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The state of Yucatan, in the southeastern tip of Mexico, is famous for dinosaurs. Those of the fossil variety may be found in museums; political ones are still roaming the landscape. Victor Cervera is considered the king of the "dinosaurs", the name given to traditional hardliners of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled in all of Mexico for 71 years until defeated last July by President Vicente Fox and his center-right National Action Party (PAN). As governor of Yucatan, Cervera has ruled the state with an iron fist for the past 20 years, through a mix of intimidation and selective corruption.
Not any more. Last Sunday, extending the party's assault on the PRI's traditional strongholds, PAN candidate Patricio Patron easily won the gubernatorial election in Yucatan against the PRI's Orlando Paredes. In a sign of the new openness that has begun to trickle south, in August an opposition coalition won the elections in Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state. Four months later, federal electoral authorities revoked a narrow PRI victory in neighboring Tabasco on charges of fraud. A new election has been set for November. These setbacks have left Mexico's once omnipotent PRI reeling. And in the three other gubernatorial elections it faces this year it is expected to lose in the two states it currently controls, Michoacan and Baja California.
PRI Secretary General Rodolfo Echeverria has admitted that the party is in crisis, and he has called a national assembly for November to resolve its much-publicized internal divisions and devise a strategy to rebuild the party. In the past, the PRI's impressive political machine was able to garner vast swathes of the vote and where it failed, it often fell back on coercion, vote-buying and fraud (Cervera, Yucatan's current governor, first rose to prominence when he was accused of stealing ballot boxes as a student leader. Now 65, he was widely reported to have given away tens of thousands of bicycles and washing machines in return for PRI votes during presidential elections last July).
More than half of Mexico's 31 states are still ruled by PRI governors and the party is the largest block in Congress. But with Fox at the Los Pinos presidential residence since December, its lifeline has been cut. From December on, the PRI didn't get the loose federal monies that would normally be distributed in an election cycle. Under Fox, federal funding for social programs-once the traditional source of pork barrel politics-is being delivered directly to recipients instead of being channeled through the state. More importantly, poor farmers and indigenous communities, who rely on such funding and represent the PRI's main electoral base, are realizing the money is coming to them even if the PRI is not in power.
The PRI's recent troubles have been exacerbated mainly by a power vacuum left after the presidential defeat. Traditionally, the multi-faceted PRI took on the ideology of the incumbent president. But the loss of the presidency has left the party without clear orientation.
"They need to find an ideology, which will be very difficult because they have people with very different ideologies," said political commentator Sergio Sarmiento. He believes rival factions will end up forcing a split within the PRI. Fox Presents His Vision for Mexico.
Meanwhile, President Fox is aiming at filling the ideological vacuum with his own pragmatic vision of the future Mexico, declaring last Tuesday an end to big government and a drive for balanced budgets and more jobs.
The National Development Plan he announced for the six years of his presidency, but extends its goals well beyond his term (the Constitution doesn't allow for reelection), also seemed to promise a more active role abroad.
Reluctance to intervene in other countries' affairs has been a cornerstone of Mexican foreign policy, but Fox's plan replaces it with a commitment to `"promote human rights and democracy abroad." This is bound to spark debate, because nonintervention has been at the heart of Mexican foreign policy. Mexico often cited that principle in opposing the U.S. embargo of Cuba and the U.S. role in the Central American wars of the 1980s.
Fox's 25-year projection sticks to his free-market ideals, with education, balanced budgets and job creation by private companies heading a list of priorities. But he notes his administration "cannot leave everything to the market, nor everything to the state," adding that "there will no longer be a paternalist government, but one that shares responsibility."
But the centerpiece of his plan is the fight against poverty and corruption. "No one can say we are satisfied while millions of families live in misery. We can not feel satisfied while we continue to occupy a top rank in terms of corruption and impunity worldwide," he said.
Fox gave no predictions on economic growth, either for this year or later on in his presidency. He has previously set a goal of returning Mexico to growth of 7 percent a year toward the end of his six-year term. He had initially said growth would reach 4.5 percent this year but, as Mexico suffers the knock-on effect of the U.S. economic slowdown, the government has already reduced its growth estimate for 2001 to between 2.5 and 3.0 percent.
However, Citigroup's purchase of Banacci, Mexico's leading bank, for $12.5 billion announced last week is indicative of a new U.S. optimism about doing business in Mexico and is as important for its symbolism as for its size.
Less than three years ago, no foreign bank would have been legally able to control Banacci. Now, Citigroup is buying it whole. The takeover is equivalent to a year's total foreign direct investment in Mexico and economists believe it could trigger further takeovers.
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com