MSG009G/01 MEXICO: Salinas Allowed to Escape Investigation, Analyst Says

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Marquez

CARACAS, Mar 14 1995 (IPS) - Former Mexican President Carlos Salinas’ freedom from investigation in connection with political assassinations is the result of a deal brokered with current President Ernesto Zedillo, political analyst Jorge Castaneda said Monday.

Salinas and his family left Mexico in a private jet Saturday and was in New York on Monday on what spokespeople said was a business trip. They also denied that a deal was made with Zedillo.

The former President’s brother Raul was arrested on Feb.28, accused of being the intellectual author of the murder of governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) secretary general Jose Ruiz Massieu.

Carlos Salinas said the he was confident of his brother’s innocence, and went on a hunger stike which lasted less than two full days March 4, demanding that the government make a statement clearing him of any connection to that murder, and the March 23, 1994 assassination of PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, which appears to have been a conspiracy.

Salinas also demanded that he not be blamed for the economic crisis which exploded in December 1994 and continues to burn.

Castaneda, author of “Utopia Unarmed”- an analysis of the Latin American left – told a conference at Venezuela’s Central University that Zedillo offered Salinas “a unique pact, without which he would not be able to leave” and go into de facto exile in the United States.

Salinas’ “exile” is a result of “a political logic that is being forced on Zedillo,” who will undoubtedly begin to resort to “spectacular methods” to win popularity, which he needs because “the adjustment programme that he has implemented in the country is far more brutal than that of 1989.”

Castaneda said the “Zedillo plan” means a 35 percent increase in gas prices, 10 to 15 percent tax rises, over one million workers laid off, negative economic growth of two percent, and an inflation rate of over 40 percent accompanied by wage increases of only 10 percent.

“In Mexico, predicting social uprisings is contentious,” said the analyst, ” but it can be said that conditions have never been riper in modern history.”

An uprising would bring “the danger of an institutional crisis for the first time in 70 years if Zedillo’s programme does not work in the short-term,” and massive social protests have already occurred, as with the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas.

“The Chiapas rebellion, despite being ineffective from a military point of view, means people are willing to risk violence to seek the satisfaction of their demands,” said Castaneda.

Furthermore, as the Zapatistas seem to have been “successful in their demands, it is a dangerous example,” and although the situation in the rest of the country is different from that of Chiapas, “the poorer sectors and the young feel the temptation to follow them.”

Castaneda said Zedillo is “backing the wrong horse” in trying to improve his position with the use of dramatic measures, and that he would do better building up government coalitions and strengthening democracy.

The analyst said the country needs a change in economic direction, the real root of the crisis, “not technical errors or presidential megalomania, although those aspects may have existed.”

The distancing between the PRI and the Mexican middle class when Salinas entered office in 1988 – “after elections which many of us believe he didn’t win” – is also blamed for causing the crisis.

Castaneda said Salinas and the PRI dedicated themselves to cultivating the middle class with what he called the “Orlando effect” – providing a fixed currency exchange rate, controls on inflation and cheap dollars so that the well-off could travel to shopping meccas like Orlando, Florida.

And when Zedillo entered office, “massive capital flight was unleashed” when “he committed the error of…meeting with the business sector to inform them that the country had no reserves, provoking the flux… and “failed to negotiate devaluation with our trading partners.”

Furthermore, as Zedillo “has not stated what he plans to do to avoid a repetition of the crisis,” there is “a lack of definition, the political system is collapsing, social uprising is a serious threat and these spectacular measures keep appearing.”