Mexico 1999

In 1999, Mexico had a population of approximately 97.5 million people. The economy of the country was still largely dependent on oil exports, but other industries such as tourism, manufacturing, and finance were beginning to gain importance. Mexico’s foreign relations in 1999 included strong ties with the United States and other Latin American countries. Politically, Mexico was transitioning to a multi-party system. In 2000, Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN) was elected president in what is widely considered to be the first free and fair presidential election in Mexican history. Fox won with 43% of the vote, ending over 70 years of one-party rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). See ethnicityology for Mexico in the year of 2018.

Yearbook 1999

Mexico 1999

Mexico. Yet another step toward democracy and away from the actual one-party system that prevailed during the PRI’s (Partido de la Revolución Institucionalizada) 70-year power holdings were taken when open primary elections for the party’s presidential candidate were held in November. This election was won by former Interior Minister Francisco Labastida. In the past, the candidate has been appointed by the outgoing president through an obscure internal process in the popular community called dedazo (about the ‘big point’). Visit Countryaah official website to get information about the capital city of Mexico. The democratization process is slow and has been riddled with scandals and crises. In particular, the 1994 events, when several prominent PRI members were murdered, came to fruition in September when the brother of one of them, former Deputy Prosecutor Mário Ruiz Massieu, committed suicide in the United States. In a written statement, he suggested that the PRI’s senior management forced him to do so. PRI still uses its enormous party apparatus and influence to control politics. A congressional proposal to facilitate opposition parties to conclude election alliances was sabotaged; it should have reduced the PRI’s chances of victory. The party also went on to win local elections; in July in the state of Mexico and in September in Coahuila, but the opposition won in Nayarit in July.

  • Also see Abbreviationfinder.org to see the acronym of MEX which stands for Mexico and other definitions of this 3-letter abbreviation.

Map of Mexico City in English

In August, tension again increased in Chiapas, where an uprising has been going on since 1994. In October, central M. was also hit by major floods with up to 400 dead and up to half a million homeless.

1988 The PRI’s hegemony is shaken decisively

On July 6, 88, presidential elections were held. Winner was PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who officially got 50% of the vote – the lowest ever for a PRI candidate. The Left had also participated in the previous elections, but for the first time now posed a real threat to the PRI’s hegemony. Its candidate, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, received 31% of the vote. He was the son of the charismatic President Lazarro Cárdenas, who had ruled Mexico in 1934-40. He had been a member of the PRI until the year before, but had broken out and had been a driving force in the building of the left-wing coalition Frente Democrático Nacional (FDN, National Democratic Front). According to independent observers, Cuauhtémoc actually won the election, but because of the PRI’s traditional electoral fraud, victory was waived. 49

In 89, the FDN was split and Cárdenas instead formed the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD, the Democratic Revolutionary Party) which consisted of his own supporters followed by PRI, Communists and a number of smaller organizations. PPS, PARM and PFCRN went out, again served as independent parties and allied themselves with the PRI in parliament.

The new PRI government decided to open the country completely to foreign investment and to take a number of steps to bring inflation under control. Both steps received with benevolence by the United States. Mexico began negotiations with the United States on the drafting of a free trade agreement, at the same time as the country was admitted to GATT and allowed foreign investment in Mexican companies beyond the 49% that was otherwise the statutory limit. In 90, the president again privatized the banks, which had been nationalized eight years earlier.

On August 18, 91 elections were held in which 500 deputies, 32 senators, 6 state governors and 66 city council members were elected in the capital. The opposition blamed the PRI for gigantic electoral fraud when the ruling party declared itself victorious with 61.4% of the vote behind it. It provided the PRI majority in the Chamber of Deputies and thus the opportunity to make constitutional amendments. One of these was the “land reform” passed in December 91. It gave farmers working on state land the opportunity for private ownership of these. The “reform” was thus a showdown with ejidos the system – the common property of the land. One of the greatest victories of the Mexican Revolution. The PRI should enable the reform to suspend the necessary annual imports of 10 million tonnes of food. The opposition would pave the way for extensive concentration of land in favor of large capital.

On December 17, 92, the governments of Mexico, the United States of America and Canada signed the Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which in the long term was to create one common free trade area.

During Salinas’ reign, inflation was reduced from three-digit numbers to 9% in 93. From the end of 88 to the middle of 93, the state had received $ 21 billion in the privatization of state-owned enterprises, but at the same time private foreign debt had increased by 11 billion to 34.

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