RARE! “Mexican Attorney General" Ezequiel Padilla Peñaloza Cut Signature

Description

Up for auction the "Mexican Attorney General" Ezequiel Padilla Peñaloza Cut Signature.
ES-8838
Ezequiel Padilla Peñaloza
(December 31, 1890 – September 6, 1971) was a
Mexican
statesman. Born in
Coyuca de Catalán
,
Guerrero
, he served in the
Senate
, as
Attorney General
in 1928, as
Secretary of Education
from 1928 to 1930, as ambassador to
Hungary
from 1930 to 1932, and as
Secretary of Foreign Affairs
from 1940 to 1945. His appointment to the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs by
President
Manuel Ávila Camacho
marked an end to the Post-
Revolutionary
domination of politicians from the North of the country. With his co-
cabinet
member
Miguel Alemán Valdés
(
Secretary of the Interior
), he "gave Mexico the most progressive foreign policy and the most orderly internal government in the nation's history." By 1941, he had successfully settled all foreign claims against the
government
stemming from the
Cárdenas
-era
expropriations
. He negotiated a favorable economic treaty,
fixed
the
peso
to the
United States dollar
, and secured loans for industrial development from the
Export-Import Bank of the United States
. During
World War II
, he was a strong proponent of inter-American unity and led conferences of the foreign ministers of countries of
the Americas
to this end. He was criticized by some for being too pro-American. He emerged alongside Alemán as a prime contender for the presidency in 1946. He was better-known abroad than his rival, and was considered to have stronger tendencies toward democracy. However, his association with the United States made him unpopular in the
left wing
of the
Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI), and Alemán won the party's nomination. He ran as an independent candidate for the presidency in 1946, receiving 443,537 votes. Though Alemán received over three times the number of votes, Padilla's total was respectable, considering the PRI's hegemony at the time. Also, the fact that he was not exiled after the campaign is considered something of a victory for Mexican democracy, which had been intolerant of opposition parties and candidates since solidification of the PRI.