Spotlight: Mexico, the Painful Changes

▪ 1996

      Rarely had a country turned from a showcase into a basket case in such a short period of time. At the end of 1993, after signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexico seemed strong, stable, and poised to enter the developed world. By the end of 1995, the country was suffering the deepest recession in its history, and its political system appeared to be in shambles. What happened over those 24 months was important not only for Mexico, which was paying dearly for any errors it may have committed, but also for the U.S., which as a neighbour bore the immediate consequences of any Mexican crisis.

      There were no agreed-upon answers about what actually caused the Mexican downfall. Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, who took over as president on Dec. 1, 1994, claimed that his administration inherited an overvalued peso, which produced an unaffordable current-account deficit of almost $29 billion in 1994. It was this that led to the peso's devaluation, he argued, and to the ensuing economic crisis.

      Former finance minister Pedro Aspe disagreed, however. The peso was not overvalued, he claimed, as was proved by the fact that exports rose 23% in 1994. Capital did not flee because of economic circumstances. At first, capital left as a response to political events and crimes—most notably the assassination of Luis Donaldo Colosio, presidential candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), on March 23, 1994. The real collapse, said Aspe, was provoked by the devaluation of the peso ordered in December 1994 by President Zedillo.

      Mexico's powerful leftist groups disagreed with both views. They argued that the economic crisis was provoked by the economic liberalization engineered by Pres. Carlos Salinas de Gortari from 1988 to 1994. Privatizing state companies and opening the borders to trade were the crucial decisions that weakened Mexico. NAFTA, in their opinion, was the straw that broke the camel's back.

      It would be hard to argue against the view that the current-account deficit was at least part of the problem. It was true that Mexico's exports were rising in 1994, but the current-account deficit made the country excessively dependent on short-term foreign money. Maintaining this capital flow was not a problem when the country was hailed as a showcase, but the flow reversed when the Colosio assassination generated doubts about Mexico's political future.

      Aspe was right, however, when he claimed that devaluation had aggravated the problem. The drastic drop in the peso's value, only days after the government had vowed not to devalue, shattered the confidence of investors and savers. It took four weeks for the country to lose $10 billion in reserves after the Colosio assassination—but only two days for the same amount to move from pesos into dollars after the devaluation.

      Mexico's privatizations and trade opening were probably necessary. During the 1980s Mexico had carried an unsustainable budget deficit, which peaked at 16% of gross domestic product (GDP). The privatizations were a crucial part of a strategy that eliminated this deficit and brought the public sector's debt from 68% of GDP in 1988 to 32% in 1994. A highly protected domestic economy had been maintained for decades, so the trade opening sharply increased imports, but it also generated competition benefiting consumers and promoted exports. Mexico's foreign sales stood at $21 billion in 1988; by 1995 they were forecast to rise to $80 billion.

      There was no indication that NAFTA, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 1994, either precipitated or accelerated the economic collapse. In October of that year, when the peso was allegedly overvalued, Mexico was already chalking up a trade surplus with its North American partners, the U.S. and Canada. Mexico's deficit was a consequence of trade with East Asia and Europe, where protectionist practices allegedly prevented the importation of Mexican products.

      On the contrary, a dearth of domestic savings was a major factor in the crisis. During the Salinas administration, improved expectations and the privatization of the nation's banks boosted credit to private companies and individuals. Consumption and investment rose more than income, while savings declined, generating demand for foreign money. In 1995 President Zedillo increased the value-added tax to reduce consumption and reformed the country's pensions system to boost savings. This was expected to reduce dependence on foreign capital and to provide stability to Mexico's volatile financial markets. It would take years, however, for accumulated pensions to provide the kind of long-term capital Mexico needed.

      This was why political reform became so urgent. The assassination of presidential candidate Colosio sparked the initial bout of capital flight in 1994 because investors saw the country as lacking adequate political institutions. Mexico's traditionally benign authoritarianism, built upon an extremely powerful presidency, had provided stability for decades, but it made the country's entire political structure dependent on the president—and his successor. Reform negotiations involving the three major political parties began in early 1995 and sought to generate a new and more balanced political structure, giving greater power to the legislative and judicial branches of government as well as to municipal and state administrations. The reforms, said to be nearly agreed upon at the end of 1995, were set to change electoral rules that had allowed the PRI to remain in power since 1929 and thus be one of the longest-ruling parties in the world.

      President Zedillo did not wait for political reform to try to clean the country's fraud-marred elections. In 1995, the first year of his administration, there were five elections involving state governorships. The PRI lost three of them. Traditionalists in Mexico claimed that these defeats demonstrated the weakness of the president, but Zedillo argued that in a true democracy it was normal for a ruling party to lose elections during a recession.

      It was not easy for a country to change from a closed to an open economy and from an authoritarian to a democratic system at the same time. Every change generates turbulence, of course, and this turbulence was what was seen in Mexico in 1994 and 1995. Liberalizing the economy and democratizing political life would not turn Mexico into a showcase again any time soon, but at least they could generate more solid foundations for building a better future.

      Sergio Sarmiento, a syndicated newspaper columnist in Mexico, is also vice president for news operations at Televisión Azteca, Mexico's second largest TV network.

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