The economist Jesús Reyes Heroles González Garza died this Sunday at the age of 71, his family announced to the Mexican press. Previously, Reyes Heroles was director of GEA Grupo de Economistas y Asociados, a consulting firm specializing in energy. This was his area of expertise after being head of the Ministry of Energy during the government of Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) and taking over the management of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) in the government of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012). .
Reyes Heroles knew Pemex inside out and spoke in the media in recent years about the company's transformation and debacle. The politician also recognized, for example, that the energy reform implemented by Calderón in 2008 was not enough to mitigate the decline of the state oil company. “This reform was stillborn because it was carried out without constitutional changes,” he said in an interview with EL PAÍS in December 2015.
However, after the 2013 energy reform, he made no secret of his enthusiasm for opening the sector to private investment. “The reform is like a big tsunami hitting Pemex, and it had to come one day. “I am living proof that Pemex cannot be reformed from within. They really needed to reform the environment that would force the company to make changes it wouldn't otherwise make,” he added.
An economist at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM) and lawyer at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Reyes Heroles enjoyed a privileged career that led him to important positions in public service, such as the management of Banobras (1994). – 1995) and the Mexican Embassy in the United States (1997-2000). He has also served on the boards of Walmart de México, Banamex and Santander. After leaving the management of Pemex in 2009, he left public service to found the energy consulting company, which he headed until his death.
His father, Jesús Reyes Heroles, was considered one of the main ideologues of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and held senior positions in the Mexican government during the six-year administrations of Luis Echeverría, José López Portillo and Miguel de la Madrid. It was he who brought him closer to public service. “He was a liberal, secular, free-thinking man, a very frugal man in his life, tolerant in many things. “In economic terms he changed, he was a man who believed in the post-revolutionary Cardenist vision of state intervention aimed at promoting the welfare of the neediest classes, and then he gradually reconsidered this feeling over time,” he commented on his father in an interview in 2015 with journalist Sergio Sarmiento.
Reyes Heroles wrote a column in the newspaper El Universal in which he addressed various issues of public life in Mexico. Their most recent collaboration in June 2023, entitled “The Other Agenda: Contaminated with Resignation and Conformism,” addressed low citizen participation in elections in the State of Mexico. “Virtually half of citizens remain in a state of exhaustion, disappointment and disorientation. Perhaps this is a direct reaction to their low participation in the elections, which is determined by the resignation and conformism of citizens. Until now we have had to live in this society,” he wrote.
Subscribe here Subscribe to the EL PAÍS México newsletter and receive all the important information on current events in this country