Word: portillo
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...economic salvation: the discovery in the late 1970s of oil reserves estimated to total as high as 200 billion bbl., second only to Saudi Arabia's supply. As the pace of oil development increased, public expectations rose, and the government of President José López Portillo launched a bold expansionist program. To pay for imports, private and public corporations increased their borrowing abroad. The crunch came when the current worldwide recession, along with the oil glut, sent prices tumbling for Mexican crude. Meanwhile, high U.S. interest rates increased the carrying cost of the Mexican debt...
...candidate of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (P.R.I..) and the choice of retiring President José López Portillo, De la Madrid had been certain to win. Reaction to the vote ranged from skepticism to cautious optimism. Said former President Miguel Alemán Valdés: "The country is at peace. There are problems naturally, but we have the confidence that they will be resolved by the next administration...
...Madrid must make tough decisions to help the floundering economy. He will have to continue the 17-point austerity program belatedly begun by the lame-duck Lopez Portillo administration. Among the targets: a reduction of the government's budget deficit from 15% of the G.D.P. to 3% by the end of 1985, import restrictions, government hiring freezes and probably a hike in Mexico's heavily subsidized energy prices. The current price of gasoline...
...result of Mexico's change of leadership will probably be easier relations with Washington. Despite a warm personal relationship with Ronald Reagan, Lopez Portillo has discomforted the U.S. by indulging his ambitions as a spokesman for Third World concerns. He irritated Washington last August when, with France, Mexico recognized the Marxist-led insurgents of El Salvador as a "representative political force" in that country. Lopez Portillo called for negotiations with the guerrillas, thereby undercutting U.S. support for the civihan-military regime. He has frequently offered to act as an intermediary between the U.S. and Cuba over the crisis...
Somehow De la Madrid has escaped the controversy surrounding the outgoing administration even though, as Mexico's Secretary of Programming and Budget, he was responsible for Lopez Portillo's grandiose Global Plan for Development, a document that has now been discreetly shelved. One reason De la Madrid may have escaped criticism is his innocuous lifestyle. Highly disciplined and a deeply religious Roman Catholic, he is untouched by any hint of scandal. He likes to spend the weekend reading in his garden. Says one diplomat who has known De la Madrid for years: "He lives comfortably...