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Time Line
Looking Back Through Time
1960s & '70s | 1980s |
1990-97 |
1998 |
1999
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1960s and 1970s
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1968
In August, 500,000 students stage anti-government protests in Mexico City. Their demands include freedom for all political prisoners and the repeal of laws on punishment for acts of subversion, treason and disorder.
Right before the Olympic Games in October, the government sends in armed soldiers to disperse 5,000 students rallying in Mexico City's Tlatelolco district. Soldiers open fire into the crowd. Estimates vary on the number of people killed.
1976
Poor economic conditions force President Luis Echeverria Alvarez to devalue the peso for the first time since 1954. |
1980s
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1980
Mexico refuses to support the United States boycott of the Moscow Summer Olympic Games.
1982
High inflation, debt and atrophying international reserves force Mexico to devalue the peso three times. In September, President Lopez Portillo nationalizes the country's private banking system.
1983
The National Action Party (PAN), the conservative political opposition to the stalwart Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), makes noticeable gains in the July municipal and state legislative elections.
1985
In September, an earthquake hits southern Mexico, including Mexico City, killing about 10,000 people and causing $5 billion in damages.
1987
The government imposes economic austerity measures, including further devaluation of the peso against the dollar, after Mexico's stock market crashes in October.
1988
PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari, a Harvard-educated technocrat, wins the presidency in July and pledges economic and political reforms. Salinas's 50.4 percent of the vote is the lowest tally ever for a PRI candidate.
In August, presidential contenders Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, Manuel Clouthier and Rosario Ibarra de Piedra bring voting-fraud charges before the Congress, which rejects the claims in September. |
1990s
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1990
U.S. President George Bush and Mexican President Carlos Salinas meet in June to discuss a North American free-trade accord that would eliminate tariffs and other trade barriers between the two countries. The pact would become the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
1991
The Salinas administration begins reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church. The 1917 constitution stripped the church of legal recognition and also barred clerics from owning property, propagating the faith, voting or running schools.
1992
Salinas announces he will grant the church legal recognition. Many of the legal restraints on the church have been ignored and, in a nation that is 90 percent Catholic, church activities are an important part of daily life.
Mexico, Canada and the United States agree in August to finalize NAFTA, creating a free-trade bloc.
1994
NAFTA takes effect on New Year's Day. Hours later, the Indian-based Zapatista National Liberation Army leads a revolt in Mexico's southern Chiapas state, killing scores of people.
The ruling party's presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, is assassinated in March while campaigning.
In another blow to political stability, Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, PRI secretary general, is assassinated by a lone gunman in September.
In December, after the PRI's Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon is inaugurated as president, he devalues the peso, causing investors to panic and the economy to fall into a recession.
1995
The United States pledges $20 billion to help stabilize the peso. The contribution pushes the total global commitment to Mexico to more than $49 billion. In response, Mexican Treasury Minister Guillermo Ortiz announces economic austerity measures in March.
Raul Salinas, brother of former president Carlos Salinas, is arrested in March for his possible connection to the murder of the PRI secretary general. Days later, Carlos Salinas leaves for self-imposed exile in Ireland.
In April, peasant rebels of the Zapatista National Liberation Army agree to preliminary peace discussions.
1996
Congress calls a special session in July to discuss a major overhaul of the political system and debate political reforms – a cornerstone of President Ernesto Zedillo's election campaign. Later, PRI members back down on the reforms.
Zapatista rebels walk out of peace talks with the government in September.
1997
Amado Carrillo Fuentes, one of the world's most powerful drug traffickers, dies in July after radical liposuction and plastic surgery.
For the first time in 68 years, the PRI loses control of the lower house of Congress in July elections.
In December, a paramilitary group massacres 45 people, mostly women and children, in a small politically divided village in Chiapas.
1998
Wildfires burn uncontrollably across Mexico, destroying rare plants and animals. Southern states are the hardest hit.
In June, Mexican troops kill 11 leftist rebels of the Popular Revolutionary Army – an indication of the government's hardening stance against insurgents and their sympathizers.
During the governors' elections in July, the PRI loses some key seats but wins one in the northern state of Chihuahua.
Bitter sparring marks talks between Zapatista rebels and negotiators from the Mexican government. The November talks was the first meeting since the two sides severed all relations in September 1996.
Citibank, the United State's second-largest bank, transfered millions in drug money for Raul Salinas, according to a report released in December by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of the United States Congress.
1999
The Mexican government ended its 25-year subsidy of tortillas on Jan. 1, causing prices to skyrocket and a backlash particularly among impoverished Mexicans who rely on the corn-flour pancakes for half their daily diet.
Raul Salinas de Gortari, older brother of former president Carlos Salinas, was found guilty Jan. 21 of ordering the September 1994 murder of Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, the secretary general and second-ranking PRI official.
On April 6, Mexico's attorney general ordered the arrest of the former governor ofthe southern state of Quintana
Roo and more than 100 public officials and others on
charges that they worked for the country's most powerful drug cartel.
On April 6, Mexico's attorney general ordered the arrest of the former governor ofthe southern state of Quintana Roo and more than 100 public officials and others on charges that they worked for the country's most powerful drug cartel.
One of Mexico's wealthiest and most politically powerful families is so involved in drug trafficking and money laundering that Carlos Hank Gonzalez and his sons Carlos Hank Rhon and Jorge Hank Rhon pose a threat to the United States, according to a report by the National Drug Intelligence Center.
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© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
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