Ortiz Mena, who was also a member of the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund between 1959 and 1970, was considered a possible candidate for the Party of Institutionalized Revolution PRI ( Partido Revolucionario Institucional ) in the presidential election on July 5, 1970, particularly because of his financial policy proximity to the USA. However, the previous Minister of the Interior ( Secretarío de Gobernación ) Luis Echeverría Álvarez became the PRI's presidential candidate and won the presidential election with 11,708,065 votes (82.93 percent), well ahead of the opponent of the PAN ( Partido Acción Nacional ) Efraín González Morfín , accounted for the 1,945,070 votes (13.78 percent). He then resigned as finance minister on August 13, 1970 and after President Echeverría Álvarez took office on December 1, 1970, he did not take over a new ministerial post in his government.

President of the Inter-American Development Bank

Instead, Ortiz Mena became President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in 1971 as the successor to Chilean Felipe Herrera , which was founded on his co-initiative in 1960. He was re-elected for a further seven-year term in 1978 and 1985. During his tenure in 1974, the so-called Declaration of Madrid (Declaración de Madrid) was made , which allowed states outside the American continent to be accepted. This led to the number of member countries growing from 23 to 44 and 15 European countries such as the Federal Republic of Germany in 1979 , but also Israel and Japan joining. At the same time, loans granted increased tenfold from $ 4 billion in 1970 to $ 40 billion in 1987. At the same time, IDB's capital rose from $ 2.4 billion to $ 34 billion. In particular, he advocated financial support for companies and technical cooperation projects. In 1978, during his presidency, the IDB created the first credit program for small and micro projects.

In 1988, Ortiz Mena resigned as president of the IDB three years before the end of his regular term after there had previously been disagreements between Latin American member countries and the US, which demanded greater influence within the bank. As early as 1985, the then US Secretary of State George P. Shultz had in vain prevented the granting of a loan of 58 million US dollars to Nicaragua , which at the time was ruled by the left-wing Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) by Daniel Ortega . He was succeeded as President of the IDB in 1988 by the previous Foreign Minister of Uruguay, Enrique Iglesias .

Ortiz Mena, who was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Universidad de las Américas (UDLA) and the Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña (UNPHU), was then general director of the Banco Nacional de México (BANAMEX), one of the largest credit companies in Mexico. In this capacity, he hosted a meeting in February 1993 in preparation for the PRI's election campaign for the upcoming presidential elections, at which the then President Carlos Salinas de Gortari , the Minister for Agriculture and Hydroelectricity Carlos Hank González and influential entrepreneurs such as Lorenzo Zambrano , Alberto Baillères , Gilberto Borja Navarrete , Bernardo Garza Sada , Carlos Slim Helú , Alfredo Harp Helú , Jerónimo Arango and Roberto González Barrera took part. Each participant undertook to donate a sum of 25 million US dollars for the election campaign.

In 1999 his autobiographical book El desarrollo estabilizador was published by the publisher Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE) . Reflexions sobre una época . He died on March 12, 2007 of complications from pneumonia . In 2009 he was posthumously awarded the Medalla Belisario Domínguez del Senado de la República , the highest honor of the government of Mexico.

Publications

  • La suspension del acto reclamado en el juicio de amparo. Dissertation UNAM, 1932.
  • Política financiera. Informes y discursos. 1962.
  • The financial books in the desarrollo socioecoómico de México. 1969.
  • Discursos y declaraciones, 1964-1970. 1970.
  • Panoramica de la economía latinoamericana y algunas reflexiones sobre el desarrollo y la integración de la región. 1972.
  • Development in Latin America, a view from the IDB. Addresses and documents, 1971-75. 1975.
  • Qué pasa en México? En conversación with Aurora Berdejo. 1984, ISBN 968-409-030-7 .
  • El desarrollo estabilizador. Reflexions sobre una época. 1998, ISBN 968-16-5431-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Leslie Bethell (Ed.): Mexico since Independence , p. 366, Cambridge University Press, 1991, ISBN 1-316-58356-2 .
personal data
SURNAME Ortiz Mena, Antonio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mexican politician and bank manager
DATE OF BIRTH September 22, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Hidalgo del Parral , Chihuahua state
DATE OF DEATH March 13, 2007
Place of death Mexico city