Mexico’s PRI and Economic Justice

* For The Times, a major American newspaper, to hail the PRI’s autocratic nomination of a presidential candidate (“A Vote for Continuity,” editorial, March 30) in the name of building a “modern economy” is disgusting.

Under President Porfirio Diaz (1871-1880), the finances of Mexico were stabilized and the country experienced an unprecedented economic development. Foreign capital, especially, American, was invested in the exploitation of the country’s mineral resources;: mining, textile and other industries were expanded; railroad, ports, telegraph lines were constructed, and foreign trade increased about 300%.

On the other hand, foreign investors drained a great part of the country’s wealth. Large numbers of Indians were deprived of their ancient communal lands, and these lands were concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of landowners. Poverty and illiteracy were widespread. Manifestations of the resulting social discontent were suppressed with an iron hand.

Accumulated dissatisfaction, however, burst forth in the revolution of 1911. Are the seeds of another revolution in the making? Your editorial shows an ignorance of history and the recent Chiapas revolt. It is about time we stop exploiting the indigenous peoples of Mexico and recognize their plight.

The Times should promote a grass-roots democratic selection of the PRI presidential candidate to bring about economic justice in Mexico.

JACK GILMAN

West Hollywood

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* Jorge G. Castaneda (“The Last Gasp of a Moribund System,” Commentary, April 1) yearns for what he calls Mexico’s last “successful presidency,” that of Adolfo Lopez Mateos, from 1958 to 1964. For those of us who took advantage of Mexico’s policies of patronage and protectionism, those were great times. But for most Mexicans, they were hardly the good old days.

In 1960, Mexico imported from the United States nearly all the flux used in automatic welding. That year, I built a plant in Mexico City to produce it locally. Once the factory was in operation, I persuaded the Mexican government to shut the border to U.S. flux producers, effectively rewarding me a monopoly and ending the lucrative market for U.S.-based manufacturers. The United States and Mexico both suffered. I made money.

It was Miguel de la Madrid, Mexico’s most underappreciated president, who kept Mexico’s nose above water when it was in danger of drowning in debt and who began to turn around Mexico’s economy. He and his successor, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, operated within a political system that cries out for reform. But good economics makes good politics. Not the other way around.

It may well be that the ghost of slain presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio will hang over Mexico’s election. But the only ghost that can haunt Mexico’s future is an over-romanticized view of a past that never was.

STANLEY A. WEISS

Washington

Weiss lived and worked in Mexico for more than 20 years.

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* Mexico’s President Salinas, and his ruling party, the PRI, desperately needed something, anything to divert the world’s attention away from Chiapas. The tragic assassination of Colosio did it.

TRINI MARQUEZ

Sky Forest