Life in Mexico from 1982 to 1994 (part 1)

The fall of the System (1982-1988)

The awaited day finally came and, as usual, care was found at the inauguration of Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado. Lopez Portillo handed over the presidential sash and everyone breathed, relieved. As soon as he could went to Rome with his son José Ramon, who had arranged a high placed in FAO, the UN Organization for agriculture and food.

In his speech of capture of possession, De la Madrid it got excited painting a distressing as astringent panorama for the very rigid plan of austerity that it prescribed later. "Live in an emergency situation", he said, with dramatic tone. "I cannot allow that homeland we dispose in their hands," he added. From their point of view, the situation was so serious that he was called into question the continuity of the development process and even "the viability of the country as an independent nation".

To the end of 1982 the numbers were stark: the gross domestic product (GDP) had fallen 0.5, inflation rose to an inconceivable 100 per cent; the foreign debt exceeded the chilling number of hundred billion dollars, not counting interest and service at high rates. Oil prices continued downward and not already offered hopes of salvation, as six years earlier. On the other hand, in Exchange for five billion dollars the International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed us draconian conditions that De la Madrid presented as a lesser evil and painful but necessary medicine that required the sacrifice of all the people.

At the beginning of six years technocrats even spoke of mixed economy, steering role of the State and revolutionary nationalism, but although not they proclaim it proudly as they would shortly thereafter, proposed change to the country and integrate it into the mystical neoliberal of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. However, in the least, they wanted to change the political system, since the authoritarian presidentialism facilitated them their projects, although, of course, they used to say otherwise.

                                                                                        

De la Madrid Government ensured that one of the structural causes of the crisis was the corruption extended all over the country and in all social classes. Of the Madrid campaign slogan was "for the moral renewal of society", and repeatedly promised that it head-on combat notorious Mexican corruption. Since he was candidate Francisco Rojas commissioned to prepare studies and then sent him to address the General Contralaria of the Federation.

On the other hand, moral renewal yes was useful for the fall of several scapegoats who went to jail accused of fraud, embezzlement or any other form of corruption. One of the first to fall was Miguel Lerma Candelaria, former Deputy Director of the Banrurel, Advisor of the Madrid and federal Deputy, who was accused of fraud, tax evasion and bribery by almost 40 billion pesos.

They were not times for the left side. The flaming Socialist party Unified of Mexico (PSUM) had remained paralyzed before the crisis.

Actually all that was the frame for the complete liberalization of prices that it was required to the International Monetary Fund. It was supposed that 300 products were subject to control, but this one was not applying itself because there was no sufficient personnel to monitor it, or at least, it was pretexting the Secretariat of Trade and Industrial Promotion (Secofin). This way it is that, for practical ends, liberalization of prices was treating itself about a virtue. It is not of surprising then that the English magazine Euromoney was granting the title of The Secretary of Finance of the Year to Jesus Silva Herzog, which was read as pats in the head to the docility of Mexico was satisfying the requirements of the IMF.

Anyhow, the equipment salinista of Programming and Budget announced his National Plan of Development (PND), scion of which the same equipment had written in 1979, which of entry he repeated that in the short term material bases did not exist to achieve the improvement of the standards of living of the population and that the royal behavior of the economy had been far much from the foreseen. The reasons of the crisis, it was insisted, they were structural: insufficient of internal saving, lack of competitiveness of the productive national device and imbalances in the boss of development between the agriculture, industry and trade. Since it prescribes these males of the PND a new model of development proposed with the commercial unilateral opening and the reduction of the participation of the State in the economy.

The privatization was a fundamental part of the project delamadridista. It was representing to slimming to the State to reduce it to the propositions adapted to a free market. For the government of De la Madrid in addition it was meaning to obtain income simultaneously that was getting rid of the maintenance costs of numerous companies.

For your part, The United States was aiming conscious blows to Mexico. In 1983 it provoked a substantial fall in the price of the Mexican gas and in addition it diminished his purchases to the half. Later, with impunity, he practised the protectionism that he was not tolerating in other countries and prevented the imports of several national products, principally meat and citrus fruits. Then there came the law Simpson-Mazzoli, which was a real blow to our country. And, finally, in less than six months four times increased the rates of interest, with which billion dollars had to be paid extras for the debt. Nevertheless, if the Mexicans were thinking about having seen everything, still it was necessary to them to contemplate the furies that the Americans would arm because of Enrique Camarena's murder.

In January, 1984, the Secretariat of Manuel Bartlett's Government elaborated the National Plan of Public Security, which one was proposing the moralizing and the modernization of the police bodies, the coordination of the policemen's numerous varieties and the incorporation of the citizens in the planeación of the public safety. But all that stayed in good intentions, the delinquency continued growing and the police also.

Little by little, the small and medium trades of the big cities installed metallic grids or thick wired to be protected from the endless robberies, and this urban landscape became habitual. The police were amusing itself very much doing juvenile roundups, but also in opposition to the smugglers, since the fayuca and the consequent ambulantaje was growing rapidly.

The education was presenting a depressing panorama. To begin, the governmental expense in this field was one of the lowest of the budget, for what Kings Heroles he was saying: " Now the secretaries of Education we are the beggars of the office ". Due to the shortage of resources the facilities of the schools were terrible and had terrible lacks in the educational equipment. They were so small the money that many official schools flatly were receiving, with what there languished the gratuitousness of the basic education. In addition, the education was very low and one was giving a high desertion in all the educational stages.

There were dramatic differences between the urban education and the rural one, which was situated tragic and strategically more backward. The nurseries were insufficient, especially of secondary up, and increasingly difficultly to accede to the university education.

By: Dulce María Prisco Hernández