TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/042489/04248900.030

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 8.6 KB | 167 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 28

MEXICO

Wimp No More


Once derided as a political weakling, Salinas is tackling
corruption, drugs and foreign debt, but the economy is still in
desperate shape

By Guy D. Garcia


    Late on the morning of Saturday, April 8, Miguel Angel Felix
Gallardo, Mexico's most notorious drug trafficker, awoke with
a stomachache. It was a telling omen. As Felix Gallardo pulled
open the bedroom curtains of his house in Guadalajara, two
police lookouts from a twelve-man task force gave the signal.
The agents jumped over a neighbor's wall and broke down the back
door, surprising Felix Gallardo on the staircase of his
two-story home. He was still in his pajamas. Pinned to the
floor, he begged his captors to kill him. When they refused, he
offered them $5 million in exchange for his freedom. Instead,
Felix Gallardo was flown to Mexico City, where he could face up
to 63 years in jail for drug trafficking, bribery and illegal
possession of weapons.

    The blow struck against Mexico's most powerful drug lord was
the latest in a series of headline-grabbing actions initiated
by President Carlos Salinas de Gortari since he took office late
last year. In January, after a sensational shoot-out in Ciudad
Madero, police arrested Joaquin Hernandez Galicia, known as "La
Quina," the powerful and widely feared leader of Mexico's oil
workers' union. A month later Eduardo Legorreta Chauvert, a top
businessman with ties to the Salinas government, was jailed on
charges of stock fraud. What La Quina, Legorreta and Felix
Gallardo have in common is that they are renowned for using
patronage and corruption to put themselves beyond the reach of
the law. By tackling such formidable figures head on, Salinas
has given notice that he is willing to uproot the status quo to
enforce his policies. "There is not a single taboo that remains
in place," says Luis Rubio, head of the Mexico City-based
Research Center for Development. "Nothing is unthinkable in
Mexico anymore."

    The President's unexpected moxie has led to a dramatic
transformation in his image. Dismissed as a colorless
technocrat, variously derided by his fellow Mexicans as "El
Chaparro" (Shorty) and "El Pelon de las Orejas" (Baldy with Big
Ears), Salinas, 41, was considered an unlikely presidential
candidate even by many members of his own Institutional
Revolutionary Party (P.R.I.). When he was elected with 50.7% of
the vote last July amid charges of ballot fraud, it became
evident that the P.R.I., which has ruled Mexico for 60 years,
had lost its grip on the country. By striking forcefully at
targets like Felix Gallardo, Salinas has boosted his prestige
and consolidated his hold on the presidency. "If President
Salinas won by just 50% last July," says a Mexican official and
former Salinas critic, "his attacks on corruption have to have
pushed his approval rating to something like 80%."

    The Salinas crackdown was greeted with cautious optimism by
agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Felix
Gallardo, the richest and most cunning member of the infamous
"Guadalajara cartel," is blamed for exporting at least two tons
of cocaine to the U.S. each month. He is a prime suspect in the
1985 abduction and murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena. Many
DEA agents wondered why it took so long to capture Felix
Gallardo, since he had been living openly in Guadalajara. Some
suspected that his arrest had been timed to coincide with last
week's "law-enforcement summit" between U.S. Attorney General
Dick Thornburgh and his Mexican counterpart, Enrique Alvarez
del Castillo.

    Still, the jailing of the elusive drug lord seemed to signal
a shift in Mexico City's see-no-evil policy toward drug
traffickers and their accomplices. Last week five high-level
police officials in Sinaloa, Tamaulipas and Mexico City were
arrested and charged with providing Felix Gallardo with weapons
and allowing him to move about the country with impunity. Says a
senior State Department official: "Clearly, the Salinas
government is more determined to fight drugs and corruption
than any of its predecessors."

    But while Salinas' crusade has impressed some U.S. officials
and members of Mexico's middle class, most of the country's 83
million people remain untouched by the President's actions. Many
recall how Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado, Salinas' predecessor,
also made a couple of splashy arrests shortly after taking
office in 1982. Some critics contend that Salinas' assaults on
Felix Gallardo and others are merely a show for the Yanquis.
They point out, for example, that while Salinas succeeded in
removing La Quina, the rest of the corrupt union's hierarchy
remains in place. Others charge that the parade of high-profile
prisoners is a smoke screen to divert Mexican public attention
away from the country's financial woes. And so far, Salinas has
shown little zeal for political reform. Says a Mexican observer:
"We don't want a sheriff, we want a President."

    Salinas' supporters recognize that it will take more than
publicity pyrotechnics to deal with Mexico's crushing $105
billion foreign debt. In his inaugural speech, Salinas vowed to
pursue a policy of "debt renegotiation" with creditors and
promised to make economic growth his top priority. Last
December he announced a new package of wage and price controls
designed to help keep the country's inflation rate, which was
running at an annual rate of 150% only two years ago, below 20%.

    Since then, Salinas has continued the course of economic
austerity he first charted as Budget Secretary under his
predecessor, De la Madrid. During the past six years, Mexico has
paid an average $10 billion annually to service its foreign
debt. This year combined debt and interest payments are
expected to reach $14 billion, or about 70% of the country's
exports.

    But while the U.S. and the international banking community
have hailed Salinas for making Mexico into a model debtor
country, its citizens are exhausted by the consequences of
severe economic belt tightening. Since the early 1980s, when
oil prices plummeted and cut deep into Mexico's revenues, wages
have lost 50% of their purchasing power. Nearly half the
population lives on less than $40 a week, and unemployment and
underemployment combined are estimated to be as high as 40%.
Says Mexican economist and political analyst Jorge Castaneda:
"While Salinas' economic policies have brought the costs to
most Mexicans, the benefits are nowhere in sight."

    Last week Finance Minister Pedro Aspe announced that Mexico
had reached a tentative agreement with the International
Monetary Fund to borrow $3.6 billion. Mexico plans to use the
three-year loan to lower its debt payments by inducing banks to
reduce the country's debt or the interest charged. It remains
doubtful, however, that the IMF deal, which is part of a new
U.S. policy announced last month by Treasury Secretary Nicholas
Brady and which could reduce Mexico's debt load by as much as
20%, is enough to jump-start the country's stalled economy. And
even if it can, there is no guarantee that the effects will
trickle down to the middle- and lower-class Mexicans who need
help desperately. Says a U.S. State Department official, with
considerable understatement: "The average Mexican will have to
ask himself the old Reagan question, `Am I better off than I
was four years ago?' The answer will have to be yes, or we
could start to see some trouble."

    Washington has made clear its willingness to help Salinas
quietly in any way it can, but there is a growing perception
among some U.S. officials that the Mexican leader is simply
running out of time. If the country does not see tangible
economic rewards within the next 18 months, a U.S. official
says, "we could see frustrations acted out in the streets."

    The more likely consequence is that the P.R.I., faced with
the prospect of social instability, would abandon current
economic reforms for quick-fix policies that would mollify the
masses. As Mexicans are fond of pointing out, their country has a
long tradition of avoiding seemingly inevitable political
upheaval. "The P.R.I. has an almost magical power to redirect
itself to reflect the needs of the country," says a Mexican
official. "And so we have the young technocrats running things.
But if they should fail, then look for a wave of populism." If
that happens, Salinas could easily turn against Washington and
the foreign banks, leaving them wondering what happened to that
simpatico President they liked so much in April.


-- Ricardo Chavira/Washington and Andrea Dabrowski/Mexico City