Mexico: neoliberalism with a human face - policies of Carlos Salinas de Gortari in Mexico

Contemporary Review, July, 1993 by Martin C. Needler

|Modernization' has always been one of his themes. Salinas appreciates that today's Mexico is a nation of literate urban dwellers who are increasingly high school and even college graduates, who are not willing to be led in the authoritarian populist style that was perhaps appropriate for the nation of illiterate peasants of 70 years ago.(13) If PRONASOL can indeed provide effective development, generate increased support for the ruling party, and form new leadership elements, all on a reduced budget, it is clearly a political masterpiece.

Of course, it never does for a Mexican president to become overconfident. The pattern for the presidents of the last quarter-century has been for disaster to strike sometime during the second half of the presidential term and force a reversal of all the optimistic prognoses. Gustavo Diaz Ordaz over-reacted to opposition demonstrations in 1968 and produced the infamous Tlatelolco massacre; Luis Echeverria's infantile leftism produced a financial crisis, and his administration ended in a chaos of government-encouraged land invasions and violent clashes; Jose Lopez Portillo mismanged the country's new oil riches in an economic and financial disaster that he tried to escape from with a demagogic and illegal seizure of the banks; while poor Miguel de la Madrid found that a disastrous economic situation could be made even worse by a devastating earthquake. The gods may also tire of Carlos Salinas. But if his luck holds and the economy continues to prosper, he may yet succeed in the culminating achievement of modernizing the ruling party and the political system, and guaranteeing absolutely free and impeccable elections which the PRI nevertheless wins handily because its policies are both effective and popular.

NOTES

(1.) Sidney Weintraub, |The Economy on the Eve of Free Trade', Current History, February, 1993, p.71. In the same issue of the journal Jorge Castaneda is more sceptical and assigns a larger role to luck; |The Clouding Political Horizon', ibid. (2.) On August 20, 1989, the Los Angeles Times published a poll in which 68 per cent of the Mexican respondents said they believed that Salinas had not actually won the election. (3.) Weintraub, op. cit. (4.) |A Report on the Mexican Mid-Term Elections', distributed by the Embassy of Mexico in the United States, n.p., n.d. (5.) Jorge J. Dominguez and James A. McCann, |Shaping Mexico's Electoral Arena: The Construction of Partisan Cleavages in the 1988 and 1991 National Elections', paper delivered at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, September 3-6, 1992, p.23. (6.) Keith Bradsher, |Study Says Trade Pact Will Aid US Economy', New York Times, February 3, 1993 page C1. This is a completely misleading headline for the story, which reports that there will be negligible effect on the US economy, though much benefit for the Mexican. (7.) Gary C. Hufbauer and Jeffrey J. Schott, North American Free Trade: Issues and Recommendations, Institute for International Economics, Washington D.C. 1993. (8.) Of course, this is privatization a la mexicana, in which the well-connected and favoured make fortunes - out of which they are expected to show gratitude to the PRI. Tim Golden, |Mexican Leader Asks Executives To Give Party $25 Million Each', New York Times, March 9,1993, p.A1. (9.) State of the Nation Address (Informe Anual), given November 1, 1992; English translation published in the Daily Report of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, FBIS-LAT-92-214, 4 November 1992. (10.) Ibid, page 13. (11.) Denise Dresser, Neo-Populist Solutions to Neo-Liberal Problems: Mexico's National Solidarity Program, San Diego: Center for US-Mexican Studies, 1991. (12.) The principal results are reported in Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Political Participation, Public Investment, and Support for the System, ibid., 1982. (13.) I discuss this question at some length in |The Future of Mexican Politics', in Michael Howard and Douglas Ross, eds., Mexico's Second Revolution? Centre for International Studies, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., 1991.