Does Mexico need a revolution?

National Review, Nov 21, 1986 by George Byram Lake

DOES MEXICO NEED A REVOLUTION?

MEXICO's Partido Revolucionario Institutional (PRI) scored another in its long series of election victories this July. In fact, during the 57 years that the party has ruled Mexico, not one of its candidates for president, governor, or senator, including no small number of prime rogues, has ever failed to win.

The party did lose a few mayors' offices to the Partido Accion Nacional (PAN) three years ago, but it took them all back in the latest sweep. Altogether the PRI has run up a winning streak that even its friends behind the Iron Curtain might envy. But now the theoreticians in the party's nomenklatura are beginning to worry. Many of their fellow citizens have been saying for years that their record is too good to be honest. Now rank outsiders, among them the U.S. Government, are saying the same thing. The legitimacy of the system is being called into question.

Mexico is suffering its worst depression in fifty years. There is wild inflation, a near-worthless peso, high unemployment, crushing taxes, growing business failures, and a foreign debt soaring above the $100-billion mark. All this and much, much more was brought on by the profligacy, graft, and incompetence of the PRI, assisted to be sure by the crash in petroleum prices, and followed by the double earthquake in September 1985.

Under these circumstances, advance claims of a great election victory by the political party responsible for the mess would strike even such talented psephologists as Boss Tweed or Tom Pendergast as plain crazy. Yet a PRI spokesman made that prediction just before the polls opened in Mexico's state elections in July, and he turned out to be right.

And why not? To begin with, the party controls the federal treasury. I also has under its thumb the millions of campesinos living (barely) on government land, the labor unions, and to a large extent both the news media and the judiciary. Then there are three million bureaucrats on the payroll, and thousands more salaried by the nine hundred state-owned business enterprises. All those people and their relatives vote PRI, or else. And finally, the government--that is to say the party--counts the ballots, at leisure. With all those advantages, the question becomes, how can it lose? And more to the immediate point, why did it suffer those minor but painful losses in 1983?

The answer is: overconfidence. President Migel de la Madrid, fresh in office in 1983, had promised clean elections, and election observes reported at the time that PRI leaders were temporarily cautious in applying what they laughingly call alquimia electoral. The techniques of that alchemy are as old as Athens: pre-stuffed ballot boxes, "lost" registration credentials, tortuguishmo (intolerable delay) in suspect voting lines, and--oddly in this era of instant communications--eight or more days in seclusion before announcing the official count.

The alchemy avialable in 1983 was slothfully applied, especially in Chihuahua, and PAN candidates won a few jobs. There was much grumbling subsequently in PRI ranks, and PRI chiefs vowed it would not happen again. In the voting this July, they made good on their now.

PAN charged massive fraud in Chihuahua and organized protest demonstrations, strikes, and blockades, all to no avail. American newsmen reported some irregularities but of course had no way of knowing what went on behind the scenes. The Catholic Archbishop of Chihuahua, Adalberto Almeido y Merino, and his priests stoutly supported the PAN protests. The PRI denied everything and chased off the few PAN officials who tried to cling to office.

Whether the PRI triumph was real or rigged, it may prove to have been a pyrrhic victory: It served to confirm the conviction of countless Mexicans and of the U.S. State Department that the whole system is fatally warped. The worst blow PAN could deal the PRI would be to give up altogether. The PRI needs at least token opposition to maintain the charade.

FOR YEARS the United States took a complacent view of democracy as practiced south of the border. The Mexican machine provided an island of stability in a volatile region. During the 1960s, in fact, growth in Mexico averaged 7 per cent a year, with sound money, low taxes, expanding production, and no debt or inflation to speak of. Mexico was held up as a model for all Latin America.

That changed abruptly with the accession of Luis Echeverria to the presidency late in 1970. Echeverria sought state control of the economy. He increased the number of state-run businesses--beauty parlors, steel mills, and everything in between--from around fifty to some eight hundred most of them run at a loss by socialist ideologues. Big spending, fiat money, and inflation were the order of the day. Echeverria increased Mexico's foreign debt from $3 billion to $27 billion, and reduced the value of the peso by 40 per cent. He was an anti-capitalist who left office a multimillionaire.

President Jose Lopez Portillo (1976-1982), a former college professor, completed the wreckage his old pal had begun. His flatout rush to exploit Mexico's rich petroleum reserves touched off a roaring boom and an orgy of corruption. When the price of oil as manipulated by the OPEC cartel hit unheard-of heights, billions of dollars poured into Mexico from export sales. Huge new bank borrowings abroad brought in yet more billions. Euphoria reigned--but much of the fresh money was pouring right out again and into private bank accounts abroad.