Carlos Salinas

Carlos Salinas de Gortari (born 3 April 1948) was President of Mexico from 1988 to 1994.

Salinas's book

In the last years of Zedillo's term, Salinas came to Mexico to announce the publication of his highly controversial, thousand-page book, Mexico: The Policy and the Politics of Modernization. Written during his stay in Ireland (it was his full time job, in effect) and full of citations of press articles and political memoirs, it defended his achievements and blamed Zedillo for the crisis that followed the Salinas administration. Denying all accusations against him, including plotting Luis Donaldo Colosio's murder, his visit shocked the political scene of Mexico, with surprise interviews (most arranged by him as part of his book's release) in major media. A few days later, however, illegal recordings of a conversation between jailed brother Raúl and one of his sisters were leaked to the media, and their conversation about who really owned the family fortune and Raúl's imprisonment quickly put an end to the affair.

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The book – a thick volume with quite small print, every page filled with footnotes and margin notes – proved as controversial as Salinas himself. Its objective value is questioned since it is clearly a document written in self-defense, but it still remains a prime source of material for the scholar, clarifying how Salinas viewed himself (and, critics add, demonstrating his pride and selfishness). One group of bank debtors formed after the December Mistake (El Barzón) declared their outrage at what they saw as profiteering from their tragedy, and took the decision to transcribe the whole book, respecting even its layout, and to give it away electronically, and they did just that, in spite of legal threats from the publisher. Salinas probably did not mind – he had already announced that he would donate a copy to each public library in the country.

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It seems unlikely Salinas will ever be brought to trial for any of the many (and mostly unproven) verbal accusations against him, but his low popularity and the changing times make his permanent return to Mexico unlikely, and his political career looks irremediably over. Some experts argue he was one of the best presidents Mexico has ever seen.

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