I hope when I die my obituary doesn’t start off as badly as this
Jose Lopez Portillo, who died on Tuesday aged 83, was President of Mexico from 1976 to 1982, when he became reviled for having squandered his country’s oil windfall in a binge of borrowing and corruption.
By the time he left office, Mexico was saddled with the world’s second-largest foreign debt. All but the dollar elite, who saw what was coming, lost their savings in the sudden devaluation of the currency. Thereafter, when Lopez Portillo dared to show his face in public, Mexicans would bark at him, mocking his pledge to “defend the peso like a dog”.
