Fernando Gutierrez Barrios; Mexico’s Spy Chief

Fernando Gutierrez Barrios, a legendary spy chief who was linked to some of Mexico’s bloodiest cases of repression but was also praised for maintaining political stability, died Monday. He was 73.

The longtime security expert died after undergoing surgery following a heart attack, his office said.

Gutierrez Barrios was one of the pillars of Mexico’s 20th century political system, which was built around the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. The party’s 71-year dynasty, only now coming to a close, was authoritarian but far more tolerant than the dictatorships in other Latin American countries.

“He was the incarnation of the authoritarian system,” said Lorenzo Meyer, a prominent historian.

Like Mexico’s political system, Gutierrez Barrios was a paradox. He was as famous for his courtly manners and elegant gray pompadour as for his ironfisted response to dissidents in the 1960s and ‘70s. He was admired by the CIA but also enjoyed a warm friendship with Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

As the force behind the country’s intelligence system, Don Fernando, as he was widely known, was a feared and mysterious figure.

“He was the expert in secrets,” Meyer said. “He knew the secrets not only of the opposition, but of the government. He was very important in keeping checks and balances within the government.”

Gutierrez Barrios entered the political arena almost by chance. As a young military officer, he was sent in 1952 to a new national security agency.

“I went to the security area as just another military commission. With the passage of time . . . first I was attracted to, then became passionate about, politics,” Gutierrez Barrios said in a rare interview with a Mexican reporter in 1995. He went on to spend three decades as a key figure in the intelligence agency, known as the Federal Security Directorate.

Gutierrez Barrios’ police were involved in some of the bloodiest chapters of recent Mexican history: the massacre of hundreds of pro-democracy student protesters in 1968, and the ruthless campaign against left-wing rebels in the 1970s.

But Gutierrez Barrios was more a politician than Augusto Pinochet of Chile.

“He preferred co-opting to killing,” Meyer said. “He always advocated leaving at least a margin for the left.”

In fact, Gutierrez Barrios enjoyed warm ties with many Latin American leftists. As a young intelligence officer, he befriended a Cuban radical jailed by the Mexican political police, helping him win his freedom. It was the start of a 44-year friendship with Castro.

Many credit Gutierrez Barrios with persuading Cuba and other Communist countries to refrain from exporting revolution to Mexico during the Cold War. In exchange, Mexico provided diplomatic and intelligence support.

But Gutierrez Barrios also carefully preserved Mexico’s crucial ties to Washington, helping the U.S. government spy on Communist countries.

“What Don Fernando did was ‘Mexico First,’ ” a former U.S. intelligence official told The Times last year. “He takes care of Mexico’s needs first in a genuinely patriotic sense.”

Gutierrez Barrios’ highest post was interior minister, the main political operator of the president, from 1988 to 1993. He also was governor of Veracruz from 1986 to 1988, and was a senator at the time of his death.

His last major political mission was the most surprising. The PRI tapped Gutierrez Barrios to help the party enter a new democratic era, asking him to organize its first presidential primary last November. Previous PRI candidates had been handpicked by the president. The winner of the primary, Francisco Labastida, was defeated in the July 2 general election.

Gutierrez Barrios is survived by his wife, Devina Maria Morales, and five children.