Values in Conflict: Developing Countries as Social Laboratories
Like a father welcoming home his prodigal son, Jacques de Larosiere, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, in a recent address at the annual meeting of the Fund singled out Mexico as a model of correct policy in dealing with the international debt crisis. Praising the austerity program adopted by the newly elected government of President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado in December 1982, Larosiere said that the Mexican problem had been dealt with "in a very efficient way, not only by the creditors and the financiers, but more importantly, by the Mexican authorities and the Mexican people."' During the same meeting, Jesus Silva Herzog, Mexico's Secretary of Finance and Public Credit, an erstwhile radical economist, was chosen by Euromoney magazine as "Finance Minister of the Year," and feted with a champagne party for bankers and financiers in Washington. Silva Herzog modestly remarked that Mexico's economic performance undoubtedly pleased foreign bankers more than it did Mexican housewives, but he promised that under the belt-tightening program things would get better by next year.2 Antonio Ortiz Mena, president of the Inter-American Development Bank, also congratulated Mexico on having selected the "only way" to cope with its $80 billion external debt and return to a path of sustained