MEXICO CITY, September 12, 2007 (LPAC)--Twenty-five years after President Jose Lopez Portillo took Mexico's banking system away from the speculators, the daughter of one of the top criminals affected by the nationalization organized a closed door seminar to discuss it.
Aside from various bankers, the September 7 seminar included members of Lopez Portillo's cabinet, and the the President's son and top adviser, Jose Ramon Lopez Portillo. It was organized by Amparo Espinoza daughter of banker Manuel Espinoza Iglesias.
The bankers argued that Lopez Portillo had nationalized the banks, imposed exchange controls, and broken with the IMF because he was drunk with power, and wanted to justify himself historically. Never again should Mexico fall into such populism, the bankers pronounced.
But Jose Ramon refused to apologize for his father's defense of Mexico's sovereignty, and defended the former president's measures, a number of which he helped draft. On the way into the affair, he told the media humorously: "I'm the pinata of the party--they're all going to try to club me."
The bankers' faction is nervous because Lopez Portillo's specter is afoot in the country again, and Lyndon LaRouche has had a hand in that. In repeated international broadcasts over the summer of 2007, LaRouche warned that Mexico will be destroyed as a nation, if its people continue to "spit" on its hero Lopez Portillo.
As President of Mexico, Lopez Portillo gave an address in October 1982 at the United Nations, which "should be heard by anyone who is a patriot anywhere within the vicinity of the Western Hemisphere today, as an example of a patriot, whose country had just been destroyed on orders, who stood up like a man as a President, to defend the honor of his country," LaRouche stated in his August 28 webcast.
LaRouche's "hero" declaration circulated widely among Mexico's top military officers, and his defense of the former President provoking controversy and openness everywhere.
A video of the 1982 Lopez Portillo speech is circulating widely.
