Zedillo Ponce de León, Ernesto (1951–)

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Zedillo Ponce de León, Ernesto (1951–)

Ernesto Zedillo was president of Mexico from 1994 to 2000, and may be viewed as a significant contributor to Mexican democracy, having introduced a number of important institutional changes that encouraged greater political participation.

Zedillo was born into modest circumstances on December 27, 1951, in Mexico City, but spent most of his childhood in Mexicali, where he attended public schools. He began his preparatory studies at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) Vocational School No. 5, completing an economics degree from IPN in only three years in 1972. In 1971 he became an economic researcher in the office of the president of Mexico, where he came under the mentorship of Leopoldo Solís, one of Mexico's leading economists. In 1974, he received a government scholarship to attend Yale University, completing an MA and PhD in economics from 1974 to 1978. After his return to Mexico, he worked in the Bank of Mexico, and was in charge of the Exchange Risk Trust Fund. In 1987, he was appointed assistant secretary of Planning and Budgeting, and a year later, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (president 1988–1994) chose him to lead the Secretariat of Planning and Budgeting. That agency was incorporated into the Treasury in 1992, and Zedillo became secretary of public education. He resigned the following year to serve as Luis Donaldo Colosio's campaign manager in the 1994 presidential election. When Colosio was assassinated mid-campaign, Salinas selected him as the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). He took office December 1, 1994, something of an accidental president.

Zedillo essentially was an academic and economic technocrat before being appointed to a series of high-level public positions. As a presidential candidate, he campaigned on the issue of continuing Salinas' neoliberal economic policies, including the further integration of Mexico into the system of capitalist globalization furthered by NAFTA, the free trade agreement with the United States and Canada. His opponents from the other two major parties, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas of the PRD and Diego Fernández de Cevallos of the PAN, hotly contested the 1994 presidential election. Colosio's assassination (the first time a presidential candidate had been assassinated since 1929), and the uprising of the Zapatista guerrillas in Chiapas in January 1994, created a highly unstable political situation, leading many Mexicans to expect grave consequences. Zedillo campaigned on a platform of political reforms, most notably the rule of law and increasing political participation. In addition, he proposed to increase education, reduce poverty, and expand employment.

Voter interest in the 1994 presidential race increased significantly as the Catholic Church and civic organizations encouraged citizens to participate. Ultimately, Zedillo won the election with approximately half of the ballots cast, followed by 26 percent for the PAN candidate and only 17 percent for the PRD candidate. Most remarkable was the voter turnout of 78 percent, the highest ever recorded in a presidential election. Shortly after Zedillo took office, he faced a major economic crisis after his administration devalued the peso against the U.S. dollar, allowing it to float free. This produced a run on the peso, the withdrawal of foreign investment and domestic capital, an annual inflation rate of 50 percent, a huge interest rate increase, and a loss of between 250,000 to a million jobs. By 1997 the president was able to stabilize the economy and to increase economic growth significantly. He increased social expenditures over those of all his predecessors since 1946, by 53 percent, but was not able to reduce the unequal distribution of income. Mexico's top 20 percent of income earners garnered 54.1 percent of the income, compared to just 4.2 percent shared among the lowest 20 percent. By the end of his administration, the United Nations estimated that approximately 57 percent of the population still lived in poverty.

The most dramatic changes during the Zedillo administration were political. His philosophy differed substantially from his predecessor's both in tone and substance. Despite strong opposition from within his own party, he persisted in moving Mexico away from its semi-authoritarian political model toward increased electoral competition, and more importantly, toward reducing executive branch power.

Zedillo set in motion four fundamental changes that improved conditions for electoral democracy and which made possible the electoral victory of the opposition in the 2000 presidential election, ousting his party after seven decades in office. The first of these changes involved decentralizing presidential authority. Unlike his predecessor, he rarely intervened in political disputes, increasing local autonomy and encouraging the development of institutional solutions. An excellent example of this was his introduction of an open PRI primary process to select its 2000 presidential candidate, allowing any registered voter, regardless of party affiliation, to participate. He broke with the prior pattern of designating his own successor.

Second, he increased the autonomy of state governors, thereby encouraging greater federalism, a concept contained in the 1917 Constitution. His administration increased state authorities' control over fiscal resources. It may well be that increased local and state authority contributed most significantly to the rise of political competition and participation, and to increased level of democratization in 2000.

Third, and extremely significant to the process of electoral democracy, he passed the 1996 electoral reforms, which among other changes implemented public financing of parties in presidential campaigns, thus equalizing the playing field among the leading parties and alliances. In short, he eliminated the incumbent party's financial linkage to the state.

Finally, he strengthened governmental institutions, laying the groundwork for a stronger judiciary at the level of the supreme court, and a stronger legislative branch. He specifically encouraged voter participation by guaranteeing the independence of the supreme institution in charge of the electoral process, the Federal Electoral Institute.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Favela, Alejandro, et al. El combate a la pobreza en el sexenio de Zedillo. Mexico City: Plaza y Valdés, 2003.

Levy, Daniel C., and Kathleen Bruhn, with Emilio Zebadúa. Mexico: The Struggle for Democratic Development. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

Purcell, Susan Kaufman, and Luis Rubio, eds. Mexico under Zedillo. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998.

Ward, Peter, and Victoria Rodríguez, with Enrique Cabrero Mendoza. New Federalism and State Government in Mexico: Bringing the States Back In. Austin: Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, 1999.

Roderic Ai Camp

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture