Carlos Salinas de Gortari (born 3 April 1948) was President of Mexico from 1 December 1988 to 30 November 1994, succeeding Miguel de la Madrid and preceding Ernesto Zedillo. Salinas de Gortari's administration was defined by neoliberal reforms which privatized the economy and ended land redistribution, and he also ended Mexico's policy of anti-clericalism and restored Mexico's diplomatic relations with the Vatican City.
Biography[]
Carlos Salinas de Gortari was born in Mexico City, Mexico on 3 April 1948, the son of Commerce Minister Raul Salinas Lozano and the brother of Raul Salinas de Gortari. He became a member of the youth wing of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and he attended Harvard in the United States before becoming involved in Mexican politics. Salinas was Washington DC's perfect candidate: he was Harvard-educated, friends with several top leaders of industry, promised to cut the PRI's ties to Mexico's labor unions, sought to gut the subsidies that kept food prices down, chopped up the communal ejido farms and sold them to corporations, and supported the privatization of large-scale national industries such as telecommunications, steel, and railroads, which were bought by PRI political operatives.
Presidency[]
Salinas de Gortari in 1988
In 1988, Salinas de Gortari became the PRI's presidential candidate, and he was backed by his wealthy businessmen friends, including his brother's American business associates, who supported his plans to implement a North American free trade agreement which would benefit American businesses. Salinas had Secretary of the Interior Manuel Bartlett Diaz rig the election by overloading the telephone lines, which were used for the first time to send electoral results to Mexico City. Salinas won the election with 50.4% of the vote to Cuauhtemoc Cardenas' 31.1%, despite all indications suggesting that Cardenas - the popular choice - would win the election. Salinas' victory led to Bartlett uttering the famous phrase, "The system has fallen," and he would later confess that the election had been heavily rigged against Cardenas.
As President, Salinas planned to modernize Mexico, end anti-clericalism, and end the redistribution of land in Mexico, causing the PRI to lose its two-thirds majority in congress. He also supported neoliberal economic reforms, privatized the banking system and the phone company of Mexico, oversaw Mexico's transition into NAFTA, divided the Guadalajara Cartel's lands between its capos after the arrest of Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, and reduced inflation, but the end of his term saw the politically-motivated assassinations of Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, Luis Donaldo Colosio, and Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu. From 1987 to 1994, the number of Mexican billionaires on Forbes increased from one to 24, and all of them owed their allegiance to Salinas and his brother, who put them in their positions of power.
Retirement[]
Salinas in 2012
Salinas de Gortari left office in 1994, but he continued to be a major PRI powerbroker as the uncle of Claudia Ruiz Massieu. His brother was arrested in 1995 for his involvement in the murders of opposition leaders during Carlos' presidency, and he served ten years in prison. Salinas himself continued to function as a grey eminence behind the PRI machine, grooming each election's presidential candidate with the support of fellow old-guard PRI politicians. He also played a major role in the rise of Conrado Higuera Sol, who worked as his henchman during the 2000s and 2010s. Salinas and Higuera Sol succeeded in sabotaging Enrique Pena Nieto's disastrous administration in order to give the PRI a chance to redeem itself with a better candidate, and Salinas ultimately passed over his own niece to back Higuera Sol's failed 2018 presidential bid.