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| REBELLION IN MEXICO | |
 October 4, 1996 
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CHARLES KRAUSE: Nothing better illustrates Mexico's continuing economic and political turmoil than the tense atmosphere that surrounded President Zedillo's second state of the nation address in early September.
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| Articulating
a vision for Mexico |
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CHARLES KRAUSE: But Zedillo's supporters say his lack of political skills is one of his strengths. Unassuming and often underestimated, they say Zedillo has been able to outwit his enemies on many key issues and now, after a slow start, has begun to compile an impressive record. |
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| Maintaining open markets | ||||||||||||||||||||
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ROBERT RUBIN, Secretary of the Treasury: (1995) Mexico has made it clear that it intends to take tough measures to turn the situation around. |
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| Unemployment and crime | ||||||||||||||||||||
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CHARLES KRAUSE: But those tough measures, sharply higher interest rates,
and sharply reduced government spending, led to the worst recession
in Mexico's modern history. Unemployment skyrocketed, antigovernment
protests became an almost daily occurrence. Crime increased sharply,
and today in Mexico City, assaults, robberies, and kidnappings have
become a fact of everyday life. In wealthy areas, armed guards protect
the banks and even private homes. Meanwhile, in the middle and working
class areas like La Merced, police walk the streets trying to maintain
order, but so far the war on poverty and crime appears to be a losing
battle. Shoppers hide their money as best they can while shopkeepers
fear for their lives. Standing behind the counter of his lingerie shop
in La Merced, SERGIO SARMIENTO: I myself have been a victim of assaults, burglaries, or in a kidnap -- or three of them over a period of a year and a half. The state has lost the capacity to defend people from other private individuals, and that's a major failure. In fact, if you asked people today what, what the most important failure of the government is right now, they'll tell you that it is public insecurity. The government in Mexico is not able to protect individuals anymore. CHARLES KRAUSE: Despite the near breakdown of law and order in Mexico City and growing desperation, Zedillo stood firm and now finally the austerity measures he ordered have begun to work. The Mexican economy grew by 7.2 percent during the second quarter of this year, and the government says the growth will continue. But so far, there's been little improvement for average Mexicans. In his state of the nation speech, Zedillo urged patience but his critics say that after two years, Mexico's patience is running out. Opposition Congressman Adolfo Aguilar.
RIORDAN ROETT: There's no question that with the very high unemployment and continued unemployment, there is a very serious income problem. The banking crisis has definitely created a very serious credit problem for the middle low, middle class, and most importantly for the very poor who are used to really living on the streets, informal economy, vendors, the buying capacity of those who bought from them has dropped very dramatically. It's striking, when I was in Mexico a few weeks ago, as you walk in the downtown area, the number of small shops used to be quite prosperous in ‘92-'93, closed down, all boarded up, and the neighbors tell you that they left within the last year or year and a half. Why? No customers. CHARLES KRAUSE: It was against this backdrop of economic hardship that Mexico's latest guerrilla insurgency, led by the popular revolutionary army or EPR began earlier this summer. One of the EPR's first acts was to invite a small group of selected journalists to a press conference in an extremely remote part of Mexico. Dario Lopez of the Associated Press had to lug his cameras across rugged terrain for two days. When he and the other journalists finally arrived, they found sixty to seventy masked guerrillas. CHARLES KRAUSE: Was it your impression that they're well trained, they're disciplined? DARIO LOPEZ, Associated Press, Mexico City: Very disciplined. Very disciplined. CHARLES KRAUSE: Well trained?
CHARLES KRAUSE: Lopez says the EPR's leaders seem to be well educated and well versed in Marxist doctrine. At the press conference they presented a long list of grievances. DARIO LOPEZ: They want their demands to be met, which --it's an improvement in all -- you know, an economic improvement, social justice, democracy, all the, the -- basically all the things that is lacking in Mexico, the problems that Mexico is suffering. |
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| Guerilla movement in south | ||||||||||||||||||||
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CHARLES KRAUSE: By and large, the government has dismissed the EPR as a guerrilla movement made up of forty to fifty hard core ideologues, with no real following in the countryside where they've been operating so far. At the Interior Ministry, spokesman Dionesio Perez Jacome told us the government has evidence that many of the EPR's foot soldiers are unemployed peasants. He says they seem to be more interested in getting paid than dying for revolutionary doctrines they only barely understand.
CHARLES KRAUSE: What concerns the government is the possibility that the EPR could become Mexico's version of Germany's Bader Meinhof Gang, or the IRA, domestic terrorists capable of kidnapping foreign executives or setting off bombs in urban areas, Mexico City, for example. But what concerns Zedillo's critics is his government's growing reliance on the Mexican army. Unlike other armies in Latin America, the Mexican army has never been directly involved in politics, nor in this century has Mexico experienced a military coup. But now Mexico's army is not only fighting the guerrillas. It's also leading the fight against Mexico's powerful drug cartel, and even common crime. As a result, Aguilar and others say the army is becoming too strong. ADOLFO AGUILAR: He's asking for the control of all of intelligence apparatus, and he's asking for increased control of police civilian apparatus. This means that the army is now assertive. Now officers of the army are demanding to be given the political authority they need to enforce the military role. This is the worst case scenario for Mexico. SERGIO SARMIENTO, Journalist: It is a risk. In fact, I would say that one of the reasons why I resent so much the emergence of these, um, guerrilla movements is because whenever you have a rebellion from the left, you get the risk of a good -- from the right, and I object to both of them. I would object so much to having the secretary of defense as president as having Adolfo Aguilar as dictator, clearly, but I just don't think it is possible. I think the chances are that, that if the economy begins to react --and I think it is beginning to react -- people will make it impossible for a dictator from the left or from the right to take over this country. CHARLES KRAUSE: Zedillo implicitly addressed these concerns in his state of the nation address when he promised to defeat the guerrillas with the full force of the law. He also repeated his promise of free and fair elections and further democratization of Mexico's political system. But fixing Mexico's many economic and political problems won't be easy, and two years into his six-year term, it's clear that Ernesto Zedillo has a long and arduous road ahead. |
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As
usual, the nationally televised speech was delivered in the imposing
chamber that houses Mexico's Congress. What should have been a moment
of triumph for Zedillo was undermined by yet another unsettling outbreak
of political violence. Just days before an unknown guerrilla group called
the Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR, had carried out a series of
daring raids that left at least 16 soldiers and policemen dead and many
others wounded. It was yet another direct challenge to Zedillo's government.
Sergio Sarmiento is a leading newspaper and television commentator with
close ties to the president and good sources within the country's security
services. Coupled with Mexico's other problems, Sarmiento says the EPR
guerrillas could pose a real danger for Mexico.
SERGIO
SARMIENTO, Journalist: They are not a military threat, just as the Zapatistas
from Chiapas were not a military threat but anyone who does understand
that, that you don't need very much to destroy the stability of the
country at this point, a country that is going through or that has gone
through a major recession, a country that is changing the rules, a country
where the old political system is dying, and a new one is emerging.
It doesn't take very much to destroy a country like that.
CHARLES
KRAUSE: This latest outbreak of guerrilla violence was clearly timed
to coincide with Zedillo's September 1 speech. The president had hoped
to use the speech to focus attention on some recent achievements, among
them a new political reform package he signed in July that could finally
guarantee free and fair elections in Mexico. He had also hoped to call
attention to signs that Mexico's economy is finally growing again after
nearly two years of severe economic decline. But among Zedillo's critics
in Congress and even among his supporters, there was general agreement
the speech was a disappointment, in part because the spotlight had shifted
to the guerrillas and in part because Zedillo once again failed to articulate
a clear vision of where he hopes to lead Mexico. In Washington, Johns
Hopkins Professor Riordan Roett, who advises a number of U.S. corporations
on Mexico, gives Zedillo's handling of the presidency so far a gentlemanly
“C.” Roett says he too is concerned about Zedillo's failure to convince
Mexicans that he's in charge. 
RIORDAN
ROETT, Johns Hopkins University: I don't think there are very many people
even in Mexico who think that Zedillo has really achieved the status
of a strong, forceful visionary president. Now, not all presidents are
visionary, and one need not be visionary to be successful, but at this
point in his administration, two years into it, he certainly has been
a superb crisis manager, particularly on the financial, economic bank
side. We don't know yet what the impact of his political reforms will
be, and to many Mexicans, my colleagues in Mexico, there appears to
be an apparent lack of sensitivity to the social fabric of Mexico, which
has frayed very badly since the end of 1994 and the peso crisis. 
SERGIO
SARMIENTO: I think the main success -- and maybe this is not clear for
Americans because most Americans are not aware of our recent political
history -- his main success was to maintain an open economy. What you
could have expected in, in the circumstances that we lived in, with
the most brutal recession we've lived in recent Mexico history, would
have been for the president to close the economy again, to revert to
trade protectionism, and to have the government take over private companies
again, to nationalize the banks, to nationalize the television companies,
to nationalize other services. Just the fact that he refused to do that,
that he refused to, uh, to close the economy, is a remarkable accomplishment.
CHARLES
KRAUSE: Zedillo's presidency has been consumed by economic crisis almost
from the moment he replaced Carlos Salinas as Mexico's president in
December 1994. Within less than three weeks after he took office, the
Mexican peso lost half its value almost overnight. The Mexico stock
market went into a tailspin. American investors lost billions of dollars,
and only a massive, $50 billion bailout hastily put together in Washington
saved Mexico from financial collapse. 
Nacine
Levy told us he was robbed of his gold chain, his watch, and his money
last June. Since then, he's hired a private security guard with a dog
to protect his shop during the hours it's open. Even Sarmiento, who
strongly supports Zedillo's tough economic program, acknowledges the
country has paid a terrible price and that no one is immune. 
ADOLFO
AGUILAR, Opposition Member, Mexico Congress: Every day the data shows
that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening and the numbers
of unemployed and poor is also enlarging, and this government had not
a policy to connect whatever improvements are taking the financial sector
with the life of the common Mexican, and with the families of Mexicans
who are in poverty. 
DARIO
LOPEZ: Yes. I mean, they're not trained in live fire, no. They're very
disciplined, and they're well trained. 
DIONESO
PEREZ JACOME, Ministry of the Interior: (speaking through interpreter)
They are mercenaries. They're hired to carry out these activities as
mercenaries, but they're not professional mercenaries. They have created
anxiety and queasiness among the population but that also has another
side, a down side to it. They've not been able to achieve any type of
acceptance or support.