José Lopez Portillo, ex-leader of Mexico, dies at 83

MEXICO CITY — Former Mexican President José Lopez Portillo, who presided over what is widely described as the most corrupt administration in Mexican history from 1976 to 1982, died yesterday from complications from pneumonia contracted earlier in the week.

He was 83.

He took office as Mexico was bogged down in its worst economic recession since World War II. Yet he promised to bring prosperity for all — especially to the millions of people struggling on the edge of poverty. He did — for a while.

New oil exploration during his six-year term brought increasing prosperity that fed some of the worst government excesses ever seen in Mexico in an administration characterized by nepotism and graft.

A foreign-debt crisis and drop in oil prices forced him to devalue the peso, nationalize banks and seize depositors' dollars. Those dollars were replaced with devalued pesos, angering the nation's middle-class to this day, analysts said.

His pledge to "defend the peso like a dog" became a national joke, with some Mexicans barking at him when he appeared in public.

"He died in peace, with his family and with his conscience clear," said his son José Ramon Lopez Portillo.

Lopez Portillo never faced charges of corruption. Mexicans widely believe that nearly all former presidents have stolen millions or billions of dollars from the public treasury.

The career politician and intellectual joined the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in 1945 and worked his way up through the ranks.

The PRI held grip on the presidency for 71 years until it was ousted by President Vicente Fox in a July 2000 general election.

Lopez Portillo was also plagued by charges related to the so-called "dirty war" against peasant rebels and leftist students in the 1960s and 1970s. That episode is only now being investigated by the new government.