The year 2003 saw important developments in Mexico’s economy, domestic politics, and international affairs. The economy, burdened by the recession in the United States (Mexico’s largest export market), had grown by only 0.9% in inflation-adjusted terms in 2002. As the U.S. recovery began, analysts predicted real growth of 1.3% in Mexico for 2003. Growth at this pace, however, was insufficient to generate the volume of jobs required by Mexico’s expanding workforce or to reduce severe socioeconomic and regional inequalities. The combination of economic downturn during 2001–02 and gradually rising labour costs continued to encourage some employers to move production facilities from Mexico to lower-wage competitors such as China. Nevertheless, macroeconomic trends (including an inflation rate in the single digits) were generally more positive during 2003.
The agricultural sector was a major exception. As the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) entered its 10th year, a further round of scheduled tariff reductions on trade in agricultural products posed new challenges to Mexican farmers, who already had long suffered from shortfalls in financial credits, technological inputs, and transportation and marketing arrangements. These concerns sparked widespread protests and demands (fueled by U.S. criticism of Mexican government subsidies for agricultural producers at a time when U.S. farm supports had increased rapidly) that the NAFTA provisions on trade in agricultural products be rejected or renegotiated. The protests forced Pres. Vicente Fox’s administration to undertake protracted negotiations with agricultural producers. The government’s announcement of an expanded package of rural-development measures (including higher price supports for certain grains) temporarily eased the domestic political problem, but the long-term crisis of the Mexican countryside remained unresolved.
Political news was dominated by the hotly contested midterm congressional and state-level elections held on July 6. Many observers were inclined to view the elections as a referendum on the Fox administration, and from that perspective the results were indeed disappointing for Fox. Although his personal popularity remained in the 60% range, his centre-right National Action Party (PAN) won just 30.5% of the valid congressional vote. This compared with 34.4% for the long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), 17.1% for the centre-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), 6.2% for the Mexican Ecological Green Party (PVEM), 2.4% for the Labour Party (PT), and 2.3% for the Democratic Convergence Party (PCD).
The PRI was reinvigorated by its results in the national election and by its victory in the Nuevo León gubernatorial race. More generally, some analysts interpreted the outcome as voters’ rejection of Fox’s economic-reform agenda, especially his continued advocacy of unpopular efforts to promote foreign private investment in the petroleum and electrical-power industries. Others wondered whether the comparatively low turnout rate in the July elections (just 41% of registered voters went to the polls) signaled growing disillusionment with the slow pace of further democratic reform since Fox’s election. Nevertheless, the PAN’s showing in July—although well below the share of the vote that it had received in 2000 when the charismatic Fox was its presidential candidate and the electorate embraced his call for “Change Now!”—was substantially higher than its historical average and indicated further organizational consolidation at the national level. The PRD also recovered somewhat from its especially poor performance in 2000; on the basis of the popularity of Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, it scored an overwhelming victory in Federal District local elections.
The most immediate result of the elections was the continuation of divided government. The PAN held only the second largest bloc of representatives (151) in the federal Chamber of Deputies; the other seats were distributed between the PRI (224), PRD (96), PVEM (17), PT (6), and PCD (5), with a final seat to be given to either the PAN or the PT. The PAN’s failure to win a majority in the Chamber promised to complicate even further such Fox legislative initiatives as reform of the federal labour law.
The year 2003 also saw the first changes in Fox’s cabinet. In January Secretary of Foreign Relations Jorge G. Castañeda—the architect of many significant departures in Mexican foreign policy—resigned his position, citing frustration with Mexico’s inability to conclude a historic agreement on migration issues with the United States. He was replaced by Luis Ernesto Derbez, formerly secretary of the economy (whose position was, in turn, taken by Fernando Canales Clariond, until then governor of Nuevo León). Between April and September cabinet officials changed at the comptroller general’s office and at the Secretariats of Agrarian Reform, Energy, Environment and Natural Resources, and Tourism. Some of these shifts occurred as part of Fox’s efforts to reinvigorate his administration in the wake of the July elections; many of these appointments brought experienced PAN leaders into national office.
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In international affairs the failure of Mexican and U.S. negotiators to reach agreement over migration reform and the significant domestic political opposition to the Fox administration’s high-profile engagement with the United States contributed to a cooling in bilateral relations. Perhaps partly to signal its displeasure over the failure to conclude an agreement on migration issues, the Fox government aggressively criticized the use of the death penalty in the U.S. In January Mexico petitioned the International Court of Justice to block the executions of 51 Mexican nationals held on death row in the U.S. The action was taken on the grounds that state and local U.S. officials had violated the 1963 Vienna Convention by failing to notify Mexican prisoners of their right to communicate with their consulates.
The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq also raised tensions. In 2001 Mexico had assumed one of the nonpermanent seats on the UN Security Council for only the third time in history. As international tensions over Iraq mounted, the Fox administration was squeezed between vocal domestic opposition to the immediate use of force against Iraq and escalating pressure from the United States for Mexico to support the U.S. position. In the end the U.S. decision to invade Iraq without a Security Council resolution specifically authorizing the use of force saved the Fox administration from making a difficult choice (Fox had indicated opposition to a proposed U.S. resolution), but not before the Iraq crisis introduced new strains in Mexico-U.S. relations.