THE PRO-NAFTA FORCES IN WASHINGTON tend to discount the notion that free trade could face significant opposition insi'de Mexico. They consider the forces behind left-of-center leader Cuauhtemoc Cardenas to be anachronistic populists exploiting mass discontent after one decade of recession and six of single-party rule. Even ob- servers who welcome the emergence of strong left-leaning dissension in Mexico believe the Cardenistas are economic know-nothings waging an otherwise admirable campaign for democratization. Domestic Mexican politics haven't been ignored. The pro-NAFTA coalition seems genuinely convinced that Sali- nas' plans for market liberalization and integration enjoy sufficiently broad public support to survive the 1994 political transition even if that transition is more genuinely demo- cratic than in the past. Not a few corporate supporters of the U.S.-Mexico pact privately share the assumption of critics that the PRI owed its 1988 victory or at least its victory margin to systematic vote-rigging. But they tend to view the show of opposition strength as more a protest vote against decades of PRI rule than a rejection of the de La Madrid-Salinas economic program. Some argue that even after discounting for priis:a ballot alchemy, the supporters of Salinas and the PAN's Manuel Clouthier together comprised a solid majority bloc in favor of candidates espousing free-market policies. They also point to unpublished opinion polling since the election some of it bankrolled by pro-NAFTA business groups that shows President Salinas consistently getting far higher approval ratings than his party or his chief oppo- nents. These polls also purport to show a remarkable absence of popular distrust of U.S. foreign investment and a general welcoming of closer cross-border ties if the result is job creation and better wages. The post-1988 disarray within the Cardenas coalition reinforced the view that Mexico is moving inexorably to- ward the deregulated economic model championed by Sali- nas. The endorsement of similar policies in every other major economy in the region despite the diversity represented by presidents Aylwin, Couor, Gaviria, Menem and Perez has further contributed to a sense of historic inevitability about U.S.-Mexican market integration. T HERE ARE FLAWS IN THIS CONVENTIONAL wisdom that lead to an overestimation of domestic Mexican enthusiasm for free trade and an underestimation of opposition potency in disputes framed in economic terms. The Cardenas voters are often incorrectly assumed to comprise a not-quite-literate rural bloc in rebellion against MexicoCity technocratsand nostalgic forthe PRI's paternal- istic, corporatist past. Salinas supporters are presumed to be motivated by their comprehension and endorsement of the need for free-market economic reform. Cardenas voters are seen as driven by "politics"; the Salinas backers are viewed as "economic." In fact, according to the official returns, rural voters were the only solid pro-Salinas faction. In the center and north of the country, the educated urban vote was split mainly be- tween Cardenas and Clouthier, with the former getting the greatest support from the nominally PRI-affiliated union members and government workers who had been the heart of the government's big-city coalition. Some of the most stun- fling Cardenas successes in 1988 came in areas that exem- plify the Salinas export-oriented manufacturing model, such as the fast-growing blue collar suburbs of Toluca and Tijuana. Often overlooked by NAFTA proponents on both sides of the border is the fact that the Cardenas forces enjoyed great credibility among Mexico's center-left majority precisely because they were identified with certain economic policy positions. Chief among these was a long-standing opposition to the development of a large export oil industry and the massive foreign borrowing it required. Implicit in all three 1988 presidential campaigns was the premise that the Mexican economy had been badly misman- aged at least since the mid- 1970s. Private sector supporters of both Salinas and the PAN say things began going seriously awry under the "statist" and deficit-financed policies of the Echeverrfa Administration (1970-1976), culminating in the sexenio-end devaluation of the peso. Critics on the Left focus more on the LOpez Portillo (1976-1982) decision to triple Pemex's production and make it a major oil exporter for the first time since the 1938 nationalization. But these analyses and their constituencies overlap. Neither Echeverrfa nor LOpez Portillo have many vocal defenders today. The Carde- nas campaign drawing on traditional Mexican autarky and the maverick anti-exporting activism of coalition leader Heberto Castillo reminded voters of the prescient neo- cardenista warnings that I 970s borrowing for oil develop- ment would lead directly to debt, recession, and dependence on volatile world commodities markets. The center-right National Action Party (PAN), despite its free-market philosophy, has also voiced strong misgivings about the way NAFTA is currently framed and the effective exclusion of both national legislatures from the negotiating process. It would be prudent for NAFTA advocates to pay closer attention to the economic arguments of the opposition. If its concerns are ignored entirely, and NAFTA does not propel Mexico into sudden prosperity, a future non-PRI govern- ment could well demand a thorough renegotiation.
