Mario Vázquez Raña, a Mexican newspaper publisher who briefly owned United Press International and was a powerful member of the International Olympic Committee, died on Sunday in Mexico City. He was 82.
Carlos Padilla Becerra, the leader of the Mexican Olympic Committee, confirmed Mr. Vázquez Raña’s death but did not specify the cause.
Mr. Vázquez Raña, the owner of more than 60 newspapers in Mexico, took over the struggling U.P.I. news agency with a partner, Joe Russo, in 1986, paying $40 million. At the time, Mr. Vázquez Raña’s fortune was estimated to be $1 billion. He sold the company after two rocky years. It is now owned by an affiliate of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church.
Mr. Vázquez Raña led the Association of National Olympic Committees from 1979 to 2012. In that role, he was one of the most powerful people on the International Olympic Committee for years. He also served on the committee’s executive board.
He was a close ally of Juan Antonio Samaranch, the president of the International Olympic Committee from 1980 to 2001.
Mr. Vázquez Raña resigned from all of his Olympic positions in 2012 in the face of a possible revolt by delegates to the Association of National Olympic Committees.
He was the president of the Pan American Sports Organization at the time of his death.
“He had outstanding merit within the Olympic movement, and we will always remember him as a great Olympic leader,” Thomas Bach, the current I.O.C. president, said in a statement.
The Olympic flag at the I.O.C. headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, was to be flown at half-staff in his honor, Mr. Bach said.
The “revolution” was a bungled plot, with Keystone Kops overtones, in which rebels seized an isolated courthouse in northern New Mexico on June 5, 1967, and it lasted only 90 minutes. But it would be immortalized in ballads (as in “Corrido de Rio Arriba”), elevate a former itinerant evangelist into a quixotic national prophet and propel a radical Chicano property rights movement into America’s consciousness.
The onetime evangelist, Reies Tijerina, who died on Jan. 19 at 88, never had the tangible success of Cesar Chavez and his nonviolent campaign to improve the lot of migrant workers. He never achieved his goal of reclaiming — for Mexicans, Indians and descendants of the original Spanish settlers — the millions of acres that changed hands when northern Mexico became the American Southwest in the mid-19th century. And his legacy was later marred by apocalyptic and anti-Semitic undercurrents.
Nonetheless, in the view of Lorena Oropeza, a history professor at the University of California, Davis, and author of a coming book about Mr. Tijerina, “Probably no person did more to shift our understanding of the history of the American West from a celebratory tale of ‘manifest destiny’ to the now-prevailing notion of a ‘legacy of conquest’ than did Tijerina.”
“One way to think of Tijerina,” she added, “is that he led an anticolonial movement within the continental United States. With only a few years of elementary education, and then time spent in Bible college, he developed a devastating critique of the American empire at the height of the Cold War.
“To young people involved in the Chicano movement, moreover, he gave them not only a militant alternative to Cesar Chavez, but also an understanding of the long history of Spanish-speaking people in the American Southwest,” Professor Oropeza said.
Mr. Tijerina, who died in a hospital in El Paso, had diabetes and heart problems, said Estela Reyes-Lopez, a family spokeswoman, who confirmed the death.
Reies Lopez Tijerina (pronounced tee-heh-REE-na), the son of cotton-picking sharecroppers, was born on Sept. 21, 1926, in Falls City, Tex. After he served as a Pentecostal pastor, he and more than a dozen families who constituted his followers bought 160 acres in Arizona in 1956 and founded Valley of Peace, a utopian commune. Often skirmishing with neighbors, the group did not live up to its name.
Mr. Tijerina, inspired by what he said was a heavenly vision, later uprooted his followers and led them to New Mexico, where by the early 1960s they had formed the Alianza Federal de los Pueblos Libres, or alliance of free city-states. Members of what he called his republic staged symbolic land seizures and citizen’s arrests and held mock trials of forest rangers. (Much of the land they claimed was in national forests.) There were arrests, prosecutions and prison terms.
The raid on the Rio Arriba County Courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, the county seat, was their most dramatic action. Mr. Tijerina and about 20 armed followers sought to liberate 11 Alianza members who they believed were being held there. The 11 had been charged with threatening to seize the 600,000-acre Tierra Amarilla land grant and to make a citizen’s arrest of the district attorney. But neither the prisoners nor the prosecutors were at the courthouse.
In the raid, a state police officer and a jailer were wounded. (The jailer was later beaten to death just before he was to testify that he had been shot by Mr. Tijerina; that crime was never solved.)
Pursued by tanks and helicopters in a National Guard manhunt, the rebels fled for the hills with two hostages. The getaway car got stuck in mud, and the kidnapped men were eventually recovered and most of the suspects captured.
Mr. Tijerina successfully defended himself at one trial but was tried a second time and convicted of charges stemming from the raid. He served six months in a state penitentiary. He also spent more than two years in federal prisons on charges arising from other protests. Nicknamed King Tiger, Mr. Tijerina was likened to other Chicano activists like Corky Gonzales of Colorado and José Angel Gutiérrez of Texas. But his views were more idiosyncratic.
He prophesied an apocalyptic future linked to American policy in the Middle East.
He also “turned many previous supporters away as he moved toward a singularly novel, but unmistakable, anti-Semitism,” Rudy V. Busto, a professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said in an interview.
Mr. Tijerina argued that Spanish speakers in the United States were the rightful descendants of the House of Israel.
“When there is war we are all Americans,” Mr. Tijerina once said. “When it’s voting time, then we are Mexican-Americans. But when it comes to jobs and land,” he said, using an epithet for Hispanics, “we are nothing.”
By 2006, after returning from self-imposed exile in Mexico, he was living in a two-room cinder-block house in a run-down barrio in El Paso, seeking legal residency for his Mexican-born third wife, Esperanza, who survives him along with eight of his children.
“My philosophy is that of the cricket against the lion,” he often said. “The cricket is the king of the insects, and the lion is the king of the beasts. The cricket had no chance against the lion, so he jumped into the lion’s ear and tickled him to death. That’s what we’re going to do to the United States — we’re going to tickle him to death.”
Elizabeth Peña, Actress on the Big and Small Screens, Dies at 55
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Elizabeth Peña and Chris Cooper in John Sayles’s “Lone Star” (1996), for which she won an Independent Spirit Award.CreditAlan Papp/Castle Rock Entertainment
Elizabeth Peña, an actress who appeared in major studio pictures like “Rush Hour,” independent films like John Sayles’s generational drama “Lone Star,” and a host of television shows, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. She was 55.
Her manager, Gina Rugolo, confirmed her death, saying it followed a brief illness.
Ms. Peña played everything from love interest to comedic sidekick in movies and on television for 35 years. She was a demolition specialist alongside Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in “Rush Hour” (1998). As Pilar Cruz, a history teacher who rekindles a romance with a small-town Texas sheriff in “Lone Star” (1996), she won an Independent Spirit Award for best supporting actress. “The sultry Ms. Peña gives an especially vivid performance as the character who is most unsettled by the shadows of the past,” Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times in 1996.
Her first major film role was as Tim Robbins’s lover in Adrian Lyne’s psychological thriller “Jacob’s Ladder” (1990). She reportedly won the part over stars like Julia Roberts, Andie MacDowell and Madonna.
A television regular, Ms. Peña appeared on shows like “L.A. Law,” “American Dad” and “Boston Public.” In the mid-1980s, she starred as a maid who marries her employer to stay in the United States in the short-lived sitcom “I Married Dora,” and starting in 2000 she played a hairdresser in “Resurrection Blvd.,” the Showtime drama about an upwardly mobile Latino family.
More recently she played the mother of Sofia Vergara’s character on the hit ABC sitcom “Modern Family,” even though she was only 13 years older than Ms. Vergara.
Elizabeth Peña was born in Elizabeth, N.J., on Sept. 23, 1959. Her father, Mario, was a Cuban actor, director and playwright, and Ms. Peña spent much of her childhood in Cuba before returning to the United States. She graduated from what is now the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan.
She performed in a production of “Romeo and Juliet,” translated into Spanish by the poet Pablo Neruda, at the Gramercy Theater in 1979 and made her film debut in the Spanish-language film “El Super” that year.
Ms. Peña went on to play the mistreated wife of Ritchie Valens’s half brother in the biopic “La Bamba” (1987); Jamie Lee Curtis’s confidante in the action film “Blue Steel” (1989); and Richard Dreyfuss’s and Bette Midler’s maid in the comedy “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” (1986).
She also did voice-over work in the animated film “The Incredibles” (2004) and cartoons like “Justice League.”
She married Hans Rolla in 1994. He survives her, as does their son, Kaelan; their daughter, Fiona Rolla; her mother, Estella Margarita Peña; and a sister, Tania Peña.
Ms. Peña said that she researched Mexican-American culture to prepare for her part in “Lone Star.”
“I recorded people’s voices to get the proper inflection,” she told The Ottawa Citizen in 1996. “I crossed the border a whole bunch to collect a lot of history. I would sit for hours looking at the women, how they dressed.”
“In the United States, all Spanish-speaking people are lumped into one category,” she continued. “But we’re all so different.”
William Lopez, who was convicted of murder in Brooklyn and imprisoned for 23 years before being exonerated last year, died on Sept. 20 in the Bronx. He was 55.
He had suffered an asthma attack and died at Jacobi Medical Center, his wife, Alice Lopez, said. He lived in the Bronx.
In 1989, Mr. Lopez was convicted of shooting a drug dealer in a crack house in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, with a shotgun. No weapon or forensic evidence was found at the scene, and prosecutors relied on the testimony of two witnesses.
One witness, a crack courier, testified that the gunman was a “tall, dark, black man,” about 6 feet 3 inches tall. Mr. Lopez was more than half a foot shorter and had light skin. When asked to look around the courtroom and identify the gunman, the witness said she did not see him, though Mr. Lopez was sitting at the defense table.
The other witness had been bingeing on crack cocaine just before the murder occurred. She later recanted her testimony, revealing that she had discussed a deal with the prosecution under which she would testify in exchange for a reduced sentence on a drug charge.
The conviction was overturned in 2013 by Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. In his ruling, he said that the Brooklyn district attorney’s office had been “overzealous and deceitful,” that Mr. Lopez’s lawyers had been “indolent and ill prepared,” and that the ruling of the original judge was “incomprehensible.”
Mr. Lopez was born on Jan. 18, 1959, in Brooklyn. He and his wife married in 1993. She survives him, as do his mother, Lydia; a brother, Eugene; a daughter, Crystal; and three grandchildren.
Throughout his incarceration, Mr. Lopez maintained his innocence. In 2012 he contacted Jeffrey Deskovic, an advocate for the wrongfully imprisoned, and Mr. Deskovic’s foundation began investigating his case. (Mr. Deskovic had been exonerated after serving time for rape and murder.)
“It had serious problems, as many trials do,” Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, told The New York Times in 2013. Mr. Hynes nevertheless filed a brief to overturn Judge Garaufis’s decision. The brief was withdrawn by his successor, Kenneth P. Thompson, who defeated Mr. Hynes in his bid for re-election.
“It feels great to be back on Earth,” Mr. Lopez said after his release. “I’m looking forward to restoring my life as best as I can.”
At his death, Mr. Lopez was preparing a lawsuit against the district attorney’s office.
Emilio Botín, Who Built Up Santander Bank, Dies at 79
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Under Mr. Botín, Banco Santander’s assets rose to 1.1 trillion euros ($1.42 trillion) last year from 20 billion euros in 1998.Credit Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images
Updated, 8:27 p.m. | Emilio Botín, who transformed Banco Santander from a regional, family-controlled bank into one of Europe’s largest financial institutions, died on Tuesday at his home outside Madrid. He was 79.
The bank confirmed the death in a statement on Wednesday, saying Mr. Botín had had a heart attack. Mr. Botín, whose personal wealth was estimated by Forbes magazine at $1.1 billion, lived in Somosaguas, a wealthy district in Pozuelo de Alarcón, a suburb of Madrid.
Mr. Botín ran Banco Santander for three decades after succeeding his father as executive chairman in 1986, continuing a family dynasty at the bank that began in 1909, when his grandfather became chairman. Both father and grandfather were also named Emilio.
Once in charge, Mr. Botín caught his domestic rivals flat-footed by raising the interest paid on deposits at his bank, a move that greatly increased the market share for what had been a middle-of-the-pack institution with almost no international presence.
Then, in a spate of deal making, Mr. Botín went from one takeover to the next, maintaining a rapid acquisition pace even during the early stages of the financial crisis in 2008. Banco Santander’s assets soared from 20 billion euros in 1998 to 1.1 trillion euros ($1.42 trillion) at the end of last year, which is about the value of Spain’s gross domestic product.
Besides Spain, Santander now has a huge commercial banking presence in Brazil and Britain, as well as a sizable one in the United States after its takeover of Sovereign Bank, based in Philadelphia. (Sovereign changed its name to Santander Bank in 2013 and is now based in Boston.)
Its ability to merge and grow made Santander the envy of banks worldwide, even if the expansion involved some risky bets. Among them was Mr. Botín’s decision to focus on Brazil even after the 2002 election of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, a former trade unionist who some feared would turn against banks. Banco Santander now earns about a quarter of its profit from Brazil.
Mr. Botín’s track record allowed him to retain almost unchallenged leadership of the bank, even as its expansion and takeovers diluted his family stake to about 2 percent of the equity.
On Wednesday, the board of Banco Santander unanimously appointed Mr. Botín’s daughter Ana Patricia Botín its next executive chairwoman. Ms. Botín, 53, started as an investment banker at JPMorgan Chase in New York before returning to Spain and taking charge of Banesto, a failed Spanish bank that her father took over in a state auction in 1994. More recently, Ms. Botín was based in London, where she was in charge of the bank’s British operations.
In contrast to bankers in other European countries, where they are largely anonymous figures, Mr. Botín wielded an almost cultlike influence in Spain. Although he avoided social events and made relatively few public utterances, his comments made headlines.
For example, his pronouncement that the Spanish economy was on the mend was regarded as a crucial vote of confidence in support of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s re-election bid in 2008.
In an online article on Wednesday in El País, Spain’s leading daily newspaper, Luis de Guindos, Spain’s economy minister, revealed that Mr. Botín’s support had been important in the government’s decision not to negotiate a full government bailout with international creditors in 2012, shortly after Spain was forced to seek European rescue money for Bankia and other suffering savings banks.
Mr. de Guindos wrote that while under intense pressure to opt for a bailout, he received a phone call from Mr. Botín telling him to resist. “You know what you have to do and I will back you,” he quoted Mr. Botín as saying.
As Mr. Botín integrated his various acquisitions, replacing well-known brands like Banesto and Abbey National with that of Santander, he insisted that employees wear the bank’s signature red — ties for men, scarves for women — on public occasions.
Emilio Botín-Sanz de Sautuola y García de los Ríos was born on Oct. 1, 1934, in Santander, a resort town on the northern coast, where his family’s bank was headquartered. (It is now based outside Madrid.) The town was once the summer vacation spot of the Spanish royal family.
By royal decree, Queen Isabel II authorized the bank’s founding in 1857, mainly to help finance maritime trade between Spain and Latin America.
Mr. Botín studied law and then economics before joining the bank at 24 and beginning a rise through the executive ranks. He was in his early 50s when he took over from his father, in 1986, a moment that coincided with Spain’s joining the European Union, which brought in substantial European subsidies to modernize Spain’s economy.
In the last three years, Mr. Botín kept Banco Santander on the sidelines of a Spanish consolidation process in which suffering savings banks that received bailout money were then absorbed by healthier commercial banks.
In 2011, as Spain’s banking crisis was nearing its peak, it was revealed that Mr. Botín and his family were the target of a tax investigation that ended when the family agreed to pay about 200 million euros, now equivalent to about $258 million, in back taxes to avoid tax evasion charges.
While little was disclosed about the settlement, investigators said the family’s undeclared money had originated in a Swiss bank account that Mr. Botín’s father had opened after leaving Spain with part of his wealth in late 1936, after the onset of the Spanish Civil War.
In addition to his daughter Ana Patricia, Mr. Botín’s survivors include his wife, Paloma O’Shea, a classical pianist, patron of the arts and founder of the Queen Sofía College of Music in Madrid; and five other children, Carmen, Emilio, Carolina, Paloma and Francisco Javier. Spanish news media said he had 17 grandchildren. Even after turning his bank into an international behemoth, Mr. Botín remained loyal to the managers who had helped run the family business when it was virtually unknown outside Spain, said Manuel Romera, a finance professor at the IE business school in Madrid.
Mr. Botín’s management team, Mr. Romera said, was “a bit like a Pretorian guard of people whom he has trusted for many years, and who are very Spanish.”
