ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the main directions of the Salinas administration's agricultural modernization strategy within the context of the progression of Mexican agrarian policy since the onset of the debt crisis in 1982. Under the de la Madrid administration, Mexico made considerable progress in recovery from the immediate strictures of the debt crisis, as a result of drastic cuts in public expenditure and the government's willingness to comply with international pressures for trade liberalization and to initiate innovative debt-restructuring strategies. The new anticorruption measures were paralleled by a major restructuring of Banco Nacional de Crédito Rural (BANRURAL) as a normal banking institution after two decades of paternalistically supervising deficit production. The significant step toward the abolition of the social property established by the revolution underscores the government's determination to remove a primary obstacle to increased domestic and foreign investment in Mexican agriculture.
