Carlos Salinas de Gortari brought more fundamental change to Mexico than any president since Lazaro Cardenas in the 1930s.
Joseph Klesner, 199453
Early in 1986, the first indications came that the 1988 presidential succession would not lead to a normal transfer of power. Several prominent PRI members began to meet informally to question the party’s policies. Perhaps the best known member of the group was Porfirio Munoz Ledo, who had served as president of the PRI, as Mexico’s ambassador to the United Nations, and as secretary of labor and secretary of education. Another outstanding member of the group was Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who in addition to being the son of Lazaro Cardenas, had served as a senator, as subsecretary of forestry and fauna, and then, from 1980 to 1986, as governor of Michoacan.
This informal group, which eventually became known as the Democratic Current, raised the issue of democratic candidate selection and questioned De la Madrid’s economic and social policies. It also highlighted the uncomfortable fact that the PRI served to implement presidential decisions and promote presidentially selected candidates, not to discuss issues.54
During the spring of 1987, Democratic Current leaders traveled around Mexico stating their case and recruiting supporters. In July 1987, the Democratic Current offered Cuauhtemoc Cardenas as a potential PRI presidential candidate. Its members regularly spoke out in the press, criticizing the social and economic policies of the De la Madrid administration. Criticism focused on the administration continuing to service the foreign debt at the cost of Mexico’s own social and economic development.55 Another target was the increased reliance on foreign investment. Cardenas declared:
We feel that foreign investment can, perhaps, in the short run, help resolve the employment problem and supply needed resources, but if not in the short or medium run, certainly in the long run, foreign investment of necessity decapitalizes the country.56
On the morning of October 4, 1987, the PRI brought in a compliant crowd to support its presidential candidate, whose name they were not yet aware of. Just as they were expected to do, its members cheered when they were informed that Carlos Salinas de Gortari, De la Madrid’s secretary of budget and planning, would be the PRI candidate. Essayist Jorge Castaneda commented on Salinas’s selection, “If Mr. Salinas owes his designation to one factor, it is probably his commitment to pursue most of Mr. de la Madrid’s economic policies: trade liberalization, austerity, cutbacks in the public sector and consumer subsidies.”57
On October 14, 1987, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas accepted the nomination of the Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution, a small political party that had backed PRI presidential candidates since 1952. Subsequently, two other small parties, which in the past had backed PRI presidential candidates, also nominated Cardenas, who launched his presidential campaign on November 29, 1987. This joint campaign, which became known as the Democratic National Front (FDN), soon incorporated a variety of social movements that were not recognized as political parties. Later in the campaign, the candidate of the Mexican Socialist Party, Heberto Castillo, withdrew his candidacy in favor of Cardenas, his former engineering student at the National University.
Despite his lack of financial backing and organization, several factors favored Cardenas. As the son of one of Mexico’s most revered presidents, he inherited a deep well of popularity and good will. Though he lacked traditional political charisma, his somber style attracted many who were repelled by PRI demagogy. Another plus was his bronze skin and Indian features in a nation with a mestizo majority that had long been ruled by those of largely European ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Finally, Cardenas could appeal to broad sectors of the population that had suffered as a result of the economic crisis of the 1980s.58
The FDN platform declared De la Madrid’s economic policies were impoverishing the majority and called for limiting foreign investment and prioritizing economic growth over foreign debt payments. Cardenas argued: “I think that this administration has been letting foreigners take over our fundamental decisions. It has acted not in the interest of the country but of foreigners who are against Mexico.”59
The dominant theme of Salinas’s campaign, which cost an estimated $800 million, was “modernization.” Such “modernization” included a continuation of De la Madrid’s opening the Mexican market to imports, export promotion, continued debt service, and the welcoming of foreign capital.60
The PRI campaign had far more resources at its disposal than did the other campaigns. Salinas’s enormous entourage flew from campaign stop to campaign stop in a fleet of jets and helicopters, accompanied by a 727-load of journalists traveling at government expense. In contrast, Cardenas and his campaign staff traveled to major cities on commercial flights and then rode in cars belonging to local supporters. The media overwhelmingly focused on Salinas.61
The PRI proudly proclaimed that “modernization” would be visible on election day. Returns would be tabulated on a central government computer and made available to the public real time. However, on the evening of election day, July 6, 1988, just as the returns began coming in, the computer crashed. Early returns from urban boxes had favored Cardenas, and the PRI was apparently afraid its traditional rural base would be incapable of overcoming Cardenas’s lead.62
A week after the election, the official results declared Salinas a winner with 50.7 percent of the vote. The returns credited Cardenas with 31.1 percent and Manuel Clouthier, the PAN candidate, with 16.8 percent. Two other small parties received the remainder of the vote. In the bellwether Federal District, the PRI claimed only 27.3 percent of the vote.
The official returns can be interpreted in three ways. First, they accurately reflected the vote. Second, Salinas won with only a plurality, and the official total was inflated to enhance his mandate. A Cardenas victory is a third possibility.63
An August 1989 Los Angeles Times poll found that only 24 percent of Mexicans believed that Salinas had won. Partially burned ballots marked for Cardenas were found in many locations. Statistical anomalies abounded. In some precincts, by official count, Salinas received 100 percent of the vote, while in adjacent precincts with the same socioeconomic make-up, he only received 30 percent. Far more than 10 percent of the PRI ballot box totals ended in zero, indicating not random distribution but election officials adding a zero to the PRI vote total on the assumption that no one would notice a zero.64
Subsequent declarations have confirmed the fraud that most Mexicans assumed at the time. In June 1994, Arturo Nunez, the director general of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), admitted that the computer system had been forced to fail in 1988. His admission, however, did not adequately describe the scope of the fraud. Political scientists Alberto Aziz Nassif and Juan Molinar Horcasitas did that:
It can be stated that the election fraud of July 6, 1988 was massive and was coordinated at the
National level. It did not result from errors committed by isolated individuals, but from
Manipulating the results to subvert the voters’ will. This massive fraud occurred in rural areas
Where there were practically no opposition poll watchers.65
Cardenas claimed that he had won the presidency, but fearing uncontrollable escalation, he did not call for his followers to engage in illegal acts, such as seizing buildings, to press his claim. He concluded he could not overturn the official results by creating disorder. Historian Enrique Krauze commented on Cardenas’ restraint:
An order from him [Cardenas] would have sent Mexico up in flames. But perhaps in memory
Of his father, the missionary general, a man of strong convictions but not a man of violence, he
Did the country a great service by sparing it a possible civil war.66
The 1988 elections were significant because for the first time they clearly indicated that opposition parties were strong enough to win, shattering the assumption that PRI victories were inevitable. The departure of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas and the Democratic Current from the PRI left the party more conservative, since it removed the political heirs of Lazaro Cardenas from inside the PRI. As a result of the elections, the opposition acquired sufficient strength in the Chamber of Deputies to prevent the PRI from amending the constitution on its own, since a two-thirds vote is required for amendments. Political scientist Lorenzo Meyer commented: “The presidential elections of July 6, 1988 represent a watershed in the political history of post-revolutionary Mexico. They opened the door to a difficult transition, from state authoritarianism to democracy.”67
Salinas quickly confounded his critics by making several bold moves that established him as a decisive leader. On January 10, 1989, he sent the army to arrest Joaquin Hernandez Galicia who, as head of the oil workers, presided over Mexico’s most powerful and corrupt labor union. The removal of Hernandez Galicia repaid him for his support for Cardenas in the 1988 elections. Soon after that, Salinas forced the retirement of Carlos Jonguitud Barrios, the long-entrenched leader of the national teachers union, who had proved unable to quell dissident teachers who favored union democracy. In April 1989, the formerly untouchable Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, whom the U. S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) claimed shipped as much as two tons of cocaine a month into the United States, was arrested. In June of 1989, Jose Antonio Zorrilla, the former head of the Federal Security Directorate, was arrested on charges of having planned the murder of well known investigative reporter Manuel Buendia. All these moves established that, the dubious election notwithstanding, Salinas was very much the man in charge.68
After the 1988 elections, the PAN and Cardenas’s FDN formed a de facto alliance to protest electoral fraud. Once in office, Salinas adroitly split this alliance, creating his own de facto alliance with the PAN leadership, while isolating the Cardenas-led faction. This led the PAN to shift from Clouthier’s denunciation of the Salinas administration as “illegal and illegitimate” to the party’s president announcing that the Salinas administration could “legitimize itself through the exercising power well.”69
In October 1988, Cardenas called for the replacement of the FDN—an unwieldy four-party alliance that was already disintegrating—with a new center-left party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The PRD, which proclaimed itself to uphold the values of the Mexican Revolution, refused to cooperate with what it branded the “usurper” administration.70
Salinas did his best to prevent the growth of the PRD and to convince the electorate that PRD election victories would destabilize the country. In the central Mexican states where Cardenas had strong backing, such as Michoacan, Guerrero, Morelos, and the State of Mexico, elections were marred by violence, and the results were widely rejected as fraudulent. PRI-controlled state and federal governments denied funds to the handful of PRD members whose mayoral election victories were recognized. Finally, often in the aftermath of disputed elections, the government unleashed deadly force on PRD followers. Between 1989 and 1993, roughly 400 PRD members were killed
For political reasons.71
Salinas’s effort to split the post-election alliance between Cardenas and the PAN dovetailed with the PAN’s own perception that it would gain stature and power by working with the PRI and refashioning its image as that of a party that could govern. This emerging PAN-PRI alliance saw Salinas recognizing some PAN electoral victories and the PAN embracing flawed PRI political reforms that the PRI did not have enough votes to pass on its own in the Chamber of Deputies. Salinas felt comfortable working with the PAN since, after the PRI’s switch to neoliberal policies, the PRI and the PAN were close ideologically.72
Salinas’s favoring of the PAN became apparent when, after repeated protests charging stolen gubernatorial elections, a PAN victory was recognized in the 1989 gubernatorial election in Baja California. The PRI’s loss to PAN candidate Ernesto Ruffo resulted from: 1) local resentment at Salinas imposing a political outsider as the PRI candidate, 2) the unusually high level of corruption during recent PRI administrations in Baja California, 3) major splits in the state PRI organization,
4) the attractiveness of the PAN candidate, a successful fishing company executive who had served as mayor of Ensenada, 5) the effective mobilization of 10,000 PAN election monitors who thwarted PRI attempts to steal the election, 6) the presence of 600 Mexican and foreign journalists who increased the political cost of stealing the election, and 7) the lack of a substantial rural population— the PRI’s traditional base. Even though the PRI candidate carried all the rural districts in Baja California, Ruffo won, since 90 percent of the state’s population was urban.73
In 1990, Salinas pushed through yet another political reform, which was known as the Federal Code of Electoral Institutions and Procedures (COFIPE). It was passed with PAN support, but over the strenuous objection of the PRD. The most dramatic aspect of the reform was the creation of the IFE, a fourth branch of government to organize elections.
Given the COFIPE’s dual purpose of building regime credibility and at the same time maintaining PRI control, it was flawed in several ways. It retained the “governability clause,” which guaranteed PRI control of the Chamber of Deputies even if its vote total fell below 50 percent. Control of the IFE itself remained under the interior secretary and representatives of the PRI.74
Salinas launched a massive new anti-poverty program, which cost more than $15 billion during his term. This program, known as Solidarity, funded a wide variety of projects such as electrification, street paving, medical centers, rural credit, sewage treatment plants, and drinking water systems. Projects often combined federal funding with community labor and planning. Salinas’s control of Solidarity funding enabled him to increase his personal power at the expense of both the PRI and the government agencies that had traditionally supplied the services Solidarity offered.
The PRI staged a remarkable comeback in the 1991 mid-term congressional races. Its vote total rose to 61.4 percent, compared to the 50.4 percent its candidates for deputy had been credited with in 1988. Its candidates won 290 of the 300 single-member congressional districts. In large part, the PRI victory reflected Salinas being seen as a strong, efficient president. In 1991, he enjoyed a 62 percent popularity rating. The PRI recovery also reflected the large number of people who expected Salinas’s economic policies to provide a better future and who had benefited from the Solidarity program.75
Other factors leading to the PRI recovery included vastly better grass-roots organization made possible by funds unavailable to other parties. The Mexican Institute of Public Opinion estimated that the PRI purchased 97 percent of the political ads on television, 86 percent of those on radio, and 72 percent of the print ads.76
Salinas’s approval rating was largely based on the expectation of a better future, not strong economic growth. During his term, the increase in GDP averaged only 3.9 percent, well below the rate during the glory days of the Mexican economic miracle. Salinas’s having increased tax collection and reduced inflation from triple digits to one digit added to his luster. Both the domestic and international press provided Salinas with adulatory coverage. In 1993, the Economist declared, “Mr Salinas has a claim to be hailed as one of the great men of the 20th century.”77
Given electoral fraud charges resulting from the 1991 election and the upcoming U. S. congressional vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Salinas decided to burnish
Mexico’s democratic image with further political reform. In 1993, a reform law eliminated the govemability clause and included candidate spending limits. With this reform, Congress legislated away many of the tools that the PRI had previously used to fix elections. Salinas assumed his popularity would enable the PRI to win elections without its having to resort to its traditional election-fixing techniques.78
Salinas undercut the three major pillars of the revolution—state enterprises, an independent foreign policy, and the ejido (whose sale he allowed). He welcomed the pope and privatized the Cananea copper mine—a revolutionary icon. The popularity of his moves was such that, at the time of his last state of the nation address, he was widely applauded for his accomplishments, both inside and outside Mexico.79
Salinas continued with the neoliberal economic model he had helped introduce during the De la Madrid administration, adding a renegotiation of the foreign debt, NAFTA, and increased privatization. He deregulated the economy to attract foreign investment and reestablished amicable relations with the business sector, which led to increased domestic investment.80
Mexico was so restructured under Salinas that Washington Post writer Edward Cody commented that the president “has proved to be as radical in his own way as the revolutionaries who galloped over Mexico at the beginning of the century with bandoleers across their chests.”81
The Indian uprising in Chiapas on New Years Day 1994 raised the likelihood that the political arena would shift from elections to armed force. This produced yet another political reform in hopes of keeping politics focused on the ballot box. With the exception of one small party, all the candidates and parties in the 1994 election signed an “Agreement for Peace, Democracy, and Justice.” This agreement led the parties, including the PRD, to negotiate a reform package designed to appeal to those who might be tempted to employ armed force as a means of political change. The resulting reform increased the independence of the IFE by providing that ten of the eleven seats on its governing council be selected without presidential intervention.82
At the end of his term in November 1994, Salinas enjoyed a 66 percent approval rating. By February of 1995, 77 percent of those queried felt that Salinas should be put on trial. Rarely in history has any president’s popularity fallen so precipitously so soon after leaving office.83
A few weeks after Salinas left office, Mexico suffered its worst economic downturn since the Depression. The peso had become seriously overvalued and, rather than devaluing it before he left office, Salinas left the devaluation for his successor. The blame he received for this was intensified by the widespread belief that his failure to devalue resulted from his aspiring to become executive director of the newly created World Trade Organization, a post he would be unlikely to receive if he were perceived as having bungled the economy. As essayist Carlos Fuentes commented: “Salinas made a mistake. A timely, well-ordered devaluation without panic would have benefited not only the national currency but also Salinas himself, and now he is berated for the difficult situation he left behind.”84
World History
