Ernesto Zedillo | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 1999 | |
| 61st President of Mexico | |
| In office 1 December 1994 – 30 November 2000 | |
| Preceded by | Carlos Salinas de Gortari |
| Succeeded by | Vicente Fox |
| Secretary of Public Education | |
| In office 7 January 1992 – 29 November 1993 | |
| President | Carlos Salinas de Gortari |
| Preceded by | Manuel Bartlett |
| Succeeded by | Fernando Solana |
| Secretary of Programming and Budget | |
| In office 1 December 1988 – 31 December 1991 | |
| President | Carlos Salinas de Gortari |
| Preceded by | Pedro Aspe |
| Succeeded by | Rogelio Gasca |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León (1951-12-27)27 December 1951 (age 73) Mexico City, Mexico |
| Political party | Institutional Revolutionary Party |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 5 |
| Parent(s) | Rodolfo Zedillo Castillo Martha Alicia Ponce de León |
| Residence(s) | Mexico City New Haven,Connecticut, U.S. |
| Education | National Polytechnic Institute (BA) Yale University (MA,PhD) |
| Signature |  |
Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León (Spanish pronunciation:[eɾˈnestoseˈðiʝo]; born 27 December 1951) is a Mexican economist and politician. He was the 61stpresident of Mexico from 1994 to 2000, as the last of the uninterrupted 71-year line of Mexican presidents from theInstitutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Father of ModernDemocracy in Mexico, his non-interventionist policy yielded transparent results on the2000 Mexican general election.[1]
During his presidency, he faced one of theworst economic crises in Mexico's history, which started only weeks after taking office.[2][3] While he distanced himself from his predecessorCarlos Salinas de Gortari, blaming his administration for the crisis,[2][4] and overseeing the arrest of Salinas' brotherRaúl Salinas de Gortari,[5] he continued theneoliberal policies of his two predecessors. His administration was also marked by renewed clashes with theEZLN and thePopular Revolutionary Army;[6] the controversial implementation ofFobaproa to rescue the national banking system;[7] a political reform that allowed residents of the Federal District (Mexico City) to elect their own mayor; theprivatization of national railways and its subsequent suspension of the passenger rail service; and theAguas Blancas andActeal massacres perpetrated by State forces.[8][9]
Although Zedillo's policies eventually led to a relative economic recovery, popular discontent with seven decades of PRI rule led to the party losing, for the first time, its legislative majorityin the 1997 midterm elections,[10] and in the2000 general election the right-wing oppositionNational Action Party's candidateVicente Fox won the Presidency of the Republic, putting an end to 71 years of uninterrupted PRI rule.[11] Zedillo's admission of the PRI's defeat and his peaceful handing of power to his successor improved his image in the final months of his administration, and he left office with an approval rating of 60%.[12]
Since the end of his term as president, Zedillo has been a leading voice on globalization, especially its impact on relations between developed and developing nations. He is currently the director of theCenter for the Study of Globalization atYale University and is on the board of directors at theInter-American Dialogue andCitigroup.
Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León was born on 27 December 1951 inMexico City. His parents were Rodolfo Zedillo Castillo, a mechanic, and Martha Alicia Ponce de León. Seeking better job and education opportunities for their children, his parents moved toMexicali,Baja California.[citation needed]
In 1964, at the age of 13, he returned to Mexico City. In 1969 he entered theNational Polytechnic Institute, financing his studies by working in the National Army and Navy Bank (later known asBanjército). He graduated as an economist in 1972 and began lecturing. It was among his first group of students that he met his wife,Nilda Patricia Velasco, with whom he has five children: Ernesto, Emiliano, Carlos (formerly married to tv hostAlondra de la Parra[13]), Nilda Patricia and Rodrigo.
In 1974, he pursued his master's and PhD studies atYale University. His doctoral thesis was titledMexico's Public External Debt: Recent History and Future Growth Related to Oil.[citation needed]
Zedillo began working in theBank of Mexico (Mexico's central bank) as a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, where he supported the adoption of macroeconomic policies for the country's improvement. By 1987, he was named deputy secretary of Planning and Budget Control in the Secretariat of Budget and Planning. In 1988, at the age of 38, he headed that secretariat. During his term as Secretary, Zedillo launched a Science and Technology reform and served in this capacity for three years until December 1991.[citation needed]
In 1992, he was appointedSecretary of Education by presidentCarlos Salinas. During his tenure in this post, he was in charge of the revision of Mexican public school textbooks. The changes, which took a softer line on foreign investment and the Porfiriato, among other topics, were highly controversial and the textbooks were withdrawn.[14] A year later, he resigned to run the electoral campaign ofLuis Donaldo Colosio, thePRI's presidential candidate.[citation needed]
In 1994, afterColosio's assassination, Zedillo became one of the fewPRI members eligible under Mexican law to take his place, since he had not occupied public office for some time.
The opposition blamed Colosio's murder on Salinas. Although the PRI's presidential candidates were always chosen by the current president, and thusColosio had originally beenSalinas' candidate, their political relationship had been affected by a famous speech during the campaign in which Colosio said thatMexico had many problems. It is also notable that the assassination took place after Colosio visited the members of theZapatista movement in Chiapas and promised to open dialogue, something the PRI opposed.[citation needed]
After Colosio's murder, this speech was seen as the main cause of his break with the president.[citation needed] The choice of Zedillo was interpreted as Salinas' way of bypassing the strong Mexican political tradition of non-reelection and retaining real power since Zedillo was not a politician, but an economist (like Salinas), who lacked the president's political talent and influence. It is unclear if Salinas had attempted to control Colosio, who was generally considered at that time to be a far better candidate.[citation needed]
Zedillo ran againstDiego Fernández de Cevallos of theNational Action Party and second-timerCuauhtémoc Cárdenas of theParty of the Democratic Revolution. He won with 48.69% of the popular vote and became the last president to distinguish the 70-year PRI dynasty in México during the 20th century.[citation needed]
At age 42, Zedillo assumed the presidency on 1 December 1994 at theLegislative Palace of San Lázaro, taking oath before theCongress of the Union presided by thedeputy president Carlota Vargas Garza. Zedillo's electoral victory was perceived as clean, but he came to office as an accidental candidate with no political base of his own and no experience. During the first part of his presidency, he took inconsistent policy positions and there were rumours that he would resign or that there would be a coup d'état against him, which caused turmoil in financial markets.[15]
Zedillo'scabinet needed to have members who could deal with crises. Throughout his presidency, he had four asMinister of the Interior,Esteban Moctezuma, who dealt with theZapatistas;Emilio Chuayffet, who resigned following theActeal massacre;Francisco Labastida, who won the primary to determine the 2000 PRI presidential candidate; andDiódoro Carrasco Altamirano, who dealt with the strike at theNational Autonomous University of Mexico.
A few days after Zedillo had taken office, one of the biggest economic crises in Mexican history hit the country. Although it was outgoing President Salinas who was mainly blamed for the crisis, Salinas claimed that President Zedillo made a mistake by changing the economic policies held by his administration. Zedillo devalued the peso by 15%, which prompted the near collapse of the financial system.[16] The crisis ended after a series of reforms and actions led by Zedillo. US presidentBill Clinton granted a US$20 billion loan to Mexico, which helped in one of Zedillo's initiatives to rescue the banking system.[17]
Zedillo had been an accidental presidential candidate who was vaulted to prominence with the assassination of Colosio. The conflict between Zedillo and Salinas marked the early part of Zedillo's presidency.[18] As with De la Madrid and Salinas, Zedillo had never been elected to office and had no experience in politics. His performance as a candidate was lacklustre, but the outbreak of violence in Chiapas and the shock of the Colosio assassination swayed voters to support the PRI candidate in the 1994 election. In office, Zedillo was perceived as a puppet president with Salinas following the model ofPlutarco Elías Calles in the wake of the 1928 assassination of president-electAlvaro Obregón. In order to consolidate his own power in the presidency, Zedillo had to assert his independence from Salinas. On 28 February 1995 Zedillo ordered the arrest of the ex-president's older brotherRaúl Salinas for the September 1994 murder of PRI General SecretaryJosé Francisco Ruiz Massieu. This action marked a decisive break between Zedillo and Salinas.[15]
Mexico had been in turmoil since January 1994, with the initial Zapatista rebellion and two political assassinations. The presidential candidateColosio of thePRI was assassinated in March 1994, and his campaign manager Ernesto Zedillo then became the candidate a few days later. The other high-profile assassination, that of PRI Secretary GeneralJosé Francisco Ruiz Massieu, brother-in-law of PresidentCarlos Salinas de Gortari in September 1994, laid bare political rivalries within the PRI. In order to give credibility to the investigations of those political crimes and grant "a healthy distance", President Zedillo appointed Antonio Lozano Gracia, a member of the opposition Political PartyPAN, asAttorney General of Mexico. Zedillo inherited the rebellion in Chiapas, but it was up to his administration to handle it.
On 5 January 1995, the Secretary of InteriorEsteban Moctezuma started a secret meeting process withMarcos called "Steps Toward Peace"Chiapas. Talks seemed promising for an agreement, but Zedillo backed away, apparently because the military was not in accord with the government's apparent "acceptance of the Zapatistas' control over much of Chiapas territory."[19][20][21] In February 1995, the Mexican government identified the masked Subcomandante Marcos as Rafael Sebastián Guillén, a former professor at theUniversidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City. Metaphorically unmasking Marcos and identifying him as a non-indigenous urban intellectual turned-terrorist of was the government's attempt to demystify and delegitimize the Zapatistas in public opinion. The army was prepared to move against Zapatista strongholds and capture Marcos.[22] The government decided to reopen negotiations with the Zapatistas. On 10 March 1995 President Zedillo and Secretary of the Interior Moctezuma signed the Presidential Decree for the Dialog, the Reconciliation and a peace with dignity in Chiapas law, which was discussed and approved by the Mexican Congress.[23] In April 1995, the government and the Zapatistas began secret talks to find an end to the conflict.[24] In February 1996, theSan Andrés Accords were signed by the government and the Zapatistas.[25] In May 1996, Zapatistas imprisoned for terrorism were released.[26] In December 1997, indigenous peasants were murdered in an incident known as theActeal massacre.[27] Survivors of the massacre sued Zedillo in U.S., but the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the suit based on his immunity as a head of state.[28]
Salinas had gained the support of the Roman Catholic Church in the 1988 elections and had pushed through a series of constitutional changes that significantly changed church-state relations. However, on 11 February 1995, Zedillo ignited a crisis with the Roman Catholic Church, hurting, recently restoredMexico–Holy See diplomatic relations.[29] Relations had already been damaged because of 24 May 1993 political assassination of the Guadalajara CardinalJuan Jesús Posadas Ocampo and lack of government progress on solving the murder by theAttorney General of Mexico. The PGR pressured the bishop of Chiapas,Samuel Ruiz García for supposedly concealing the Zapatistas guerrilla activity.[30] Ruiz's involvement had been strategic and an important instrument to keep the peace after the EZLN uprising.[31][32][33]
Zedillo's presidential motto wasBienestar para tu familia ("Well-being for your family"). He created the poverty alleviation programProgresa, which subsidized the poorest families in Mexico, provided that their children went to school. It replaced the Salinas administration's PRONASOL, deemed too politicized.[34] It was later renamedOportunidades (Opportunities) by presidentVicente Fox. The parastatal organizationCONASUPO, which was designed to supply food and provide food security to the poor was phased out in 1999, resulting in higherfood prices.[35]
Carlos Salinas had negotiated Mexico's place in NAFTA, which took effect in January 1994, so Zedillo was the first president to oversee it for his entire term. The Mexican economy suffered following the December 1994 peso crisis, when the currency was devalued by 15% and the U.S. intervened to prop up the economy with a multi-billion dollar loan so that NAFTA under the Zedillo administration got off to a rocky start. The Mexican GDP was -7% and there were hopes that NAFTA would lift that miserable performance statistic.[36]
In the run-up to the implementation of NAFTA, Salinas had privatized hundreds of companies. During the Zedillo administration, he privatizedthe state railway company,Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México. This led to the suspension of passenger service in 1997.
Zedillo saw electoral reform as a key issue for his administration.[37] In January 1995, Zedillo initiated multiparty talks about electoral reform, which resulted in an agreement on how to frame political reform. In July 1996, those talks resulted in the agreement of Mexico's four major parties on a reform package, which was ratified unanimously in the legislature. It created autonomous organizations to oversee elections, made the post ofHead of Government of Mexico City, previously an appointed position, into an elective one, as of July 1997, and created closer oversight of campaign spending. "Perhaps most crucially, it represents a first step toward consensus among the parties on a set of mutually accepted democratic rules of the game."[38] The reforms lowered the influence of the PRI and opened opportunities for other parties.[39] In the 1997 elections, for the first time the PRI did not win the majority in Congress. Zedillo was also a strong advocate of federalism as a counterbalance to a centralized system.[40]
Zedillo sought to forge new ties overseas, including ones with China.[41] He made a rhetorical gesture to Africa, but without real effect.[42]
He successfully concluded negotiations with the European Union for a Free Trade Agreement, which entered into force in July 2000[43]
In terms of its approval ratings, the Zedillo administration was a very unusual one in Mexican politics in that, while normally Presidents are highly popular upon taking office and don't experience serious downturns in their approval rate during their first year in office, Zedillo dealt with very low approval ratings merely weeks after taking office due to his decision to devaluate thePeso on 20 December 1994, giving way to theMexican peso crisis that severely hit the national economy.[44]
Hitting a bottom low 24% approval on 3 January 1995, Zedillo continued to experience low approval ratings throughout 1995, with the effects of the economic crisis, the continuing conflict with theEZNL inChiapas and theAguas Blancas massacre in June preventing his popularity from recovering. Although not as troublesome as in 1995, his approval ratings remained unsteady during 1996.
Zedillo's approval ratings, however, experienced a steady growth beginning in January 1997, and for the rest of his administration, his disapproval rate was never higher than his approval rate. Helped in no doubt by the relative economic recovery and the peaceful transfer of power toVicente Fox (who won the2000 presidential elections, being the first opposition candidate in 71 years to defeat the rulingPRI), Zedillo left office with an approval rate of 64% and a disapproval rate of 25.4%.[45]
On average, Zedillo's administration had an approval rating of 55.3% and a disapproval rating of 34.3%.
An interesting occurrence is that of the aforementioned 3 January 1995 poll: at the same time that Zedillo recorded his lowest-ever approval rate and a disapproval rate of 30%, 46.1% of those polled either stated that they didn't have an opinion on his administration or didn't answer, making it the only case ever recorded in Mexican modern history in which a plurality expressed no opinion on a sitting President.[46]
Highest approval ratings:
Lowest approval ratings:
Highest disapproval ratings:
Lowest disapproval ratings:
The presidential election of 2 July 2000 was a watershed in Mexican history for several reasons. The PRI presidential candidate,Francisco Labastida was not designated by the sitting president (as all former presidential nominees from the PRI had been until that point), but by an open internal primary of the party.[47] Changes in the electoral rules meant that the government did not control voting as it had previously in the Ministry of the Interior. Elections were now the jurisdiction of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), with Mexicans having faith that elections would be free and fair.[48] IFE implemented new procedures regarding campaigns and balloting, with rules for finance, guarantee of the secret ballot, and unbiased counting of votes. Also important were some 10,000 Mexican poll watchers and over 850 foreign observers, including ex-president of the U.S.,Jimmy Carter.Zapatista leaderSubcomandante Marcos declared that the election was a "dignified and respectable battleground."[49] The results of the election were even more historic. For the first time since the founding of Zedillo's party in 1929, an opposition candidate won, a peaceful change from an authoritarian government.[50] Zedillo went on national television when the polls closed, declaring thatVicente Fox had won. In Fox's autobiography he writes, "There are still those old-guardpriistas who consider Ernesto Zedillo a traitor to his class for his actions on the night of 2 July 2000, as the party boss who betrayed the machine. But in that moment, President Zedillo became a true democrat... In minutes, he preempted any possibility of violent resistance from hard-linepriistas. It was an act of electoral integrity that will forever mark the mild-mannered economist as a historic figure of Mexico's peaceful transition to democracy."[51]
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Since leaving office, Zedillo has held many jobs as an economic consultant in many international companies and organizations. He currently is on the faculty atYale University, where he teaches economics and heads theYale Center for the Study of Globalization. In 2008, a conference on global climate change was convened at Yale, resulting in a published volume edited by Zedillo.[52]
In 2009, Zedillo headed an external review of theWorld Bank Group's governance.[66] Since 2019, he has been serving on the High-Level Council on Leadership & Management for Development of the Aspen Management Partnership for Health (AMP Health).[67] In 2020, he joined the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPR), an independent group examining how the WHO and countries handled theCOVID-19 pandemic, co-chaired byHelen Clark andEllen Johnson Sirleaf.[68]
In 2016, Zedillo co-signed a letter calling for an end to thewar on drugs, along with people likeMary J. Blige,Jesse Jackson andGeorge Soros.[69]
According to a 2012Economist article, a group of ten anonymousTzotzil people claiming to be survivors of theActeal massacre have taken an opportunity to sue former President Zedillo in a civil court inConnecticut, "seeking about $50 million and a declaration of guilt against Mr Zedillo." The victims of the massacre were members of an indigenous rights group known asLas Abejas; however, the current president of that organization, Porfirio Arias, claims that the alleged victims were not residents of Acteal at all. This has led commentators to allege the trial to be politically motivated, perhaps by a member of his own political party, theInstitutional Revolutionary Party, angry about Zedillo's reforms that led to the party losing power in the2000 Mexican presidential election, after 71 years of continuous political rule.[70]
TheUnited States Department of State recommended that President Zedillo be grantedimmunity from prosecution due to the actions occurring as part of his official capacity as head of state. This motion is not binding in the US court system, but judges "generally side with the State Department."[71]
The plaintiffs, who are being represented by Rafferty, Kobert, Tenenholtz, Bounds & Hess may appeal the ruling of U.S. District Judge Michael Shea to sidestep the immunity Zedillo has been granted.[72]
In 2014, the US Supreme Court refused to hear a case against Zedillo on grounds of "sovereign immunity" as a former head of state by survivors of the Acteal massacre.[28]
In a national survey conducted in 2012 by BGC-Excélsior regarding former Presidents, 39% of the respondents considered that the Zedillo administration was "very good" or "good", 27% responded that it was an "average" administration, and 31% responded that it was a "very bad" or "bad" administration.[73]
: Collar of theOrder of the Aztec Eagle (1996)
Argentina: Grand Collar of theOrder of the Liberator General San Martín (1996)[74]
Estonia: Collar of theOrder of the Cross of Terra Mariana (27 October 1995)
Spain: Collar of theOrder of Isabella the Catholic (19 January 1996)[75]
Italy: Knight Grand Cross with Collar of theOrder of Merit of the Italian Republic (26 March 1996)[76]
Uruguay:Medal of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay (1996)[77]
Peru: Grand Collar of theOrder of the Sun of Peru (1996)[78]Peru:Order of Merit for Distinguished Service [es] (1996)
Portugal: Grand Collar of theOrder of Prince Henry (30 September 1998)
United Kingdom: Honorary Knight Grand Cross of theOrder of St Michael and St George (1998)
Finland: Grand Cross of theOrder of the White Rose of Finland (1999)[79]
Romania: Grand Cross with Chain of theOrder of the Star of Romania (2000)
Hungary: Grand Cross with Chain of theOrder of Merit of the Republic of Hungary (2000)[80]
Ukraine First Class of theOrder of Prince Yaroslav the Wise[81]
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| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Secretary of Programming and Budget 1988–1992 | Succeeded by Rogelio Gasca Neri |
| Preceded by | Secretary of Public Education 1992–1993 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | President of Mexico 1994–2000 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Institutional Revolutionary Party nominee for President of Mexico 1994 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
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| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
