Forgotten Continent by Michael Reid

Author:Michael Reid
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300224658
Publisher: Yale University Press (Ignition)

Salinas: perestroika without glasnost

Salinas made a determined attempt to rebuild the PRI system by restoring its lost reputation for economic competence, while updating its mechanisms of political control. Though his father had been industry minister in the 1960s, Salinas seemed to be a new kind of PRI politician. He had a doctorate in political economy from Harvard. Although prematurely bald, he was aged just 40 when he became president. He spoke softly, but always with a hint of steel. He liked to describe himself as a consensus-builder and negotiator.70 But he was ruthless and hyperactive. He surrounded himself with a clutch of liberal economists with doctorates from American universities. The finance minister, Pedro Aspe, brought inflation down and renegotiated the foreign debt. Salinas boldly challenged several political taboos: he put aside the PRI’s history of anti-clericalism by restoring relations with the Vatican, and ordered an end to six decades of land reform, instead granting members of ejidos (communal farms) the right to obtain individual title to their plots. For these reforms, he secured the support of the National Action Party (PAN), the conservative opposition. In the most iconoclastic move of all, he challenged the deep-rooted anti-Americanism of Mexico’s political leadership by opening negotiations for NAFTA, a free-trade agreement with the United States and Canada.

This whirlwind of economic modernisation attracted much praise abroad. But the reform programme was less liberal (let alone ‘neoliberal’) than it seemed. Salinas left intact the state monopolies of oil and electricity. He excluded energy and many services from NAFTA. Telmex, the telecoms company, was transformed from a public monopoly into a private one. Foreign banks were barred from the bank privatisation. The president relied on many of the institutions, levers of power and clientelistic networks of Mexico’s corporate state. Private business was especially loyal. At a dinner in 1993 that would become infamous, Salinas sat down with two dozen of Mexico’s richest businessmen, most of them beneficiaries of privatisations or other favours. He asked for $500 million for the PRI to fight the 1994 election. Most were happy to stump up their allotted $25 million.71 Inflation was reduced partly through the pacto, an incomes policy negotiated with business and with Fidel Velázquez, the general secretary of the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), the main trade union. Under this arrangement, real wages halved in the decade to 1992.72 In deference to Don Fidel, who in that year was re-elected for an eighth consecutive six-year term at the age of 91, Salinas did not touch the restrictive labour laws.

Salinas did make a few gestures towards political modernisation. For the first time, the PRI surrendered its monopoly of state governorships, PAN victories being accepted in Baja California and Chihuahua. In many other cases, Salinas would wait to see the strength of opposition protests. He sometimes intervened not to recognise an opposition victory, but to force the ‘winning’ PRI candidate to resign, to be replaced by a presidential appointee. In all, he removed 17 governors in 14 of Mexico’s 31 states.

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