Carlos Salinas de Gortari

Carlos Salinas de Gortari ( born April 3, 1948 in Mexico City) is a Mexican politician and was the President of Mexico ( 1988-1994).

Salinas studied at the universities of Mexico and Harvard. In 1978 he received his doctorate in political economy.

From 1971 to 1974 Salinas worked in the Mexican Ministry of Finance. From 1979 to 1981 he worked in the household and the Ministry of Planning. Salinas 1981 campaign manager of Miguel de la Madrid during his presidential candidacy. After de la Madrid's electoral victory, he was budget minister.

1988 Salinas was the successor of de la Madrid's presidency. His election was overshadowed by a scandal. When the opposing candidate was surprising after counting of the first voices forward, broke inexplicably together the computer system. After a few days Salinas was declared the winner. Voting papers were destroyed a few years later.

In December 1992, Salinas, the U.S. President George Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, the North American Free Trade Agreement signed (North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA).

Salinas ' policy caused an economic boom by strong inflow of international capital, for political reasons, he kept the currency, the Mexican peso, however, greatly overrated. Many sectors of the economy were privatized, which was not without corruption and self-enrichment of the ruling class.

During his tenure, the uprising of the Zapatistas (EZLN ), he was not reflected against the advice of staff by a massive military operation, but curbed by expelled the rebels in remote villages falls.

According to the Constitution could Salinas 1994 not run for another term as president. On August 25, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León was elected president. A few months earlier, was assassinated at a campaign rally in Tijuana on March 23, 1994, the PRI candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio. One month after Zedillo took office broke the currency together ( Tequila crisis ), which led to a massive economic crisis. This and the discovery of the machinations of Salinas ' brother Raul, who had earned a three-digit U.S. dollar millions of transactions with drug cartels and to cover his actions the Secretary-General of the ruling party PRI had by an attack can kill, meant that Salinas himself into abroad had to flee in a kind of self-imposed exile.