There was fraud on a colossal scale, but the PRI
monopoly of power had been broken in the
Mexican Congress. Nevertheless, the PRI Presi-
dent remained firmly in power and an economic
austerity programme was instituted. But for the
first time in many decades there were indications
of future political changes.
In 1961, Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress was
to have been the starting point for the transfor-
mation of Latin America. The cycle of depriva-
tion, economic and social injustice was to have
been broken and Latin American societies were to
have started on the road to political democratic
reform. Over thirty years later the problems of the
continent were still daunting. Population growth
outstripped development. The danger of Marxist
revolution had been contained, but terrorism and
repression continued. The root causes of instabil-
ity had not been removed. The immigration from
the countryside had swollen the shanty towns that
surrounded the fashionable streets of the wealthy.
Everywhere there were thousands of children
begging, stealing or offering themselves for pros-
titution. Mexico City served as but one example
of their plight. The pependores, or rubbish pickers
(10,000 of them), made the City’s three huge
rubbish dumps their home. Even here they were
exploited by ‘bosses’ who made their money out
of the refuse that could be recycled.
By turning to a market economy, privatising
and liberalising trade with the expected coming
into operation of a free-trade region comprising
herself, the United States and Canada, Mexico
hoped in the 1990s to create her own economic
miracle. Many companies were privatised and in
1990/1 a good growth rate was achieved, while
inflation, which in 1987 ran at 160 per cent, was
slashed in 1992 to 12 per cent. Foreign debts
were reduced and foreign investment began to
return. Salinas toured the country and won
support among the peasantry. He used proceeds
from the sale of state-owned companies to build
schools, to link rural communities with the elec-
tricity network and to ensure that clean drinking
water was available. More than 1200 health clinics
were opened in 1991 to serve the people. Huge
problems remained. Carlos Salinas de Gortari
declared that his aim during his six-year term of
office as president from 1988 to 1994 was to take
Mexico from Third World to First World status.
During the first years of his presidency he made
a dynamic start.
There were at last some hopeful indications of
change in Latin America in the 1990s. A number
of countries were determinedly trying to turn the
economic corner and make a start on raising
the standard of living of the most deprived.
The enormous level of Latin American debt,
which had risen from $68 billion in 1975 to $410
billion in 1987, threatened to cripple efforts
towards further investment and development.
But, unable to recover all of it, the West agreed
to write a portion of it off. Western institutions
such as the International Monetary Fund insisted
on the medicine of austerity and better economic
management, which Mexico had to accept in
order to attract new funds. Among left-wing guer-
rilla movements there was a collapse of morale
following the demise of the Soviet Union. All but
Marxist fanatics were ready to end the fighting and
to exchange the rifle for the ballot box. Civilian-
elected governments and multi-party parliaments
became the norm. It was not democracy, but it
was progress, a move away from tyrannical and
authoritarian regimes.
Even so, there was no guarantee that demo-
cratic representative institutions could long
survive economic mismanagement, as the example
of Peru showed in 1992. Democracy cannot be
divorced from social and economic progress. It
can not take firm root unless the needs of the
poor are also met. When elected officials accept
that their power derives from the people and not
just from the nation’s elite, true democracy can
be established.
Widespread corruption still plagued Latin
America in the last decade of the twentieth
century. Birth rates still tended to be too high,
though they were dropping in Argentina, Chile,
Brazil and Mexico. High birth rates meant that
even countries on the path of economic reform
would be faced with increasing poverty. The
distribution of wealth, or rather lack of it, to
the poor majority scarcely diminished the gap
between rich and the poor. The statistics for
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