Salinas’ Story: Unscientific Fiction

So, finally Carlos Salinas de Gortari has provided an explanation of why things went wrong in Mexico in 1994. The former president, who for five years won applause and fame all over the world for being the Latin leader Americans loved to like, has become the Mexican all his compatriots love to hate. After 16 months in self-imposed exile and disgrace, Salinas has decided to fight back and justify himself in a newspaper interview. He probably should have kept quiet.

In a flood-like three-part series published the week before last in the daily Reforma, Salinas speaks a great deal but says little new or interesting. With one significant exception: He at last explains why his administration unraveled during its final year, culminating with a massive devaluation of the peso just three weeks after he left office. Though insinuated or briefly stated on previous occasions, his version of events had never been laid out so clearly. Or with such blatant cynicism and falsehood.

In a nutshell, Salinas argues that from the outset, the reforms that he undertook negatively affected powerful vested interests in Mexico. He lowered tariffs, jailed union bosses, allowed the opposition to win state governorships, cut subsidies and gave away land titles or property deeds. All of this angered various traditional power fiefdoms, from old-school politicians--the so-called dinosaurs--to shantytown leaders, coddled businessmen and populist intellectuals. They fought back in defense of their perks and privileges, unleashing a “tremendous power struggle in Mexico.” It led, one way or another, to the volcanic occurrences of 1994. Somehow, the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, the assassinations of Luis Donaldo Colosio and Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, the accusations that PRI leaders were responsible, the kidnappings of several bankers and business leaders, the capital flight and crash of the peso--all can be attributed to this struggle for power.

It sounds good, but it’s not. In fact, the explanation is simply, outrageously, untrue, as many Mexicans have already protested. That most of the charges leveled against Salinas have not been proved and may well be inaccurate does not make his countercharges credible. Mexicans know--if his foreign audience does not--that his account contradicts how Mexico works.

Salinas is unable to name a single figure--with the exception of 75-year-old former President Luis Echeverria --representing those interests he mentions. Not one politician, labor boss, businessman, intellectual or demagogical popular leader is identified or even suggested. Only abstract entities took on the “reform-minded young Mexican president” as the foreign press often called him. The reason is self-evident: No vested interest declared war on Salinas; he had no one to defend himself against. Does this mean everyone agreed with Salinas’ policies? Of course not. It only demonstrates that Mexican elites do not engage in frontal combat with an all-powerful president; they never have, and probably never will. They are particularly reluctant to do so with a chief of state who pampers them, co-opts them and showers them with favors. Politicians of the likes of Carlos Hank Gonzalez and Fernando Gutierrez Barrios filled Salinas’ Cabinet. The old-time rich, like media mogul Emilio Azcarraga, were his darlings, along with newcomers like banker Roberto Hernandez and electronics entrepreneur Ricardo Salinas (no relation). And labor lords like 90-year-old Fidel Velazquez received the same respect as in the 1950s, ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s.

The trouble with Salinas’ scenario--and with Mexico--is that the nation’s elites don’t get even; they just get mad. No businessman in Mexico will go to the mat with the government over lower or higher tariffs, or lower or higher wages, or lower or higher interest rates. They will pout and bad-mouth the president in private, and heed his beck and call in public. No PRI politician will declare war on the president over the loss of a few congressional seats or quasi-state businesses, or a set of ideological principles he never believed in anyway. And no Mexican intellectual worth his embassy or literary prize will join the loyal opposition or conspire to overthrow the regime just because Salinas signed NAFTA or had the Pope in for tea. Mexico, unfortunately, does not work that way.

The only vested interests in the country willing to fight back and to risk something to defend themselves are the drug cartels. Since we know that Salinas certainly did not wage war on them, one has to wonder what would have led the new Mexican magnates to declare war on him. But Salinas did not answer this question, and is not likely to any time soon.