Carlos Salinas de Gortari and the Resurrection of the PRI
Once the most reviled man in Mexico, former President Carlos Salinas de
Gortari presses ahead with his political comeback. On a July 31 visit to
Chihuahua City, Salinas was given a VIP welcome by high-ranking members of
his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and a good portion of the
state’s political class.
“(Salinas) will continue being an important citizen for all of us,” said
Antonio Andreu, president of the standing commission of the Chihuahua
State Legislature.
Officially, the occasion of Salinas’ visit was to promote a new book he
authored.
On hand for the well-attended presentation in the state capital complex
were Chihuahua Governor Jose Reyes Baeza, former governors Patricio
Martinez and Fernando Baeza and the rectors of the autonomous universities
of Chihuahua and Ciudad Juarez. Previous to Salinas’ speech, Governor
Reyes Baeza held a private meeting with the man who was Mexico’s president
from 1988 to 1994.
In his presentation, Salinas blamed former presidents Ernesto Zedillo and
Vicente Fox for allowing Mexico to wallow in economic stagnation between
1995 and 2005. Massive migration was the consequence, Salinas contended.
“Five million compatriots left the country in search of a future in order
to respond to their own expectations and those of their families,” Salinas
said. “It’s difficult to encounter a country in times of peace that has a
migratory phenomenon of this magnitude.”
As is customary, Salinas accepted no responsibility for the peso
devaluation and financial crash of 1994-95 that immediately followed his
term in office and ushered in Mexico’s worst economic crisis since the
Great Depression.
Alluding to his successors’ responsibility for the current public safety
crisis and “moral tragedy” of the times, Salinas did not mention the
consolidation of the Juarez, Tijuana or Gulf cartels during his
presidency. Nor did he delve into the explosive events of the last year of
his administration, including the slaying of Guadalajara Cardinal Juan
Jesus Posadas OCampo; the murder of Salinas’s likely successor, Luis
Donaldo Colosio; the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas; and the Mexico City
gangland-style killing of Salinas’ former brother-in-law and PRI leader
Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu.
Instead, Salinas’ speech followed the political line that the PRI is
pushing to win the mid-term congressional elections in 2009 and re-conquer
the Mexican presidency in 2012.
Flush with victories in state and local elections last year, the PRI is
promoting itself as the alternative between the radical “populism” of
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and the “neoliberalism,” or unrestrained free
market philosophy, of President Felipe Calderon’s conservative National
Action Party (PAN).
Critics of neo-liberalism, however, would be quick to point out that
Salinas was the Mexican leader who pushed through the North American Free
Trade Agreement and pressured the Mexican Congress to enact a
constitutional reform that permitted the privatization of
collectively-owned farm lands known as ejidos.
Touching on the contemporary political scene, Salinas lauded Reyes Baeza
as a “first class” governor and praised President Felipe Calderon for
retaking the “reformist path.” Significantly, the Harvard-educated
politician blessed President Calderon’s controversial Pemex reform
proposal that is undergoing a bitter fight in the Congress and in the
streets.
Sharing commonalities with Calderon’s legislation, Salinas' PRI recently
presented its own initiative. At this political juncture, it’s
next-to-impossible for the president’s Pemex reform, opposed by Lopez
Obrador as well as by other center-left political forces and many social
movements on the grounds that it will privatize a
constitutionally-protected public property, to make it through the
Congress without the support of the PRI.
Considering the PRI’s clout, the issue of who really calls the shots in
Mexico will become even more interesting if the party that was born from
the ashes of the 1910 revolution wins next year’s elections. In this
sense, the PRI is working on different levels to guarantee the continuity
of the political class that has governed Mexico for decades.
In 19 months of office, the Calderon administration has relied on the
support of PRI governors and federal lawmakers to advance its agenda.
Writing earlier this year, political analyst Jorge Zepeda Patterson
predicted that not only will the PRI achieve a crucial electoral victory
next year, but that the Calderon government’s dealings with leading
Priistas could ultimately wind up handing over the presidency on a
“platter” to the former ruling party in 2012.
Politically, Salinas’ increasingly public profile should be viewed as a
key element in the PRI’s steady resurrection and from its 2000 electoral
defeat. Moreover, the Chihuahua speech was one more indication of the
strategic role Mexico’s geographically largest but conflictive state will
play in the reconsolidation of the PRI’S political and economic power in
tandem with a sector of the PAN.
In the days preceding the Salinas speech, President Calderon conducted a
brief visit to Ciudad Juarez, where he inaugurated new maquiladora
operations, and former PRI leader and political operator Elba Esther
Gordillo, who is widely credited for helping Calderon attain the
presidency in 2006, made a visit to Chihuahua.
Personally, Salinas’ Chihuahua appearance showed how far he’s bounced back
since 1994-95, when an unfolding economic disaster and his older brother
Raul’s legal problems influenced the ex-president to undertake a
self-imposed exile to Ireland, Cuba and other places.
Jailed for 10 years in Mexico on charges of planning the murder of Ruiz
Massieu and investigated in Europe for secret bank accounts that had the
smell of drug money-laundering, Raul also prevailed, beating the homicide
rap while escaping prosecution for the suspect funds. He has yet to be
tried for pending embezzlement and illicit enrichment charges in Mexico.
Unable to sustain a criminal case, the Swiss authorities recently returned
more than $100 million of the frozen funds to the Mexican government and
Grupo IUSA headed by businessman Carlos Peralta.
In 2002, a Swiss judge provided documents to the Mexican government that
purported to show the involvement of Mexican military, law enforcement and
other public officials in drug trafficking during Salinas’ 1988-94 term in
office. Some of the information came from protected witnesses, including
one man who was reported tortured and murdered before he was scheduled to
fly to Switzerland in November 2001.
Allegations of turbulent European financial transactions also surrounded a
third Salinas brother, Enrique, who was murdered in 2004.
Although he loudly protested the 1995 arrest of Raul, and even staged a
brief hunger strike, Carlos Salinas de Gortari has always disassociated
himself from his older brother’s activities.
For a sector of the political class, Salinas’ political rehabilitation,
which actually began when Vicente Fox took office in 2000, has now come
full circle.
Accompanied by his second wife, Ana Paula Gerard, Salinas signed
autographs of his book during the Chihuahua visit. He took no questions
from reporters and did not offer a press statement.
Sources: El Diario de Juarez, August 1, 2008, Article by Sandra Rodriguez
Nieto. Norte, August 1, 2008. Article by Angel Zubia Garcia. El Heraldo de
Chihuahua, August 1, 2008. Article by Samuel Garcia. Frontenet.com, July
31, 2008. La Polaka.com, July 31 and August 1, 2008. Source Mex/Latin
American Data Base, July 23, 2008. Pagina 24/Notimex, April 18, 2008.
Article by Gabriel Pourcel. El Sur, March 4 and 9, 2008. Articles by
Miguel Angel Granados Chapa and Jorge Zepeda Patterson. New York Times,
December 10, 2005.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness.”
—Mark Twain
\"La vida es dura, el corazon es puro, y cantamos hasta la madrugada.” (Life is hard, the heart is pure and we sing until dawn.)
—Kirsty MacColl, Mambo de la Luna
\"Alea iacta est.\"
—Julius Caesar
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Actually put their lives and the lives of their families on the line.
All we get
in the USA are the usual suspects, lawyered up and hiding behind who ever is dumb enough to sheild 'em.
