The former rector of the University of Guadalajara (UdeG) and president of the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL), Raúl Padilla, has been found dead at the age of 69 in his home. Specifically, in the Vallarta Poniente neighborhood, in the municipality of Guadalajara, in Mexico.
The university center itself has confirmed the news shortly after the events occurred. For his part, the governor of Jalisco, Enrique Alfaro, has branded the death as suicide on his networks. “The State Prosecutor confirms to me that a few hours ago Raúl Padilla López took his own life at his private home. I had communication with his brother Trinidad de él and with the Rector of the University of Guadalajara to express my condolences to the family and the institution. Rest in peace â€, he wrote on Twitter.
Shortly after, the State Attorney General’s Office reported that it had opened an investigation to clarify “the events in which the former rector took his own life.” The agency added that “a firearm was located at the scene, as well as a posthumous message,” as reported by the local media.
The reactions have not been long in coming. The filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has been one of the first to offer his condolences. “I am in Scotland, and the painful news of the death of Raúl Padilla reaches me. He always maintained the conviction that Guadalajara had an international level. Close in painful moments and in good moments,” the director wrote on his Twitter.
Padilla was quite a political and cultural personality in the Mexican state of Jalisco. He was the founder of FIL, which he endowed with great international projection, and which today is considered the second largest book fair in the world, only behind the one in Frankfurt, and the first in Spanish.
In addition, under his leadership, he managed to turn the University of Guadalajara into “the second largest in Mexico”, as the center recalled in a statement.
In recent years, he had had disagreements with some personalities, including President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who came to define him as “the true power in the UdeG” and who was part of “the mafias” in the public universities of the country. “There are cases where there are mafias, I couldn’t find another word, that dominate public universities. Mr. Padilla from Jalisco is not Rector, but he is the one in charge at the University of Guadalajara, â€said the president in 2021.
