In line with Counterpunch's corrective, via MexFiles, to the nauseatingly hagiographic portrayals of Ronald Reagan these days - the excellent recent pieces in The Real News (search "Reagan") another exception - here's one oft-forgotten fun fact on Reagan and Mexico:
Who was the first to congratulate Carlos Salinas after the highly fraudulent presidential election of 1988, calling personally to recognize the outcome?
Reagan was.
Yes, despite highly substantiated claims of fraud, including the embarrassingly blatant "collapse" of the new and vaunted computerized voting system, as well as the brutal murder of opponents of the regime on the eve of the election, Reagan didn't even bother to hear the opposition out - and, lest we forget, that included both the left and right, including the conservative PAN - yet immediately gave aid and comfort, as it were, to what was when all is said and done an increasingly brutal and dictatorial regime that did all it could to cover up that it had either lost the election, or certainly won it by less than 50 percent (that's what Manuel Camacho told me, at least, but fact remains we'll never know).
I won't jump too far into the pitfalls of counter factual history here, but when it comes to Mexico's democratization process, it seems fair to me to posit that Reagan by congratulating Salinas that very night, did his part to kick the feet under Mexico's democracy promoters.
