Carlos Tello Macías

Carlos Tello Macías (born on 4 November 1938) is a Mexican socialist-oriented economist, academic and diplomat. He is a former ambassador to Cuba, Portugal and Russia and a former Secretary of Budget and Planning in the cabinet of President José López Portillo. According to a document distributed in the Senate by his political rivals (including some members of his own party), he was responsible for the high inflation rate (which surpassed 100 percent) and the significant increase of the external debt (which grew from 8.6 to 92.4 billion USD) in the López Portillo administration.

Tello Macías was born in Geneva, Switzerland, where his parents, Manuel Tello Baurraud and Guadalupe Macías Viadero were serving as Mexican diplomats. He received a bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Georgetown University (1955–58), a master's degree in Economics from Columbia University (1958–59) and a doctorate's degree in the same discipline from King's College, University of Cambridge (1961–63).

He joined the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 1976. Besides serving as Secretary of Budget and Planning in the federal cabinet (a position he was forced to resign from following a long and bitter dispute with the Secretary of Finance, Julio Rodolfo Moctezuma), Tello worked in the public sector as Undersecretary of Finance (1975–76) and as director-general of the Bank of Mexico (September 1982 – November 1982), where he substituted Miguel Mancera, who opposed his foreign exchange controls strategy.

As an academic, he read several courses at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (1960–87), at El Colegio de México (1964–79), at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and worked as a researcher for over nine years at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (1978–87). He also worked as a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at Washington, D.C. (1984) and as a visiting researcher at the Center for Mexican-United States Studies at the University of California, San Diego (1984–85).

Tello Macías is married to Catalina Díaz Casasús, a descendant of former President Porfirio Díaz. He has three children, among them, historian Carlos Tello Díaz, author of La rebelión de las cañadas.

• Cartas desde Moscú (Letters from Moscow, 1994)
• Estado y desarrollo económico: México 1920-2006 (State and Economic Development: Mexico 1920-2006, 2008)