and Ernesto Zedillo, at the Millennium Summit, 2000 At age 42, Zedillo assumed the presidency on 1 December 1994 at the
Legislative Palace of San Lázaro, taking oath before the
Congress of the Union presided by the
deputy president Carlota Vargas Garza. Zedillo's electoral victory was perceived as clean, but he came to office as an accidental candidate with no political base of his own and no experience. During the first part of his presidency, he took inconsistent policy positions, and there were rumours that he would resign or that there would be a coup d'état against him, which caused turmoil in financial markets.
Cabinet Zedillo's
cabinet needed to have members who could deal with crises. Throughout his presidency, he had four as
Minister of the Interior,
Esteban Moctezuma, who dealt with the
Zapatistas;
Emilio Chuayffet, who resigned following the
Acteal massacre;
Francisco Labastida, who won the primary to determine the 2000 PRI presidential candidate; and
Diódoro Carrasco Altamirano, who dealt with the strike at the
National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Financial crisis of December 1994 A few days after Zedillo had taken office, one of the biggest economic crises in Mexican history hit the country. Although it was outgoing President Salinas who was mainly blamed for the crisis, Salinas claimed that President Zedillo made a mistake by changing the economic policies held by his administration. Zedillo devalued the peso by 15%, which prompted the near collapse of the financial system. The crisis ended after a series of reforms and actions led by Zedillo. US president
Bill Clinton granted a US$20 billion loan to Mexico, which helped in one of Zedillo's initiatives to rescue the banking system.
Break with Salinas Zedillo had been an accidental presidential candidate who was vaulted to prominence with the assassination of Colosio. The conflict between Zedillo and Salinas marked the early part of Zedillo's presidency. As with De la Madrid and Salinas, Zedillo had never been elected to office and had no experience in politics. His performance as a candidate was lacklustre, but the outbreak of violence in Chiapas and the shock of the Colosio assassination swayed voters to support the PRI candidate in the 1994 election. In office, Zedillo was perceived as a puppet president with Salinas following the model of
Plutarco Elías Calles in the wake of the 1928 assassination of president-elect
Alvaro Obregón. In order to consolidate his own power in the presidency, Zedillo had to assert his independence from Salinas. On 28 February 1995, Zedillo ordered the arrest of the ex-president's older brother
Raúl Salinas for the September 1994 murder of PRI General Secretary
José Francisco Ruiz Massieu. This action marked a decisive break between Zedillo and Salinas. In February 1995, the Mexican government identified the masked Subcomandante Marcos as Rafael Sebastián Guillén, a former professor at the
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City. Metaphorically unmasking Marcos and identifying him as a non-indigenous urban intellectual turned-terrorist of was the government's attempt to demystify and delegitimize the Zapatistas in public opinion. The army was prepared to move against Zapatista strongholds and capture Marcos. The government decided to reopen negotiations with the Zapatistas. On 10 March 1995, President Zedillo and Secretary of the Interior Moctezuma signed the Presidential Decree for the Dialog, the Reconciliation and a peace with dignity in Chiapas law, which was discussed and approved by the Mexican Congress. In April 1995, the government and the Zapatistas began secret talks to find an end to the conflict. In February 1996, the
San Andrés Accords were signed by the government and the Zapatistas. In May 1996, Zapatistas imprisoned for terrorism were released. In December 1997, indigenous peasants were murdered in an incident known as the
Acteal massacre. Survivors of the massacre sued Zedillo in U.S., but the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the suit based on his immunity as a head of state. Relations had already been damaged because of the 24 May 1993 political assassination of the Guadalajara Cardinal
Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo and the lack of government progress on solving the murder by the
Attorney General of Mexico. The PGR pressured the bishop of Chiapas,
Samuel Ruiz García for supposedly concealing the Zapatistas guerrilla activity. Ruiz's involvement had been strategic and an important instrument to keep the peace after the EZLN uprising.
Poverty alleviation Zedillo's presidential motto was
Bienestar para tu familia ("Well-being for your family"). He created the poverty alleviation program
Progresa, which subsidized the poorest families in Mexico, provided that their children went to school. It replaced the Salinas administration's PRONASOL, deemed too politicized. It was later renamed
Oportunidades (
Opportunities) by president
Vicente Fox. The parastatal organization
CONASUPO, which was designed to supply food and provide food security to the poor was phased out in 1999, resulting in higher
food prices.
NAFTA and other economic measures Carlos Salinas had negotiated Mexico's place in NAFTA, which took effect in January 1994, so Zedillo was the first president to oversee it for his entire term. The Mexican economy suffered following the December 1994 peso crisis, when the currency was devalued by 15%, and the U.S. intervened to prop up the economy with a multi-billion-dollar loan, so that NAFTA under the Zedillo administration got off to a rocky start. The Mexican GDP was -7%, and there were hopes that NAFTA would lift that miserable performance statistic. In the run-up to the implementation of NAFTA, Salinas had privatized hundreds of companies. During the Zedillo administration, he privatized
the state railway company,
Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México. This led to the suspension of passenger service in 1997.
Electoral reform Zedillo saw electoral reform as a key issue for his administration. In January 1995, Zedillo initiated multiparty talks about electoral reform, which resulted in an agreement on how to frame political reform. In July 1996, those talks resulted in the agreement of Mexico's four major parties on a reform package, which was ratified unanimously in the legislature. It created autonomous organizations to oversee elections, made the post of
Head of Government of Mexico City, previously an appointed position, into an elective one, as of July 1997, and created closer oversight of campaign spending. "Perhaps most crucially, it represents a first step toward consensus among the parties on a set of mutually accepted democratic rules of the game." The reforms lowered the influence of the PRI and opened opportunities for other parties. In the 1997 elections, for the first time the PRI did not win the majority in Congress. Zedillo was also a strong advocate of federalism as a counterbalance to a centralized system.
Foreign relations Zedillo sought to forge new ties overseas, including ones with China. He made a rhetorical gesture to Africa, but without real effect. He successfully concluded negotiations with the European Union for a Free Trade Agreement, which entered into force in July 2000
Official international trips This is a list of
official trips abroad made by Zedillo during his presidency. According to Article 88 of the
Constitution of Mexico, the president may leave the country for up to seven days by informing the
Senate or, where applicable, the
Permanent Commission in advance of the reasons for the absence, as well as of the results of the measures carried out. For absences longer than seven days, permission from the Senate or the Permanent Commission is required.
Approval ratings In terms of its approval ratings, the Zedillo administration was a very unusual one in Mexican politics in that, while normally Presidents are highly popular upon taking office and don't experience serious downturns in their approval rate during their first year in office, Zedillo dealt with very low approval ratings merely weeks after taking office due to his decision to devaluate the
Peso on 20 December 1994, giving way to the
Mexican peso crisis that severely hit the national economy. Hitting a bottom low 24% approval on 3 January 1995, Zedillo continued to experience low approval ratings throughout 1995, with the effects of the economic crisis, the continuing conflict with the
EZNL in
Chiapas and the
Aguas Blancas massacre in June preventing his popularity from recovering. Although not as troublesome as in 1995, his approval ratings remained unsteady during 1996. Zedillo's approval ratings, however, experienced a steady growth beginning in January 1997, and for the rest of his administration, his disapproval rate was never higher than his approval rate. Helped in no doubt by the relative economic recovery and the peaceful transfer of power to
Vicente Fox (who won the
2000 presidential elections, being the first opposition candidate in 71 years to defeat the ruling
PRI), Zedillo left office with an approval rate of 64% and a disapproval rate of 25.4%. On average, Zedillo's administration had an approval rating of 55.3% and a disapproval rating of 34.3%. An interesting occurrence is that of the aforementioned 3 January 1995 poll: at the same time that Zedillo recorded his lowest-ever approval rate and a disapproval rate of 30%, 46.1% of those polled either stated that they didn't have an opinion on his administration or didn't answer, making it the only case ever recorded in Mexican modern history in which a plurality expressed no opinion on a sitting President.
Highest approval ratings: • 15 October 1997 (74.8% approval). • 1 September 1997 (71.4% approval). • 1 July 1998 (71.3% approval).
Lowest approval ratings: • 3 January 1995 (24% approval). • 16 January 1995 (31.4% approval). • 1 February 1995 (35.7% approval).
Highest disapproval ratings: • 17 November 1995 (49.8% disapproval). • 2 May 1995 (48.8% disapproval). • 1 March 1995 (45.9% disapproval).
Lowest disapproval ratings: • 6 December 1994 (6.5% disapproval). • 15 December 1994 (7.2% disapproval). • 15 October 1997 (18.2% disapproval). ==2000 election==