In a nation where style is often as important as substance, Carlos Salinas de Gortari seems an unlikely choice to be President. He is short and almost bald, and his bushy mustache and outsize ears are a caricaturist's delight. His appetite for hard work and rapid-fire oratory have earned him the irreverent nickname Atomic Ant. Yet last week the Harvard-educated Salinas was named the candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party for the July 1988 presidential election. Although Salinas will face opponents, his victory is virtually assured; the monolithic P.R.I. has not lost a national election since its founding in 1929.
Salinas, 39, will be Mexico's youngest President in more than a half- century. Like his three predecessors, Salinas is a technocrat and has never held an elected post, although he is the first economist ever to serve in a job occupied primarily by lawyers. Still, Salinas brings ample experience to the presidency, which carries a six-year term. As the Minister of Budget and Planning since 1982, Salinas is both credited and cursed for President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado's austerity program. Salinas' task will be to guide Mexico's economy from the sleepy epoch of the sombrero into the dynamic age of the superconductor. At the same time, he faces mounting demands to loosen the P.R.I.'s grip on the country's political system.
While a steady devaluation of the peso has boosted exports and helped build foreign reserves of $15 billion, the reforms have produced an annual inflation rate of 130%. Additional cutbacks in public spending are certain to further antagonize Mexico's powerful labor unions, which have grown angry as purchasing power has shrunk by as much as 40% during the past five years. Moreover, Mexico has a foreign debt of more than $100 billion that consumes about $1 billion a month in interest payments. Although a showdown with the labor unions may come, Salinas is expected to follow De la Madrid's austerity course.
On the political front, however, Salinas' success may depend on how quickly he distinguishes himself from his predecessors. While charges of ballot fraud, patronage and corruption have long dogged the P.R.I., the allegations are growing dangerously heated. Last year the situation turned particularly bitter after closely contested mayoral elections in the northern state of Chihuahua, a stronghold of the conservative National Action Party, the largest of the eight opposition parties. Afterward a P.R.I. official conceded, "We may have won the elections, but we have lost the people."
Recently, the party leadership faced its most serious internal challenge ever. Led by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, 53, the son of a former President, a faction insisted that the selection process be opened up. The party met the demand halfway. Instead of keeping the process secret, the party leadership made public a list of six names. Each of the candidates then fielded questions from party officials at televised breakfast meetings.