López Portillo belonged to a triumvirate of former presidents — all of whom also had connections to the CIA — who waged a “dirty war” against leftist political dissenters and armed revolutionary organizations between 1964 and 1982. Under these three presidents, the Mexican Armed Forces, the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (or DFS, the notorious secret police), and paramilitary groups committed egregious human rights violations. Agents and soldiers were left to their own devices to track down, torture, rape, and kidnap peasants and students, terrorize rural communities and wreak havoc on their crops, and perform extrajudicial executions and disappearances.