Mexico: Neoliberalism with a Human Face

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Like the other countries of Latin America, and indeed of the world, Mexico has taken the path of neoliberalism in economic policy; but - like everything Mexico does - it has done so with a difference, and a very significant difference.

Unlike what has happened in so many countries, where the new policies have met with elite dissent and popular resistance, in Mexico the new policies have been generally welcomed. This is because conditions had become so disastrous that everybody felt that a drastic change was long overdue and was willing to suspend disbelief long enough for the benefits of the new policies to become apparent. In fact, things were so disastrous that improvement was all but inevitable, whether new policies had been adopted or not. Nevertheless, it would be not only ungracious but inaccurate to ascribe the success of the policies of the current administration only to luck; a great deal of skill has been involved, skill beyond the level one has any right to expect, and beyond the level one has seen in action in most of the countries of the world. |The economic managers have been so adept ... that they have earned the right to say to their countrymen "Trust us".'(1)

The situation facing the incoming government of Carlos Salinas at the end of 1988 looked horrendous. Real per capita income had fallen to the levels of twenty years before; inflation was running at more than 150 per cent a year; the country had an external debt of almost a hundred billion dollars. Politically, the situation looked equally disastrous for the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Salinas had just won the presidency with an official figure of 50.74 per cent of the vote, a majority so bare that it was universally believed to have been adjusted upward so that the government candidate would not take office with the indignity of having had a majority of the voters oppose him, by far the lowest proportion of the vote for a winning presidential candidate in this century.(2) The opposition on the left was …