Mexico’s Political System Will Weather Economic Disasters, Expert Says

Mexico today is facing its greatest economic and political challenges in more than half a century, but a collapse of the nation’s embattled political system is very unlikely, a leading expert in U.S.-Mexican relations said Thursday.

Buffeted by a $100-billion foreign debt, the collapse of world oil prices, 100% inflation and the effects of the catastrophic earthquake of 1985, Mexico this year experienced its lowest economic point since the midst of the Great Depression, according to Wayne A. Cornelius, director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at UC San Diego.

Compounding the nation’s problems, he noted, were heightened internal attacks on the Mexican political system and a crescendo of criticism from the United States.

“It was, in most respects, a disastrous year--for Mexico and for the U.S.-Mexico relationship,” said Cornelius, speaking at the first in a series of annual reviews of the two nation’s relationship.

Moreover, Cornelius saw little relief in sight.

“Reflecting on the downward spiral of Mexico’s economy in 1986,” he said, “it is difficult to escape the conclusion that whatever the Mexican government does, it will not be enough. There can be no substitute for a sustained recovery in oil prices, and for significant relief from the debt burden.”

The economic crisis has eroded living standards and increased pressure for reform of Mexico’s singular political system, which is dominated by the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. In recent years, opposition parties in Chihuahua and other Mexican states have seized upon popular dissatisfaction to score significant political advances, often taking to the streets to voice claims that only fraud has stymied them from achieving even more decisive victories.

“Mexico’s political system is under greater stress today than at any time since the mid-1930s, and it’s difficult to see how that stress is going to be relieved in the foreseeable future,” Cornelius said.

Cornelius, like many other experts in the field, sees no prospect of the fall of the extraordinarily adaptable political system that has governed Mexico since 1929. Mexico’s governing machinery has long impressed observers with its ability to weather economic and social storms that have often toppled other Latin American regimes.

“No knowledgeable observer expects the present political system to collapse in the near future--if only because most Mexicans do not believe there is a viable, positive alternative to the existing system,” Cornelius said.

In another matter, Cornelius, who is also a specialist in Mexican migration to the United States, predicted that the much-heralded new U.S. immigration law is unlikely to halt the flow of illegal aliens across the U.S.-Mexico border. The statute, Cornelius argued, is marred by loopholes and a failure to recognize the economic lure for Mexicans leaving their crisis-ridden homeland.

“As long as you have a situation in which workers can earn as much in 30 or 45 minutes in the United States as they earn in a whole day in Mexico, this kind of legislation is going to be of very limited effectiveness,” Cornelius said.