ABSTRACT
Mexican president Miguel de la Madrid faces his greatest foreign policy challenge in Central America. De la Madrid and his foreign policy team must struggle with the contradictions in Mexico's national interests in the region--contradictions brought into sharp relief by the policies of his predecessor, Jose Lopez Portillo. During the 1960s and 1970s, Mexico sought to increase its economic ties with Central America, but its political relations in the region remained low-key. Mexico's traditional adherence to nonintervention inhibited Mexican leaders from criticizing the Mexican dictatorships while its progressive image made Mexican leaders cautious about aligning too closely with Central American governments. The contradictions in Mexico's Central American policies can be understood in terms of : the conflicting demands on foreign policy makers, the crisis of the Mexican system, the decreasing ability of leaders to use effectively revolutionary rhetoric in legitimizing the system, and the tensions engendered by the nation's economic dependency on the United States.
