Given the background of sweeping transformations in Latin America, the Mexican case is emblematic of the reach but also the limits of the ongoing changes.
Modern Mexico has a complex original history. It is the outcome of various major factors each with a specific weight: the glorious past of the pre-Columbian civilisations, Spanish colonisation, the early-twentieth-century revolution with its myths and taboos and its difficult
relations with its powerful northern neighbour.
All of these factors are present in the specific make-up of the country and condition the ongoing deep changes to both economic and political systems.
Of course this process is not only found in Mexico. With varying degrees of success, all Latin American countries are tackling modernisation processes begun in the 1990s, following the deep crisis of the 1980s. This dramatic crisis at least brought a turning point as regards the exhausted development model based on the state as the only driving force for development and a culture with protectionism and subsidy as the ground rules for the economy and society.
Mexico arguably had the most radical version of this model: a quasi single party system lasting more than 60 years. The party lived in symbiosis with the state and exercised vertical control over the unions (virtually a single union), and all aspects of social, economic and cultural life. Now evidently dated and historically obsolete, this model was the focus of interest for observers and experts who noted how it managed to channel the social pressures generated at the base when vertical control was exercised by the one-party state over society. In practice for decades there was no alternative to the existing model in Mexico, because it successfully satisfied the essential needs of society without resorting to particularly coercive methods.
The PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) build up its ideology from a revolutionary legacy with all its progressive (or presumably such) dogmas: secularisation, nationalism, statism, agrarianism, and trade unionism. The PRI called for permanent revolution on the basis of these key concepts, or rather it ‘institutionalised the revolution’, as the party name suggests in what are rather contradictory terms for Europeans.
In the 1980s the external debt crisis forced restraints on public finances and a consequent gradual revision of the Mexican political model. At the same time the growing globalisation highlighted the need for lasting economic efficiency to bring to an end the socialist system and usher in the ‘single liberal model’.
To this background a group of young Us-educated technocrats, permeated with the new dominant ideology, took over the driving seat in the PRI. Their objective was the modernisation of the country. Thus the lukewarm reforms under the presidency of Miguel de Madrid (1982-1988) were followed by the presidency of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994), the leader of this reformist movement.
The Salinas presidency dealt devastating blows to all the pillars of the revolution: secularisation (through the recognition of the Catholic Church and the signing of a concordat with the Vatican); agrarianism (the end of the distribution of land for the peasants); trade unionism (the umbilical cord between state and the CTM, the only major union, was cut, the emergence of conflicts over productivity and workers rights); statism (reforms of the state apparatus); nationalism (the end of the love-hate relationship with the United States by joining NAFTA).
Salinas, however, was unable or reluctant to complete modernisation by also reforming the party. This shortcoming, combined with the incredible corruption of the president and his clan, his possible involvement in the ‘great mysteries’ of his presidency (the deaths of Posadas, Colosio and Ruiz Massieu) led to the downfall and exile of the man who had had the courage to make vital decisions for the future of his country. The signs of a decay in the Pri political model had already emerged in the controversial election of Salinas in 1988, contrasted by the personal success of Cuauthémoc Cárdenas, the leader of the PRD (Partido de la Revolución Democrática). In the following years, the PAN (Partido de Acción Nacional) and the PRD obtained significant breakthroughs in various state political elections. Then the 1994 presidential elections seemed to consolidate the monopoly of the PRI, although they did spell out the end of the quasi singleparty state. The most recent elections of 6 July, dealt the final blow.
At stake in the elections were 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 32 of the 128 seats in the Senate, as well as 6 governor’s posts (in the states of Campeche, Colima, Nuevo León, Querétaro, San Luís Protosí and Sonora), and the highly significant election of the mayor of the Federal District of Mexico City. The latter vote was particularly emblematic of the ongoing changes in Mexico. A city of enormous dimensions containing ten per cent of the population and the centre of the political, economic and cultural life of the country, Mexico City had never previously had a directly elected mayor. An automatic member of the government, the mayor used to be appointed directly by the president – just one of the anomalies in the Mexican political system.
The direct election of the Mexico City mayor had become one of the favourite issues with the opposition. They finally managed to get the election held for the first time in conjunction with the legislative elections of July 1997.
The electoral campaign already had enormous political significance, since for the first time in its history, the PRI was in danger of having its parliamentary majority dramatically cut. But the campaign became even more significant when the main opposition leader, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas decided to stand for mayor of the Federal District. He had already run the president close in the 1988 presidential elections and at that time won a majority in the capital.
The polls predicted a defeat for the PRI, but the actual outcome was something of a rout. In the legislative elections the PRI received 37.64 per cent of the vote (239 seats), thus losing its absolute majority in the lower chamber for the first time. The PAN received 26.15 percent (122 seats) and the PRD 24.79 per cent (124 seats). The two minority parties Partido del Trabajo and the Partito Verde Ecologista de México – won the remaining 15 seats.
In the Senate elections there was a similar voting pattern but because of the partial nature of the elections the PRI held on to its absolute majority.
As concerns the election of the mayor of Mexico City, the PRI suffered a considerable setback. Cárdenas was elected with 47.79 per cent of the votes, while the government candidate, Alfredo del Mazo, only received 25.56 per cent and the PAN candidate, Carlos Castillo Peraza, 15.93 per cent. The PRD also won the absolute majority of seats in the Federal District legislative assembly (38 out of 66). This is a remarkably significant result, if we bear in mind the factors outlined at the beginning of the article. Cárdenas’ political future had seemed uncertain after the heavy electoral defeat in 1994. But he managed to strengthen his position as opposition leader and in the coming years he will be able to take on the PRi in his new role as mayor of the Federal District. This kind of cohabitation is a complete novelty for Mexico, used to political monopoly. Cárdenas’ task will not be easy given the range of problems in the mega-metropolis (crime, social issues, pollution, housing shortage, etc.) and the city’s financial dependence on central power, which can thus curb his room for manoeuvre. But if Cárrdenas is even only moderately successful in his new job, he will be in an ideal position to become the first president in the post-Pri era after the elections planned for the year 2000.
As regards the election of governors, the Pri won in four out of six states, but lost in the two most significant states Querétaro and Nuevo León – where the PAN was victorious.
This means that in addition to having more than half of the parliamentary seats, the former opposition also governs the regions with more than half of the total Mexican population.
This set of results marks the end of the PRi single-party politics and the system it was based on.Only in the coming years will it be possible to see the new balances in the Mexican political system, but it is now a fact that the turnaround after sixty years of absolute PRI rule would
seem to be irreversible.
This does not necessarily mean that the PRI will inevitably lose its hold on power. A three-party system has now emerged, but the scenario of a pact between the PAN, with its liberal ideology, and the PRD, a party still appealing to the revolutionary past, does not seem destined to last.
The role of the previously virtually irrelevant parliament, now acquires a new significance in the political context. The two chambers become a forum for political debate and conflict, while until the last elections, they where only a mouthpiece for the decisions taken by the president and the party.
The opposition managed to leave aside its ideological differences in order to elect the first non-PRi prime minister. In September, President Zedillo made the traditional speech to the nation before parliament. For the first time the presidential speech was not made to a chamber of Pri yes-men, and the reply from the prime minister was critical, instead of the obsequious responses of the past. Although this would seem normal practice in countries used to democracy, in Mexico it took on the dramatic tones of a psychodrama in the days running up to the first parliamentary session. The dinosaurs of the PRI couldn’t bring themselves to contemplate a critical reply to the president’s speech.
Another vital factor in this context of change has been the reforms introduced to the system of monitoring the vote, which was once both cause and effect in the result. For the first time in decades the electoral results were not called into question by other political forces. This was due to the severing of the relationship between the government and the IFE (Federal Electoral Institute), the body appointed to monitor and count the vote.
What then are the foreseeable political scenarios?
The PRi must adapt to being just another party and concentrate on a renewal, by breaking definitively with the past and defining once and for all its reference values to replace its old ideological pillars.
There is a good chance there will be individual defections and perhaps even breakaway groups. President Zedillo may play a key part, if he decides not to sit back and glory in the symbolic honorary role of former Mexican presidents, but throws himself into renewing the party which he symbolises.
Another scenario has been hinted at by what happened in the last PRI national congress in September 1996. The congress voted to replace the ‘social liberalism’adopted in 1992 with ‘revolutionary nationalism’ as the main inspiration of the party. The congress also decided that candidates for the presidency, governors and senators could only be selected from people who had been elected. This measure suggested a revenge by the old party apparatus on the ‘young lions’ of the PRI (in keeping with this rule, neither Salinas nor Zedillo could have been candidates).
If this tendency carries the day, the PRI might well shun modernisation and take refuge in the traditional model inspired by populism, thus running the risk of becoming a party dominated by ‘old Mexico’, increasingly room far removed from the more developed regions of the country (the PAN-controlled North and the PRD-controlled DF).
But in all this speculation it must not be forgotten that the Pri is still the leading Mexican party, even though it has lost its absolute majority.
The PRD emerged from the elections as the second party, when in previous years it had been in danger of collapsing due o the continuous breakaways and internal struggles. Cárdenas symbolises the crossing of the desert, since he strengthened his position as a possible alternative to the PRI after a time when his political future was in doubt.
The PRD’s problem is that its support comes from two contrasting areas: on one hand, the radical electorate, the left in Mexican terms (i.e. associated with the revolutionary legacy) and, on the other, the moderates who have only recently turned to the PRD to punish the mistakes of the PRI. But PRI could woo these floating votes back, if it proved capable of completing modernisation, and if the radical elements came to dominate the PRD.
The other major problem for the PRD is its weakness outside the capital and the central states.
In fact the fate of the PRI and the PRD are joined by the same double thread. Both parties have a radical populist wing and a more liberal wing. In the new pluralist scene this situation can’t be sustained in the long-term without damaging the strength of the party. Significantly, over sixty per cent of votes still go to parties whose main ideological reference is the early-twentieth-century revolution. This paradox reveals the strength of symbols in Mexican politics and society.
Seemingly destined to become the second party in the country, the PAN is the expression of the business-oriented players and a liberal ideology. Its main power base is the entrepreneurial classes in the northern states. But its rise has slowed down and it is now paying the price for the economic forms enacted by the Pri technocrats, which stripped the economic programme of its meaning. Moreover, the PAN has been unable to make inroads outside the northern states, its traditional stronghold.
There are thus many unknown factors in the political future of Mexico. What seems unlikely is a return to the past in terms of economic reforms. Although the fashionable party, the PRD, is critical of liberalism, it does not seem to have an alternative economic recipe.
Among the inevitable choices were the abandoning of the central state model and the way forward implicit in NAFTA membership. Over and above ideological tags, these moves are an objective rejection of the revolutionary legacy.
In this context a number of other crucial factors emerge for the future of the country:
- – the need to work out a new social model enabling greater sections of the population to benefit from the reforms, so far only limited to a few strata of society.
– A crack-down on political corruption and drug traffic. Mexico is being transformed from a transit country for drug traffic into a world producer of cocaine and heroin. The consequences for public order and the morality of the social and political system have been traumatic in a country no longer with any reference points from the previous system of power.
– The revival of the previously unfruitful dialogue with the guerrilla movements. These movements came into being in Mexico just when similar movements were disappearing in the rest of Latin America. The dialogue with the EZLN (the Zapatists) has not yielded concrete results and the Popular Revolutionary Army (the Ejército Popular Revolucionario – EPR) is a force to contend with in the state of Guerrero. The basic problem is the need to involve the less developed areas in the modernisation taking place in the rest of the country. The latest tragic episodes in Chiapas give a measure of the complexity of the problem.
– On the international scene, Mexico has the chance to counterbalance its clearly pro-North American stance by building relations in other directions: the ongoing talks with the European Union and the dialogue with MERCOSUR seem to open up encouraging prospects in this sense.
In conclusion, Mexico is facing a complex transformation process full of risks and possible crises. The Mexican case is particularly emblematic in the Latin American context. It is a country of transit between Latin America and the United States with a surprising combination of both First- and Third World elements and the problems of both North and South.
Seen by some as a model of political stability, by others as ‘democratic tyranny’, a model of the benefactor-state or an inefficient corrupt state, Mexico has always been an important paradigm for other Latin American countries.
This aspect will certainly not diminish in the near future. Mexico will continue to attract the attention of experts and observers interested in the development of Latin American societies.