1982 Mexican general election

General elections were held in Mexico on 4 July 1982.Dieter Nohlen (2005) ''Elections in the Americas: A data handbook, Volume I'', p. 453 The presidential elections were won by Miguel de la Madrid, who received 74% of the vote. In the Chamber of Deputies election, the Institutional Revolutionary Party won 299 of the 372 seats,Nohlen, p468 as well as winning 63 of the 64 seats in the Senate election. Voter turnout was 75% in the presidential election and 73% and 66% for the two parts of the Chamber elections.

Rosario Ibarra, who was nominated presidential candidate by the Revolutionary Workers' Party, was the first woman ever to run for president in a Mexican election.

These would be the last of the symbolic/non-competitive presidential elections in which the PRI (in power since 1929) and its presidential candidate faced no serious opposition and won by a huge margin.

Background

The previous presidential elections, celebrated in 1976, had featured only one presidential candidate (José López Portillo). The lack of any opposition in that election raised serious doubts, nationally and internationally, regarding the legitimacy of the Mexican political system under the PRI, which had been in power since 1929. Due to this, a political reform was passed in 1977 which allowed many more parties to compete in federal elections (notoriously including the decades-old Mexican Communist Party, which until then had been barred from participating in elections) as well as providing better representation for opposition parties in the Chamber of the Deputies.

As a result, nine political parties were able to participate in the 1982 elections. In the presidential election, there were seven registered candidates, which at the time was the biggest number of candidates registered in a presidential election and was a stark contrast with the single-candidate election of 1976.

Nonetheless, these proved to be rather cosmetic changes, as the PRI continued to be the dominant party and practices of vote buying and electoral fraud remained widespread. It wasn't until the mid-to-late 80's that the PRI began to face real challenges at the state and federal levels by opposition parties (particularly, by the PAN and the PRD).

Designation of the PRI presidential candidate

By 1981, the officials that were perceived by the public opinion as having the most possibilities of being chosen by López Portillo to succeed him in the Presidency were Jorge Díaz Serrano (Director General of PEMEX), Miguel de la Madrid (Secretary of Programming and the Budget) and Javier García Paniagua (National President of the PRI). Among them, initially Díaz Serrano was apparently the most favoured to obtain the presidential candidacy, being a long-time friend of López Portillo and enjoying the popularity that came with the financial boom that the country had enjoyed in those years due to the high international oil prices and the discovery and development of new oil fields during Díaz Serrano's tenure in PEMEX, as Mexico had become one of the main oil exporters in previous years (a famous phrase in this respect was said by President López Portillo in August 1977, when he stated that the country should become used to "administering the abundance").

However, in June 1981 the international oil prices plummeted, and Díaz Serrano, without the authorization of the economic cabinet, consequently announced that Mexico would lower the prices of its oil by 4 dollars. The controversy unleashed by Díaz Serrano's decision resulted in his resignation as Director General of PEMEX and, with it, the end of his presidential aspirations.

In this manner, the two serious contenders that remained were García Paniagua and De la Madrid. García Paniagua, son of General Marcelino García Barragán, was a faithful reflection of the post-revolutionary political elite, and was identified with the "populist" sector which was more inclined to uphold the discourse of the Mexican Revolution and to continue López Portillo's general policies. In contrast, De la Madrid (who had a post graduate degree in Public Administration from Harvard University) was perceived as a skilled technocrat, mainly recognized for the elaboration of the Global Development Plan, which was announced in April 1980 and was intended to guide the planning of the economic policy of the López Portillo government.

The fall in the oil prices in June 1981 radically altered the national scene, and the process of the selection of the PRI presidential candidate took place while an increasingly serious economic crisis was taking over the nation. The uncertainty threatened with paralysing the public administration, so López Portillo was forced to announce, ahead of time, on 25 September the chosen person to succeed him as President of the Republic: Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado.

The selection of De la Madrid was mainly due to the fact that, in the middle of the crisis which was beginning to wreak havoc in the national economy, López Portillo considered that his Secretary of Programming and the Budget was the best man to face the situation because of his administrative skill (particularly due to his elaboration of the aforementioned Global Development Plan). As De la Madrid himself would latter recount, García Paniagua's reaction at not having been the chosen one was particularly aggressive, and so he was replaced in the Presidency of the PRI by Pedro Ojeda Paullada a couple of weeks after the announcement.

The designation of De la Madrid aroused significant opposition from inside the party, specially from its more traditional sectors, since the candidate was perceived as a conservative technocrat with no political skill (in fact, just like López Portillo before him, De la Madrid had never held a popularly elected post at the time of his nomination as presidential candidate). One of those dissatisfied was the old leader of the CTM, Fidel Velázquez, who had reportedly favoured García Paniagua. In contrast, the announcement of De la Madrid's candidacy was well received by the banking community and the private sector, which was reflected by a 10-point increase in the Mexican Stock Exchange the day of his nomination.
In spite of the initial hostility by many sectors inside the PRI, in the end De la Madrid manage to consolidate his position and to gather the support of his party, agglutinating the so-called "cargada priísta" around himself.

Campaign and economic crisis

After being nominated as presidential pre-candidate, De la Madrid appointed Manuel Bartlett Díaz as General Coordinator of his campaign, while he entrusted the direction of the PRI's Institute of Political, Economic and Social Studies (IEPES) to his old collaborator from the Secretariat of Programming and the Budget, Carlos Salinas de Gortari. In practice, Bartlett acted as the "Political chief" of the campaign, and Salinas de Gortari was its "Economic chief".

1981 and 1982 were particularly difficult years for the Mexican economy. At the time of De la Madrid's nomination in September 1981, the public finances of the nation had already begun to experience the first ravages as a consequence of the fall in oil prices in June. Nonetheless, at first the discourse of De la Madrid's campaign, while not denying the crisis, preferred to focus on other subjects and didn't deviate significantly from the traditional "nationalist" and "revolutionary" tone of previous PRI campaigns. De la Madrid proposed seven central theses as the centrepiece of his campaign: "Revolutionary nationalism", "integral democratization", "egalitarian society", "decentralization of the national life", "development, employment and fight against inflation", "democratic planning" and, the most famous of them all, "moral renovation of the society". The latter, which emphasised stopping and fighting government corruption, had a particular impact on voters, since the López Portillo administration had been mired in grave corruption scandals at all levels, involving officials appointed by the President (the more infamous cases were those of Arturo Durazo Moreno aka "El Negro Durazo", Jorge Díaz Serrano and Carlos Hank González) and even members of the president's family (many of whom also held government positions during his presidency). In this context, according to a poll from October 1981, 70% of the population considered that corruption in Mexico had reached "gigantic levels".

As the months passed, the economy continued to deteriorate: from September 1981 to January 1982, capital flight and distrust of the national economy skyrocketed. On 5 January 1982, the government urged people to avoid the waste of gasoline, warning that otherwise it would have to impose rationing. In February, the López Portillo government was forced to devalue the peso, leaving it at an exchange rate of 46 pesos per US dollar. By then, the government had already lost 3,000 million dollars from its international reserves. In spite of this first devaluation, speculation and capital flight did not cease, inflation continued rising, and the government had to adjust