The Party Is Over : Part 5

Bordering On Chaos: Mexico's Roller-Coaster Journey to Prosperity
by Andres Oppenheimer

(Page 5 of 5)

Even the most serious-looking guests - Rizzo and fellow governors Manlio Fabio Beltrones of the northern state of Sonora, Otto Granados of the central state of Aguascalientes, and Rubé,n Figueroa of the southern state of Guerrero, who were sitting with their wives in the back of the room - soon joined in the dancing. The presidential couple danced to five songs in a row, laughing and joking easily with the other couples between songs.

At two minutes to midnight, a smiling Salinas stood up from his chair and looked at his digital watch, waiting to kick off the new year. The whole room exploded in laughter when a waiter behind him, who had been given the go-ahead by the president to uncork an extra large bottle of champagne, found himself unable to do the job. The man was fighting with the cork, growing increasingly nervous as the seconds went by and midnight came closer. hen he finally got the cork to fly in the air, everybody applauded, and the buoyant crowd began to count backward. "Diez, nueve, ocho . . .," they chanted, champagne glasses in hand. At the count of zero, everybody lifted their cups and - amid shouts of "Viva México!" - toasted right and left wishing everybody a good year, kissing one another on the cheeks and embracing their children.

It was nearly two A.M., and Salinas was dancing a Mexican corrido with his daughter, when a somber-looking presidential aide entered the room. The man walked straight to the dance floor, whispered something in Salinas's ear, and handed him a typewritten card. Still smiling, the president stood up and left the room. He had to take a phone call, he told his wife. General Antonio Riviello, the Defense minister, had an urgent message. He would come right back.

Salinas came back five minutes later. His face had changed, and so had Mexico. A near breathless Defense minister had gotten the president out of his New Year's party to tell him there had just been a guerilla uprising in the remote southern state of Chiapas. More than two thousand Mayan Indians, carrying everything from machetes to AK-47 rifles, had taken the city of San Cristóbal de as Casas shortly after midnight and were reported to have also seized the nearby cities of Ocosingo, Altamirano, and Las Margaritas. They were calling themselves an Indian army - the Zapatista National Liberation Army - and were vowing to redress five hundred years of white exploitation of the Mayas.

Whoever the Zapatistas were, they were threatening to march straight to Mexico City to topple the government. As absurd as that sounded, Salinas knew this was serious trouble. There had been dozens of deaths, perhaps hundreds. The reports were still sketchy because top military officers in Chiapas were out celebrating the New Year. The army commander in Chiapas had gone with his family to visit the ruins of Palenque and had not yet been located. The Interior minister, a former governor of Chiapas, was vacationing somewhere near the rebel-held area and had not been reached. But there had been dozens of ca s from lower-level officials and private citizens in the area. A shaken Salinas asked for an update later that night and went back to the party.

It a seemed like a bad joke. Mexico had not had a massive peasant revolt since the beginning of the century and had been virtually free of guerrilla violence over the past two decades. All potential rebel groups - including those in Chiapas - were thoroughly infiltrated by government security agents or had been bought out. It sounded weird, absurd, almost impossible.

When Salinas reentered the room, the crowd on the dance floor had doubled, and the euphoria had grown accordingly. The president tried his best to dance and posed for some guests who had brought their video cameras. But minutes later, at about 2:10 A.M., the presidential aide walked into the room and interrupted the president once again - it was Interior minister Patrocinio Gonza ez Blanco Garrido on the phone. Salinas excused himself and left the room. He would not come back.

"The laughter in the room soon began to die down," recalls another state governor who attended the party. "Half an hour later, there was a feeling of awkwardness in the air as we prepared to leave. We were waiting for the president to say good-bye, but he was nowhere to be seen." At about 2:30 A.M., some people began to leave. Soon the band stopped playing. The last guests left in silence.

A few days later, a Mexico City daily carried a cartoon showing Salinas in his tuxedo, sporting a big smile, raising his cup of champagne to celebrate the New Year - as a bullet coming from a window was about to break his glass in pieces. Other cartoonists evoked images of the 1959 Cuban revolution, when Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista had learned of Fide Castro's guerrillas' advance on the city while celebrating the New Year at a lavish party in the presidential palace and had left the country immediately. Like Batista's relatives, Salinas's wife, Cecilia, and their children had taken off early January 1 for the United States. Presidential aides said they had left on a long-planned skiing trip, but in light of the unprecedented events of the day, many Mexicans found that hard to believe. The Zapatista rebellion had shattered Mexico's illusions of peace and stability . The party was over.

© 1999 by Andres Oppenheimer

About the Author

Andres Oppenheimer is a Latin American correspondent for the Miami Herald and the author of the widely praised book Castro's Final Hour. In 1987 he was co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Iran-Contra scandal. He lives in Mexico City and Miami.