Carlos Salinas

Former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari is back in Mexico, and he’s pulling no punches in criticizing the current president, Ernesto Zedillo.

Salinas has written a book, almost 1,500 pages long, that details the accomplishments of his administration. Included are documents that he hopes will prove that Zedillo, not he, is responsible for the 1995 economic crisis, when the peso’s value collapsed and interest rates soared. Salinas also describes a two-decade-old power struggle between hard-liners in the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and reformers like him.

Mexicans believe Salinas has a lot of explaining to do. When his presidential term ended Dec. 1, 1994, he had one of the highest approval ratings in the country history, about 70%. Four months later, his popularity had collapsed. Salinas not only was blamed for the economic catastrophe that devastated Mexico in 1995; he also was accused of heading a conspiracy to cover up the investigation of the assassination of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio.

In February 1995, his brother Raul was jailed and charged with masterminding the 1994 killing of PRI Secretary-General Francisco Ruiz Massieu, who was also Salinas’ former brother-in-law. But worse things were to come for Salinas: Swiss authorities discovered that Raul had deposited millions of dollars in a Swiss bank account through a complicated scheme. The investigators suggested that the money had been paid to Raul before and during Salinas’ presidential term by Colombian and Mexican drug dealers in exchange for protection. Raul was convicted last year of organizing Ruiz Massieu’s murder and sentenced to 50 years in jail, which was later reduced to 27 years. The Swiss have not been able to prove their drug-connection accusations.

Salinas left Mexico in March 1995, knowing that Mexican public opinion had turned against him. Since then, he has lived mostly in Dublin.

Many wonder what Salinas, 52, is really up to. Did he return home to challenge President-elect Vicente Fox or will he join the ranks of past presidents who live in wealthy suburbs and are despised by the people?

Salinas was interviewed in Mexico City in the house of his new parents-in-law. He is married to Ana Paula Gerard and has two children with her.

*

Question: Six years after the peso-devaluation crisis of 1994-95, many Mexicans still blame you for the dramatic economic downturn. Are they wrong?

Answer: When I finished my term, there were some economic insufficiencies: a trade deficit, a problem with the exchange-rate regime and some non-performing loans. But inflation was the lowest in a quarter of a century, there was no fiscal deficit, the level of debt was the lowest in 25 years and Mexican exports were performing superbly. The problems, however, cannot explain the magnitude of the crisis. The crisis of 1995 was due to two fundamental mistakes that President Ernesto Zedillo committed 20 days after taking office.

Q: What mistakes?

A: First, members of the Zedillo administration provided inside information to a few Mexican businessmen that a peso devaluation was in the works. Needless to say, those businessmen went out and bought dollars.

Q: How much?

A: Half the total foreign reserves. Without those reserves, there was no way to stabilize the peso.

Q: How do you know this?

A: Reliable documents provided by the Central Bank of Mexico and the International Monetary Fund. The flight of capital this time was not provoked by foreign speculators but by the infamous error de diciembre, the mistake of December.

Q: What was the second mistake?

A: A team of trained economists, headed by Zedillo, took more than three months to adjust their economic program to [the peso devaluation]. During those three months, domestic interest rates went from an annual 15% rate to more than 110%. There was no way any business in Mexico could withstand this kind of interest rate. Just think of the millions of Mexicans whose houses were mortgaged and who had to pay their car Sergio Munoz is an editorial writer for The Times.

[loans] and credit cards. This is what brought them to default. I can understand their irritation, but when the people demanded an explanation, the government, instead of a sound explanation of its blunders, put all the blame on the previous administration. For six years, Mexicans have been subjected to a persistent campaign of misinformation about my administration in order to cover up [this administration’s] blunders.

Q: Why did you go on a hunger strike in March 1995?

A: Since February 1995, the Zedillo administration had blamed my family and me for the major political problems it had. It fabricated an accusation against my brother, accusing him of masterminding the murder of the secretary-general of the PRI. It paid a bribe of half a million dollars to a man to change his testimony, and based on hearsay testimony, my brother was apprehended on [Feb. 28]. The Zedillo administration also leaked anonymous comments to the New York Times, accusing me of having conspired to cover up the Colosio murder and ordering the destruction of evidence. This action convinced me that the rule of law had disappeared in Mexico, and that the [Zedillo administration] would move from political to judicial accusations. That was when I decided to go on a hunger strike. I wanted the Zedillo administration to tell Mexicans what they were telling foreign sources off the record: that the mistake of December was their own deed.

Q: Did you ever talk to Zedillo?

A: We talked for about two hours. He agreed the attorney general would deliver a public statement about the Colosio affair, stating there was no cover-up, and that the government would reproduce the statement by the Bank of Mexico, in which the bank clearly said the government had provided inside information that provoked the capital fight.

Q: Did Zedillo do that?

A: The president gave me his word he would do it, and I ended the hunger strike. He did the first part, not so clearly the second. But what [the administration] did afterward was to launch a misinformation campaign to blame me for the economic problems of the nation.

Q: Many Mexicans, including some thought to be your friends, have said you betrayed them. Ordinary Mexicans say you tricked them because you made them believe Mexico was part of the First World. How do you answer that?

A: This is part and parcel of the misinformation campaign. . . . It became a state matter because the survival of the Zedillo administration was at stake. What I actually did say was that the Second World had disappeared with the end of the communist regimes, and that Mexico faced a choice: to belong to the Third World or to the First. There was no choice. We were determined to be a developed country, but for that we had to undertake serious reforms. That’s what we did during the six years of my administration.

Q: Do you believe your brother Raul is innocent of the charge of murder?

A: Yes. What we saw during his trial convinces me more of his innocence, because the government not only bribed the main witness with half a million dollars but went to extremes never seen before in Mexico’s judicial system. Things like digging up a corpse from a cemetery and planting it at my brother’s house. The judge who ruled against him said there was no motive, no direct accusation. He admitted the accuser was a liar and that he had received the money but that, nevertheless, he believed the witness.

Q: Was this the Zedillo’s doing?

A: The press reported that the sentence came from Zedillo’s desk.

Q: Why would he do such a thing?

A: I think it was all part of the cover-up campaign for the economic crisis that Mexicans continue to face. The economic and social indicators are beginning to resemble those we had in 1994. Zedillo took six years to bring the Mexicans back to where they were the first day he took office.

Q: Raul has already been sentenced to 27 years. Does he have any more recourse?

A: Yes, an amparo or what you call habeas corpus. He and his lawyers are working on this.

Q: How do you explain your brother’s wealth?

A: I think he has to give us an explanation. It came to me as a shock to learn about the resources he had accumulated abroad. I believe the way he accumulated them was suspicious, because he used forged documents. But I have said quite clearly that none of the money my brother has had anything to do with any decision that I or any member of my Cabinet made while we were in office.

Q: How do you answer critics who say Raul was doing your dirty work?

A: It is part of the same campaign to discredit me. Curiously, Mexican authorities have not presented any accusation against my brother for the money he has abroad. That is, that money is not related to public funds. Raul says it was a fund he put together with other Mexican investors, and some of them have already recognized that was the case.

Q: What about the claim that Raul was called Mr. 10% because he was taking money from people who needed to do business with the government?

A: These things have been written with no solid evidence to sustain them. Not one single businessman has come forward during the past six years of prosecution to present a single demand in which he would state he was charged 10% for the deals he did with the government. I am not excusing my brother’s behavior. What I am saying is that none of these things that have been written has been proved in a court of law.

Q: Yet, many people find it hard to believe you didn’t hear about all the accusations of corruption against your brother.

A: I heard he was doing business, and I instructed the general comptroller to make sure that his business, something he could do as any other citizen, had nothing to do with the government.

Q: The comptroller has said that she told you there was corruption in Raul’s business.

A: No, that is not what she said. She said she was asked to look at this matter, and no single evidence of corruption was presented to her.

Q: While investigating the sources of your brother’s money, the Swiss accused him of colluding with drug dealers. Furthermore, many people in Mexico believe Raul was involved with drug dealers.

A: The Swiss made the accusation because Mexican authorities told them that Raul may have links with drug traffickers and that they would supply them with a picture of Raul with drug traffickers and documents that proved the link. They never produced either. Then the Swiss conducted their own investigation based on information from some protected witnesses of the [U.S.] Drug Enforcement Agency. Four years later, the Swiss authorities seized the funds without making an accusation. Now a magistrate in Switzerland has to decide if [this action] can be sustained in a court of law.

Q: That your brother is in jail for something you say he is not guilty of must be terrible for you. But at the same time, he destroyed your legacy.

A: My legacy was destroyed by the deliberate campaign conducted by the Zedillo administration and hard-liners within the PRI. No doubt the behavior of my brother helped their cause.

Q: Who killed presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio in 1994?

A: During my administration, two respected special prosecutors conducted an investigation and both concluded that a single man committed the crime. During the past six years, the Zedillo administration tried to fabricate a conspiracy. . . . Those who most benefited from Colosio’s death were promoting the idea that those of us who lost more with his death were responsible for it.

Q: Why did you choose Zedillo as your successor after the assassination of Colosio?

A: I had very limited alternatives. . . . [He] was chosen as the substitute candidate for his own merits, which he undoubtedly had.

Q: Why did he go so personally against you?

A: I don’t know if there is anything personal here.

Q: You did not take Raul’s arrest personally?

A: I think it all was part of his strategy to cover up [his administration’s] economic blunders.

Q: Why did you go into a self-imposed exile?

A: In March of ‘95, Mexico was going through a very difficult economic situation, and the Zedillo administration was presenting me as a source of economic instability. So I decided on my own free will to leave the country so I would not be consider an element of instability.

Q: Why are you returning now?

A: I have returned five or six times before, and this time I am coming to present my book.

Q: Are you afraid?

A: I am a man who goes in and out of my country freely. I return to Mexico every time with great confidence and I leave with great sadness.

Q: Are you going to keep your house in Dublin?

A: I am ending my residence there.

Q: Are you planning to live here?

A: I am planning to live here permanently. This is my home, this is my place. And, yes, I do realize it is going to be difficult; the people have been told for six years that I ended their hopes.

Q: Do you feel you owe an apology to the Mexican people or do you feel they owe it to you?

A: I owe an apology to my children. I owe them an explanation, because they lived with me when I had the support of the people during the last days of my administration, and then for the last six years, they have seen my legacy tainted. I owe them an apology for this. To the Mexican people, I owe an explanation about what actually happened.