"Mexico is in a major, major mess today," Dartmouth Montgomery Fellow Jorge Castaneda said yesterday before a capacity crowd in Carpenter Hall.
Castaneda, speaking on the current situation in Mexico, said the administration of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari did not leave "a great legacy" to the Mexican people, either economically or politically.
Castaneda, a political science professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, spoke as part of a panel discussion on the Mexican "Miracle and the Collapse." The panel was the first of the day-long conference on "The Past and Future of Mexican Development and Democracy."
Despite the massive inflow of foreign capital during Salinas' six-year presidency, the Mexican economy did not grow, Castaneda said. He also said the Salinas administration did not do much to bolster democratic institutions while in power.
Panelist John Coatsworth, director of Harvard University's Center of Latin American Studies, said improved democracy is the best way for Mexico to solve its current economic and political problems.
"The only solution I can think of ... is called democracy," he said.
Although the current bailout of Mexico by the United States and the International Monetary Fund will "probably work," Coatsworth said the plan "won't work very well" without fundamental structural changes in Mexico.
"Every single change of president in Mexico ... has ended in crisis," Coatsworth said, because the ruling Partido Revolucional Institucional pursues economic policies to boost the economy in election years, regardless of the consequences.
He said the Salinas administration attempted to reflate the Mexican economy in 1994 in the face of an overvalued peso and large current account deficits, leading to a disaster after disruptions like the Chiapas rebellion and the assassination of PRI presidential candidate L. D. Colosio.
Sergio Sarmiento, a panelist who is a columnist for Reforma, a Mexican newspaper, said the strong peso and current account deficits did not necessitate the collapse of the Mexican economy this winter.
He said the collapse was more a result of a liberalization policy that opened Mexican markets too quickly, but did not democratize its political and economic institutions.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Arturo Valenzuela said the collapse of Mexico's economy did not occur only for "internal domestic" reasons.
He said part of the problem was caused by an unexpected increase in the liquidity of financial markets and the greater mobility of capital in global markets.
Valenzuela said the real challenge Mexico faces is carrying through the "fundamental" transformation in Mexican society..
Valenzuela said reforming the current one-party governance system and "pushing the process of greater democratization" should be the main goals of Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo.
