De la Madrid inherited the financial catastrophe from his predecessor; Mexico experienced per capita negative growth for his entire term. De la Madrid's handling of the devastating 1985 Mexico City earthquake was his own major misstep. The end of his administration was even worse, with his choice of
Carlos Salinas de Gortari as his successor, the split in the PRI with the exit of
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, and the government's handling of balloting with election results deemed fraudulent. His administration did have some bright spots, with Mexico's becoming a member of the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1985. Mexico also was part of the
Contadora process to find a solution of the conflicts in Central America.
Economic policy , 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 policies of his two immediate predecessors, particularly the financing of development with excessive overseas borrowing, which was often countered by high internal capital flights. De la Madrid himself had been Minister of Budget and Programming under López Portillo, and as such he was perceived by many as being co-responsible for the crisis that he himself had to deal with upon taking office. 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. 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 decentralizing its economy. The number of state-owned industries went down from approximately 1,155 in 1982 to 412 in 1988. De la Madrid re-privatized companies that had been made state-run under his predecessors. He sought better public-private sector relations, but the private sector began backing opposition candidates nonetheless. Given the dire economic circumstances he inherited from his predecessor, he pursued policies of economic austerity, rather than deficit spending.
Domestic elections President De la Madrid initially stated that further democratization of the country was necessary, and the political system opened up to greater competition. As other parties showed the potential for their electoral success, however, 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 (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, especially 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. 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.
The 1986 gubernatorial elections in that same state [es] 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. (center) in
Mazatlán (1988).
Attempt to legalize abortion Since his campaign for the presidency, De la Madrid had mentioned the importance of discussing the topic of abortion, given the high national demographic growth and the scarce resources that the country had to deal with the necessities of an ever-growing population, specially in the middle of the economic crisis. Upon becoming President, De la Madrid and the Attorney General
Sergio García Ramírez attempted to reform the Penal Code of the
Federal District to decriminalize abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy "due to failure of the contraceptive methods, fetal alterations and pregnancies due to rape, with previous medical authorization and carried out at a hospital center". However, due to the highly negative reaction of the
Catholic church and the conservative sectors, the initiative was finally withdrawn.
1984 Molotov cocktail attack On 1 May 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.
San Juanico explosions (LPG) containers exploded into huge fireballs killing 500–600 people and causing severe burns in 5000–7000 others. On 19 November 1984, a massive series of explosions occurred at a
liquid petroleum gas (LPG) tank farm in the town of
San Juan Ixhuatepec (outside of
Mexico City,
Mexico). The disaster was initiated by a
gas leak on the site, likely caused by a pipe
rupture during transfer operations, which caused a plume of LPG to concentrate at ground level for 10 minutes. The plume eventually grew large enough to drift on the wind towards the west end of the site, where the facility's waste-gas flare pit was located. The explosions devastated the town of San Juan Ixhuatepec, and resulted in 500-600 deaths and 7,000 people with severe injuries. The tragedy sparked a national outrage, and President De la Madrid visited the affected area on 20 November. He instructed the creation of a commission to help the survivors and to rebuild the destroyed homes. On 22 December, the Procuraduría General de Justicia found the state-run oil company
Pemex to be responsible for the incident, and was ordered to pay indemnification to the victims. Due to the tragedy apparently having been caused by corruption and incompetence at the state-run company, the public further resented the Government and public institutions.
1985 Earthquake 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 19 September 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. 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. The earthquake 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. 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. 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. 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". During the World Cup's inauguration at the
Estadio Azteca on 31 May, just before the opening match
Italy vs Bulgaria, De la Madrid was jeered 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. An official who was present at the event recalled that "[The President's] words were completely drowned out by boos and whistles [...] I was dying with embarrassment, but it seemed to be the right metaphor for the mood of the country."
Split in the PRI In October 1986, a group of politicians from the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) led by
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas,
Porfirio Muñoz Ledo and
Ifigenia Martínez, 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, Muñoz Ledo and Martínez left the PRI the following year and created the
National Democratic Front (
Frente Democrático Nacional), a loose alliance of left-wing parties.
Drug trafficking As the U.S. consumption of illegal substances grew in the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. became interested in strengthening enforcement of drug trafficking in Mexico. In the 1980s U.S. Presidents
Ronald Reagan and
George H. W. Bush expanded the so-called "war on drugs" to stop drugs at ports of entry from Mexico. More importantly, the U.S. began asserting extraterritorial jurisdiction over drug trafficking in Mexican national territory. The crackdown on drug trafficking resulted in higher prices for drugs, since there was more risk involved, but trafficking in this era boomed. Drug trafficking organizations in Mexico grew in size and strength. As the U.S. asserted jurisdiction over trafficking in Mexico, Mexico could no longer pursue an autonomous drug policy. Agents of the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) began operating in Mexico without the consent of Mexican authorities. "In 1987, De la Madrid declared drug trafficking a national security problem and completely reorganized Mexican antidrug policy" and more government financial and personnel resources were devoted to the policy. Arrests in 1987 for drug trafficking reached 17,000. Front-line enforcement agents of the Mexican police were often corrupted by bribes from drug traffickers. Violence between traffickers and the police increased in this period. A major incident in the drug war and in U.S.-Mexican relations was the kidnap, torture, and murder of DEA agent
Enrique "Kiki" Camarena in 1985. In 1984, the Mexican government had staged a raid on a suspected site of drug trafficking in Chihuahua state. Traffickers suspected Camarena of providing information to the Mexican government and he was abducted in February 1985, tortured and killed; his body was found a month later. The U.S. responded by sending a special unit of the DEA to coordinate the investigation in Mexico. In the investigation, Mexican government officials were implicated, including Manuel Ibarra Herrera, past director of Mexican Federal Judicial Police, and
Miguel Aldana Ibarra, the former director of Interpol in Mexico. Drug trafficking as an issue has continued in Mexico in succeeding presidential administrations.
Foreign policy 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. On 31 March 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. 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.
Official international trips This is a list of
official trips abroad made by de la Madrid 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. ==1988 election==