Editing Carlos Salinas de Gortari (section)

====Church–State relations====
{{See|History of the Catholic Church in Mexico#Salinas, the Vatican, and Reform of the Constitution}}
The Catholic Church and the Mexican government has had a historically fraught relationship, with restrictions on the church's role in national life.  In the 1980s, the church saw electoral participation reform and fighting electoral fraud as an issue. Sometime during the presidential campaign, the PRI had indicated to the Church that a Salinas victory would be beneficial to the Church. It has been considered a quid pro quo agreement.<ref>Tangeman, ''Mexico at the Crossroads'', see esp. chapter 5, "Salinismo, the Church, and Quid Pro Quo".</ref>
A delegation of the leadership of the episcopal hierarchy attended the inauguration of Salinas on 1 December 1988.<ref>Tangeman, ''Mexico at the Crossroads'' p. 71-72.</ref> After the 1988 election the Mexican bishops did not make public statements about the election results. Behind the scenes the apostolic delegate to Mexico, the Vatican's representative, Mexican bishops, and government officials had a series of secret meetings that hammered out the outlines of a new Church-State relationship. In his inaugural address, Salinas de Gortari announced a program to "modernize" Mexico via structural transformation. "The modern state is a state which ... maintains transparency and updates its relation with political parties, entrepreneurial groups, and the church."<ref name=Blancarte1993/> His declaration was more an articulation of the direction of change, but not list of specifics.

The implementation of reforms entailed amending the 1917 constitution, but before that overcoming opposition on the Left but also in the Catholic Church itself.<ref>Blancarte, "Recent Changes in Church-State Relations in Mexico", p. 2.</ref> After considerable debate, the Mexican legislature voted for fundamental revisions in Church-State policy.<ref name="Jorge A. Vargas 1998"/><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Vargas |first1=Jorge |title=Mexico's Legal Revolution: An Appraisal of Its Recent Constitutional Changes, 1988-1995 |journal=Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law |date=21 October 2014 |volume=25 |issue=3 |pages=497 |url=https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/gjicl/vol25/iss3/5/ }}</ref>