II and in 1942 agreed to the Bracero Program with the United States, permitting a specified number of temporary Mexican laborers into that country annually to work in mining, commercial agriculture, and related industries Conceived as a wartime measure, under pressure from the U.S government and commercial interests, the program was extended until 1965 Dispensing with much of the socialist rhetoric and orientation of the Cárdenas years, the Camacho administration slowed the pace of agrarian reform; installed the moderate Fidel Velásquez as head of the CTM (which he dominated until his death in 1997); established a state-run national bank (Nacional Financiera); loosened restrictions on foreign ownership of Mexican resources; expanded public works programs; and embarked on an export-led model of national development These trends continued under Camacho’s successors Miguel Alemán Valdés (1946–52), Adolfo Ruiz Cortines (1952–58), Adolfo López Mateos (1958–64), and Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964 –70) These were the years of the so-called Mexican Miracle, when relative social peace prevailed, state-led industrialization made major strides, and economic growth rates were the highest in the nation’s history The government’s principal source of foreign exchange derived from state control of the Mexican oil industry through PEMEX (Petróleos Mexicanos), established in 1938 In the 1960s many Mexicans grew increasingly disenchanted with the ruling party’s authoritarianism and corruption A major crack in the PRI’s ideological edifice came in the October 1968 Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City, on the eve of the country’s hosting of the Olympics, when the police and state security forces violently repressed popular demonstrations calling for greater democracy The PRI’s corruption, graft, nepotism, and violent repression of opposition mounted in the 1970s under presidents Luis Echeverría Alvarez (1970–76) and José López Portillo (1976–82) Oil revenues were at an alltime high, though much of the income was squandered in bribes, kickbacks, inflated salaries, and wasteful projects Numerous protest movements by workers, students, farmers, and others were violently suppressed, including a guerrilla movement in the state of Guerrero led by former schoolteacher Lucio Cabañas Government debt rose dramatically, with world financial markets flush with petrodollars and transnational financial institutions like the World Bank eager to extend low-interest loans to “developing” economies like Mexico’s In 1982, under President Miguel de International Monetary Fund (IMF) 209 la Madrid (1982–88), a combination of a global recession, low world oil prices, record-high debt ($80 billion in 1982), galloping inflation, and massive government expenditures led to the effective bankruptcy of the Mexican state Devaluation of the peso and a restructuring of the international debt followed, though in December 1988, when de la Madrid left office, foreign debt had risen to a record $105 billion, second only to Brazil’s As a consequence of these and related crises, the administrations of presidents Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–94) and Ernesto Zedillo (1994–2000) embarked on a major effort to rein in inflation and slash the size of the federal government through privatization of state-owned industries and pursuit of fiscal austerity measures recommended by the International Monetary Fund The combination of prolonged economic crises and erosion of the PRI’s ideological legitimacy led to the party’s defeat in the 2000 elections, though it continued to play a major role in the National Assembly and in state and local governments throughout Fox’s tenure, as it promised to play in the administration of PAN-affiliated President Felipe Calderón, elected in 2006 Further reading: Casteda, Jorge G The Mexican Shock: Its Meaning for the United States New York: New Press, 1995; Meyer, Michael C., William L Sherman, and Susan M Deeds The Course of Mexican History 8th ed New York: Oxford University Press, 2007; Middlebrook, Kevin J The Paradox of Revolution: Labor, the State, and Authoritarianism in Mexico Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995 Michael J Schroeder International Monetary Fund (IMF) Since its foundation at the end of World War II, the International Monetary Fund (IMF, or Fund) has been one of the world’s most powerful and controversial multilateral economic institutions Debates on the role of the IMF in the global economy have intensified in recent decades, especially from the 1990s Like its “sister institution,” the World Bank, the IMF was conceived at the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 and formally established the following year, its official mandate “to promote international monetary cooperation . . to facilitate the expansion and balanced growth of international