Word: portillo
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...Lopez Portillo was heading for trouble in any case, but last year's world oil glut brought a sudden end to Mexico's spree. As prices for crude oil began to drop around the world, Mexico stubbornly tried to hold the line. When Jorge Diaz Serrano, the president of Pemex, announced a $4-per-bbl. price cut, he was promptly sacked, and Mexican oil prices were jacked up again. Customers went elsewhere until Mexico bowed to the pressures of the marketplace. By that time, the country had lost about $1 billion hi revenue, and the drain has continued...
...desperation, Lopez Portillo devalued the peso in February. Then, victimized by his own indecisiveness and the pressures of the P.R.I.'s political machine, he was unable to hold firm on a wage freeze required to reap the anti-inflationary benefits of the devaluation. Within weeks, all government employees were given a 30% wage hike, and the government "recommended" that private-sector employers grant their workers increases of 10%, 20% or 30% "to restore purchasing power." In a single stroke, Lopez Portillo had wiped out most of the gains of the devaluation that had shaken his administration-and lost much...
...Lopez Portillo compounded the country's political and economic troubles by encouraging the most deadly bane of Mexico's one-party system: corruption. La mordida (literally, the bite) has always been endemic in Mexican society, but with the huge infusion of oil money, corruption mushroomed. The outgoing President, for example, created 5 million jobs in six years. But at least half of the 2 million new public positions are suspected...
...Lopez Portillo's critics to be what the Mexicans call aviadores (flyers), meaning that they are imaginary jobs for which someone is drawing an extra salary. Lopez Portillo himself raised eyebrows by putting his son Jose Ramon Lopez Portillo on the government payroll as a subse-cretary in the Ministry of Programming and Budget and hiring his sister as the country's director-general of radio, television and cinematography...
...even bigger cause for gossip in Mexico City is the huge, five-house compound that the outgoing President is building for his family on a hill overlooking the capital. Cynics have labeled the complex the "dog hill," a reference "to a Lopez Portillo remark that he would "fight like a dog" to defend the shrinking value of the Mexican peso...