As the investment fashion for the Mexican peso died, the bank depleted its reserves to defend the peso. The government replaced short-term borrowing in pesos that no one wanted to be owed with short-term borrowing in dollar `tesobonos' - folly with hindsight, but at the time proof only of its dedication to the peso/dollar rate.The death of peso fashion was due to a year's worth of evidence that Mexico's politics are still a great deal less modern than its economics. There was an uprising in the state of Chiapas in January 1994; the murder of the probable next president, Luis Donaldo Colosio, in March; the murder of the secretary-general of the ruling party, Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, in September; plus sundry kidnappings. And as each story unfolded, it became clear that each of them was part of the pain of reforming the sumptuously-named Party of Institutionalised Revolution, or PRI, that has had Mexico in a one-party grip since the 1920s Local thugs are not going to go quietly. The patronage machine refuses to be dismantled in the name of free-market economics. The drugs-money network within the party has a way with all those who promise transparency.Praise, then, must go to the mild-mannered President Ernesto Zedillo, who, after getting off to a rotten start with his version of Britain's ERM crisis, is standing by his promises to go on opening up the economy and the political system. He has appointed an opposition man to the post of attorney- general; arrested the brother of the ex-president, Salinas, for alleged complicity in the Colosio murder; allowed an opposition party to win the state governorship of Jalisco - quite something in Mexico; embraced negotiation with the rebels in Chiapas; and removed a series of tools of political manipulation from the PRI.
He shows no sign of being diverted from this crusade by economic difficulties. He is probably risking a bullet in the head from the "dinosaurios" within his own party. This, or some lesser form of internal revolt, creates the greatest single risk that my optimism will prove massively misplaced.That apart, his government is now imposing sudden austerity on the Mexican people, by means of swingeing tax increases and interest rate rises. This will cause bitterness right across Mexican society, but my guess is that it will not lead to political violence. The most notable tension could well be with the US, where the Mexican export bonanza with which the contentious North American Free Trade Area opened is now an import bonanza that will have Ross Perot chortling. But it is too late for any serious rift: such is the mutual involvement of Mexico and the US that they are financially welded to each other, rather as East Germany was to West when the time came for their economic reunification.The peso will now be left to find a new low level that the markets will believe in, one that will allow the burnt central bank to rebuild its reserves.
This could be in the region of seven pesos to the dollar, making Mexican labour and assets roughly half as expensive as they were before the Mexican private sector began its hot money binge.Six years as foreign editor of the Financial Times taught me this: foreign correspondents are wise just twice about their appointed countries: during their earliest days, when their minds are unclouded by facts, and during their fourth year, when they put the facts into a reasonably fresh perspective. In between, they are eloquently wrong about half-baked convictions. And by year five, all but the best are so well informed as to see both sides of everything.After three days in Mexico, this unclouded mind says this: if the dinosaurios of the PRI do not go on the rampage, Mexico at seven pesos to the dollar (at today's Mexican prices) will prove to be a bargain route into the great North American economy.. Two weighty conferences followed hard on each other's heels last week Theoretically, they were unconnected But the irony of their juxtaposition was hard to miss.
On Wednesday, the great and the good gathered in London for a meeting on "Britain and the World" - a meeting that sought to gaze into Britain's tormented soul. The following day, another group of the great and the good descended on the respectable little town of Knigswinter - a kind of Cheltenham on the Rhine - for their annual Anglo-German bash. Traditionally Knigswinter, just across the river from Bonn (more a state of mind than a geographic location; every other year the meeting is held in Cambridge) has been a place where both sides address their knottiest problems Usually, Germany is the worried one Now, however, it is Britain that seeks reassurance. What one speaker at the Knigswinter conference described as "cross-dressing" was suddenly all the rage. Knigswinter began 45 years ago as a way of bringing the two countries together in difficult times. It sought to build understanding between them and to nurture the still tender shoots of federal German democracy. Knigswinter prospered, even (or especially) when times were hard.Germany's obsessive fear of what others think of it has long been a wonder to behold.