328 UNIT 3 MODERN MESOAMERICA
factor behind the party’s loss of power was its failure to deal with the “Indian Prob-
lem” in the southern part of the country.
In the 1997 mid-term elections, the PRI party lost its majority in the lower house
to the PRD (Democratic Revolutionary Party) and PAN (National Action Party) op-
position parties. The popular PRD candidate, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas (son of Lázaro
Cárdenas), promising to alleviate the problems faced by the Indians and other rural
peoples, was elected to the extremely important Regente(mayoralty) position of Mex-
ico City. In addition, in the southern states of Mexico, several PRI governors were
forced out before completing their terms of office because of unsettled conditions
within their jurisdictions. Finally, in 2000 the PRI party for the first time lost the
presidential elections, as the conservative PAN candidate, Vicente Fox, won the elec-
tion with 43 percent of the votes. Like his PRI predecessors, Fox has been unable to
resolve the so-called “Indian Problem.”
In Central America, the peace agreements in the 1990s laid the groundwork for
a series of neoliberal changes that in an uneven way have gradually unfolded through-
out Central America during the past fifteen years. The modest developmental poli-
cies of the past have given way to aggressive neoliberal programs similar to those in
Mexico. The economic emphasis has shifted to privatization of state industries, re-
duction in social spending, acceptance of multinational corporate investments, and
the stabilization of private land holdings (agrarian reform has been given low pri-
ority). Following the lead of Mexico, the Central American countries appear to be
on the verge of signing their own free trade agreement (CAFTA) with the United
States.
One consequence of these programs is that the Gross National Product (GNP)
per capita has begun to increase in the Central American countries since the end of
the civil wars there (Spence 2004). For example, the per capita increases are l.4 per-
cent in Guatemala, 2.4 percent in El Salvador, 2.8 percent in Costa Rica (only in
Nicaragua has per capita growth lagged behind at .1 percent). Nevertheless, despite
overall declines in Central American poverty rates during the postwar period, some
75 percent of Guatemalans, 36 percent of Salvadorans, and 50 percent of Nicaraguans
still live in poverty (in Costa Rica the figure is 18 percent). And, as in Mexico, the In-
dians and poor Ladinos in general have not benefited substantially from the eco-
nomic prosperity.
The most notable political achievements in Central America consist of the demise
of the military dictatorships and the emergence of a variety of democratic govern-
ments in all the Central American countries (only Costa Rica was genuinely demo-
cratic prior to the l990s). The revolutionaries who fought in the civil wars, including
some Indians, have organized political parties and now participate in the electoral
process. In the most recent presidential election in Guatemala, for example, the vice-
presidential candidate for the leftist URNG party was Pablo Ceto, the same Mayan In-
dian mentioned before who joined the revolution in hopes of promoting the cause
of Indians in the country (see the reference to Pablo Ceto in the earlier section on
the Guatemalan revolution). Another Mayan Indian, Rigoberto Queme, announced