Word: madrid
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...more than 100,000 civilians have been slaughtered by right-wing death squads and left-wing guerrillas, or have disappeared. As many as 250,000 people are believed to have fled the country, some 40,000 of them to neighboring Mexico. Thus, when Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado last week praised Guatemala's democratic principles during his first state visit to that country, he was acknowledging an important change in the land that was once the jewel of the Mayan empire...
...Mexico's ruling party mysteriously selects a candidate for the next presidential election. There will be no political scrapping, no embarrassing public exchanges. Instead, as tradition dictates, "precandidates" have quietly come to the fore. When the moment is right, probably within the next six months, President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado will anoint one of the hopefuls -- the tapado -- to be the candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. That man almost certainly will be the next President. Since the party's founding in 1929, no P.R.I. candidate has lost a presidential, senatorial or gubernatorial race...
...party conference earlier this month, the P.R.I. leadership did its best to snuff out the troublemakers. In an unusual attempt to demonstrate party unity, De la Madrid was joined on the dais by two former Presidents, Luis Echeverria and Jose Lopez Portillo, both of whom have been widely discredited. Warned P.R.I. President Jorge de la Vega: "Those who do not want to respect the will of the immense majority of party members should renounce our party and seek affiliation with other political organizations." In response, the Mexico City daily Jornada editorialized last week: "The leaders of the party pretend that...
Whoever succeeds De la Madrid will have to grapple with ever louder calls for the P.R.I. to loosen its iron grip. Each of the three men now being touted for the presidency has had opportunities to observe other political models while studying at American or European universities. Seemingly first among equals is Alfredo del Mazo Gonzalez, 43, De la Madrid's Minister of Energy. Del Mazo has held bank posts and served as governor of the state of Mexico before assuming his current portfolio, which has demanded careful management of Mexico's precious oil reserves while the sag in prices...
...candidate perceived as least likely to brook internal dissent is Manuel Bartlett Diaz. After successfully coordinating De la Madrid's presidential campaign, he was designated Secretary of the Interior. In that capacity, Bartlett, 51, had responsibility for overseeing the elections in Chihuahua, which many Mexicans believe were fraudulent. The third hopeful, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Minister of Planning and Budget, is credited with great intelligence and thought to be the most likely of the contenders to favor party reform. But Salinas has some deficits. He is young, only 39. And he has a reputation for dishing out criticism...