Mexico’s New Leader Unveils Diverse Cabinet

President-elect Ernesto Zedillo, promising an era of historic reform on the eve of his inauguration, on Wednesday unveiled a new government of veteran technocrats, hard-line ruling-party stalwarts, trusted personal aides and--for the first time in almost seven decades--an opposition member.

Together they will attempt to steer Mexico into the 21st Century through a minefield of political crises.

Dominated by free-market economic reformers, the “mixed-bag” Cabinet of 23 men and two women, mostly younger than 45, is expected to have a positive long-term effect on foreign investment and expanding trade with the United States under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The new team named by the 42-year-old economist who will take office in a daylong celebration today includes Treasury Secretary Jaime Serra Puche and Commerce Secretary Herminio Blanco.

Both are veteran technocrats in the Cabinet of outgoing President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and chief architects of his radical economic reform policies. Both are well known and respected in the United States for their key role in negotiating NAFTA last year.

But amid political infighting and unsolved assassinations that threaten to tear apart Zedillo’s long-governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, from within, the new president also gave a key Cabinet post to the party’s controversial chairman, Ignacio Pichardo, who was recently accused by Mexico’s former deputy attorney general of obstructing justice in the unsolved Sept. 28 assassination of PRI Secretary General Francisco Ruiz Massieu.

Mexico’s stock market, up nearly a point before Zedillo’s noon Cabinet announcement, fell sharply in the afternoon, apparently on the news of Pichardo’s appointment as secretary of energy, mines and state industry--a key post that includes management of the state’s powerful oil monopoly, Pemex, and the Federal Electricity Commission.

Most analysts, however, saw the appointment as an appeasement to party hard-liners, and they said they expected the market to recover Friday or early next week on the basis of Zedillo’s other major appointments.

Among those key appointments was Foreign Secretary Jose Angel Gurria, a gregarious economist and prominent Zedillo campaign aide who is also well known in Washington and other foreign capitals for his lead role in renegotiating Mexico’s foreign debt.

“I think Zedillo intended it to be a mixed-bag Cabinet,” Mexican political analyst Sergio Sarmiento said. “On the one hand, Zedillo is keeping with tradition, appointing the president of PRI to a Cabinet position, although he could have been excused for not doing so this time.

“On the other hand, he has named a member of the opposition as attorney general, who now will make sure these unsolved crimes are investigated thoroughly and independently. It’s a crucial position, and it really changes the rules of the game.”

In naming Antonio Lozano, a 41-year-old veteran of the leading opposition National Action Party, as the nation’s top law-enforcement official, Zedillo broke a 65-year PRI tradition of naming only ruling-party members to the inner circle of government.

As attorney general, Lozano will take over the controversial, unsolved investigations into the assassinations of Ruiz Massieu in September and Luis Donaldo Colosio in March.

Colosio, the PRI’s popular, reformist presidential candidate, was gunned down at a campaign rally in Tijuana, which led to Zedillo’s nomination.

Most Mexicans believe that both were political murders hatched by internal party conspiracies.

That theory was bolstered last week by Ruiz Massieu’s brother, Mario, who as deputy attorney general investigated his murder for two months before resigning and publicly alleging that PRI Chairman Pichardo was part of a conspiracy to cover it up.

Mario Ruiz Massieu, speaking on a Santa Monica radio program Wednesday, appeared to regard the Lozano appointment as good news.

“All of the facts that I gathered were included in my initial investigation (report) that I have turned over, and now that there will be an impartial investigator, I’m sure that they will all come to light,” he said.

Most analysts viewed Lozano’s appointment as a clear signal by Zedillo that he intends to fulfill promises of sweeping political reforms, which include officially separating the ruling party from the government apparatus, reducing the monolithic power of the Mexican presidency, separating the judiciary from politics and ushering in a new era of political pluralism.

“The Cabinet shows the thrust of the Zedillo Administration--continuity of the economic program, depoliticization of the Interior Ministry and the federal district of Mexico City, and creating an independent judiciary,” concluded Fernando Escalante, a sociologist and judicial expert at the Colegio de Mexico graduate school in Mexico City.

But on the eve of today’s celebration officially christening Zedillo as Mexico’s president for the next six years, other analysts were less impressed with the Cabinet that is inheriting a widespread sense of national insecurity fueled by soaring rates of kidnaping, narcotics trafficking and street crime and a looming civil war in the southern state of Chiapas.

“This Cabinet still has a lot to prove. It’s not very impressive at all,” observed Emilio Zebadua, an economics professor at the Colegio de Mexico.

“It’s full of contradictions, and there’s the possibility they will not be able to deal effectively with these problems.”

But even Zebadua praised one of Zedillo’s appointments as “an opening” to solve the most immediate and dire of those problems--the simmering conflict in Chiapas, where leaders of the indigenous rebel group, the Zapatista National Liberation Army, have threatened to break a fragile cease-fire and relaunch their armed insurrection, which left scores dead in January.

Almost universally acclaimed was Zedillo’s selection of Arturo Warman as secretary of agriculture and natural resources, which Zebadua called “an opening for an enlightened person to come up with a proposal for Chiapas.”

Warman, 57, is an expert on land reform and indigenous Mexican tribes, and his book on Mexican independence leader Emiliano Zapata, titled “We Came to Object,” has become mandatory reading in most Mexican schools.

Warman’s Cabinet post will enable him to negotiate crucial Zapatista demands for equitable distribution of land rights and natural resources in the embattled state.

Among the most powerful new Cabinet members, though, is also the least known: Interior Secretary Esteban Moctezuma Barragan.

Analysts identified Moctezuma as Zedillo’s closest personal adviser, who, like Zedillo himself, has little experience in Mexico’s rough-and-tumble politics and its accompanying intrigues.

But analyst Sarmiento said Moctezuma, a lawyer-turned-technocrat, “has a reputation of being a good administrator,” adding that his appointment to manage the nation’s most sensitive public-security agencies is an indication that Zedillo saved the most critical departments for the people he trusts most.

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Zedillo’s Key Ministers

Here’s the list of key cabinet ministers named Wednesday by President-elect Ernesto Zedillo.

Interior Secretary: Esteben Moctezuma Barragan, 40, economist with masters degree from Cambridge University, England, who is Zedillo’s closest personal adviser; will oversee national police and powerful internal security agencies.

Foreign Secretary: Jose Angel Gurria, 44, former director of Mexico’s export development bank; instrumental in renegotiating Mexico’s foreign debt.

Treasury Secretary: Jaime Serra Puche, 43, top technocrat and trade secretary under outgoing President Carlos Salinas de Gortari; as head of most powerful economic ministry, his appointment will please foreign investors.

Commerce Secretary: Herminio Blanco, chief Mexican negotiator on NAFTA and key former deputy cabinet secretary under Salinas.

Secretary of Energy, Mines and State Industry: Ignacio Pichardo, 59, president of ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party; recently accused by former deputy attorney general of obstructing justice in investigation of assassination of the party’s secretary general Francisco Ruiz Massieu.

Secretary of Communications and Transportation: Guillermo Ortiz, 46, economist and former undersecretary of Treasury who oversaw privatization of banks; now will oversee airports, highways and telecommunications industry, which will be demonopolized in 1996.

Attorney General: Antonio Lozano, member of National Action Party, largest opposition group, who will supervise continuing investigations into this years’ two major political assassinations, including the March murder of ruling party presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio.

Secretary of Agriculture amd Natural Resources: Arturo Warman, 57, is expected to lend his expertise on land reform and indigenous tribes to the Chiapas issue.

Source: Times Mexico City Bureau