Elected with 17 million votes in 1994, the Mexican president comes across as a low-key though genial pragmatic idealist with the nerves of a tightrope walker. His long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as PRI, has been stained by scandals virtually since its creation in 1929, yet Zedillo, a Yale-trained economist, is earning a reputation as a statesman who has tried to bring democratic reforms to his country.
Shortly before his Chicago visit last week to promote Mexico’s political stability and investment potential, Zedillo granted an interview in Los Pinos, the presidential compound in Mexico City. On July 6, largely due to his reforms, the PRI suffered historic setbacks in midterm elections, losing two state governorships along with its majority in the lower house of Congress for the first time in 68 years.
Q: Mr. President, how can you push for electoral reform and democracy without undermining the PRI? One thinks of Gorbachev when he pushed for change in the Soviet Union. He ended up out of power, and we know what happened to the USSR.
A: I think the difference is enormous. One party dominated Mexico for several years, but Mexico was never a totalitarian country. As we now move toward more equitable conditions for political competition, the dominant party inevitably is going to suffer. But if we hadn’t changed, the PRI would not have been a major player in the 21st Century–my colleagues know that. Now there will be three major parties in Mexico, all of which have tended to moderate their extreme positions on many issues.
I learned long ago that when you have responsibility–true responsibility–on your hands, you tend to become more responsible. That’s one of the intended results of reform. I think it’s good for Mexico.
Q: Why has your party been so slow to speak out against corruption, as you yourself have said?
A: Without making excuses, I believe that many of the cultural traditions we inherited as far back as colonial times have tolerated corruption–cynics would say it was the oil that made the machinery move. What has changed now is the perception of how damaging corruption is. People aren’t complacent anymore. They’re beginning to understand that one of the fundamental ingredients of national development is the rule of law.
Q: You have said, “We want political competition like you want economic competition.” In the last election, an opposition candidate even was elected mayor of Mexico City in a landslide, a post considered a steppingstone to the presidency. Why do you encourage such competition?
A: Because we want democracy. We want all voices, all opinions in Mexican society to be reflected.
Q: What happened since, say, 1988, when charges surfaced that the PRI stole the presidential election? Why has change been so dramatic?
A: I think you have to go back to the late 1960s. Before then, there was a national consensus that political stability–no matter what–was crucial. Democracy was a nice principle in our constitution, but little else. Then people started speaking out about democracy, about political freedom, about pluralism. The movement grew. Also, the reforms that happened in 1994 were very important. I can assure you that my election was absolutely legal.
So it has been a gradual transition. We’ve never had a rupture. We haven’t had a major crisis. No breakdowns. We had the capacity to evolve gradually and consistently, and that is evident by my own party opening up the process to others.
The magic of Mexico is that we are quite a tolerant society.
Q: Why is it so difficult to break up the drug cartels in your country?
A: You should ask your own government about its efforts against organized crime. Because that’s what it is in Mexico. Those criminals have a lot of resources. They use false names, false papers, have many personalities. They have money to corrupt people. Throughout history, combating such criminals has always been very difficult. All we can do is keep pursuing the cartels and keep prosecuting them.
Q: Officials of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency have said they don’t know who to trust in Mexico. Who can they trust?
A: They can trust me. And the attorney general and the secretary of defense. They can trust a lot of people. But I do share their concerns. For many years, unfortunately, organized crime permeated some of our institutions–we have hundreds of former policemen in jail; now we also have members of the army. That is terrible.
Q: What are you doing to address the problem?
A: We have undertaken a major overhaul of the national attorney general’s office. We have been working hard to reform the judiciary to ensure more expeditious and effective trials. We are working on many fronts at once, though I would be the last to expect these problems to be solved overnight.
Q: Your economy seems to be doing well, especially the export sector. Yet the average Mexican still earns less than $3 a day, and by your own estimate, 15 million people live below the poverty level. How can economic growth in your country reach down to the poor?
A: The good news is that the proportion of people earning the minimum keeps going down. But it’s true that real wages, comparatively speaking, are very low in Mexico. We are an undercapitalized country. We also have a demographic factor–people entering the labor market now were born when Mexico was having its highest population growth in history. So there always is an excess of available labor, and that keeps wages low.
But you cannot create permanent employment or improve real wages if your economy does not grow. We need more investment, which would bring higher productivity per worker and higher real wages. We need sustained economic growth to make the benefits of the economy reach everyone.
Q: What are your thoughts on NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement)? Which country has benefited the most?
A: I think it has been successful, though it’s wrong to compare who has gained. NAFTA has allowed exports to increase and has helped the creation of jobs. It has been in effect only three years, so it is not possible to assess it fairly. But I think it was a good initiative and has worked well so far.
Q: In general, how would you characterize relations between Mexico and the U.S.?
A: They’re good. President Clinton’s visit left powerful testimony of how cooperative the relationship has become. Of course, we have problems, and some of them are acute. But we now have in place the mechanisms to pursue resolutions. NAFTA was a clear example. But even with such important issues as drug trafficking and immigration, we are working together now.
Q: It has been said that you may go down in history as the president who provided the transition government for Mexico to finally achieve full democracy. How do you want to be remembered?
A: That has never been my concern. I think it’s a foolish intellectual exercise.
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An edited transcript
