Historic Anniversary in Mexico. No one cared.
July 2, 2000. A day that will...oh, forget it:
President Vicente Fox led celebrations on Saturday for the anniversary of his historic election triumph but most Mexicans see little improvement five years after he swept away one-party rule.
Less than 10,000 people, many fewer than organizers had hoped for, turned up at a pro-democracy rally to mark Fox's victory over the often corrupt Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, on July 2, 2000....
High hopes of a better life under full democracy have largely fallen flat. Fox has failed to make good on campaign promises of strong economic growth.
But Mexico has avoided the kind of financial crisis suffered by other Latin American countries in recent years and Fox has brought more transparency to public life after decades of rampant corruption....
A poll in Reforma newspaper on Saturday showed 55 percent of Mexicans believe that changes made under Fox are not very important.
Even senior members of Fox's conservative National Action Party, or PAN, admit the government has not really delivered on bread-and-butter issues....
Former Polish President Lech Walesa spoke at the event but attendance was a far cry from five years ago, when tens of thousands of Mexicans rushed to the landmark Angel monument after Fox won the presidency.
Saturday's crowd was small compared to recent protests in favor of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist favored to replace Fox at next year's polls. More than 100,000 people poured onto the streets to back the Mexico City mayor's run for the presidency....
The main opposition PRI still dominates in Congress where it has blocked Fox's economic reform plans. Opinion polls show the party's candidate, Enrique Pena, is also set to win Sunday's election in the State of Mexico, seen as a key indicator of next year's presidential polls.
A history lesson from the Daily Kos:
The PRI was created by the generals who won the Mexican revolution in the early 1920s, after they destroyed the real revolutionaries, guys like Emiliano Zapata. (Whom, in a rather stunningly ironic gesture, George Bush Sr. later named his oil company after.)
The PRI's platform could best be described as: Hold on to power by any means necessary, but try not to shoot too many people while doing it....
[T]he PRI invented a system called "tapadismo" -- the veil. PRI Presidents served one term only, but got to choose the own successor, who was then "elected" by the people. The PRI bought elections with the usual machine tactics -- patronage, bribes, threats, etc -- and when that didn't work, stole them. But it usually worked and over the years the PRI became the government and the government became the PRI.
It's easy to knock it now, but the system brought Mexico better government than it had ever known before. No coups -- the army stayed out of politics and the politicians stayed out of the army. Repression was kept to a minimum. The press was semi-free. An opposition party, the PAN, was tolerated -- even if it did play the Washington Generals to the PRI's Harlem Globetrotters. By Latin American standards, Mexico was a success....
[T]he PRI decayed over the years, and in the '80s began to fall apart. The left wing of the party revolted and put up its own presidential candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, son of the guy who nationalized the oil industry. In the 1988 election, Cardenas shocked the PRI (and probably himself) by appearing to win. The PRI had to suspend the count (citing the usual "computer glitch.") When it resumed, the PRI candidate was safely ahead.
Still, it was easy to see the PRI was living on borrowed (or stolen) time. So the "winning" candidate, Carlos Salinas, set out to reform it, along with the moribund Mexican economy. He recruited a group of young, U.S.-trained economists to help him. NAFTA was one result; the collapse of the PRI was another.
NAFTA fueled an import binge but also a financial crisis. Salinas, who was monumentally corrupt (well, duh) got busted, along with his brother and good part of the Mexican banking system....
By 2000, the Mexican people had had enough, and -- deprived of the usual "computer glitches" -- the PRI lost its first presidential election. Fox, the PAN candidate, took office.
Another history of the PRI can be found here.
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