Miguel de la Madrid

Miguel de la Madrid
52nd President of Mexico
In office
December 1, 1982 – November 30, 1988
Preceded by José López Portillo
Succeeded by Carlos Salinas de Gortari
Director of the Fondo de Cultura Económica
In office
1990–2000
Preceded by Enrique González Pedrero
Succeeded by Gonzalo Celorio Blasco
Secretary of Programming and the Budget
In office
May 16, 1979 – September 30, 1981
President José López Portillo
Preceded by Ricardo García Sainz
Succeeded by Ramón Aguirre Velázquez
Personal details
Born Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado
(1934-12-12)December 12, 1934[1]
Colima, Mexico
Died April 1, 2012(2012-04-01) (aged 77)
Mexico City, Mexico
Resting place Iglesia de Santo Tomás
Nationality Mexican
Political party Institutional Revolutionary Party
Spouse(s)
Paloma Cordero Tapia (m. 1959–2012)
[2]
Children Enrique de la Madrid Cordero
Alma mater National Autonomous University of Mexico
John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University

Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado (Spanish pronunciation: [miˈɣel delamaˈðɾið uɾˈtaðo]; December 12, 1934 – April 1, 2012) was a Mexican politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who served as the 52nd President of Mexico from 1982 to 1988.[1] During his presidency, de la Madrid introduced sweeping neoliberal economic policies in Mexico, beginning an era of market-oriented presidents in that country. His administration was criticized for its slow response to the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, and the handling of the controversial 1988 Presidential elections in which the PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari was declared winner, amid accusations of electoral fraud.

Early life and education

Miguel de la Madrid was born in the city of Colima, Colima, Mexico. He was the son of Miguel de la Madrid Castro, a notable lawyer (who was assassinated when his son was only two),[3] and Alicia Hurtado Oldenbourg. His grandfather was Enrique Octavio de la Madrid, the governor of Colima.

He graduated with a bachelor's degree in law from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and received a master's degree in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, in the United States.[1]

Early career

He worked for the Bank of Mexico and lectured in law at UNAM before he got a position at the Secretariat of Finance in 1965. Between 1970 and 1972, he was employed by Petróleos Mexicanos, Mexico's state-owned petroleum company, after which he held several other bureaucratic posts in the government of Luis Echeverría. In 1979, he was chosen to serve in José López Portillo's cabinet as Secretary of Budget and Planning, replacing Ricardo García Sainz.[1]

He was president after López Portillo. He won the elections that took place on July 4, 1982, and took office the following December.

He was a member of Collegium International, an organization of leaders with political, scientific, and ethical expertise whose goal is to provide new approaches in overcoming the obstacles in the way of a peaceful, socially just and economically sustainable world.

Presidency

Domestic policy

From left to right: US President Ronald Reagan, First Lady Nancy, Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid and his wife Paloma Cordero in Cross Hall, White House, at a state dinner.

Unlike previous Mexican leaders, he was a market-oriented president. Inflation increased on an average of 100% a year and reached to an unprecedented level of 159% in 1987. The underemployment rate soared to 25% during the mid-1980s, income declined, and economic growth was erratic since prices rose usually much faster than incomes.

All that was a stark reminder of the gross mismanagement and inept policies of his two immediate predecessors, particularly the financing of development with excessive overseas borrowing, which was often countered by high internal capital flights.[4]

During his presidency, De la Madrid introduced neoliberal economic reforms that encouraged foreign investment, widespread privatization of state-run industries, and reduction of tariffs, a process that continued under his successors, and which immediately caught the attention of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international observers. In January 1986, Mexico entered the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) following its efforts at reforming and decentralising its economy. The number of state-owned industries went down from approximately 1,155 in 1982 to 412 in 1988.

As an immediate reaction to the economic crisis, he first presented the Immediate Economic Reorganization Program (Programa Inmediato de Reordenación Económica) and, a couple of months later, the National Development Plan (Plan Nacional de Desarrollo). Some of the measures proposed were a reduction of public spending, fiscal reforms, a restructuring of the bureaucracy, and employment protection.[5]

Local elections

Although President De la Madrid initially stated that further democratization of the country was necessary, his attitude later seemed to be hostile to the advance of opposition parties, instead allowing the PRI to maintain near-absolute power of the country[6] (at the time, the PRI still governed all of the Mexican states plus the Federal District, in addition to holding 299 of the 400 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 63 of the 64 seats in the Senate). However, it was during his administration that the opposition National Action Party (also known as "PAN" for its initials in Spanish) started to become popular with the masses, specially in Northern Mexico.

In 1983, during the Municipal elections in the northern state of Chihuahua, the PAN won the state's nine biggest Municipalities, which held 70% of its population. The border state had been one of the most affected by the government's policies, specially the nationalization of the Bank decreed in the last months of former President López Portillo's administration.[7] Rather than accepting that the unpopularity and corruption of the PRI in Chihuahua had led to such a defeat, the local PRI bosses claimed that the Catholic Church, the local businessmen and even "foreign influences" had persuaded voters to support the PAN. Most importantly, the local PRI stated that the electoral defeat was a "tragic disaster" that should never be repeated.[8]

The 1986 gubernatorial elections in that same state were marked by accusations of Electoral fraud. Although the PRI candidate, Fernando Baeza, was officially pronounced winner, the PAN candidate Francisco Barrio Terrazas, who officially ended in second place with 35.16% of the vote (at the time, the biggest percentage of votes that an opposition candidate had earned in Chihuahua) did not recognize the results, and the PAN promoted acts of civil disobedience to resist the alleged fraud. Many other local elections were marked by accusations of fraud in those years, sometimes ending with violent clashes. In some small municipalities of Veracruz and Oaxaca, the local population even seized or burned the local Town halls in response to alleged electoral frauds.[7]

In response to these controversies, an electoral reform was conducted in 1986:

  • The number of members of the Chamber of Deputies being elected by proportional representation (plurinominales) was increased from 100 to 200 and allowed for a better representation of opposition parties.
  • The Senate is composed of two senators from each state and two from the Federal District of Mexico. An election of half of its members takes place every three years.
  • The Legislative Assembly of the Federal District of Mexico was created.[9]
Miguel de la Madrid (left) with U.S. President Ronald Reagan (center) in Mazatlán (1988).

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and other politicians from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) announced the creation of the Democratic Current (Corriente Democrática) within the PRI. The Democratic Current demanded the establishment of clear rules for the selection of the party's presidential candidate. When they failed, Cárdenas and Porfirio Muñoz Ledo left the PRI and joined the National Democratic Front (Frente Democrático Nacional), a loose alliance of left-wing parties.[10]

Assassination attempt

On May 1, 1984, an anti-government activist named José Antonio Palacios Marquina, along with others, threw Molotov cocktails at the balcony of the Presidential Palace, where De la Madrid was reviewing the May Day parade. Although the President was unharmed, the incident left many officials and guests injured, including the then-director of the ISSTE, Alejandro Carrillo.[11][12][13]

1985 Earthquake

First ladies Paloma Cordero of Mexico (left) and Nancy Reagan of the United States (right) with US Ambassador to Mexico, John Gavin, observing the damage done by the earthquake.

In the morning of September 19, 1985, an 8.0 magnitude earthquake devastated Mexico City and caused the deaths of at least 5,000 people. De La Madrid's mishandling of the disaster damaged his popularity because of his initial refusal of international aid. It placed Mexico's delicate path to economic recovery in an even more precarious situation, as the destruction extended to other parts of the country.[2]

The federal government's first public response was President de la Madrid's declaration of a period of mourning for three days starting from 20 September 1985.[14]

De la Madrid initially refused to send the military to assist on the rescue efforts, and it was later deployed to patrol streets only to prevent looting after a curfew was imposed.[15]

These earthquakes created many political difficulties for the then-ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) or Institutional Revolutionary Party. The crisis was severe enough to have tested the capabilities of wealthier countries, but the government from local PRI bosses to President de la Madrid himself exacerbated the problem aside from the lack of money. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared it would not request aid.[16]

It was also widely reported in the days after the earthquake that the military assisted factory owners in retrieving their machinery rather than in removing the bodies of dead factory workers.[17]

President de la Madrid was also criticized for refusing to cut foreign debt payments to use the money to help with the recovery effort (at the time, his administration destined around 30% of the federal budget towards the payments of the foreign debt). The government's response to the earthquake was widely criticized at various levels of Mexican society, being seen as both authoritarian and incompetent.[16] As most of the collapsed buildings were of recent construction and public works projects, the government was seen at fault due to mismanagement and corruption in these constructions.[18] The government itself realized that it could not handle the crisis alone through already-established institutions and decided to open the process up to "opposition groups".[16]

1986 World Cup

During his administration, Mexico hosted the 1986 FIFA World Cup. There were some protests against the tournament, as Mexico was going through an economic crisis at the time and the country was still recovering from the 1985 earthquake, therefore the World Cup was considered by many as a lavish and unnecessary expense.[19] During the World Cup's inauguration at the Estadio Azteca on May 31, De la Madrid was booed by a crowd of 100,000 while trying to give a speech, apparently in protest over his administration's poor reaction to the 1985 earthquake.[20][21][22]

1988 election

Galloping inflation, the controversial privatisation programme and austerity measures imposed by his administration caused the ruling party to lose ground, leading up to the controversial elections of 1988. In 1987, an internal conflict led to a division in the PRI, as President De la Madrid, like previous PRIísta Presidents had traditionally done, handpicked his successor for the Presidency and appointed the Secretary of Budget and Programming, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, as the PRI candidate for the 1988 elections.[23] A group of left-wing PRI politicians, led by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas (the son of former President Lázaro Cárdenas) and Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, protested Salinas' appointment as they demanded that the PRI should put an end to the practice of the President choosing his own successor, and proposed that the PRI Presidential candidate should be democratically chosen by all of the PRI members through a convention. They also claimed that President De la Madrid had gone too far with his austerity and free-market reforms, and that his protegée Salinas represented a continuation of such policies.[23] After many public discussions and proposals, the leadership of the PRI stood by President De la Madrid and confirmed Salinas as the party's presidential candidate, while expelling Cárdenas and Muñoz Ledo from the PRI, along with their followers.[23]

For the first time since the PRI took power in 1929, the elections featured two strong opposition candidates with enough popularity to beat the PRI candidate. On one hand, after he and Muñoz Ledo were expelled from the PRI, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas was nominated presidential candidate by the Frente Democrático Nacional, a coalition of leftist parties. Cárdenas attained massive popularity as result of his efforts at democratizing the PRI, his successful tenure as Governor of Michoacán, his opposition to the austerity reforms and his association with his father's nationalist policies.[24] On the other hand, the right-wing opposition party PAN nominated Manuel Clouthier as their presidential candidate. A businessman-turned-politician, Clouthier became popular, specially in Northern Mexico, for his populist rhetoric and his dennouncement of the political establishment and the media.

On Election Day 1988, the computer system used to count the votes shut down, as Cárdenas held an initial lead. That event is remembered by the prase se cayó el sistema (the system crashed). When the system was restored, Carlos Salinas was declared the winner.[25] The expression “se cayó el sistema” became a euphemism for electoral fraud. All the opposition candidates refused to recognize the official results and claimed that a massive electoral fraud had been orchestrated by the government. Nevertheless, Salinas was confirmed by the Chamber of Deputies, controlled by the PRI, as the winner.

Foreign policy

President de la Madrid arriving at Andrews Air Base, Maryland.

In 1983, the Contadora Group was launched by Colombia, Panama, Venezuela and Mexico to promote peace in Latin America and to deal with the armed conflicts in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.[26]

During De la Madrid's administration, Mexico pursued closer relations with the United States, supporting some of its foreign policy objectives. On March 31, 1986, the Mexicana Flight 940 crashed in the state of Michoacán, killing everyone on board. Initially, two Middle Eastern terrorist groups claimed responsibility for this crash, along with the bombing of TWA Flight 840, which occurred just two days later. An anonymous letter signed by those groups claimed that a suicide mission had sabotaged the plane in retaliation against the United States.[27][28] However, sabotage was later dismissed as a cause of the crash, and the investigations carried out by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and Mexican aeronautical authorities concluded that the cause of the accident was that the center landing gear tire was filled with compressed air, instead of nitrogen.[29]

Director of FCE

After completing his term, he became the director of the Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE) in 1990. He implanted modernization programs in production and administration. It incorporated the most advanced techniques in book publishing and graphic arts and maintained the openness and plurality features in the publication policy of the company.

On September 4, 1992, he inaugurated the new facilities, on 227 Picacho-Ajusco Road. Surrounded by garden and offices, it hosts cultural unity Jesús Silva Herzog, the Gonzalo Robles Library, which houses the growing publishing history of the Fund, and the seller Alfonso Reyes.

On the international scene in 1990, the existing facilities were remodeled subsidiaries. The presence of the Economic Culture Fund acquired a larger projection in the Americas: on September 7, 1990, the subsidiary in San Diego, California, was founded. On June 21, 1991 Seller Azteca opened its doors in São Paulo, Brazil. In 1994 FCE facilities were inaugurated in Venezuela, and in 1998, another subsidiary was established in Guatemala. This Thus, the FCE reached a significant presence in Latin America with nine subsidiaries: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Spain, United States, Guatemala, Peru and Venezuela.

In publishing field, under his direction, 21 new collections were launched: in 1990, Keys (Argentina) in 1991, A la Orilla del Viento, Mexican Codices, University Science and Special Editions of At the Edge of the wind; in 1992, Breviary of Contemporary Science (Argentina) and New Economic Culture, in 1993 Library Prospective, Mexican Library, Library Cervantes Prize (Spain), and History of the Americas Trust and Cruises, in 1994, Word of Life and Indians A Vision of America and the Modernization of Mexico; Files, Sunstone (Peru), Entre Voces, Reading and Designated Fund 2000; Encounters (Peru) History of Mexico, and five periodicals: Galeras Fund, Periolibros, Images, Spaces for Reading and the Fund page.

During his administration, the FCE received several awards, among them: in 1992, FILIJ Book Award (CNCA) to children's books, in 1993 Golden Laurel Award (Department of Culture of the City of Madrid) in 1993, honorable mention Juan García Bacca (Peruvian Cultural Association) Award, and Gold Aztec Calendar (Mexican Association of Radio and Television). In 1994 and 1995 Award Book Bank of Venezuela for children's books.

The Spanish Council for Latin American Studies, distinguished him for his contributions to the development of reading in the Spanish language, received in 1997 the IUS Award by the Faculty of Law of the UNAM, and in 1998 the government of France awarded him the Academic Palms in rank of Commander for his contribution to cultural development. In 1999, Mr. De la Madrid received the medal Picasso Gold (UNESCO), for their work on the diffusion of Latin American culture.

Personal life and death

De la Madrid died on April 1, 2012, at 7:30 am in a Mexican hospital apparently following a lengthy hospitalization for complicated chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which led to acute renal failure and cardiac arrest.[30]

Public image and legacy

Unlike his predecessors (specially Luis Echeverría and José López Portillo), President De la Madrid was noted for making relatively few speeches and keeping a more reserved and moderate public image. Although that has been attributed to an strategy to break with his predecessors' populist legacies, President De la Madrid's public image was critiziced by some observers, who considered that the President was "grey", "distant" or "insensitive" (he was nicknamed "El Presidente gris" -"the grey President").[31] This perception worsened with his government's slow response to the 1985 Earthquake, when President De la Madrid also rejected International aid in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.

President De la Madrid's biggest legacy may have been his implementation of economic neoliberal reforms in Mexico, breaking with decades of economic nationalism, and beginning mass privatization of state-run companies, a process which would be further deepened during the administration of his successor, Carlos Salinas de Gortari. De la Madrid was also the first of the so-called Technocrats to become President.[32] On the other hand, those reforms and his unwillingness to allow a primary election to choose the PRI candidate for the 1988 Presidential elections are credited as the factors which led to the split of the party in 1987, with Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and Porfirio Muñoz Ledo founding the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD by its initials in Spanish) in 1989, taking a great number of former priístas with them.

Under his "Moral Renovation" campaign, his administration attempted to fight corruption at all Government levels, fullfiling Mexico's foreign debt compromises, and creating the Secretaría de la Contraloría General de la Federación (Secretariat of the General Inspectorate of the Federation) to guarantee fiscal discipline and to keep an eye on possible corrupt officials. Nevertheless, his administration still had some corruption scandals of its own, the most notorious being the murder of journalist Manuel Buendía in 1984 by agents of the Federal Security Directorate (Buendía had been investigating possible ties between Drug cartels, the CIA and the FSD itself).[33] De la Madrid shut down the FSD in 1985, although in its place similar Intelligence agencies would be created in subsequent years.

Finally, his administration's handling of the 1986 elections in Chihuahua and, specially, the 1988 Presidential elections, remains highly controversial.

In a 1998 interview for a documentary produced by Clío TV about his administration, De la Madrid himself concluded:

"What hurts me the most, is that those years of economic adjustment and structural change, were also characterized by a deterioration of the income distribution, a depression of the real wages, and an insufficient creation of jobs. In summary, by a deterioration of the social conditions."[34]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Encyclopædia Britannica (2008). "Miguel de la Madrid". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
  2. 1 2 Ortiz de Zárate, Roberto (10 May 2007). "Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado" (in Spanish). Fundació CIDOB. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
  3. ↑ Carlos Valdez Ramírez. "Fuerte de carácter y muy íntegro Miguel de la Madrid (in Spanish, fifth paragraph)". El Noticiero. Retrieved 1 July 2017.
  4. ↑ Duncan, Richard; Kelly, Harry (21 June 2005). "An Interview with Miguel de la Madrid". Time. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
  5. ↑ Rivera Ayala, Clara (2008). Historia de México II. Cengage Learning Editores. p. 381.
  6. ↑ Collado, Maria del Carmen. "Autoritarismo en tiempos de crisis. Miguel de la Madrid 1982-1988". Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  7. 1 2 Fernandez Menendez, Jorge (1 June 1992). "Chihuahua otra vez". Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  8. ↑ Fuentes Mares, Jose. Historia ilustrada de México: De Hernán Cortés a Miguel de la Madrid. Océano. p. 467. ISBN 968-493-160-3.
  9. ↑ Delgado de Cantú, Gloria M. (2003). México, estructuras política, económica y social. Pearson Educación. pp. 123–124.
  10. ↑ Foweraker, Joe (1990). Popular Movements and Political Change in Mexico. Lynne Rienner Publishers. p. 129.
  11. ↑ "Molotov en Palacio Nacional". Milenio (in Spanish). November 11, 2014. Retrieved October 14, 2017.
  12. ↑ Fabrizio Mejía Madrid, "Insurgentes" in The Mexico City Reader (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), ed. Rubén Gallo, trans. Lorna Scott Fox & Rubén Gallo), p. 73.
  13. ↑ Castigo al Pato: 23 años de cárcel y el pago del traje de Carrillo Castro, Proceso (August 30, 1986).
  14. ↑ "Suicidios in Tlatelolco:Sismo en Mexico" (in Spanish). Mexico City: La Prensa. 14 September 2005. p. 2.
  15. ↑ Velasco Molina, Carlos (20 September 1985). "Estricto Patrullaje Militar Para Garantizar paz: Aguirre" (in Spanish). Mexico City: Excélsior. pp. 1a, 22a.
  16. 1 2 3 Haber, Paul Lawrence (1995). "Earthquake of 1985". Concise Encyclopedia of Mexico. Taylor & Frances Ltd. pp. 179–184.
  17. ↑ Kirkwood, Burton (2000). History of Mexico. Westport, CT, USA: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. p. 203. ISBN 0-313-00243-6.
  18. ↑ "El terremoto en Mexico de 1985" (in Spanish). Retrieved 4 October 2008.
  19. ↑ ""No queremos goles , queremos frijoles"" (in Spanish). El País. 8 May 1986. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
  20. ↑ "LAS RECHIFLAS AL PRESIDENTE MARCARON LA INAUGURACION: AL SEGUNDO JUEGO ASISTIO SIGILOSAMENTE" (in Spanish). Proceso. 7 June 1986. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
  21. ↑ "HACE 25 AÑOS SE INAUGURÓ EL MUNDIAL DE MÉXICO 1986" (in Spanish). Record. 1 January 2013. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
  22. ↑ "¿Por Qué Perdimos?: Reflexiones Desde El Anonimato De Un Ciudadano Sin Futuro" (in Spanish). Retrieved 20 February 2018.
  23. 1 2 3 Delgado de Cantú, Gloria. Historia de México, Volumen 2. Pearson Educación. ISBN 970-26-0356-0.
  24. ↑ Werner, Michael. Concise Encyclopedia of Mexico. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  25. ↑ "1988: La caída del sistema". CNN. Archived from the original on 29 October 2013. Retrieved 26 October 2013.
  26. ↑ Rivera Ayala, Clara (2008). Historia de México II. Cengage Learning Editores. p. 387.
  27. ↑ Levi, Isaac A. (April 4, 1986). Mexican jet pilots claim plane crash caused by explosion. Kentucky New Era (AP).
  28. ↑ "The Montreal Gazette - Google News Archive Search". news.google.com. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
  29. ↑ "The Crash of Mexicana de Aviacion Flight 940". ecperez.blogspot.co.nz. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
  30. ↑ http://www.milenio.com/cdb/doc/impreso/9139921%5Bpermanent+dead+link%5D
  31. ↑ Montalvo, Tania. "MIGUEL DE LA MADRID, EL PRESIDENTE DEL QUIEBRE PRIISTA". Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  32. ↑ Granados, Omar. "¿Cómo fue el sexenio de Miguel de la Madrid?". Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  33. ↑ Becerril, Andres. "El de Buendía, el primer crimen de narcopolítica". Excelsior. Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  34. ↑ "Miguel de la Madrid - Oportunidades perdidas". Sexenios (in Spanish). Clío TV.
Political offices
Preceded by
José López Portillo		 President of Mexico
1982–1988		 Succeeded by
Carlos Salinas
Party political offices
Preceded by
José López Portillo y Pacheco		 PRI presidential candidate
1982 (won)		 Succeeded by
Carlos Salinas de Gortari
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