The last decade and a half has been a period of dramatic economic and political change in Mexico. On the economic level, the decade of the 1990s began with a severe debt crisis that threatened Mexico's economy with a real possibility of bankruptcy and economic chaos. The debt emergency was relieved, and Mexico went on to enter into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and Canada. After decades in which the Mexican economy was largely cut off and insulated from the world, Mexico's market was opened up to broad competition, while Mexican exporters correspondingly gained far freer access to one of the world's largest markets.
During this same period, Mexico has undergone an equally dramatic political transformation. For decades the Mexican political system was as closed as its economic structure, with de facto one-party rule by the Party of the Institutional Revolution, or PRI. The President of Mexico was restricted to a single six-year term, but effectively handpicked his successor. This did not prevent the successor from sharply reversing his predecessor's policies, as in fact was often the case, but the vast patronage structure of the ruling party went on unchanged.
By the late 1980s, however, cracks were appearing in the solidity of this structure; the PRI won the 1988 election only by overt fraud. In 2000, Mexico passed a milestone when an opposition party won the presidential election, and Vicente Fox became the first non-PRI leader of Mexico since the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century. In both economics and politics, the period since about 1990 thus marks a radical departure from the previous patterns of modern Mexico.
The remainder of this discussion will first examine Mexico's political development since 1990, placing it in the context of previous Mexican political history, and exploring recent and contemporary trends. The discussion will then examine in turn ...