Jesus Silva-Herzog Flores

Jesús Silva-Herzog Flores (Mexico City, May 8, 1935 - Ibidem, March 6, 2017) was an economist, academic and politician Mexican affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Family

He was the son of Jesús Silva Herzog, who was one of the most renowned economists in the academic and public spheres of the country. He had three children: María Teresa, Eugenia and the professor and political analyst Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez.

Career

Graduated from the Faculty of Economics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, he obtained a master's degree in the same discipline at Yale University. He was a professor-researcher at UNAM and the College of Mexico, as well as founding director of the Institute of the National Housing Fund for Workers (Infonavit), an official at the Bank of Mexico and undersecretary of the Treasury (1979-1982).

Secretary of Finance and Public Credit

At the peak of his political career, he served as Secretary of the Treasury during one of the most serious economic crises in Mexican history, at the end of José López Portillo's government and during the first half of Miguel de la Madrid's..

Silva-Herzog was appointed Secretary of the Treasury in March 1982 at the suggestion of the then official presidential candidate Miguel de la Madrid, who kept him in that position after assuming the presidency. Due to the serious economic and financial situation that the country was going through, and the negotiations that the Secretary consequently had to carry out with the creditors and the International Monetary Fund, Silva-Herzog achieved international notoriety, being appointed in 1983 as the "Minister of Finance of the year" by Euromoney magazine.

During De la Madrid's presidency, Silva-Herzog had several disagreements with the then Secretary of Programming and Budget, Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Tension reached its highest point in 1986, after a further collapse in international oil prices (from approximately $30 per barrel in 1985 to a low of $10.42 per barrel in March 1986) threatened to place once again the Mexican economy is on the brink of collapse. In response, Salinas de Gortari expressed that it was more convenient for the country to adhere to the Baker Plan (so called because it was proposed and promoted by the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, James Baker), according to which highly indebted countries, like Mexico, modest economic growth to pay their debt; Silva-Herzog, on the other hand, adhered to IMF directives, which called for an induced recession of the economy.

That same year, Silva-Herzog presented to the presidential cabinet an agreement that he had reached with the IMF, which demanded greater austerity in public spending, greater personnel cuts and another induced recession; This agreement was rejected by the cabinet as it was considered too harsh. In protest, Silva-Herzog submitted his resignation in June 1986. This was considered a political victory for Salinas de Gortari, given that Gustavo Petricioli, an ally of Salinas, was appointed as Silva-Herzog's successor at the head of the Treasury at the same time. that another of his allies, the then Undersecretary of Planning and Budgetary Control Pedro Aspe, would join as a key figure in the negotiations with the IMF. In this way, Salinas de Gortari took full control of the national economic strategy.

Subsequent activity

In July 1987, during a work tour that the then National President of the PRI, Jorge de la Vega Domínguez, carried out in San Luis Potosí, the teaching sector of said city "uncovered" to Silva-Herzog, asking the party leader to take into account the former Secretary of the Treasury to be part of the PRI candidates for the 1988 presidential elections. The dissident Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, who had left the PRI a few months earlier, spoke in good terms about an eventual presidential candidacy for Silva-Herzog, whom he referred to as "a man in whom I see many qualities." Despite the momentary media surprise due to the "uncovering" de Silva-Herzog, said pre-candidacy never materialized, and finally the former Secretary of the Treasury would not even appear among the "six distinguished PRI members" to compete for the party's presidential candidacy a few months later.

Later, he was Mexico's ambassador to Spain and Secretary of Tourism during the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, as well as ambassador to the United States under Ernesto Zedillo. In the academic field, from 1989 to 1991, he was director of the Center for Latin American Monetary Studies (CEMLA).

In 2000, he was the candidate of his party (the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI) for the head of government of the Federal District and in that race he obtained one million votes, behind the candidate of the Alliance for Change (PAN- PVEM) Santiago Creel and the winner of the elections, the candidate of the PRD-PT-Convergencia-PSN-PAS-PCD, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.