TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111990/1119006.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7.7 KB | 161 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 58

MEXICO

In a Hurry or Running Scared?


Salinas is modernizing Mexico's economy, but he is not nearly as
far along in reforming the country's antiquated political system

By JILL SMOLOWE/MEXICO CITY -- Reported by Andrea Dabrowski and
John Moody/Mexico City


    Mexico is a country where nothing is ever quite what it
seems. Appointments are made to be broken. Most prices are
negotiable. Saving face is more important than telling the
truth. Yet what President Carlos Salinas de Gortari is striving
to achieve is unusually straightforward. Since his inauguration
in December 1988, Mexico's 42-year-old leader has trained his
formidable skills on awakening his country from inward-looking
torpor to a world where market forces are increasingly
international and interdependent.

    After almost two years at the helm, Salinas can claim some
success. On the economic front, he has launched a campaign to
reduce Mexico's bloated statist economy and attract foreign
investment that has earned high marks from Mexican businessmen
and international lenders. But in throwing the country open to
inspection by potential investors, Salinas has unwittingly
invited scrutiny of the other major prong of his modernization
drive: his pledge to build a true multiparty democracy.

    This week Mexicans will be watching carefully as the
returns roll in from municipal and legislative elections held
Nov. 11 in the state of Mexico. There is widespread skepticism
that the Institutional Revolutionary Party (P.R.I.), which has
governed the country for 60 years, will permit a fair count in
the state, where it lost in 1988. The party's reputation is not
helped by the fact that two P.R.I. victories last year in the
central states of Guerrero and Michoacan provoked opposition
charges of ballot rigging and resulted in violent clashes
between police and demonstrators.

    Veteran P.R.I. officials concede that there is "a
contradiction" between the rapid renovation of Mexico's economy
and the slow pace of political change. Opposition politicians on
both right and left go further, accusing the P.R.I. of outright
electoral abuses. Various international human rights groups and
local activists cite a growing number of incidents of police
harassment and brutality. Intellectuals, especially those linked
to popular opposition leader Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who lost to
Salinas in 1988, accuse the government of orchestrating a
campaign to intimidate and silence political opponents. Says
Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, a professor of political science at
Mexico City's National Autonomous University and one of Salinas'
most vocal critics: "He is as dictatorial as his predecessors.
He's just changed the messages."

    Salinas' message on economics has been tough talk backed by
tough action. He has restored business enterprises largely to
private hands, most notably by selling off the national airline
and Cananea, the nation's largest copper mine. The national
telephone company and Mexico's 18 banks have also been put up
for sale. Since 1989, when he set out to liberalize
foreign-investment regulations, $5.2 billion in new capital has
flowed into Mexico, along with consumer goods once unavailable.
Salinas has also rectified a dangerous reliance on oil, which
produced 78% of Mexico's export income in 1982. Today it
accounts for less than 35%.

    The growing trade in goods manufactured in Mexico or
assembled at factories along the U.S. border, known as
maquiladora plants, is likely to rise even more if Salinas
succeeds in his boldest gambit yet: signing a free-trade
agreement with the U.S., a topic that is expected to dominate
talks between Salinas and President Bush scheduled to be held in
Monterrey later this month. At present, most of the 2,200
maquiladoras are U.S.-owned and employ 560,000 Mexicans who
assemble parts manufactured north of the border. A free-trade
agreement would encourage more foreign investment, thus
providing additional jobs.

    Salinas' economic drive has meant redefining some crucial
relationships. By extending a friendly handshake to Bush, he has
shifted away from prickly concerns about a gringo economic
invasion and set U.S.-Mexican relations on a steadier course.
Conversely, his approach to Mexico's perennial lawlessness has
been firm, from tracking down top drug traffickers to jailing
corrupt union and business leaders. Admirers who call Salinas'
rapid-fire methods "world-class" say this President is a man in
a hurry.

    His critics counter that he is a man running scared. They
claim that for all of Salinas' achievements, the traditional
polarization between the haves and the have-nots is more
pronounced than ever. Half of Mexico's 81 million people live in
poverty. A wage freeze, coupled with a 30% inflation rate and
sharp cuts in subsidies for such basic staples as sugar, milk
and beans, has meant a 60% drop in purchasing power since 1982.

    The average daily minimum wage of $3.55 is so inadequate
that many working-class people have deserted the formal economy
to try their luck as street vendors. Salinas' policies have cost
at least 1.4 million jobs. Warns a longtime member of the
P.R.I.: "There's a difference between being in a hurry and being
precipitous."

    "The people are in a hurry," Salinas retorts, "and I
respond to the rhythm of the people." But even admiring
businessmen and members of his own party wonder if he isn't
pushing ahead too quickly, rending Mexico's delicate social
fabric by asking people to make too many sacrifices they do not
understand. Disappointment could begin to catch up with Salinas.
The 70% approval ratings that marked his first year in office
have plummeted below 44%, according to the results of an
unpublished poll taken by the newspaper Excelsior. Now the talk
is of his autocratic style of rule: he is likened with varying
degrees of enthusiasm to Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev and
Margaret Thatcher.

    During the annual state of the nation address, or informe,
on Nov. 1, Salinas was interrupted repeatedly by catcalls and
howls of disapproval from parties of the right and left. The
irreverence stood in stark contrast to the respectful reception
usually accorded a President in Mexico. When Salinas claimed
that a new electoral code had been endorsed across the political
spectrum and that a reliable voters' registration list was being
drawn up, the opposition erupted in chants of "We repudiate
electoral fraud!"

    Leftist critics charge that their phones are tapped and
that transcripts of their personal conversations are leaked to
the Mexican press. The Mexican Commission for the Defense and
Promotion of Human Rights and international groups like Americas
Watch document a rise in the number of arbitrary detentions,
disappearances and political assassinations. Even those who
endorse Salinas' economic program often fault his political foot
dragging. "If you begin to reform, you should reform
thoroughly," says Rogelio Ramirez de la O, a private-sector
economist. "That should be called `the Gorbachev lesson.'"
Unfazed by such criticism, Salinas argues that political and
economic reform cannot be undertaken simultaneously. "Anyone who
brings about changes over a wide number of fronts has to be able
to control them," he says.

    But if Salinas' reforms continue to fail to touch ordinary
lives, the President may find it difficult to maintain that
control. He knows that to expand the pool of Mexicans who
benefit from the country's economic development, he needs
foreign investment -- and that depends on political stability.