Word: mexicanization
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...imposing austerity, De la Madrid could be faced with a different kind of crisis from within his own political power base, Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (P.R.I.), which since 1929 has exercised a monopoly over Mexican political life (see box). Like the eleven Presidents who have held office in the past half-century, De la Madrid was hand-picked by his predecessor after secret consultations with a tiny group of economic and political oligarchs. According to the official returns, he won the national election last July with 74.4% of the 23.6 million votes cast...
...same danger applies to the other major challenge De la Madrid has set for himself: the "moral renovation" of Mexico. Corruption has long been endemic in Mexican society, from the highest reaches of government to the cop on the beat. (In Mexico City, some police cadets would literally take a week off from their academy training to learn from veteran officers how to take bribes.) The country's effective one-party system virtually institutionalized the practice, a fact that Mexicans have recognized with equanimity. But during López Portillo's term of office, the scale of corruption...
...expanding interdependence of the two countries is strikingly visible in such U.S. border towns as Calexico, Calif., Nogales, Ariz., and El Paso. During Mexico's boom, local economies flourished as Mexicans crossed the border in droves to buy American-made cars, clothing and food. But the peso's declining value, together with strict controls on the amount of U.S. currency Mexicans can obtain, has virtually halted the flow of Mexican customers, and merchants complain of near Depression business conditions...
This situation cannot change until the Mexican economy substantially improves. The man who must make that happen is a paradox: a politician who has never before held elective office. Virtually all of Miguel de la Madrid's adult life has been spent within the Mexican bureaucracy, usually in financial or planning positions. He is a lawyer-technocrat who is known as a pragmatic and quiet but firm negotiator rather than an inspired political leader for difficult times. De la Madrid's reputation is based on his mastery of the details of economic planning, his simplicity of style...
Born in the small Pacific state of Colima, De la Madrid had a conventional middle-class upbringing by Mexican standards, with one important exception. His father, a prominent local attorney, died when De la Madrid was only two; he was shot by an irate enemy of one of his clients. De la Madrid, his mother and only sister moved to Mexico City, where Miguel was a diligent student, working part-time as a bank's legal clerk to help support the family. De la Madrid now credits his mother Alicia Hurtado de la Madrid with having given...