Profile : Mexico’s Main Pillar of Economic Stability : Miguel Mancera has been a welcome symbol of austerity. Now he is pushing to make the Bank of Mexico autonomous.

Mexicans knew the party was over and the bills charged to the oil boom were coming due when Miguel Mancera was named head of the central bank in 1982. Notorious as a fiscal tightwad in a government of big spenders, Mancera was his nation’s symbol of austerity. In 11 years as the Bank of Mexico’s governor, he has done nothing to alter that image.

“What does Mancera do with his old suits?” asks a familiar quip. The answer: “He wears them.”

The dated suits, along with his combed-back, graying hair and no-nonsense black-framed glasses, lend the 60-year-old governor an ascetic air even in an office decorated with beveled wood panels and paintings that the noted artist Diego Rivera gave the government as tax payments.

Mancera’s Spartan reputation served Mexico well as the country struggled through the 1980s, weighed down by debt and striving toward economic reform. In international financial circles, the Yale-trained economist became a sorely needed assurance of economic stability. He receives much of the credit for pushing the fight against inflation to the top of the government’s agenda. In June, policies he advocated brought the annual inflation rate down to a single digit for the first time in two decades.

Now, the Mexican government is trying to transfer the symbolic mantle of austerity and stability from Mancera to the institution he has served since 1958, the Bank of Mexico.

After years of quiet persuasion--the subtle, Mexican version of lobbying--Mancera has persuaded President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to take an unprecedented step.

Salinas has proposed constitutional amendments that would cede part of the executive branch’s power by making the Bank of Mexico autonomous--similar to the U.S. Federal Reserve--in its power to curb government borrowing and influence interest rates.

“We must institutionalize the fight against inflation and the most effective way to do it is to make the central bank autonomous,” Mancera said during a recent interview.

The administration considered the step so important that over the three days following the announcement, Mancera set aside nine hours to discuss the initiative individually with reporters. A press briefing would have been faster, but as one senior government official noted, “Mancera does not like crowds.”

In this presidential system, no one doubts that the amendments recently passed by Congress will be just as easily ratified by the states, making the bank legally autonomous on Jan. 1. The question is whether, in a country where personalities carry far more weight than institutions, Mancera’s vision of an independent central bank can be more than a dream.

“This fits in with the broader process of trying to institutionalize the reforms in economic policy,” said Denise Dresser, a political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.

“If autonomy has a chance anywhere, it has a chance at the Bank of Mexico,” she said. “It is one government institution that has created a semblance of a civil service. The elites there are a purely technocratic breed.”

Mancera epitomizes that breed, shunning the rounds of receptions and public appearances, usually considered essential to political career-building, in favor of long hours at his desk.

Most of his business socializing is done over lunch in the private Bank of Mexico dining room down the hall from his office. That saves time and expense, he quickly points out to visitors.

At those lunches, Mancera serves domestic wines, although lately that is as much a sign of nationalism as economy. In these days of a strong peso--Mancera bristles at the word “overvalued”--a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from the Monte Xanic winery he favors costs about $28, significantly more than comparable imported labels.

But that is one of the few luxuries Mancera permits in the central bank offices.

The pen he draws from his suit pocket to sketch a diagram is not Mont Blanc or even Parker, but Bic.

He loves opera and the symphony, yet seldom attends, despite working across the street from the Palace of Fine Arts, the nation’s premier concert hall. “I can never predict what time I will leave the office,” he explained. “If I bought tickets and then couldn’t go, that would be a waste of money.”

Even after late nights at the office, he drives home to the house in the south of the city that he shares with his wife of 34 years, Sonia. Shortly after becoming governor, he canceled the lease on the apartment his predecessor kept two blocks from the bank.

Mancera allows time for diversions only on weekends at his vacation home near the resort town of Cuernavaca, about an hour’s drive from the capital. There, he swims or rides horseback.

But his favorite part of the weekend, Mancera says, is the time he spends with his five sons and their families, especially his two grandchildren, ages 2 1/2 and 6 months.

“My parents taught me values that have served as a guide for my whole life: work, ethics and responsibility to my work and my family,” Mancera said.

His accountant father was the main force behind Mancera’s decision to attend the then-new Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.

Two prominent family friends--businessman Raul Valleres and former Treasury Secretary Luis Montes de Oca--founded the school as a free-market counterweight to the Marxist teachings at Mexico’s government universities.

Today, Mancera’s subordinates describe him as a boss with no tolerance for mediocrity.

“He is so rigorous in his methodology that he carefully analyzes everything you say,” noted Sergio Ghigliazza, who worked for Mancera 20 years before taking his current position as director of the organization for Latin American central banks. “You do not make off-the-cuff remarks to him.”

On the other hand, Mancera always backs up his employees, Ghigliazza said. “For me, he was the ideal boss.”

Ghigliazza has known Mancera since they were graduate students at Yale in 1959. He remembers Mancera as a standout at Yale who received top marks and recognition from professors.

Among the economics students of that era, Mancera and Andres Bianchi--more recently the first governor of Chile’s central bank--were stars, Ghigliazza recalled.

Over the years, Mancera has built on the international reputation that he began to develop at Yale.

“There is no question that he is currently the best central bank governor in Latin America,” said Bianchi, now president of Banco Credit Lyonnais, Chile. “He is extremely intelligent, has common sense and experience.”

Mancera used his international stature to advocate autonomy for the Bank of Mexico. Speaking at an International Monetary Fund-U.N. conference in Beijing three years ago, he emphasized the importance of an independent central bank.

“Politicians are subjected to many pressures to spend liberally, which they simply cannot often resist, even though in many cases they are fully aware of the consequences of excessive spending,” he said then.

“This inability to exercise the necessary restraint seems to be a justification for an independent central bank.”

He also outlined the conditions for autonomy: that other government agencies cannot force the central bank to lend money or buy securities and that members of the governing board cannot be removed before their terms expire and the terms should not expire in election years.

Those arguments and conditions are key parts of the law approved by Congress. Mancera also called on his high-powered international contacts, such as Bianchi, to study ways to make the Bank of Mexico more autonomous.

The result is legislation that Mexico watchers say could be a landmark in economic stability for the country. By strengthening institutions such as the Bank of Mexico, the near-imperial powers of the Mexican president could be constrained. That would limit the wild swings of the political pendulum that have accompanied Mexico’s presidential succession for decades.

And that, more than the fight against inflation or his penurious habits, could be the legacy Miguel Mancera leaves the Bank of Mexico.

Biography

* Name: Miguel Mancera

* Title: Governor, Bank of Mexico

* Age: 61

* Personal: Born in Mexico City. Graduated from Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, 1956. Master’s degree in economics from Yale, 1960. Married to Sonia Corcuera for 34 years. They have five sons.

* Quote: “I consider myself a terribly lucky person because of the education I received, both at home and at work.”