MEXICO

Introduction

For over eight decades stability was the feature that differentiated Mexico's political system from most of its Latin American neighbors and from Mexico's turbulent pre-1917 history. Unlike most other Third World countries, Mexico's post-1917 political atmosphere was relatively peaceful, power was transferred between leaders after regular, peaceful elections, and the military was thoroughly subordinate to civilians. This stability resulted from a highly effective and remarkably flexible semi-authoritarian regime dominated by a single party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). That model delivered impressive rates of economic growth, but also produced an economy plagued by severe economic inequality and massive poverty.

In July 2000 the PRI's long tenure was suddenly ended, marking the start of a new era in Mexican politics. The decline of the PRI's political hegemony had begun in the early 1980s when the Mexican economy narrowly averted bankruptcy. In response to a severe economic crisis, the PRI leadership began to dismantle the prevailing protectionist and statist economic model. Mexico opened its economy up to the world and began a transition to a neo-liberal economic political economy. It quickly became one of Latin America's most open economies. The hallmark of this new era was Mexico's entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, along with the United States and Canada.

The economic crisis of the 1980s (and the PRI's response to it) created new sources of political opposition, and the party's power was seriously threatened for the first time in seventy years. In 1988 the PRI resorted to massive fraud to avoid losing the presidency, and it increased the use of fraud to prevent the opposition from taking control of state legislatures. In January 1994 armed Mayan peasants shocked Mexico when they seized control of a town in southern Mexico. In March of that year the PRI's candidate for the presidency was assassinated while campaigning for office, the first such political murder since 1928. There were serious allegations that the murder had been ordered by members of the governing party, and the inability of the government to solve the crime added to a sense of crisis. The emergence of a strong political challenge to the PRI, the presence of an armed guerrilla movement, and a high-profile political murder destroyed the image of Mexico's system as stable and peaceful.

The political turmoil was alarming to Mexicans and Americans alike. The 1994 NAFTA accord only ratified a growing (but highly asymmetrical) interdependence between the U.S. and Mexican economies. Mexico and the United States share a two thousand-mile border, and Mexican immigration to the United States has long provided a steady stream of labor that is vital to U.S. economy. In addition, the United States is the chief consumer of Mexico's oil exports, and Mexico is now the United States's second biggest trading partner after Canada.

After two decades of political and economic crisis, the July 2000 victory of Vicente Fox, the first non-PRI president since 1917, provided new hope for Mexico's future, even as it raised new questions. Fox took power vowing to (1) shake up the Mexican system, (2) consolidate democracy, (3) crack down on corruption, and (4) improve relations with the United States. However, soon after winning Mexico's first truly democratic election, Fox discovered that the PRI's loss of the presidency did not give the new president a blank check. The PRI maintained strongholds of political power in a variety of federal and state political institutions. Our study of Mexico will raise several important questions. Has Mexico had a democratic transition, or is it still best viewed as a semi-authoritarian regime? Has Mexico's embrace of a neo-liberal economic model been a success, or has it merely exacerbated inequality and worsened poverty? Is Mexico likely to remain a close and trusted ally of the United States?

Major Geographic and Demographic Features

Mexico has a stunningly diverse geography that includes tropical rain forests, snow-capped volcanoes, and rich agricultural regions. Historically the two major mountain ranges that divide Mexico (the eastern and western Sierra Madres) have made transportation and communication very difficult. Only 12 percent of Mexico's land is arable, and the most productive agricultural areas are in northern Mexico, closer to the U.S. border. There, large and highly mechanized export farms provide much of America's winter produce. The proximity of Mexico's agricultural export to the U.S. market has been a major boost to Mexico's economic growth. Agriculture in southern Mexico is characterized by smaller farms and less efficient production. Mexico is well endowed in minerals and has major oil reserves.

With 101 million people, Mexico has the second largest population in Latin America (Brazil has the largest). Its population is racially quite diverse: about 60 percent are mestizos, people of mixed Spanish and indigenous blood, and another 10 percent are considered indigenous because they still speak an indigenous language. These people live primarily in the central and southern parts of Mexico. The largest indigenous groups are the Maya, located in Mexico's far south (along the Guatemalan border), and the Nahuatl, concentrated in central Mexico. Mexico's Caribbean coast also has a large population of African decent.

Nearly three-quarters of Mexico's population lives in urban settings, a relatively recent change. Mexico City has dwarfed all other Mexican cities-it now has about eighteen million people. Population growth has slowed with economic development, but Mexico's large population still strains its resources. As a result, Mexicans still migrate in very large numbers. Many have left the impoverished countryside for the cities, often leaving the poor south and heading to the wealthier north, especially to the factory towns along the U.S. border. On the other hand, a steady stream of Mexicans has migrated across the border to the United States.

Historical Development of the State

The history of the modern Mexican state can be viewed as a struggle between political order (which has almost always been achieved by authoritarian rulers) and political anarchy, which has periodically plagued Mexico. ¹

Period	Dates	Political Conditions
Colonial	1519–1810	Order
Independence	1810–1876	Anarchy
Porfiriato	1876–1910	Order
Mexican Revolution	1910–1917	Anarchy
The PRI Regime	1917+	Order

When the Spanish conquistador Hernàn Cortes arrived in Mexico in 1519 he encountered well-established and highly sophisticated indigenous civilizations. The country had long been home to peoples like the Maya, Aztecs, and the Toltecs, all of whom created relatively prosperous economies, impressive architecture, sophisticated agricultural methods, and powerful militaries.

Three years after their arrival, the Spanish conquerors defeated the Aztec military leader Cuauhtémoc, imprisoned its emperor Montezuma, destroyed Tenochitlàn-the impressive Aztec capital-and decimated the indigenous population. By the early seventeenth century the indigenous population had been reduced from about twenty-five million to under a million. The surviving indigenous people of Mexico, concentrated in central and southern Mexico, became a permanent underclass of slaves and landless peasants.

The Aztec empire was replaced by the equally hierarchical, authoritarian, and militaristic Spanish empire which created a legacy very different from that imparted to the U.S. by British colonialism. Mexico was the richest of Spain's colonial possession, and Spain ruled the distant colony with an iron first, sending a new viceroy to rule the colony every four years. Colonial viceroys were absolute dictators: armed with the terror of the Spanish Inquisition, they were able to stamp out most political dissent. Lacking any civilian oversight, rampant corruption thrived in the colonial administration.

Independence and Instability: The Search for Order

The struggle for independence can be viewed as a conflict over control of the state between the aristocracy loyal to Spain and the increasingly powerful and wealthy criollos (Mexican-born descendents of Spaniards). Though inspired by the French and American Revolutions, the Mexican independence movement was mostly a response to the sudden blow that Napoleon's invading armies delivered to Spain. When Spain adopted a progressive liberal constitution in 1820, conservative Mexican elites viewed independence as the only means to preserve order and the status quo. The leading independence rebels and political conservatives agreed that an independent Mexico, declared in 1821, would preserve the role of the Catholic Church and would implement a constitutional monarchy, with a European at the head. Mexico's War of Independence lasted eleven years and cost six hundred thousand lives.

Mexico's independence was dominated by political conservatives. As a result, independence did nothing to alleviate the poverty of Mexico's indigenous people and its large mestizo (mixed race) population. Indeed, the violence of the war of independence, and the elimination of the minimal protections by the Spanish Crown, worsened their plight. The power of large landholders, or latifundistas, grew with independence, and the newly independent Mexico grew more economically disparate and politically unstable. Much of the turmoil and political chaos that plagued Mexico over the next half-century was caused by a dispute between conservative monarchists and more liberal republicans. With the end of Spanish rule and the strong centralized government of the viceroy, Mexico was dominated by local military strongmen, known as caciques. Mexico's weak central state could not impose its authority.

Independent Mexico's first leader, Colonel Agustín de Iturbide, had himself crowned emperor in 1822 but was overthrown by General Antonio López de Santa Ana (Mexico's first in a series of caudillos, national military strongmen) and executed two years later. Santa Ana dominated the politics of Mexico over the next thirty years, but despite his considerable power he was unable to impose his authority over local caciques, or to prevent the secession of Texas in 1835. The impotence of a fragmented Mexico became even more apparent in the 1840s when a rising imperial power, the United States, defeated Mexico during the Mexican-American War (1846), which resulted in Mexico's loss of half its territory (California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas) to the United States. In the aftermath of the defeat, Mexico's weakened government faced a massive uprising, known as The War of the Castes, by its indigenous Mayan population in the south. It took several years of fighting to subdue the rebellion.

Over the next several decades Mexican liberals, led by a Zapotec Indian, Benito Juarez, attempted to centralize, modernize, and secularize Mexico. Juarez, who occupied the presidency on three separate occasions, imposed a fairly progressive constitution in 1857, and is today considered one of Mexico's first proponents of democracy. However, Juarez was unable to bring stability to Mexico. In 1864 Mexican conservatives, backed by French troops, imposed an ill-fated and short-lived monarchy ruled by an Austrian emperor, Maximilien. Maximilien was captured and executed in 1867. Juarez regained power, but his reforms alienated Mexican conservatives, and Mexico soon succumbed to a long dictatorship.

The Porfiriato: Economic Liberalism and Political Authoritarianism

From 1876 to 1910 Mexican politics was dominated by Porfirio Díaz, a general who had backed the liberal reforms of Juarez and fought to expel the French-imposed monarchy. Díaz was elected to power in 1876, and repeatedly had himself reelected until 1910. Díaz ruled Mexico with an iron fist, imposing a brutal authoritarian regime (known as the porfiriato), which gave Mexico its first taste of stability since independence. Díaz was also responsible for Mexico's first real economic development and was the first Mexican ruler to impose the power of the state on remote areas.

The Revolution

The Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) can be viewed as a struggle between two different groups attempting to seize control of the state. The first group included middle-class Mexicans resisting the dictatorship of Díaz. The second group contained radical social reformers who sought, among other things, agrarian reform.

In the first phase of the Revolution, middle-class political reformers, led by landowner Francisco Madero, defeated the Díaz dictatorship. Madero's victory promised democratic reforms and minimal economic change. The second phase of the Revolution involved a struggle between these political reformers and advocates of radical socioeconomic change. The most famous revolutionary advocate of the poor was Emiliano Zapata, a young mestizo peasant leader. Zapata organized a peasant army in Morelos, south of Mexico City, to push for agrarian reform. In the north of Mexico Francisco (Pancho) Villa had organized an army of peasants and small farmers.

The often contradictory aspects of the Mexican Revolution help explain why it was so protracted and so bloody: Mexico soon descended into political chaos in which armed bands led by regional "caciques" fought each other over a period of seven years. About 1.5 million Mexicans (about 7 percent of the total population) died in the conflict, and thousands more fled north to the United States. Order was only restored in 1916, under the leadership of a northern governor, Venustiano Carranza. Carranza not only defeated supporters who wanted a return to dictatorship, but he also defeated Zapata and Villa, the more radical voices of the Revolution.

The Constitution of 1917 reflected some of the contradictions of the Mexican Revolution. The document was written not by peasants and workers, but by middle-class mestizo professionals who had suffered under the Díaz dictatorship. Some of their values were largely "liberal," explaining provisions in the Constitution that called for regular elections as well as harsh measures to weaken the Catholic Church. The Constitution sought to prevent the reemergence of a dictatorship by devolving political power to Mexico's states, by adopting federalism, and by barring presidents and other elected leaders from reelection. Reflecting the power of the emerging mestizo class and the role played by indigenous Mexicans in unseating the dictatorship, the 1917 Constitution included elaborate protection for indigenous communal lands and a call for land reform. The Constitution was also a nationalist document that prohibited foreign ownership of Mexican land or mineral rights.

Although Carranza sucessfully seized power and fostered a new Constitution, he was unable to implement many of the reforms or to stem Mexico's endemic political violence. His government was responsible for the murder of Zapata in 1919, and Carranza was himself assassinated by political opponents in 1920.

Mexico's next two elected presidents, Alvaro Obregón (1920-24) and Plutarco Elias Calles (1924-28), finally put an end to the political bloodshed and developed a political system capable of maintaining order. Obregón promoted trade unions but brought them under control of the state. He also promoted land reform while tolerating the presence of large haciendas. He managed to gain the support and recognition of the United States, which had feared the Revolution as a socialist experiment. Most significant, he purged the army and weakened the revolutionary generals who had continued to meddle in politics. Calles consolidated state power by imposing the first income tax and investing in education and infrastructure. He vigorously enforced the Constitution's limit on the power of the Catholic Church. The Church was a major landowner, and its support for the dictatorship of Díaz and the enemies of the Revolution made it a prime target for reform. Religious processions were banned, clergy could not appear in public in religious garb, the Church could not own any property, and control over education was given to the state.

When Calles left power, he also left Mexico his most enduring legacy: the National Revolutionary Party, which was later renamed the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). From the outset the PRI was conceived as a party of power and as a party of the state. Its colors (red, white, and green) were the colors of the Mexican flag. Its goal was to encompass all those who supported the Revolution, and its members thus ranged from socialists to liberals. Moreover, it was designed to incorporate and co-opt the most important organizations in Mexican society, starting with the army. The PRI's main purpose was to end political violence by controlling the political system and the process of presidential succession. After decades of instability and violence, the Revolution's leaders brought Mexico an unprecedented period of political peace.

The PRI in Power, 1917-2000: Stability Achieved

For decades the PRI provided Mexico the much desired political stability that its founders had sought. Under the PRI, Mexico has held national elections every six years, and new presidents have taken power without violence or military intervention. The PRI regime featured a strong president, directly elected for a single six-year term. Though not part of the 1917 Constitution, PRI presidents claimed the power to name their successors by officially designating the PRI candidate for the presidency, and for over eighty years no official PRI candidate ever lost a presidential election. During most of the PRI's tenure in office, the Mexican presidency enjoyed the reverence and aloofness of monarchical heads of state, while possessing far more power than the typical democratic president. Most important, until 2000, Mexican presidents controlled the vast machinery of the PRI and used the state to dispense patronage. Unlike U.S. presidents, they faced no effective check on their power from the legislature, judiciary, or state governments, all of which were controlled by the PRI.

Under the PRI, regular elections were held for national, state, and local offices, and opposition parties actively contested these elections. During most of this period, there was no formal censorship of the press, and Mexicans were free to voice their opinions and to criticize the government. Mexicans were free to live where they wanted and they were living according to their Constitution, as a democratic state.

But under the surface the Mexican regime had clear authoritarian tendencies. The PRI held an inordinate amount of power. It won every presidential election between 1917 and 2000, and during that time won the vast majority of seats in the legislature and at the state and local level. The PRI dominated major trade unions and peasant organizations. Through its control of the state, the PRI dominated major pieces of the economy, including Mexico's vast oil wealth. The PRI became experts at co-opting possible sources of opposition, including the press and Mexico's weak opposition parties. Unlike many authoritarian regimes, the PRI leaders did not often need to revert to harsh repression, but when necessary the regime used a variety of tactics to stifle the opposition. Its most notorious tactic was the selective use of electoral fraud in order to preserve the PRI's political dominance, a tactic that was employed increasingly in the 1970s and 1980s as the PRI's grip on power began to erode.

Since the Mexican Revolution scholars have struggled to characterize the Mexican regime. It is perhaps most accurate to view Mexico under the PRI as an authoritarian regime dominated by a single political party, but one that afforded far more civil liberties than its authoritarian counterparts elsewhere. Mexico held regular elections (though not always free and fair), tolerated and even encouraged political parties (although those parties only began to win office in the 1980s), and formally protected basic civil liberties. Compared with almost any other authoritarian regime, human rights abuses were minimal. The PRI maintained its power almost exclusively through cooptation, inclusion, and corruption. Its unparalleled success in these methods meant that it didn't often need to resort to brute repression. The Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa thus viewed the PRI regime as the "Perfect Dictatorship." The nature of Mexico's regime is again uncertain since the PRI lost power at the federal level in 2000.

The Slow Erosion of PRI Power: 1980-2000

By the early 1980s the vaunted stability of the Mexican regime was called into question by a series of interrelated economic and political challenges to PRI rule. The economic crisis of the 1980s unleashed numerous challenges to the PRI's political hegemony. The conservative opposition in northern Mexico, long an advocate of free-market economic policies, began seriously to contest local and state elections. The PRI was then forced to revert to ever-increasing and ever-more overt electoral fraud to deny power to the opposition. The watershed election of July 2000 ended the PRI's seventy-one-year-old control of the presidency. Vicente Fox, candidate of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), handily defeated Francisco Labastida of the PRI, despite an expensive and elaborate PRI campaign.