General elections were held in Mexico on 4 July 1982.[1] The presidential elections were won by Miguel de la Madrid, who received 74% of the vote. In the Chamber of Deputies election, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) won 299 of the 372 seats,[2] as well as winning 63 of the 64 seats in the Senate election.[3] Voter turnout was 75% in the presidential election and 73% and 66% for the two parts of the Chamber elections.[4]
The deputies elected served during the 52nd session of Congress (1982–1985), while the senators additionally served during the 53rd session (1985–1988).
Rosario Ibarra, who was nominated as a presidential candidate by the Workers' Revolutionary Party (PRT), was the first woman ever to run for president in a Mexican election.
These were the last of the symbolic/non-competitive presidential elections in which the PRI (in power since 1929) and its presidential candidate faced no serious opposition and won by a huge margin.
Background
The previous presidential elections, held in 1976, had featured only one presidential candidate (José López Portillo). The lack of any opposition in that election raised serious doubts, nationally and internationally, regarding the legitimacy of the Mexican political system under the PRI, which had been in power since 1929.[5] Due to this, a political reform was passed in 1977 which allowed many more parties to compete in federal elections (notoriously including the decades-old Mexican Communist Party, which until then had been barred from participating in elections) as well as providing better representation for opposition parties in the Chamber of the Deputies.[6]
As a result, nine political parties were able to participate in the 1982 elections. In the presidential election, there were seven registered candidates, which at the time was the biggest number of candidates registered in a presidential election and was a stark contrast with the single-candidate election of 1976.
Nonetheless, these proved to be rather cosmetic changes, as the PRI continued to be the dominant party and practices of vote buying and electoral fraud remained widespread. It wasn't until the mid-to-late 1980s that the PRI began to face real challenges at the state and federal levels by opposition parties: particularly, by the National Action Party (PAN) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
By 1981 the officials that were perceived by the public opinion as having the most possibilities of being chosen by López Portillo to succeed him in the presidency were Jorge Díaz Serrano (Director General of PEMEX), Miguel de la Madrid (Secretary of Programming and the Budget, and who had known López Portillo since the 1950s when the latter was one of his teachers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)[7]) and Javier García Paniagua (National President of the PRI). Among them, initially Díaz Serrano was apparently the most favoured to obtain the presidential candidacy, being a long-time friend of López Portillo and enjoying the popularity that came with the financial boom that the country had enjoyed in those years due to the high international oil prices and the discovery and development of new oil fields during Díaz Serrano's tenure in PEMEX, as Mexico had become one of the main oil exporters in previous years (a famous phrase in this respect was said by President López Portillo in August 1977, when he stated that the country should become used to "administering the abundance").[8] López Portillo had also delivered a passionate defense of Díaz Serrano and PEMEX during his third State of the Nation report to Congress in 1979 [note 1].
However, in June 1981 the international oil prices plummeted, and Díaz Serrano, without the authorization of the economic cabinet, consequently announced that Mexico would lower the prices of its oil by 4 dollars. The controversy unleashed by Díaz Serrano's decision resulted in his resignation as Director General of PEMEX and, with it, the end of his presidential aspirations.
In this manner, the two serious contenders that remained were García Paniagua and De la Madrid. García Paniagua, son of General Marcelino García Barragán[es], was a faithful reflection of the post-revolutionary political elite, and was identified with the "populist" sector which was more inclined to uphold the discourse of the Mexican Revolution and to continue López Portillo's general policies.[11] In contrast, De la Madrid (who had a post graduate degree in Public Administration from Harvard University) was perceived as a skilled technocrat, mainly recognized for the elaboration of the Global Development Plan, which was announced in April 1980 and was intended to guide the planning of the economic policy of the López Portillo government.
The fall in oil prices in June 1981 radically altered the national scene, and the process of the selection of the PRI presidential candidate took place while an increasingly serious economic crisis was taking over the nation. The PRI then announced—relatively ahead of time[note 2]—on 25 September the chosen person to succeed López Portillo as President of the Republic: Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado.[12]
The selection of De la Madrid was mainly due to the fact that, in the middle of the crisis which was beginning to wreak havoc in the national economy, López Portillo considered that his Secretary of Programming and the Budget was the best man to face the situation because of his administrative skill (particularly due to his elaboration of the aforementioned Global Development Plan).[13] As De la Madrid himself would later recount, García Paniagua's reaction at not having been the chosen one was particularly aggressive, and so he was replaced in the Presidency of the PRI by Pedro Ojeda Paullada[es] a couple of weeks after the announcement.[14]
The designation of De la Madrid aroused significant opposition from inside the party, specially from its more traditional sectors, since the candidate was perceived as a conservative technocrat with no political skill (in fact, just like López Portillo before him, De la Madrid had never held a popularly elected post at the time of his nomination as presidential candidate). One of those dissatisfied was the old leader of the Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM), Fidel Velázquez, who had reportedly favoured García Paniagua. In contrast, the announcement of De la Madrid's candidacy was well received by the banking community and the private sector, which was reflected by a 10-point increase in the Mexican Stock Exchange the day of his nomination.[15] In spite of the initial hostility by many sectors inside the PRI, in the end De la Madrid manage to consolidate his position and to gather the support of his party, agglutinating the so-called "cargada priísta" around himself.
Campaign and economic crisis
After being nominated as presidential pre-candidate, De la Madrid appointed Manuel Bartlett Díaz as General Coordinator of his campaign,[16] while he entrusted the direction of the PRI's Institute of Political, Economic and Social Studies (IEPES) to his old collaborator from the Secretariat of Programming and the Budget, Carlos Salinas de Gortari.[17] In practice, Bartlett acted as the "political chief" of the campaign, and Salinas de Gortari was its "economic chief".[18]
1981 and 1982 were particularly difficult years for the Mexican economy. At the time of De la Madrid's nomination in September 1981, the public finances of the nation had already begun to experience the first ravages as a consequence of the fall in oil prices in June. Nonetheless, at first the discourse of De la Madrid's campaign, while not denying the crisis, preferred to focus on other subjects and didn't deviate significantly from the traditional "nationalist" and "revolutionary" tone of previous PRI campaigns. De la Madrid proposed seven central theses as the centrepiece of his campaign: "Revolutionary nationalism", "integral democratization", "egalitarian society", "decentralization of the national life", "development, employment and fight against inflation", "democratic planning" and, the most famous of them all, "moral renovation of the society".[19] The latter, which emphasised stopping and fighting government corruption, had a particular impact on voters, since the López Portillo administration had been mired in grave corruption scandals at all levels, involving officials appointed by the President (the more infamous cases were those of Arturo Durazo Moreno aka "El Negro Durazo", Jorge Díaz Serrano and Carlos Hank González) and even members of the president's family (many of whom also held government positions during his presidency). In this context, according to a poll from October 1981, 70% of the respondents considered that corruption in Mexico had reached "gigantic levels".[20]
As the months passed, the economy continued to deteriorate: from September 1981 to January 1982, capital flight and distrust of the national economy skyrocketed. On 5 January 1982, the government urged people to avoid the waste of gasoline, warning that otherwise it would have to impose rationing. In February, the López Portillo government was forced to devalue the peso, leaving it at an exchange rate of 46 pesos per US dollar. By then, the government had already lost 3,000 million dollars from its international reserves.[21] In spite of this first devaluation, speculation and capital flight did not cease, inflation continued rising, and the government had to adjust the public tariffs.
At a campaign stop at Villahermosa, De la Madrid hinted at legalizing abortion, stating that "as the rate of population growth increases, scarce resources – and I refer here to resources generally, not only economic resources – fail to keep pace with that growth", and addressed the necessity of discussing issues "such as respect for the freedom not only of the couple but especially of women, with a view to giving them truly free choices and protecting their health", explicitly referring to "the topic of abortion – a delicate matter to deal with, but one that has been touched upon here – because it is a topic that society cannot disregard".[22]
As the economic crisis worsened, the De la Madrid campaign began to adopt a more "realist" tone. In a speech delivered by the candidate on 24 May 1982 at León, Guanajuato, De la Madrid advocated a profound program that included fighting inflation and currency volatility, he committed to avoiding a recession and protecting employment, and he finally expressed his rejection of "populism and any form of demagogy".[23] Many commenters pointed out that De la Madrid himself, as Secretary of Programming and the Budget and as the author of the "Global Development Plan" in 1980 – which had not anticipated a fall in the oil prices and whose mechanisms turned out to be insufficient to deal with the subsequent disaster – was to some extent responsible for the economic crisis.[24]
The PRI was criticized for the high cost of the official campaign in spite of the nation's critical financial situation. In defense, De la Madrid stated that "We could have saved lots of money focusing the campaign on TV and radio, but the Mexican idiosyncrasy demands that the people meet their candidate and have the opportunity to convey their problems to him" and that he preferred "the cost of political campaigns to the cost of the repression that dictatorial regimes carry with them".[25] De la Madrid made an extensive tour of the national territory, as was the tradition for priísta presidential candidates; journalist Isabel Arvide, who was sent by El Sol de México to cover the campaign, stated that De la Madrid toured more than 114 000 kilometers on his campaign.[26]
On 19 June the Unified Socialist Party of Mexico (PSUM) carried out the closing campaign rally of its presidential candidate, Arnoldo Martínez Verdugo, at the Zócalo in Mexico City. The event was of particular importance, both for it being the first opposition demonstration to be held at the Zócalo in 14 years (since the student protests and the subsequent Tlatelolco Massacre in 1968, the government had barred opposition organizations from using the compound), and for the relatively big assistance that it had, with many thousands of PSUM sympathizers joining that day. The event was remembered by the press as the "Red Zócalo".[27][28]
In spite of the worsening economic crisis and the corruption scandals of the López Portillo administration, the PRI held a lead in opinion polls and, as it had always happened since it took power in 1929, its candidate was the eventual winner of the election by a large margin, as the opposition remained divided and none of its candidates had enough political strength to effectively challenge De la Madrid and the massive political apparatus of the PRI. De la Madrid's aforementioned proposal of "Moral renovation of the society" was also credited as a reason for his decisive victory, as voters hoped that the austere, reserved candidate would indeed make a serious effort to finally curb corruption in Mexico. In addition, De la Madrid was able to distance himself from López Portillo and to project himself as a serious, hard-working technocrat who was the "perfect antidote" for the social and economic disaster left by his predecessor.
The increase in voter turnout, which was of 74.82% according to official figures, was widely celebrated by the government as an advance against abstentionism. In spite of it and of the positive result for the PRI, the economic condition continued to deteriorate. In August, the country declared a moratorium on its foreign debt and the peso suffered another devaluation, remaining at an exchange rate of around 70 per US dollar. Towards the end of the year it had further fallen to 149 per dollar, which meant that the accumulated devaluation in 1982 was of 470%.[31]
The discredit of López Portillo near the end of his presidency, amid the severe economic crisis and the monumental corruption scandals which involved members of his government and his family, had no precedent in the recent memory of the nation.
The situation was such that on 1 September 1982, during his final State of the Nation report to Congress, President López Portillo asked for forgiveness from the nation's poor for having failed to improve their condition, as he shed some tears.[32] In the same Address to the Congress, López Portillo decreed the nationalization of the banks and a generalized exchange control. These measures, taken only three months before his term was set to end, caused serious differences between López Portillo and President-elect De la Madrid, who had expressed his complete disagreement with the measures and would later write that "it implied a severe lack of respect for me and a suspicion that the President intended to condition my government".[33] The relationship between the two became more distant in the following months, as De la Madrid perceived that López Portillo, through his son José Ramón, was trying to exercise too much power for an outgoing President and that he was trying to overshadow the President-elect.[34]
The National Action Party (PAN), which had nominated Pablo Emilio Madero as its presidential candidate, claimed that there had been many irregularities in the election, such as an unrestricted use of public resources in favor of the PRI candidates, emptying of electoral rolls, stuffing of ballot boxes, and that many ballots with votes for Madero and other opposition candidates had been thrown into the garbage by PRI officials; while they didn't go so far as to dispute that De la Madrid had indeed won, the PAN argued that the margin of victory of the PRI candidate had been artificially inflated and that Madero had obtained at least 4 million votes. With these arguments, in the 9 September session of the Chamber of Deputies, the PAN voted against the ruling which officially declared De la Madrid as president-elect.[35]
↑ In the aftermath of the Ixtoc I oil spill that occurred in June 1979, prominent opposition politician Heberto Castillo harshly criticized PEMEX's handling of the disaster and produced documents which purportedly showed that Díaz Serrano remained a shareholder of Permargo, the company that was drilling the Ixtoc I well at the time of the accident, even though Díaz Serrano had previously stated that he had sold all of his shares before being appointed director of PEMEX.[9][10]
↑ Generally, the so called destape ("uncovering" or "unveiling"), which was the announcement by the PRI of the person chosen by the president to succeed him, would take place in October or November of the year prior to the presidential elections.
Related Research Articles
Carlos Salinas de Gortari is a Mexican economist and former politician who served as the 60th president of Mexico from 1988 to 1994. Affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), earlier in his career he worked in the Secretariat of Programming and Budget, eventually becoming Secretary. He secured the party's nomination for the 1988 general election and was elected amid widespread accusations of electoral fraud.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party is a political party in Mexico that was founded in 1929 as the National Revolutionary Party, then as the Party of the Mexican Revolution and finally as the PRI beginning in 1946. The party held uninterrupted power in the country and controlled the presidency twice: the first one was for 71 years, from 1929 to 2000, the second was for six years, from 2012 to 2018.
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano is a Mexican politician and civil engineer. A prominent social-democrat and the son of 51st president of Mexico Lázaro Cárdenas, he is a former Head of Government of Mexico City and a founder of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). He ran for the presidency of Mexico three times, and his loss in the 1988 Mexican general election to Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari had long been considered the result of electoral fraud perpetrated by the ruling PRI, later acknowledged by Miguel de la Madrid, the incumbent president at the time of the election. He previously served as a Senator, having been elected in 1976 to represent the state of Michoacán and also as the Governor of Michoacán from 1980 to 1986.
Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado was a Mexican politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who served as the 59th president of Mexico from 1982 to 1988.
José Guillermo Abel López Portillo y Pacheco was a Mexican writer, lawyer, and politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who served as the 58th president of Mexico from 1976 to 1982. López Portillo was the only official candidate in the 1976 presidential election, being the only president in recent Mexican history to win an election unopposed.
Luis Echeverría Álvarez was a Mexican lawyer, academic, and politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who served as the 57th president of Mexico from 1970 to 1976. Previously, Echeverría was Secretary of the Interior from 1963 to 1969. He was the longest-lived president in Mexican history and the first to reach the age of 100.
Adolfo Tomás Ruiz Cortines was a Mexican politician who served as President of Mexico from 1952 to 1958. A member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), he previously served as Governor of Veracruz and Secretary of the Interior. During his presidency, which constituted the Mexican Miracle, women gained the right to vote, and he instigated numerous public health, education, infrastructure, and works projects.
Sergio García Ramírez was a Mexican jurist and politician who served as a judge at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights from 1997 to 2009.
Jesús Silva-Herzog Flores, born as Jesús Silva y Flores was a Mexican economist and politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). He served as secretary of Finance and Public Credit in the cabinet of President Miguel de la Madrid (1982–1986), as ambassador to Spain (1991–1994) and the United States (1995–1997), and as secretary of Tourism (1994) in the cabinet of Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
General elections were held in Mexico on 6 July 1988. They were the first competitive presidential elections in Mexico since the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) took power in 1929. The elections were widely considered to have been fraudulent, with the PRI resorting to electoral tampering to remain in power.
The “National Democratic Front” was a coalition of Mexican left-wing political parties created to compete in the 1988 presidential elections, being the immediate predecessor of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). It was result of an agglutination of small political left and center-left forces with dissident members from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Their candidate for the presidential election was Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas.
Manuel Bartlett Díaz is a Mexican politician, former director of the public energy company CFE, and former Secretary of the Interior. Bartlett was elected to the Senate of the Republic for the 2000–2006 term, where he became known as one of the most staunch defenders of state ownership of electric utilities. On May 27, 2006, in view of the low possibility of Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate Roberto Madrazo winning the Presidency, Bartlett declared that he would vote for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, then candidate for the Party of the Democratic Revolution, to avoid a right-wing victory. Madrazo and the national leader of the PRI, Mariano Palacios, both condemned these declarations, and announced the possible expulsion of Bartlett from the party. Bartlett responded by continuing to speak out against both leaders.
The Embassy of Mexico in Berlin is the diplomatic mission of Mexico to Germany. The embassy is located in Klingelhöferstrasse 3, Berlin-Mitte.
The Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation of Mexico is the national federal entity that regulates commercial road traffic and broadcasting. Its headquarters are in the Torre Libertad on Reforma in Mexico City but some aspects of the department still function at the old headquarters located at the intersection of Eje Central and Eje 4 Sur (Xola). The building is decorated with murals created by arranging small colored stones on the building's outer walls.
The president of Mexico, officially the president of the United Mexican States, is the head of state and head of government of Mexico. Under the Constitution of Mexico, the president heads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander in chief of the Mexican Armed Forces. The office, which was first established by the federal Constitution of 1824, is currently held by Claudia Sheinbaum, who was sworn-in on October 1, 2024. The office of the president is considered to be revolutionary, in the sense that the powers of office are derived from the Revolutionary Constitution of 1917. Another legacy of the Mexican Revolution is the Constitution's ban on re-election. Mexican presidents are limited to a single six-year term, called a sexenio. No one who has held the post, even on a caretaker basis, is allowed to run or serve again. The constitution and the office of the president closely follow the presidential system of government.
Mario Ramón Beteta Monsalve was a Mexican economist who served as the last Secretary of Finance in the cabinet of President Luis Echeverría (1975–76), as director-general of Pemex (1982–87) and as governor of the State of México (1987–89).
Roberto de la Madrid Romandia was a Mexican elected official who served as governor of Baja California from 1977 to 1983. He was the first American-born governor of a Mexican state. He was a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
General elections were held in Mexico on 4 July 1976. José López Portillo was the only candidate in the presidential election, and was elected unopposed. In the Chamber of Deputies election, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) won 195 of the 237 seats, as well as winning 64 seats in the Senate election. Voter turnout was 65% in the Senate election and 62% in the Chamber election.
Javier García Paniagua was a Mexican politician who served as president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 1981 and held positions in the cabinet of President José López Portillo as Secretary of Agrarian Reform and Secretary of Labor and Social Welfare.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Mexicoportal 
