Mexico Wimp No More

By Guy D. Garcia

Late on the morning of Saturday, April 8, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, Mexico's most notorious drug trafficker, awoke with a stomachache. It was a telling omen. As Felix Gallardo pulled open the bedroom curtains of his house in Guadalajara, two police lookouts from a twelve-man task force gave the signal. The agents jumped over a neighbor's wall and broke down the back door, surprising Felix Gallardo on the staircase of his two-story home. He was still in his pajamas. Pinned to the floor, he begged his captors to kill him. When they refused, he offered them $5 million in exchange for his freedom. Instead, Felix Gallardo was flown to Mexico City, where he could face up to 63 years in ; jail for drug trafficking, bribery and illegal possession of weapons.

The blow struck against Mexico's most powerful drug lord was the latest in a series of headline-grabbing actions initiated by President Carlos Salinas de Gortari since he took office late last year. In January, after a sensational shoot-out in Ciudad Madero, police arrested Joaquin Hernandez Galicia, known as "La Quina," the powerful and widely feared leader of Mexico's oil workers' union. A month later Eduardo Legorreta Chauvert, a top businessman with ties to the Salinas government, was jailed on charges of stock fraud. What La Quina, Legorreta and Felix Gallardo have in common is that they are renowned for using patronage and corruption to put themselves beyond the reach of the law. By tackling such formidable figures head on, Salinas has given notice that he is willing to uproot the status quo to enforce his policies. "There is not a single taboo that remains in place," says Luis Rubio, head of the Mexico City-based Research Center for Development. "Nothing is unthinkable in Mexico anymore."

The President's unexpected moxie has led to a dramatic transformation in his image. Dismissed as a colorless technocrat, variously derided by his fellow Mexicans as "El Chaparro" (Shorty) and "El Pelon de las Orejas" (Baldy with Big Ears), Salinas, 41, was considered an unlikely presidential candidate even by many members of his own Institutional Revolutionary Party (P.R.I.). When he was elected with 50.7% of the vote last July amid charges of ballot fraud, it became evident that the P.R.I., which has ruled Mexico for 60 years, had lost its grip on the country. By striking forcefully at targets like Felix Gallardo, Salinas has boosted his prestige and consolidated his hold on the presidency. "If President Salinas won by just 50% last July," says a Mexican official and former Salinas critic, "his attacks on corruption have to have pushed his approval rating to something like 80%."

The Salinas crackdown was greeted with cautious optimism by agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Felix Gallardo, the richest and most cunning member of the infamous "Guadalajara cartel," is blamed for exporting at least two tons of cocaine to the U.S. each month. He is a prime suspect in the 1985 abduction and murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena. Many DEA agents wondered why it took so long to capture Felix Gallardo, since he had been living openly in Guadalajara. Some suspected that his arrest had been timed to coincide with last week's "law-enforcement summit" between U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and his Mexican counterpart, Enrique Alvarez del Castillo.

Still, the jailing of the elusive drug lord seemed to signal a shift in Mexico City's see-no-evil policy toward drug traffickers and their accomplices. Last week five high-level police officials in Sinaloa, Tamaulipas and Mexico City were arrested and charged with providing Felix Gallardo with weapons and allowing him to move about the country with impunity. Says a senior State Department official: "Clearly, the Salinas government is more determined to fight drugs and corruption than any of its predecessors."

But while Salinas' crusade has impressed some U.S. officials and members of Mexico's middle class, most of the country's 83 million people remain untouched by the President's actions. Many recall how Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado, Salinas' predecessor, also made a couple of splashy arrests shortly after taking office in 1982. Some critics contend that Salinas' assaults on Felix Gallardo and others are merely a show for the Yanquis. They point out, for example, that while Salinas succeeded in removing La Quina, the rest of the corrupt union's hierarchy remains in place. Others charge that the parade of high-profile prisoners is a smoke screen to divert Mexican public attention away from the country's financial woes. And so far, Salinas has shown little zeal for political reform. Says a Mexican observer: "We don't want a sheriff, we want a President."

Salinas' supporters recognize that it will take more than publicity pyrotechnics to deal with Mexico's crushing $105 billion foreign debt. In his inaugural speech, Salinas vowed to pursue a policy of "debt renegotiation" with creditors and promised to make economic growth his top priority. Last December he announced a new package of wage and price controls designed to help keep the country's inflation rate, which was running at an annual rate of 150% only two years ago, below 20%.

Since then, Salinas has continued the course of economic austerity he first charted as Budget Secretary under his predecessor, De la Madrid. During the past six years, Mexico has paid an average $10 billion annually to service its foreign debt. This year combined debt and interest payments are expected to reach $14 billion, or about 70% of the country's exports.

But while the U.S. and the international banking community have hailed ! Salinas for making Mexico into a model debtor country, its citizens are exhausted by the consequences of severe economic belt tightening. Since the early 1980s, when oil prices plummeted and cut deep into Mexico's revenues, wages have lost 50% of their purchasing power. Nearly half the population lives on less than $40 a week, and unemployment and underemployment combined are estimated to be as high as 40%. Says Mexican economist and political analyst Jorge Castaneda: "While Salinas' economic policies have brought the costs to most Mexicans, the benefits are nowhere in sight."

Last week Finance Minister Pedro Aspe announced that Mexico had reached a tentative agreement with the International Monetary Fund to borrow $3.6 billion. Mexico plans to use the three-year loan to lower its debt payments by inducing banks to reduce the country's debt or the interest charged. It remains doubtful, however, that the IMF deal, which is part of a new U.S. policy announced last month by Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady and which could reduce Mexico's debt load by as much as 20%, is enough to jump-start the country's stalled economy. And even if it can, there is no guarantee that the effects will trickle down to the middle- and lower-class Mexicans who need help desperately. Says a U.S. State Department official, with considerable understatement: "The average Mexican will have to ask himself the old Reagan question, 'Am I better off than I was four years ago?' The answer will have to be yes, or we could start to see some trouble."

Washington has made clear its willingness to help Salinas quietly in any way it can, but there is a growing perception among some U.S. officials that the Mexican leader is simply running out of time. If the country does not see tangible economic rewards within the next 18 months, a U.S. official says, "we could see frustrations acted out in the streets."

The more likely consequence is that the P.R.I., faced with the prospect of social instability, would abandon current economic reforms for quick-fix policies that would mollify the masses. As Mexicans are fond of pointing out, their country has a long tradition of avoiding seemingly inevitable political upheaval. "The P.R.I. has an almost magical power to redirect itself to reflect the needs of the country," says a Mexican official. "And so we have the young technocrats running things. But if they should fail, then look for a wave of populism." If that happens, Salinas could easily turn against Washington and the foreign banks, leaving them wondering what happened to that simpatico President they liked so much in April.

With reporting by Ricardo Chavira/Washington and Andrea Dabrowski/Mexico City