Mexico & Nafta - June 2008 (ISSN 1741-444X)

One of Mexico's most controversial former presidents, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, burst back onto the political scene at the beginning of May with a series of interviews to promote his new book, La Década Perdida.

Salinas has already written a huge autobiography defending his administration, which began in 1988 with an election fraud. It ended in 1994 with a guerrilla uprising; the murder of his first choice as successor; and, eventually, an extremely damaging currency devaluation. What makes Salinas' latest tome so important politically is that he again breaks the longstanding convention that Mexico's former presidents may be seen but are never heard.

Salinas famously criticised his successor Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León in a radio phone-in in 1995, before going into exile in Ireland and Cuba. In La Década Perdida, Salinas does not actually refer to either Zedillo or Zedillo's successor, Vicente Fox, but dismisses both administrations as “neoliberal failures".  Salinas is equally dismissive of what he calls authoritarian populism, which he says is currently represented in Mexico by the radical leftwing leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

However, Salinas's really controversial statement - made in an interview with the most important newspaper in Mexico City, Reforma - was to praise the current president, Felipe Calderón, as a “reformer who deserves every support." Few endorsements could be more damaging to Calderón.

The irony is that Salinas - who basked in the approval of neo-liberals from North America when one of his first acts upon taking office was to arrest the leader of the oil workers' union, Joaquí­n “La Quina" Hernández - makes some pertinent points. How can it be, Salinas asks, that after a decade of neo-liberal governments and rising oil prices in Mexico, the state oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), is virtually bust? The answer, as Salinas knows, is that successive governments (including his own, which launched privatisation in Mexico) failed to get to grips with Pemex and merely continued to milk its revenues to meet government spending. This had the added bonus, for politicians, of keeping tax rates low.

Mouriño cleared
On 13 May a congressional committee cleared Juan Camilo Mouriño, the interior minister, of breaking the law in his dealings with Pemex, first when he was a congressman and then as an adviser to the energy minister. Mouriño advised two family companies on deals with Pemex while he was also chairman of the chamber of deputies' energy committee and then later an adviser to the then energy minister (now President), Felipe Calderón Hinojosa.

The congressional committee stated that it found nothing illegal in the contracts between Pemex Refinación and Teisa and Ivancar (companies owned by Mouriño's family). At the time, both Teisa and Ivancar had been represented in their dealings with Pemex by Mouriño. The congressional committee was set up in March to investigate the deals, which Andrés Manuel López Obrador had alleged were fishy.

EPR
The government backed down on 13 May from its demand that it would only talk directly to the Mexican guerrilla group, Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR). It will now negotiate via a Comisión de Mediación, proposed by the EPR. The government stressed that its goal is eventually to hold formal negotiations with the EPR.  The commission, whose spokesman is Carlos Montemayor, emphasised that it has no direct contact with the EPR and will wait to see how the group will react to the government's offer. In 2007, the EPR bombed oil pipelines, causing considerable economic damage but no casualties.

• PRD
  The leftwing Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) still has not agreed on which candidate won its elections for party president on 16 March. The PRD is the second biggest party in the lower chamber of congress and controls Mexico City. Party committees oscillate between declaring that Alejandro Encinas or Jesús Ortega has won the contest. Encinas is loyal to Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leader of the party's radicals. Ortega is more of a moderate.