Gustavo Petricioli

Who was Gustavo Petricioli?

Gustavo Petricioli Iturbide was a Mexican economist who served as Secretary of Finance in the last cabinet of Miguel de la Madrid and as Mexican ambassador to the United States.

Petricioli was the son of Carlos Petricioli Alarcón and Ada Iturbide Preciat. He received a high school diploma from the Monterrey Institute of Technology, a bachelor's degree in Economics from the ITAM and a master's degree in the same discipline from Yale University. He lectured on Monetary Theory at both ITAM and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and joined the Revolutionary Institutional Party in 1952.

Before joining the federal cabinet Petricioli served as Undersecretary of Finance, as Deputy Director of the Bank of Mexico, and as Director-General of Nacional Financiera. As Secretary of Finance, he co-authored the Pact for Stability and Economic Growth, a national strategy to control the fiscal deficit and inflation in coordination with the private sector.

Petricioli died of a heart attack on 9 October 1998 at Los Angeles Hospital in Mexico City. He married Rosa Blanca Morales Murphy, who had two sons, Gustavo and Ada. After his divorce, he remarried to Mariluisa Castillón, mother of his sons Hugo and Maria Luisa. Hildegard Rohen accompanied him the last years of his life. In his honor, a remembrance book, El complejo arte de vivir: homenaje a Gustavo Petricioli, was published by Editorial Porrúa and a statue was erected at ITAM; his alma mater.