Ernesto P. Uruchurtu

Ernesto P. Uruchurtu (28 February 1906 – 8 October 1997) was a Mexican politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its forerunners. A native of the state of Sonora, he held various positions within his party and served two short stints as secretary of the interior and a 14-year term as the unelected head of government of the Federal District that earned him the sobriquet el Regente de Hierro ("The Iron Regent").

Ernesto Uruchurtu Peralta^[a] was born in Hermosillo, Sonora, on 28 February 1906, the fifth of nine children born to Gustavo Adolfo Uruchurtu Ramírez and María Luisa Regina Peralta Arvizu. He attended school at the Colegio de Sonora^[b] and the Escuela Normal de Hermosillo. He then went on to study law at the National University of Mexico (UNM, later UNAM) in Mexico City, where his law-school classmates included Antonio Ortiz Mena, Antonio Carrillo Flores and, most notably, Miguel Alemán Valdés. He received his degree after successfully defending his thesis, titled Escuelas y tendencias penales. El nuevo Código Penal ("Schools and Criminal Trends. The New Criminal Code"), in 1930.^[5][1]

After completing his studies, Uruchurtu took a position as a first-instance judge in the border city of Nogales, Sonora. In 1931, Governor of Sonora Rodolfo Elías Calles^[c] nominated him to serve as the state's attorney-general; the Congress of Sonora unanimously approved the appointment, and he took office on 19 February 1932. During his tenure, he chaired a committee charged with harmonising the state's laws with the federal constitution and secondary legislation before resigning on 11 November 1932. He spent the following years in private legal practice before being appointed as a notary public in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, on 6 March 1935. He also began writing political opinion pieces for El Pueblo, a local newspaper owned by Israel González Filigrana, with whom he maintained a years-long correspondence.^[1]

In 1936, Emilio Portes Gil, then serving as president of the National Revolutionary Party (PNR, which would later become the Institutional Revolutionary Party), selected Uruchurtu as the party's general secretary in Sonora; he assumed the position on 1 July but did not survive much after Portes Gil's resignation as party president in August 1936. Still within the party, he backed Román Yocupicio Valenzuela's bid to represent the PNR in that year's gubernatorial election. Yocupicio won the party primaries and went on to win the 11 November election; upon taking office as governor, he nominated Uruchurtu for a seat on the state's Supreme Court of Justice. Uruchurtu was sworn in on 2 January 1937 but, after several clashes with Yocupicio, resigned on 11 May 1937.^[1]

Following his break with the governor, Uruchurtu returned to Mexico City, from where he continued to criticise Yocupicio's administration until the end of his term. However, when Anselmo Macías Valenzuela, Yocupicio's preferred candidate to succeed him, won the 1939 gubernatorial election, Uruchurtu turned his attention away from Sonoran politics and towards the national stage and, most particularly, the 1940 presidential election. Unimpressed by the official candidate, Manuel Ávila Camacho, who was expected to continue the left-leaning policies of outgoing president Lázaro Cárdenas, Uruchurtu threw his support behind the conservative Juan Andreu Almazán and his Revolutionary Party of National Unification (PRUN). The election was nasty, violent, almost certainly fraudulent, and ultimately won by Ávila Camacho with an official total of almost 94% of the votes cast.^[1][7] In the aftermath, Almazán temporarily fled the country and, by 1942, Uruchurtu had realigned himself with the ruling party (now renamed the Party of the Mexican Revolution, PRM) and had taken a position as legal director of the Banco Nacional de Crédito Ejidal (BNCE), a state-owned rural development bank. At the same time he began supporting his elder brother Gustavo's bid to be chosen as the PRM's candidate in the 1943 Sonora gubernatorial election, but Gustavo withdrew when former president Abelardo L. Rodríguez decided to contend.^[1]

In May 1945, Uruchurtu resigned his position with the BNCE and joined Miguel Alemán Valdés's campaign for the 1946 presidential election.^[5][1] Alemán Valdés, whose friendship with Uruchurtu dated back to their time together at the National University, was then serving as Ávila Camacho's secretary of the interior, a position traditionally seen as the antechamber of the presidency. During the campaign, Uruchurtu was appointed general secretary of the newly renamed Institutional Revolutionary Party on 19 January 1946.^[8][1]

Miguel Alemán won the 7 July 1946 election with almost 78% of the votes cast.^[9] In assembling his cabinet, he appointed former governor of Campeche Héctor Pérez Martínez to the choice position of interior secretary, with Uruchurtu assigned to an undersecretarial position in the same department. As undersecretary he oversaw a range of issues, including immigration policy and relations with the country's governors, and played a role in Alemán's planned political and judicial reforms. When Pérez Martínez died unexpectedly on 12 February 1948, Alemán selected Uruchurtu to replace him on an interim basis, until the appointment of Pérez's formal replacement, Governor of Veracruz Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, on 30 June 1948. Back in his role as undersecretary, one of the main tasks Uruchurtu oversaw was the updating of the 1930 Criminal Code on which he had written his undergraduate thesis; a draft was finalised in 1949 but the new code was never enacted.^[1]

On 13 October 1951, Ruiz Cortines was announced as the PRI's candidate for the 1952 presidential election and, that same day, President Alemán appointed Uruchurtu interior secretary, a position in which he remained until the end of Alemán's term on 30 November 1952. During his 14 months as secretary of the interior, Uruchurtu oversaw the enactment of a new Federal Electoral Law that facilitated, to some extent, the registration of opposition political parties.^[1]

Ruiz Cortines won the 7 July 1952 election with 74% of the vote and took office on 1 December.^[10]

For much of the 20th century, governance of Mexico City, as the seat of the federal government, was the responsibility of the Department of the Federal District (DDF). The DDF was led by an unelected official appointed directly by the President of the Republic, and those presidential appointees were commonly known as regentes ("regents"). The first direct election to the successor position was held in 1997.^[11][12]

Upon taking his oath of office at the Palacio de Bellas Artes on 1 December 1952, President Ruiz Cortines was flanked by the members of his cabinet, including Ernesto P. Uruchurtu as head of the Department of the Federal District. He would remain in that position for an uninterrupted and unequalled 13 years, 10 months and 14 days, serving under Ruiz Cortines and his two successors, Adolfo López Mateos and Gustavo Díaz Ordaz.^[1] His authoritarian style in discharging his duties, his intolerance of corrupution and his efforts to stamp out what he deemed "immoral" activities in pursuit of the capital's modernisation soon earned him the Regente de Hierro nickname.^[13][14]

His third term ended with his resignation from the position on 14 September 1966 following fierce criticism sparked by the violent eviction of more than 3,000 inhabitants of irregular settlements in the Pedregal de Santa Úrsula in the south of the city close to the Estadio Azteca.^[15][16]

Uruchurtu's time in office was noted for its major restructuring of the city's infrastructure. Among the most significant projects were the culverting of the Río de la Piedad and the construction of the Viaducto de la Piedad, which was later extended as the Viaducto Miguel Alemán; Río Churubusco was also culverted and the avenue of the same name built and widened. The first section of the Anillo Periférico ring road was built from the Toreo de Cuatro Caminos on the limits between Miguel Hidalgo and Naucalpan to Cuemanco in Xochimilco. Paseo de la Reforma was widened; although this required the demolition of several blocks in the city centre, the benefits for the growing volume of urban traffic were significant. Similarly, Avenida Insurgentes Norte was extended from the city centre to Indios Verdes and towards the highway to Pachuca, Hidalgo. Later works included the completion of the Viaducto Miguel Alemán, the conversion of the Calzada de Tlalpan into an expressway, the northern extension of Paseo de la Reforma and the start of work on the Estadio Azteca.^[14][17]

The Colector Central – a precursor to the city's deep drainage system – was built, and around 80% of the existing sewage and stormwater draining systems were replaced, thereby reducing the severe flooding that Mexico City had traditionally suffered. The drinking water distribution network was also expanded and modernised, and several water treatment plants were constructed.

During his nearly 14 years in office, the city acquired almost 200 new schools.^[15] More than 180 public markets were built, including La Merced, San Juan and Sonora.^[16] Clandestine and unsanitary slaughterhouses were replaced in 1955 by the Ferrería Abattoir in Azcapotzalco.^[18] As part of his drive to promote formal markets, he also clamped down – hard – on street trading.^[13][14]

Public spaces established during the period include the second section of Chapultepec Park, with two large artificial lakes, an amusement park, fountains and gardens, and the Natural History Museum.^[14][16] The San Juan de Aragón Park was also built, housing the city's second zoo, as well as extensive sports facilities and landscaped and wooded areas.^[19] The Magdalena Mixhuca Sports City, a monumental project for the practice of a wide range of sports, was inaugurated in 1958.^[16] The canals of Xochimilco were restored and the embarcadero and neighbouring Xochimilco Flower Market were built.^[2]

His administrations also saw the construction of major museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art and, in coordination with the Secretariat of Public Education, the National Museum of Anthropology. Next to Chapultepec Castle, the Museum of Mexican History (Museo del Caracol) was built, and in the city centre various colonial buildings were restored, notably the one housing the Museum of Mexico City. New buildings were constructed for various city government offices and borough authorities.

Throughout his tenure, he systematically opposed the construction of a metro system, arguing that the city's subsoil would make it too costly and dangerous. His refusals brought him into conflict with President Díaz Ordaz and, following his fall from grace, construction work on the Mexico City Metro began in 1967 and it carried its first passengers in 1969.^[20][17]

During his time in office, Uruchurtu also pursued campaigns to clean up the Federal District's morals. Under the Cruzada de la Decencia Teatral ("Crusade for Decency in Theatres"), launched in 1952, a team led by Luis Spota patrolled the city's theatres to supervise the "moral quality" of their productions. During his tenure, numerous theatres and cabarets were closed down; bars, cantinas and pulquerías suffered the same fate,^[21] and those that survived had to close by 1 a.m.^[14]

Censorship also extended to other forms of entertainment: women's wrestling was banned in 1954,^[22] Luis Buñuel's 1961 film Viridiana could not be shown,^[23] and a scheduled concert by The Beatles in 1965 was cancelled.^[24][25]

Uruchurtu's name appeared on the list of possible successors to Ruiz Cortines for the 1958 presidential election but López Mateos was chosen instead. The same occurred for the 1964 election, ultimately won by Díaz Ordaz.^[2]

After 1966, Uruchurtu never again held public office.^[2] He died at his home on Mexico City's Paseo de la Reforma on 8 October 1997 and was buried in the city's Panteón Español.^[15][14]

Uruchurtu never married, and his bachelorhood was perhaps one of the factors behind his failure to secure the 1958 presidential nomination.^[26] His brother Gustavo A. Uruchurtu Peralta – as the personal physician to President Álvaro Obregón and later a member of both chambers of Congress, the most prominent of his siblings – predeceased him in 1987.^[2][27] The pair's paternal uncle, Manuel Uruchurtu Ramírez, was a prominent businessman in Sonora who served in the Chamber of Deputies during the final years of Porfirio Díaz's presidency and was the only Mexican passenger to perish in the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic.^[1][2]

Uruchurtu remains a polarising figure. For some, he enjoys almost mythical admiration for his work in building many of the roads, markets, schools, housing estates and parks that still make up Mexico City's urban infrastructure, while for others he was a repressive authoritarian who extinguished the city's nightlife, mercilessly targeted certain social groups and delayed the arrival of a modern mass-transit system.^[28] Journalist Francisco Ortiz Pinchetti, one of the founders of the news magazine Proceso, described him as a "controversial politician like few others, transformative and repressive, arbitrary and popular, moralistic, effective and uncompromising".^[29]

The transformations he brought about in the capital were also commemorated in the 1958 song "No es Justu" by satirical singer-songwriter Chava Flores, which praised the beautification of the city and its new markets and called for a statue in Uruchurtu's honour while at the same time riffing on the unusual prominence of the letter U in his name.^[30][31][d]