Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico

University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States

The Revolution Is Dead. "Viva la revolucin!:" The Place of the Mexican Revolution in the Era
of Globalization
Author(s): Vincent T. Gawronski
Source: Mexican Studies / Estudios Mexicanos, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Summer, 2002), pp. 363-397
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the University of California Institute for Mexico
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The Revolution is Dead.
iViva
la revoluciont:
The Place of the Mexican Revolution
in the Era of Globalization
Vincent T. Gawronski
Birmingham-Southern College
Mexicans have
long
cherished their
revolutionary heritage,
but where does the
Mexican Revolution now reside in collective
memory,
and does the idea of the
Revolution still have
any legitimating power?
And what has been the
relationship
between the PRI's
long sequence
of
legitimacy
crises and the Mexican Revolu-
tion? Until
procedural democracy provides significant
substantive and
psycho-
logical benefits,
the recent democratic turn will not
fully supplant
Mexico's tra-
ditional sources of
legitimacy.
While Mexicans
generally
see the
regime
as
falling
short in
achieving
the basic
goals
of the Mexican
Revolution,
there are indica-
tions that the Revolution-understood as collective
memory, myth, history,
and
national
identity-still
holds a
place
in
political
discourse and
rhetoric,
even if
such
understandings
make little
logical
sense in the era of
globalization.
Los mexicanos han tenido un
largo
carinio
por
su herencia
revolucionaria,
pero
id6nde
reside ahora la Revoluci6n mexicana en la memoria
colectiva?,
etodavia
tiene
poder legitimador
la idea de la Revoluci6n? eY cual ha sido el vinculo
entre la secuencia
larga
de las crisis de
legitimidad
del PRI
y
la Revoluci6n Me-
xicana? Hasta
que
la democracia
procesal proporcione ventajas
substantivas
y
psicologicas significativas,
la vuelta reciente a la democracia no
suplantara
com-
pletamente
las fuentes tradicionales de la
legitimidad
en Mexico. Mientras
que
los mexicanos
generalmente
entienden
que
el
regimen
ha fallado en la reali-
zacion de las metas basicas de la Revoluci6n
mexicana, hay
indicaciones
que
la Revoluci6n-entendida como memoria
colectiva, mito,
historia e identidad
nacional-todavia tiene
lugar
en el discurso
y
retorica
politicos,
incluso si tales
conocimientos tienen
poco
sentido
l6gico
en la
epoca
de la
globalizaci6n.
This
essay
addresses the
overarching question
of how a
political system
that
emerged
from a true social revolution
responds
to
global
forces that
seem to be
undermining revolutionary
nationalism as a source of
politi-
MexicanStudies/EstudiosMexicanos Vol. no.
18(2),
Summer
2002, pages
363-397. ISSN 07429797 ?2002
Regents
of the
University
of California. All
rights
reserved. Send
requests
for
permission
to
reprint
to:
Rights
and
Permissions, University
of California
Press,
2000 Center
St., Berkeley,
CA 94704-1223
363
Mexican
Studies/Estudios
Mexicanos
cal
legitimacy
and
regime support.
The dominant
precepts underlying
globalization-namely neoliberalism-simply negate many
of the
prin-
ciples upon
which
revolutionary-nationalist regimes
have been based.
The
specific
case is
Mexico,
where the once
highly
statist, nationalist,
and at least
rhetorically
socialist
regime
has embraced neoliberalism
and is in the throes of democratic transition. The more
general ques-
tion
necessarily provokes
several interrelated
questions
that focus
speci-
fically
on the
place
of the Mexican Revolution: Where does the Mexican
Revolution-with its
lofty goals (historically comprising
a
"religion
of
the
patria")-reside
in the Mexican collective
memory, especially
since
Vicente Fox
Quesada
of the conservative Partido Acci6n Nacional
(PAN)
has defeated the Partido Revolucionario Institucional
(PRI)?
Have the
myths
and rituals of
revolutionary
nationalism lost their
appeal?
What
has been the
relationship
between the PRI's
long sequence
of
legitimacy
crises and the Mexican Revolution? Did the PRI so
empty
the Mexican
Revolution of
significance
as to make its
mythology meaningless
and thus
incapable
of
rendering support
for both the PRI and
perhaps
even for
the entire
political system?
Does the electoral defeat of the PRI in the
era of
globalization finally signal
the Mexican Revolution's death knell?
Does the idea of the revolution continue to have
any legitimizing/
legitimating power? Finally,
and
perhaps
most
important,
can the
proce-
dural democratic
transition,
with the
high,
and often
unrealistic,
expec-
tations it has
generated, supplant
traditional
revolutionary
nationalism
as the foundation of the Mexican
political system,
thus
constituting
a
new Mexican Revolution? As
Benjamin
(2000: 13)
emphasized:
"Mexi-
cans invested a lot of
meaning
in their Revolution with a
capital
letter
during
this
century,"
but where does that
meaning
now
lay
in Mexican
collective
memory, especially
as so
many
forces-both local and
global-
are
making
it
increasingly
difficult to
uphold
so
many classically
revolu-
tionary goals
and ideals?
Drawing
from several
public opinion surveys
conducted
by
the
Mexico office of the well-known firm Market
Opinion
Research Inter-
national
(MORI
de
Mexico),
this
analysis
and discussion focuses on two
1997-1998
surveys
that included commissioned items
exploring
the Rev-
olution's
progress
and
likely
demise and the
place
of the Mexican Rev-
olution in the minds of the Mexican
people.
The first task was to assess
the
saliency
of the Mexican Revolution's basic
goals
and ideals with the
1. Public
opinion polling
has a
relatively long history
in
Mexico,
but
very
few
polls
of
any significance
have
tapped
attitudes and
opinions regarding
the relevance and/or ful-
fillment of the basics
goals
and ideals of the Mexican Revolution.
Nonetheless,
three of
the more
important survey
research-based studies are Basanez
(1990), Camp (1996),
and
Dominguez
and McCann
(1996).
364
Gawronski: Mexican Revolution in the Era
of
Globalization
365
following question,
which was asked on both
surveys:
"To what extent
are the
following
basic
principles
of the Mexican Revolution relevant to
today's
(1997-1998)
society?" Drawing
from Frank
Brandenburg's (1964)
notion of a
revolutionary
creed,
the
question
was broken down to the
most
commonly
understood
revolutionary goals
and ideals:
(1)
"The Land
Belongs
to Those Who Work
It," (2)
"Respect
for Labor
Rights," (3)
"No
Reelection of the President of the
Republic,"
(4)
"National Economic
Sovereignty,"
(5) "SocialJustice."
Asking respondents
to use a
five-point
scale
(one, "very
relevant" to
five,
"not-at-all
relevant"),
the
question
was
intended to measure the extent to which Mexicans see the
primary goals
and ideals of the Revolution as
important
to
today's
(1997-1998)
Mexico.
From
"relevance,"
the
survey
instrument moved to
"fulfillment,"
and the
survey respondents
were asked to evaluate the
degree
to which
they
saw each of the five basic
principles
as
having
been
fulfilled,
once
again
according
to a
five-point
scale
(one,
"very
fulfilled" to
five,
"not-at-all ful-
filled").
"To what extent has the
government
fulfilled the basic
princi-
ples
of the Mexican Revolution so far?"
The first MORI
survey
(n
=
1225)
was conducted in Mexico
City
in
September
1997.
The
second,
national in
scope
(n
=
1105, weighted
valid n =
1642),
was administered in late December
1997
through early
January
1998.2
The
survey
results and
analysis empirically
validate much
of the
existing
literature on
Mexico,
and two
very strong
conclusions
stand out:
1. The
goal
of "No Reelection of the President of the
Republic"
con-
tinues to be
very
relevant to
Mexicans,
and to Mexico
generally,
and is the most fulfilled basic
revolutionary principle.3
2. The
Revolution-generated goal
of
"SocialJustice"
is the least rele-
vant and least fulfilled
goal.
2. The
questions
that were
eventually
included in the December
1997-January
1998
national
survey
(n
=
1105, weighted
valid n
=
1642)
went
through
several iterations. To en-
sure that the
questions
were
understandable,
a self-administered
pre-test
was conducted
among
Mexican nationals
living
in the
Phoenix, Arizona,
area. In
September 1997,
MORI
de Mexico conducted a
pilot study (n=1225)
in Mexico
City
to ensure that the
questions
were
manageable
in the field. The
pilot study produced
valuable
quantitative
and
qualita-
tive data and can be considered a stand-alone
study
of Mexico
City.
After some minor ad-
justments
and
rewordings,
MORI
appended
the final
survey
instrument to the 1997 Mexico
Latinobar6metro,
which is a
comprehensive public opinion survey
modeled after the Eu-
robarometer and
implemented annually
in seventeen Latin American countries and
Spain.
3. While the
principle
of no reelection also
applies
to other elected
officials,
it is most
strongly
associated with the
presidency
because of the
highly presidentialist
nature of the
postrevolutionary regime
and the existence of the
six-year "perfect dictatorships"-the
sex-
enios.
Moreover,
it was also much easier to
tap opinions regarding
the
presidency
because
it is has been such a visible and
palpable
historical
component
of Mexico's
political system.
Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos
The Revolution as a Source of
Legitimacy
Exploring public
attitudes toward the Revolution is
admittedly
sensitive.
Whether
institutionalized,
permanent,
frozen,
or
programmatically
dead,
the Revolution has carried enormous
symbolic
value and has
generated
a massive literature.4
Historically
it has been a national
adhesive,
at least
rhetorically, despite
never
being uniformly
understood.
Now, however,
the Mexican
political system,
which was founded on
revolutionary
rhet-
oric and socialist ideals
(some
initially competing),
is
facing unique
chal-
lenges. Indeed,
contrary
to its
founding revolutionary ideology,
Mexico
is
increasingly becoming
a
cog (or
"pivot")
in the
global system (espe-
cially
with its
unique global
trade
relations),
and the official revolution-
ary party-the
PRI-is no
longer revolutionary
or even
populist.
As
Thomas
Benjamin
(2000: 23)
astutely
observed:
The Mexican
political system during
most of the twentieth
century
has based
its
legitimacy largely
on la Revoluci6n. The state and the dominant
party,
ac-
cordingly,
are the culmination and continuation of the Mexican revolution. La
Revoluci6n is identified with the most sacred values and the
highest principles
of the
Republic,
as well as the
greatest
needs and
aspirations
of its
people.
The
revolutionary origins
of the
political system
and the
system's
faithful adherence
to la Revolucion have
justified
the existence of the
system,
the
hegemony
of
the official
party,
and the
authority
of the successive
regimes
that take
power
every
six
years.
This
pattern
for
support
is
changing,
however. The
system
has
deviated from its
founding principles
as Mexican civil
society
has
changed
and
awakened.
Opponents
of the
government
have embraced la Revolucion and are
making
it their own.
Addressing legitimacy
in
Mexico, however,
is
always fraught
with
prob-
lems because Mexicans
supported
the PRI-state
system
for decades de-
4. Within the vast "Mexicanist" mainstream
literature,
a
strong
current has
empha-
sized the Mexican Revolution and its
meaning
and
importance.
Still one of the most in-
sightful
works is The
Making of
Modern Mexico
(1964),
where
Brandenburg
more con-
cretely developed
the idea of the
"Revolutionary Family"
and the
closely
associated
"Revolutionary
Creed." Ross's Is the Mexican Revolution Dead?
(1966)
and Cumberland's
The
Meaning of
the Mexican Revolution
(1967)
continued the focus. The Revolution was
then revisited in the mid-1980s with the
Cambridge History of
Latin America series
(1984),
Knight's (1986)
erudite two-volume
history,
and Hart's
(1987)
influential work.
Later,
in
their edited
volume,
Everyday
Forms
of
State
Formation, Joseph
and
Nugent (1994)
in-
sightfully
demonstrated the
continuing
role of the Mexican Revolution in the
relationship
between
popular
cultures and state formation at the local level
(see
also Becker
1995).
At
the same
time, however,
other scholars
began shifting
the theme to the Revolution's
pos-
sible
demise, specifically Meyer (1992), Aguilar
Camin and
Meyer
(1993),
and Middlebrook
(1995). Benjamin (2000),
from a more historical
perspective,
examined how Mexicans in-
terpreted
the Revolution
through
collective
memory, myths,
and
historiography
between
1910 and 1950.
366
Gawronski: Mexican Revolution in the Era
of
Globalization 367
spite injustices, gross inequalities,
and classic semi-authoritarianism.5
Indeed one of the most
enigmatic
features of Mexican
society
is the de-
gree
to which Mexicans have
historically
tolerated so much.
Support,
in such
cases,
for the
system
does not emanate as much from "belief in
the
validity
of
legal
statute" or rational
rules, resting
more on
ideolog-
ical foundations and culture than on modern
sources,
despite
Mexico's
remarkable and
thoroughly
modern constitution. But as
globalization
bears down
heavily
on
Mexico,
the traditional
ideological
and cultural
sources of
legitimacy
are
withering just
as
democracy
seems to be tak-
ing
hold-that
is,
as democratic
procedures (free
and fair
elections)
and
high expectations
of benefits
(substantive
and
psychological) replace
revolutionary
nationalism. Thus the traditional
symbolic,
national ad-
hesive that has held the
postrevolutionary regime together
for so
long
is now
dissolving. However,
the
apparent
democratic transition will
mean
very
little if the
average
Mexican's
quality
of life does not soon
improve.
If the
regime
does not meet a sufficient measure of social ex-
pectations,
democratic breakdown and civil unrest
may
result. As
well,
if
society
continues to hold socialist and
revolutionary-nationalist
ideals
or if it maintains
unrealistically high expectations,
the
regime
could be
forced to deal with
greater
levels of
opposition
and/or political
violence.
Regime performance
and effectiveness become more salient when
crises
emerge
or when social
(value)
expectations
outrun
regime (value)
capabilities.6
5.
Padgett's (1976, 1966)
work laid out the fundamental characteristics
(semi-
authoritarianism, co-optation, corporatism)
of what Needler
(1995)
described as the "clas-
sic" Mexican
political system.
6. Mexico is indeed in
flux,
but
potentially
the
gravest problem
resides in the im-
plications
of a
stuck,
or at least a
severely constrained,
policy pendulum.
In his famous "J
curve"
theory
of
revolution,
Davies
(1962) posited
that when an intolerable
gap emerges
between
expected
values and actual
values,
conditions become
ripe
for revolution. The
contemporary
Mexico
case, however,
is not a
perfect
fit for Davies. Punctuated with so
many crises,
Mexico has not
yet experienced
"a
long period
of
rising expectations
and
gratifications."
In
fact,
Mexico's most successful
period
of economic
growth-the
so-called
Mexican Miracle-exacerbated
many inequalities. Indeed, only recently
have the mod-
ernization of Mexican
society
and the
apparent
democratic transition
significantly
raised
hopes
and
expectations-unfortunately just
as Mexican
policymakers
are
becoming
more
constrained.
Therefore,
Mexico's
predicament
more
closely
fits Gurr's
(1967)
model than
Davies's
or,
for that
matter, Johnson's (1966).
Gurr
(1967: 3) argued
that:
[T]he necessary precondition
for violent civil conflict is relative
deprivation,
defined
as actors'
perceptions
of
discrepancy
between their value
expectations
and their en-
vironment's value
capabilities.
Value
expectations
are the
goods
and conditions of life
to which
people
believe
they
are
justifiably
entitled. The referents of value
capabili-
ties are to be found
largely
in the social and
physical
environment:
they
are conditions
that determine
people's
chances for
getting
or
keeping
the values
they legitimately
ex-
pect
to attain.
Mexican
Studies/Estudios
Mexicanos
Undeniably,
the institutionalization of the Mexican Revolution and the
creation of a
revolutionary iconography
with its associated
myths
were
unique
historical,
political,
and cultural
processes.
And a
specific pro-
grammatic
agenda emerged
to advance basic
revolutionary principles
and
ideals,
but this created a tension between the real and the ideal. The PRI
laid official claim to its
revolutionary heritage,
in
essence, by upholding
a
nationalist-revolutionary myth
(or
myths), advancing
socialist
rhetoric,
and
implementing
certain ideals and
goals
but
freezing
others for later.
The revolutionaries-the
"Revolutionary Family"-blessed
the PRI as the
official
party
of the
Revolution,
as Martin Needler
(1995:
68-69) noted:
In Mexico
legitimacy
has two
sources,
democratic and
revolutionary, reflecting
the fundamental
ambiguity
of Mexican
political mythology. Legitimacy
comes
from election
by
the
people;
it also comes from the
heritage
of the Revolution.
When
legitimacy
no
longer
comes from
"above,"
from
royalty ruling by
the
grace
of
God,
it must come from
"below,"
from the will of the
people,
or from the act
of the overthrow of the
illegitimate
ruler itself. Until the
system began
the ex-
tended crisis
period
of the 1980s and
'90s,
these two sources of
legitimacy
con-
verged
in the official
party,
the PRI.
The PRI-state
system
also relied
upon populism
and
specific
socialist
poli-
cies such as land
redistribution,
albeit
limited,
and economic national-
ism
(Import
Substitution
Industrialization)
to foster a sense of Mexican-
ness
(mexicanidad),
which
garnered support
for the
regime.
Indeed
support
for the
postrevolutionary regime
became
tightly
bundled with
Mexican nationalism and a sense of
identity, especially
cultural nation-
alism.
Also, creating
a sense of who is and who is not Mexican bound the
nation and the
postrevolutionary
state
(see Knight 1994).
Thus,
the vast literature on
political legitimacy
in Mexico has tended
to focus on how certain
institutions,
practices,
social
forms,
myths,
and
heroes became
accepted
as
legitimate.
It has
generally emphasized
the
historical
process whereby
the national state came to exercise control
and domination after the Mexican
Revolution,
especially
how the state
"institutionalized" the Revolution.7 Vincent L.
Padgett's (1976: 59-60)
work is still
revelatory:
The
nationalist, revolutionary
tradition
composed
of ideals and heroes reaches
back
through
time. The roots lie in the
periods
of Cardenas and
Zapata,
and fur-
7.
Importantly,
Mexican attitudes toward education are
very significant
for
political
legitimacy
and
regime support.
Education is an
agent
of
political
socialization,
and in
Mexico,
the
public
schools are
operated by
the national
government.
Needler
(1995: 69)
noted that
"public
education in Mexico has a
high
content of civic indoctrination." This
factor,
as
Camp
also observed
(1993: 57),
"could serve as a
positive,
indirect means of re-
inforcing
the state's
legitimacy-especially
because texts in
elementary
schools are selected
by
the
government." Therefore,
education is
important
for
passing
on the basic
principles
368
Gawronski: Mexican Revolution in the Era
of
Globalization
369
ther,
in those of
Juarez, Hidalgo,
and
Morelos,
and even
stretching
back to
Cuauhtemoc and the
days
of Indian
greatness.
All of this has been
shaped
into
an historical
synthesis
which focuses on the
identity
of the
people
and forms
the basis of the
existing
national order. "Mexicanism"
(Mexicanidad)
is used to
justify
the
present
and the future. The
Revolutionary
coalition has found it a valu-
able means of
subordinating
the
deep
schisms in Mexican
society
to the
imple-
mentation of
policy
and the
stability
of
government.
This institutionalization
process,
Alan
Knight (1994: 60)
later
added,
while
undeniably
a state
project
of cultural
transformation,
was
complex
and
contradictory:
The
revolutionaries,
as I have
said, firmly
believed in notions of
hegemony,
even
false consciousness
(if
not in those
terms).
But how successful were
they? First,
did
they
transform
popular consciousness, legitimizing
the
revolutionary regime?
(And
if
so,
we
may
ask
again,
did
thereby
foster a new
"mystification"
or "false
consciousness"?
Or, rather,
did
they successfully
combat a rival
legitimation-
for
example,
Catholic conservatism-and
thereby demystify, breaking
the fetters
of false
consciousness?)
Or was the
revolutionary project
a
failure,
a
gimcrack
facade behind which the common
people,
the
peasants especially, grumbled
and
prayed
to old
gods,
untouched
by
the new
legitimation?
Was it a case not
just
of "idols behind altars" but idols behind altars behind murals?
Needler
(1995: 69), moreover, highlighted
the role of the
president
of
Mexico:
The
popular
mandate and democratic
legitimacy
were of course
personalized
in the role of the
president. By
a sort of
pseudo-apostolic
succession,
the
pres-
ident was also the direct heir of the
martyrs
of the
Revolution, having
received
the
presidential
sash from the hands of his
predecessor,
who had received
his from
his,
in a line which
goes
back at least to
Obreg6n.
The
party
and the
president
thus incarnated
legitimacy
in Mexico.
Benjamin
(2000:13), focusing
on the
early postrevolutionary period,
em-
phasized
the role the voceros de la Revolucion had on
legitimating
the
regime.
The voceros were those "that had invented and constructed the
Revolution with a
capital
letter in their
pamphlets, broadsides, procla-
mations, histories, articles,
and editiorials." He
(2000: 14)
explained:
Their
talking, singing, drawing, painting,
and
writing
invented la Revoluci6n: a
name transformed into what
appeared
to be a natural and self-evident
part
of
reality
and
history.
This
talking
and
writing
was also
part
of an
older, larger,
and
greater project
offorjando
patria, forging
a
nation, inventing
a
country, imag-
ining
a
community
across time and
space
called Mexico.
and ideals of the Mexican
Revolution,
which
Padgett
(1976: 9) pointed
out
early
on: "Par-
ticularly important
is the
interpretation
of
history
as
presented
to most Mexican school
children and
young people."
Mexican
Studies/Estudios Mexicanos
The
Revolution,
consequently,
became embedded in Mexican collec-
tive
memory
as national
myth
and
history. Virtually every
Mexicanist
therefore
agrees
that Mexico's
postrevolutionary political system
has,
at least
metaphorically,
rested on a socialist-nationalist and revolution-
ary ideology,
but Mexico's
biggest paradox
has been the dissonance be-
tween
revolutionary
rhetoric and the
reality
of the Mexican
state,
which
became
readily apparent
when Mexico's
post-World
War II
period
of
economic
growth-the
"Mexican Miracle"-started to
peter
out,
and
most
starkly
in
1968,
with the massacre at Tlatelolco.8
Starting
in
1968
and more or less
ending
with the
highly
contested
1988
presidential
elections Mexico
experienced
a
long sequence
of
legitimacy
crises. The
definitive end of the
sequence
of
legitimacy
crises came with the
pop-
ular election of Mexico
City's
first true
mayor,
Cuauhtemoc
Cardenas,
in
1997,
and of
course,
with the electoral defeat of the PRI in 2000
by
Vicente Fox.
The PRI's
Sequence
of
Legitimacy
Crises:
Moral, Performance-Based,
and Political
Many
less astute observers of Mexico have tended to
explain
the PRI's
loss of
support by focusing
on
perceptions regarding
the PRI's
(in)at-
tentiveness to social
expectations during
the 1980s
and
1990s; however,
the
beginning
of the end for the PRI must be
pushed
back to
1968,
a
point
made
by
Will Pansters
(1999: 250)
and
many
others:
Although
the
agitated
summer of 1968 ended in brutal
repression,
its
longer-
term effects are
argued
to be so
profound
that there exists a line of
continuity
between this
experience
(1968)
and the electoral
opening
which, sinceJuly 1988,
8. The Tlatelolco
rally
was not
large compared
to the
protests
and demonstrations
that would be
organized
in the 1980s and 1990s in Mexico
City's
z6calo. On October
2,
1968, just days
before Mexico would host the
Olympics,
thousands of
students, women,
children,
and
spectators gathered
in the Plaza. The demonstration was
peaceful.
The
speeches
were emotional but not
noteworthy. Riding (1985: 60)
summarized what
hap-
pened
next:
At around 5:30 P.M. there were
10,000 people
in the
plaza, many
of them women and
children
sitting
on the
ground.
Two
helicopters
circled
above,
but the crowd was ac-
customed to such surveillance. Even the
speeches
sounded familiar. Then
suddenly
one
helicopter
flew low over the crowd and
dropped
a flare.
Immediately,
hundreds
of soldiers hidden
among
the Aztec ruins of the
square opened
fire with automatic
weapons,
while hundreds of secret
police agents
drew
pistols
and
began making
ar-
rests. For
thirty minutes,
there was total confusion. Students who fled into the
adja-
cent Church of San Francisco were chased and beaten and some were murdered. Jour-
nalists were allowed to
escape,
but then banned from
re-entering
the area when the
shooting stopped.
That
night, army
vehicles carried
away
the
bodies,
while firetrucks
washed
away
the blood.
370
Gawronski: Mexican Revolution in the Era
of
Globalization 371
seeks to
put
an end to the
hegemony
of the official
party.
These effects
range
from the modification of values and behavioural
practices, through
a
reorgani-
zation of class alliances within the
ruling
elite
(favouring
the urban middle classes
to the detriment of traditional
corporatist
sectors),
to the
emergence
of
public
opinion
as a
political
factor. Others have
emphasized
that it was the violent
sup-
pression
of the 1968 student movement and the
spreading
of
leadership
and
ideologies throughout society.
With the massacre of students and other
protesters
in the Plaza de
Tlatelolco-several hundred
people
were killed but the
government only
conceded
32-the PRI-state
system
was
widely challenged,
for the first
time,
on a value basis. The
1968
Olympic
Games were held without ma-
jor
incident,
and Mexico's
image
abroad was saved. Less
immediately
vis-
ible but more
important
in the
long term,
the moral
legitimacy
of the
entire PRI-state
system
was undermined. In
particular
the
regime
lost the
support
of
many
of Mexico's established and
upcoming intelligentsia.
Many
of Mexico's intellectuals had shared with the
political system
an
ideological agenda
of
revolutionary
nationalism and the
widespread pro-
motion of education. Entwined in mutual
support,
the
intelligentsia
lent
legitimacy
to the
regime.
In return the
regime
doled out favors and
gov-
ernment
posts
to their favorite sons (and a few
daughters). However,
shocked
by
the PRI-state's behavior at
Tlatelolco,
such world-renowned
writers as Carlos Fuentes and Octavio Paz
strongly
denounced the bru-
tal actions of the
regime, breaking
their official ties with the
government
and
calling
into
question, really
for the first
time,
the
legitimacy
of the
whole
postrevolutionary system.
Enrique
Krauze
(1997: 733)
noted the historical
impact
of 1968 on
Mexican
politics
and
society
while
focusing
on the motivations and con-
sequences
of
people's
actions:
The Student Movement of
1968
opened
a crack in the Mexican
political system
where it was least
expected: among
its
greatest beneficiaries,
the sons of the
middle class. On their own account
they
rediscovered that "man does not live
by
bread alone." Their
protest
was not in behalf of
revolution,
it was for the
broader cause of
political
freedom. As had been the case with the
doctors,
the
government
did not know how to handle middle-class dissidence
except through
the same violent methods
(loaded threats or loaded
guns)
that had
given
them
effective results with the workers and the
peasants. Here,
their action had the
opposite
effect.
But
despite
the revealed contrast between the
regime's professed
rev-
olutionary
values and its
actions,
it survived
through co-optation,
clas-
sic
semi-authoritarianism,
and moderate
political
reforms. The
1977-
1978
reforms softened direct
challenges
to the
system by making
it eas-
ier for
opposition parties
to
officially register
and
by widening,
ever so
Mexican
Studies/Estudios
Mexicanos
slightly,
the arena for
political
mobilization and interest
representation.
"The
political
reform was the
government's
and the
ruling party's
re-
sponse
to a series of
challenges
that undermined the
efficiency
and le-
gitimacy
of the PRI"
(Pansters 1999: 250). Indeed,
PRI
political
reform
efforts have been more a result of PRI-elite survival
strategies
than ad-
herence to some
deep-seated
commitment to
democracy
and revolu-
tionary goals
and ideals. PRI elites
implemented liberalizing political
re-
forms in
response
to
perceived
threats,
not because
they
were
being
responsive
and attentive to the needs and wishes of the Mexican
people.
Todd A. Eisenstadt (2000:
5-6) argued
that the PRI liberalized the
electoral
system
for four reasons:
First,
the PRI
could, "through multiple
iterations of
graduated reforms,
acquire precise
information about in-
cumbent and
opposition popularity
in various
segments
of the
popula-
tion."
Second,
the PRI could "divide and
conquer
the
opposition through
such reforms."
Third,
the
channeling
of
opposition
into the electoral
arena
helped
the PRI to channel
protesters,
students,
and the
strongly
disillusioned "out of the
unpredictable
realm of street demonstrations
and
picket
lines and into the
highly regulated
realm of
campaigns
and
elections." This
channeling
"also
helped
to restore
credibility
to the
[PRI]
domestically
and
internationally." Finally, political
liberalization
helped
to "bind the hardliners within the authoritarian coalition." Eisenstadt
(2000: 6)
explained:
[T]he
party's
technocratic
leaders,
especially
in the
1990s, increasingly
dis-
counted the old-time machine's
ability
to
"get
out the vote" as a skill valued
by
the
party.
In
fact,
President Carlos Salinas
repeatedly
undermined the traditional
machine bosses
by negotiating away
their electoral victories at
post-electoral
bar-
gaining
tables with the
PAN,
known as concertasiones
(Spanish slang
combi-
nation of "concession" and
"agreement").
Salinas drove a
wedge
into the
party
starting
in
1989 which ended in electoral defeat 11
years
later
by placing
a much
higher premium
on
getting along
with the PAN in federal
parliamentary
cham-
bers on economic
policy
votes than on
getting along
with his own
party's
tra-
ditional vote
getting
activists. He has been
widely
blamed for
weakening
the PRI
to the
point
that PRIistas have
proposed
his
expulsion
from the
party.
Ernesto
Zedillo,
Salinas's less
politically
adroit and
equally
technocratic successor con-
tinued Salinas's
policy
(but without
going
to Salinas's extreme of
sacrificing
lo-
cal PRI victories for concession
agreements
with the
PAN), divorcing
himself
from
party
affairs in the controversial "safe distance"
policy.
While it is true that the PRI liberalized itself into electoral
defeat,
the
story
needs more contextualization and
explanation
because the dem-
ocratic transition has been so
protracted.
Moreover,
while Mexico has
made
significant
democratic strides with the PRI's
losses, very
few
politi-
cians and even fewer academics are
declaring
the transition
complete.
372
Gawronski: Mexican Revolution in the Era of Globalization
373
Essentially,
the PRI's
implosion
and
apparent
demise must be traced to
the PRI-state
system's long sequence
of
legitimacy
crises,
political
re-
form efforts to deal with several
problems,
and a
general falling
out of
touch with the Mexican
people
as
society modernized,
all of which re-
sulted in the
withering away
of the PRI's traditional
revolutionary
sources of
legitimacy
and
corporatist
and
populist
networks.
In
1982
Mexico announced that it could no
longer
service its ex-
ternal
debt,
banks were
nationalized,
and an economic debacle
ensued,
which initiated Latin America's "Lost Decade" of
development. Chap-
pel
Lawson
(2000: 272)
noted that
"[b]y
the
early
1980s,
fifty years
of
corruption, cronyism, patronage,
and
pork barreling
had
sabotaged
Mexico's
economy."
Then,
in
1985,
Mexico
City
was struck
by
twin earth-
quakes
that devastated
parts
of the
city.
The PRI-state
system's
disaster
response
and
subsequent management
of the reconstruction were
widely
criticized. The
regime's performance legitimacy
was
lost,
as
people
realized
just
how few resources the PRI-state
system really
com-
manded,
how
corrupt
it
was,
and how much
political space actually
ex-
isted. The confluence of these factors made the PRI
politically
vulnera-
ble in the
highly
tainted 1988
presidential
elections,
in which the PRI
resorted to electoral
alchemy
to
prevent
a Partido de la Revoluci6n
Democratica
(PRD)
victory.
In
1988, then,
the PRI lost
political legiti-
macy.9
Lawson
(2000: 272)
emphasized
the
importance
of 1988:
Although
the
regime's legitimacy
had been
eroding steadily,
it now
collapsed.
Like other
catalytic
events-such as the Tlatelolco massacre of
1968,
the national
bankruptcy
of 1982 and the
devastating
Mexico
City earthquake
of 1985-the
alleged
fraud of
1988
triggered
mass
protests
and
increasing
social mobilization.
Since
1988, Knight (1999: 106-107) argued
the PRI has fallen into an-
other "Darwinian
period," having gone through
three
(and now
four)
stages
in its evolution:
[F]irst
a Darwinian
period (1917-29)
of internal
conflict, punctuated by
revolts
from within the ranks of the
revolutionary army, during which,
with the recur-
rent victories of the central
government,
the ranks of the dissidents were thinned
and the
penalties
of
insurgency
rammed home.
Second,
a
long
transitional
pe-
riod
(1929-52)
when revolts were few or feeble and
PNR/PRM/PRI dissidents
mounted
significant
but unsuccessful electoral
challenges
to the official candi-
date.
Third,
the
heyday
of the PRI
(1952-87),
when the
party machine,
possessed
of enormous
powers
of
patronage,
maintained
party cohesion,
avoided schisms
and defeated the
genuine opposition parties
with relative ease. The PRI
split
of
9. A useful heuristic device for
clarifying
the PRI-state
system's sequence
of
legiti-
macy
crises is Collier and Collier's
(1991)
"critical
juncture"
framework.
Application
of
the framework reveals that the turn to
political
liberalization is a direct
legacy
of the
1968-1988
period
of
change
and transformation for the entire
country.
Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos
1987,
followed
by
the
highly
contentious 1988
election,
represented,
in some
ways,
a return to the second
phase, although
in
very
different socio-economic
circumstances.
Nevertheless,
by
the
1991 mid-erm
elections,
it
appeared
that
everything
had returned to normal. The PRI
regained
its
strength, primarily
because
the PRD leftist coalition could not muster the same measure of
support
that it had in
1988.
However,
despite
the
apparent
return to
normality,
political
liberalization continued
apace
with further electoral reforms.
In
1989
the Federal Electoral
Institute,
Instituto Federal Electoral
(IFE)
was created and then reconstituted in
1990
to release it further from the
fetters of
government
control and to
empower
it to oversee and moni-
tor the
voting process.
A
1993
electoral reform law
helped
to make the
electoral
process
even fairer and more
transparent by giving
the IFE more
power
and
autonomy.
Eisenstadt
(2000: 11)
called the IFE
"[t]he
most
critical autonomous institution for
mediating
the 'levelness' of the elec-
toral
playing
field."
In
large part
due to the
IFE,
the
1994
presidential
election
appeared
both fair and
clean,
despite being preceded by
a host of traumatic
events,
especially
the
Zapatista uprising
in
Chiapas
and then the assassinations
of 1994 PRI
presidential
candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio and then Mario
Ruiz
Massieu,
the PRI
party
chairman.
President Ernesto Zedillo who had
replaced
Colosio as the PRI's can-
didate,
was in office less than a month before Mexico tumbled into
yet
another economic
crisis,
as a
consequence
of a
poorly managed peso
devaluation. Millions of
jobs
were lost as the middle class once
again
bore
the brunt of Mexico's
wrongheaded
economic
management,
and doubts
were raised about Mexico's future
stability, especially
as incidences of
high-level narco-corruption
came to
light.
But
political
liberalization and
democratic
aspirations tempered
direct attacks on the
regime-the
var-
ious
guerrilla
insurrections in the South were an
exception-and
miti-
gated
a
potentially
volatile situation.
The
1997
mid-term elections continued the
liberalizing
trend. One
important
result was the election of Mexico
City's
first true
mayor,
the
PRD's Cuauhtemoc
Cirdenas,
rather than an
appointed regent.
This
gave
the PRD
greater political recognition
and
prestige.
The second result was
an
opposition majority
in the Chamber of
Deputies
(Mexico's
lower
house), again
for the first time. But the most historic
development
has
been the most recent.
The
July
2000
presidential
elections resulted in the PRI's first defeat
ever,
when Vicente Fox
Quesada
of the
center-right,
conservative Par-
tido Acci6n Nacional
(PAN),
but in coalition with the Partido Verde
Ecologista (PVE),
won the election.
Significantly,
Zedillo
publicly
rec-
374
Gawronski: Mexican Revolution in the Era
of
Globalization
375
ognized
Fox as his
successor, hailing
Mexico as a true
democracy.
0
And
in
Chiapas,
where the
Zapatista problem
has been
festering
since
1994
and where the PRI has
traditionally
and
authoritatively
dominated
poli-
tics,
the PRI was defeated in the
August
2000
gubernatorial
race
by
a
former
priista,
Pablo Salazar
Mendiguchia.
To defeat the
PRI,
Salazar was
supported by
a broad coalition of
eight opposition parties.
Apparently,
the Mexican
people
had had
enough, publicly
declar-
ing
that
they
would vote PRI but then
secretly voting
for the
opposition.
Judith
Adler Hellman
(2000: 6)
emphasized
that it was "the sum of mil-
lions of individual decisions to vote
strategically
and
non-ideologically"
that made the difference. Democratic
procedures
do
matter,
and the Mex-
ican
people
voted for
change.
Indeed
they
now feel safer
voting
for the
opposition,
and for the first
time,
it is
possible
to
contemplate seriously
the consolidation of
democracy
in Mexico. 1
Through
this
sequence
of
legitimacy crises,
the PRI-state
system
gradually
moved further
away
from its
revolutionary heritage,
but the
Revolution still resided
firmly
in the collective
memory
of the Mexican
people.
In
fact, through
the
sequence
of
legitimacy
crises,
PRI elites were
10.
Zedillo,
whose sexenio was not
especially remarkable,
nonetheless found him-
self in an
interesting
situation. Hellman (2000: 9) explained:
At
worst, history
will note its financial
scandals,
not to mention its failure to resolve
the crisis in
Chiapas, improve
the
poor
human
rights
record of
Mexico,
or make a dent
in the
growing power
of the
drug
lords. Yet the
outgoing president
found himself in
a
win/win
situation. Either the PRI would
prevail,
in which case Zedillo could claim
that the
good government
and
leadership
he
provided paved
the
way
for
victory. Or,
as
transpired,
Labastida would lose to
Fox,
and Zedillo could
play
a historic role in the
great transition, calling
for
respect
for the democratic
process,
the will of the
people
and the rule of law.
11.
However,
there remain
significant challenges
to democratic consolidation. A
wealthy
and
powerful
economic class continues to
reap
the benefits from
neoliberal,
free-
trade
policies,
and economic benefits have not been
trickling down, despite
Mexico's cur-
rent macroeconomic
stability
and
growth
rate. No one "eats the
GDP,"
and
approximately
half of all Mexicans live at or below the
poverty line,
with the income of the
poor
lower
in real terms that it was before the 1994 crisis. General crime is
rampant
in some
areas,
especially
in Mexico
City
and
along
several
lesser-traveled,
rural
roads,
and human
rights
abuses are not
infrequent. Arbitrary
detention, torture,
and assassinations with
impunity
continue,
and the
judicial system
is too weak (and often too
corrupt)
to
investigate
and
prosecute.
The
illegal drug
trade feeds billions into the
political economy,
which con-
tributes
heavily
to
corruption. Also,
environmental
degradation
and
pollution
on a
grand
scale are
prevalent, especially
in Mexico
City
and
along
the U.S.-Mexican border. Chronic
low-intensity military
conflict continues in a number of
states,
and
finally,
"democratiza-
tion has not
proceeded
at the same
pace
across all
regions
or
spheres
of
government.
As
a
result,
Mexico's new
political
order
comprises
a series of authoritarian enclaves in which
the old rules of the
game
still
operate"
(Lawson
2000:
267-268).
Mexican
Studies/Estudios
Mexicanos
assailed for
betraying
the
principles
of the Mexican Revolution. This be-
trayal
would become more
evident,
and even
necessary,
as Mexico be-
came more
deeply integrated
into the
global economy
and more vul-
nerable to its vicissitudes and as the
government's policy pendulum
stuck
to the
center-right,
with
policymakers
forced to abandon
outright
the
revolutionary programmatic agenda.12
As Needler
(1995: 30)
pointed
out:
Under other
circumstances,
the
change
in economic
policy
would have been
an
extremely risky policy
for
Salinas, putting
in doubt his
legitimacy
as heir
of the
Revolutionary
tradition at the same time as his other source of
legitimacy,
as winner of democratic
election,
was also under
question.
There
is, however,
a
legitimacy
that derives from
performance
as well as a
legitimacy
that attaches
to
origins,
and Salinas's
position
was revalidated in the
eyes
of the
public by
the
success of his economic
policies.
This was missed
by
Cuauhtemoc
Cardenas,
who continued to focus his attacks on the
questionable
election of 1988 and
failed to devise a coherent
critique
of the Salinas economic
policies
and a
plau-
sible alternative economic
strategy.
The
regime
and the PRI
especially
are no
longer
as flexible as
they
once
were because neoliberalism demands that Mexican
policymakers
dis-
avow rhetorical and
symbolic
commitments to the Revolution.
AsJoseph
Klesner
(1997: 198) argued: "Revolutionary
nationalism does not
pro-
vide
legitimacy
for the current rulers because
Zedillo,
Salinas before
him,
and de la Madrid even earlier have
actively sought
to tear down the
poli-
cies that buttress
revolutionary
nationalism." Now Mexican
policymak-
ers face the dilemma of
reconciling
the
revolutionary past
with the ne-
oliberal
present just
as Mexico becomes more
deeply
embedded in the
global capitalist system,
and with the
victory
of the
center-right,
conser-
vative
PAN,
it seems
unlikely
that the Mexican Revolution will be called
upon
in
political
discourse and rhetoric for
garnering regime support.
The Revolution Revisited: Another Mexican Revolution?
As
Brandenburg noted,
the
"Revolutionary Family"
advanced a kind of
loose
ideology,
the
"Revolutionary
Creed,"
which he
(1964: 8-18)
broke
12. Needler
(1982, 1990, 1995)
had
argued
that the PRI had set
up
a
presidentialist
political system
characterized
by
a
corporatist
umbrella structure with a wide
array
of
po-
tentially conflicting groups.
These
groups-labor, peasantry, business,
the middle
class,
the
military-were
not all
formally
contained within the
PRI,
but all their
political
activ-
ity
was. The
key
to Mexican
political stability
then became a
strategy
(accidental
or con-
scious)
whereby
successive Mexican
presidents emphasized
the interests of certain social
sectors more than others. The
emphasis, however, changed
with each
president.
Thus the
emphasis
or favoritism
pendulum
would rest
temporarily
on one
group
but then move to
a different
group
with the next
president.
In that
way,
no
group
ever felt
permanently
dis-
affected,
and all believed that it
might
be their "turn" next time.
376
Gawronski: Mexican Revolution in the Era of Globalization 377
down to fourteen
points:
(1) Mexicanism, (2) Constitutionalism, (3)
So-
cial
justice,
(4)
Political
liberalism, (5)
Racial
tolerance, (6) Religious
tol-
erance, (7)
Intellectual freedom and
public
education, (8)
Economic
growth, (9)
Economic
integration, (10)
Public and
private ownership
initiatives, (11)
Defense of labor
rights, (12)
Financial
stability,
(13)
A
share in world
leadership,
and
(14)
International
prestige.
This
creed,
which still
pervades
Mexican
political
culture,
provided
the
ideological
and
symbolic
adhesive for
consolidating
state
power, garnering popular
support, legitimating
the rule of the
PRI,
and
cobbling together
the ever-
troublesome and
disparate "Many
Mexicos."13
Traditionally,
the PRI's
purpose
has been to articulate and channel
interests, organize power
and
authority-through corporatist
networks-
and advance
(purportedly)
the basic
principles
and nationalist-socialist
ideals of the Mexican Revolution. But the world has
changed
consider-
ably
since the
founding
of the
PRI,
and Mexico is
subject
to new
glob-
alizing
forces
(internal
and
external).
As David
Barkin,
Irene
Ortiz,
and
Fred Rosen
(1997: 27) succinctly explained:
"Mexico is
transforming
it-
self
through
the conflictive interaction of two
powerful
forces-the
glob-
alizing project imposed
from
above,
and the resistance to that
project,
welling up
from below." This interaction
inevitably
creates
opportuni-
ties and constraints while
challenging many principles
and ideals borne
of the Mexican
Revolution;
it also undermines the
regime's
traditional
revolutionary
sources of
legitimacy
and exacerbates
many state-society
conflicts.
To
justify
often
very
different state
policies,
the Revolution has his-
torically
been made
quite
flexible,
and its basic
principles
have been un-
derstood and
reinterpreted
over the
years
in
many ways by
the
average
Mexican and
political
elites. PRI elites even
reinterpreted
the Revolu-
tion to
justify
such
antirevolutionary
acts as
revoking
Article
27, thereby
ending
the
ejido system,
a cornerstone of
revolutionary
nationalism. En-
gaged
in
policies
of economic
liberalization,
the PRI elites
argued
that
the Revolution had been so successful that Mexico is set to
pass
on to
the next
revolutionary stage despite
whole
regions
of Mexico
having
never
experienced
the
prior stages,
most
notably Chiapas.14
Glossed over
is the fact that the new
happens
to be
substantively
antithetical to the
old
revolutionary goals
and ideals.
Inevitably,
then,
the issue of
political stability
and the
potential
for
13. See the classic work
by Simpson
(1966)
and
Knight's (1994)
discussion of how
the Mexican Revolution created a sense of nationhood.
14.
Interestingly,
as the first
post-Cold
War and
postmodern insurrectionary
move-
ment,
the
Ejercito Zapatista
de Liberacion Nacional
(EZLN)
has been careful to avoid Marx-
ist/socialist
discourse
(see
Bruhn
1999).
For more
comprehensive
works on the
indige-
nous
uprising
in
Chiapas
see
Harvey (1998),
La Botz
(1995),
and Ross
(2000).
Mexican
Studies/Estudios
Mexicanos
political
violence and revolution in Mexico must be raised. So while
many
scholars have debated the end of the Mexican
Revolution,
others have
explored
the
possible
onset of another or at least increased levels of
po-
litical violence
(for
example,
see Alschuler
1995,
Pansters
1999, Knight
1999).
Specifically,
however,
Linda S. Stevenson and Mitchell A.
Seligson,
in their
exploratory study
of
assembly plant (maquiladora)
workers
along
the U.S.-Mexican border and in northern
Mexico,
were driven
by
the
question
of how
prone
to revolution Mexico
might
be. That
is, they
were concerned with the
propensity
for
political
violence and
political
instability, arguing
that an
underlying
effect has
explained
Mexico's
long-
standing political stability:
[T]his
effect holds
only
in the case of nations that have
undergone
an
unusually
violent, protracted
revolution. Bolivia's revolution of
1952
was short and rela-
tively bloodless;
and
although
the Cuban Revolution of
1959
was
preceded by
two
years
of armed
conflict,
its
scope
and level were
relatively
minor in terms
of casualties. In other cases of modern
revolutions,
such as
Russia, China,
and
Mexico,
the
insurrectionary phase
of the revolution lasted a number of
years
and was
accompanied by
an enormous amount of violence.
Thus,
we
suggest
that the sheer
magnitude
and
ubiquity
of violence asso-
ciated with the revolution in
Mexico,
in contrast to those in Bolivia and
Cuba,
has left such a
deep psychological imprint
on most Mexicans that the fear of re-
visiting
that violence has been a
major
constraint on violent
political
actions.
(Stevenson
and
Seligson
1996:
60)
These scholars
(1996: 60)
further
hypothesized
that "... as time
passes
and the memories of the revolution
fade,
the
degree
of fear declines and
more
people
become
willing
to take
political
actions that older
genera-
tions would not have taken
previously."
In other
words,
as the histori-
cal event and the fearful violence associated with it fade from
memory,
the Revolution no
longer
serves as a source of
political stability.15
Moreover,
the
increasingly
divisive nature of Mexican
politics, par-
ticularly
the camarilla
system,
has been
contributing
to the
increasingly
violent nature of
politics
in Mexico. The camarilla is
essentially
the
sys-
tem of
patronage
and
obligation
in which
loyalty
is owed to a benefac-
tor who is often a
family
friend or member of an intimate
clique.
The
15.
Turning
this into a
hypothesis
that can be tested with
public opinion polling
is
more difficult than it seems.
Measuring peoples' propensity
to
engage
in violent or revo-
lutionary political
behavior can be difficult. Public
opinion polls
do not measure how
prone
a
country might
be for a
revolution-only feelings, beliefs,
and ideas about
violence, po-
litical
participation,
and revolution.
Moreover, public opinion-particularly
a
survey snap-
shot in time-cannot be used to
predict
the
propensity
to
engage
in
political
action. There
is a
discontinuity
between how
people
think or how
they
claim
they
will
behave,
and how
they actually
do behave.
Therefore,
public opinion
is
only
one
aspect
of a
very compli-
cated
reality.
378
Gawronski: Mexican Revolution in the Era
of
Globalization 379
benefactor
protects
and
appoints
to
key positions
the
loyal up-and-comer
who
reciprocally helps
to
push
the benefactor
up
the
political
hierar-
chy. Basically,
the future of the
young
subservient is
dependent upon
the success of the
benefactor,
but Pansters
(1999: 260) argued
that:
The
sharpening
of camarilla
politics
shades into the institutional framework
and
generates regime instability.
The
discretionary
use of the law and the use
of violence were also inherent to the
logic
of
personalism,
but
today they
tend
to subvert the institutional framework. The
disruption
of
important
areas of the
political
and socio-economic
system simultaneously
fosters different forms of
violence and undermines the mechanisms to counteract them.
Finally,
Mexican
public opinion
has
certainly
not
ignored
Mexico's less
than stable situation. For
example,
in
August
of
1990,
MORI fielded a
national
survey
(n
=
1711) that
explored
Mexican
knowledge of,
and at-
titudes
toward,
human
rights
and human
rights organizations.
Embed-
ded in the
survey,
however,
was a most
intriguing question:
"Some
say
that because of
poverty, corruption,
and other
problems,
there could
be a revolution in Mexico within five
years.
Do
you
believe that is
prob-
able or
improbable?"
While the
question
was a bit
sensational,
the re-
sults were
quite startling:
Of the
1,598 people
who
provided
substan-
tive answers to this
question, fully
47.1
percent reported seeing
another
revolution in Mexico within five
years
as either
"probable"
or
"very prob-
able."
Only
39.6
percent
believed that it was either
"improbable"
or
"very
improbable,"
and
slightly
over
13
percent responded
with
"regular"
(in
English
a kind of
"maybe").
Flawed or
not,
the
question appeared
to
tap
some
very deep public
concerns over the
stability
of the
country.
Four
years
later the
Zapatistas
burst onto the scene in the southern state of
Chiapas. Apparently, many
of the
1990
survey respondents
indeed had
their
finger
on
something.
The
1997-1998
Survey
Results
To
explore
the current
place
and or
plight
of the Mexican Revolution
in the minds of the Mexican
people,
MORI was commissioned with a
set of
questions,
which were first tested on the
September
1997
Mexico
City survey
and then included
(reformulated
slightly)
on the full national
survey.
The first task was to assess the current
saliency
of the Revolu-
tion's basic
goals
and
ideals,
and the
following question
was asked on
both the Mexico
City
and national
surveys:
"To what extent are the fol-
lowing
basic
principles
of the Mexican Revolution relevant to
today's
society?" Drawing
from
Brandenburg's (1964)
notion of a revolution-
ary
creed,
the
question
was broken down to the most
commonly
un-
derstood
revolutionary goals
and ideals:
(1)
"The Land
Belongs
to Those
Mexican
Studies/Estudios
Mexicanos
Table 1. Perceived Relevance
of
the Revolution's Basic
Principles.
Mexico
City
and the Nation
Compared ("very
relevant"
and "somewhat relevant"
combined)
1997 1997-1998
Mexico
City Survey
National
Survey
Valid
Frequency
Percent
Frequency
Percent
The Land
Belongs
to Those Who Work It 341 27.8 553 35.4
Respect
for
Labor
Rights
339 27.7 463 30.6
No Reelection of the
President of the
Republic
812 66.2 904
58.9
National Economic
Sovereignty
297
24.2
436 28.4
Social
Justice 236 19.3 409 28.6
Who Work
It," (2)
"Respect
for Labor
Rights," (3)
"No Reelection of
the President of the
Republic,"
(4)
"National Economic
Sovereignty,"
(5)
"Social
Justice."
Asking respondents
to use a
five-point
scale
(one,
"very
relevant" to
five,
"not-at-all
relevant"),
the
question
was intended to measure the ex-
tent to which Mexicans see the
primary goals
and ideals of the Revolu-
tion as
important
to
today's
Mexico. The values for
"very
relevant" and
"somewhat relevant" were combined to facilitate
comparisons,
and the
greater
the
percentage,
the
higher
the
degree
of
perceived
relevance
(see
Table
1).
Most
responsible
for
holding postrevolutionary
Mexico
together,
the
revolutionary principle
of "No Reelection of the President of the
Repub-
lic" continues to be
very
relevant to Mexicans and to
Mexico, being
the
most relevant
goal
on both
surveys.
Panster
(1999: 237)
explained
the im-
portance
of no reelection:
The
tenacity
with which the
principle
of no re-election has been maintained
has the obvious
advantage
of elite circulation. The rotation of different
political
factions has assured the
system
a certain amount of
vitality
to the
degree
that it
has mobilized
energies
and
opened up opportunities
for those who seek access
to
political
circles. In the first decades after the armed
phase
of the
revolution,
this
principle
meant that members from hitherto subordinated classes could
climb to the
upper
echelons of the
post-revolutionary
state. This
degree
of
po-
380
Gawronski: Mexican Revolution in the Era
of
Globalization 381
litical institutionalization and constitutionalism
sharply
contrasts with the fre-
quent
elimination of constitutional
guarantees
under authoritarian
military gov-
ernment in other
parts
of Latin America.
While no reelection remains a sacrosanct
revolutionary principle
in
Mexico,
the
survey
data reveal that "Social
Justice"
is the least relevant
revolutionary principle
in Mexico
City
and the next-to-least relevant for
the
nation,
but for all intents and
purposes
"Social
Justice"
is tied with
"National Economic
Sovereignty."
It seems that some of the
respondents
are
expressing deeply ingrained
frustration and
cynicism regarding
so-
cial
justice-that
is,
social
justice
is
perceived
as irrelevant
perhaps
be-
cause it has been so unfulfilled.
Mexicans,
after
all,
have lived with in-
stitutionalized
inequality
and
injustice
for
quite
a
long
time.
In the Mexico
City survey,
the MORI interview team was able to
record a wide
variety
of
qualitative
comments that surrounded the cod-
able
responses, many
of which are
wonderfully cynical
and sometimes
humorous. For
example,
when asked about the relevance of the basic
revolutionary principles,
one
respondent
added the
following:
"Todos no
vigentes,
s6lo estdn
impresos, pero
estdn
muy
bien
guardadosy
son
utilizadospor
conveniencia
delgobierno."
("None
of them are
relevant,
they're
only published,
but
they
are
very closely guarded
and used
only
at the
govern-
ment's
convenience").
Because the format of the Revolution
questions
was
changed
somewhat
for the
1997-1998
national
survey,
there are minor
problems compar-
ing
the results. The Mexico
City survey respondents
were asked to rank
order the basic
principles
of the Mexican Revolution as to
perceived
saliency
to
today's society
(1997-1998). According
to the results and the
interviewers'
comments,
rank
ordering proved
too difficult for the re-
spondents,
and there
may
have been some confusion as to the
meaning
of relevance.
Moreover,
MORI
weighted
the
responses
to create discrete
dimensions of the same
question
results.
Nonetheless,
several distinct
patterns emerged.
On both
surveys
"No Reelection of the President of
the
Republic"
is the most relevant basic
principle,
followed
by
"The Land
Belongs
to Those Who Work
It,"
"Respect
for Labor
Rights,"
and then
"National Economic
Sovereignty"
and "Social
Justice."
Because of the
problems
revealed in the Mexico
City survey,
it was decided that each
basic
revolutionary principle
should stand alone-that
is,
on the
1997-
1998
national
survey,
each would be asked as a
separate question
and
not be rank ordered.
From
relevance,
the
survey
instrument moved to
fulfillment,
and
the
survey respondents
were asked to evaluate the
degree
to which
they
saw each of the five basic
principles
as
having
been
fulfilled, according
Mexican
Studies/Estudios
Mexicanos
Table 2. Perceived
Fulfillment of
the Revolution's Basic
Principles:
Mexico
City
and the Nation
Compared ("very fulfilled"
and
"somewhatfulfilled"
combined)
1997 1997-1998
Mexico
City Survey
National
Survey
Valid
Frequency
Percent
Frequency
Percent
The Land
Belongs
to
Those Who Work It 277 22.6 522
33.4
Respect
for Labor
Rights
276 22.5 449 29.7
No Reelection of the
President of the
Republic
821 67 874 56.5
National Economic
Sovereignty
241 19.7 406 27.5
Social
Justice 173 14.1 361 24.8
to a
five-point
scale
(one,
"very
fulfilled" to
five,
"not-at-all
fulfilled").
"To what extent has the
government
fulfilled the basic
principles
of the
Mexican Revolution so far?"
Once
again,
the values for
"very
fulfilled" and "somewhat fulfilled"
were combined for ease of
comparison,
and the same
pattern emerged,
indicating
that
degree
of fulfillment follows
perceived
relevance,
with
a
higher percentage indicating greater
fulfillment (see Table
2).
From the
comparable patterns
found in Table 1 and Table
2,
it
ap-
pears
that a
very
close
cognitive
association exists between the relevance
and the fulfillment results. In
fact,
when the basic
principles
are
collapsed
into additive index variables for both
surveys,
the relevance and the ful-
fillment
question
results demonstrate a
strong
correlation. For both sur-
veys,
the correlation is
significant
at the .01
level,
Pearson two-tailed
test,
but it is
slightly stronger
on the Mexico
City survey
(.680)
than it is on
the national
survey (.596).
The most fulfilled
principle
of the Mexican
Revolution, according
to the Mexico
City
and
1997-1998
national
survey respondents,
there-
fore,
is "No Reelection of the President of the
Republic," indicating
that
this a
very important revolutionary goal.
Well
established,
this one ba-
sic
principle
has
probably
been the most
consequential
factor con-
tributing
to Mexican
political stability, creating
the
six-year "perfect
dic-
tatorships"
(see
Cothran
1994;
Needler
1982, 1990, 1995).
One of the
qualitative
comments was
especially
acute on this score:
382
Gawronski: Mexican Revolution in the Era
of
Globalization
383
"Sobre la no
reeleccion, aunque
no
reeligan
a la misma
persona,
si lo hacen
con el mismo sistema."
("About
no
reelection, although you
don't elect the same
person, you
do elect the same
system").
As Table 2
shows,
Mexicans view the least fulfilled basic
revolutionary
principle
as
"SocialJustice."
To recall
Brandenburg (1964: 11):
Translated into
simplest
terms,
social
justice
means that
today
and tomorrow
are worth
living
for the
promise
of a better life than
yesterday's. Implementations
of this
proposition
show the state
establishing
and
extending
social
security;
building public
clinics,
hospitals,
schools,
libraries and
reading rooms; erecting
large public housing developments, laying
out athletic
fields; redistributing agri-
cultural
lands; allotting part
of the
government budget
to the
poor, indigenous
communities, making
available basic foodstuffs at reduced
prices
to the Mexican
masses; enforcing
rent
controls,
low
transportation
rates,
and labor
rights;
and
constructing sanitary public
markets, slaughterhouses, drainage
systems,
and
water
supplies. Finally,
redistribution of national income and the
improvement
of the
living
standards of all Mexicans are
important
factors in the translation of
justicia
social.
Admittedly,
social
justice
is an
amorphous concept
that is difficult to
tap
with
survey
data. The
concept
has been so bandied about in the
rhetoric of the
postrevolutionary regime
that it
simply
cannot be ade-
quately
nailed down. For
example,
social
justice
was not
perceived
to
be
very
relevant to
today's
Mexico,
which
may
indicate that most Mex-
icans are
truly cynical
about the
prospects
of
actually achieving
this
goal.
But
why
would Mexicans feel
cynical
about a
goal
or ideal that
they
do not
perceive
as relevant?
Nonetheless,
the fact that an ex-
traordinarily
similar
pattern emerged
from both
question
results
points
to this conclusion.
Only
14.1
percent
(173)
of Mexico
City
residents
surveyed
believed
that social
justice
had been
"very"
or "somewhat fulfilled." To the con-
trary,
55.1
percent
(675)
see it as
"slightly"
or "not-at-all fulfilled." On
the
1997-1998
national
survey, nearly
25
percent
(24.8
percent,
361
in-
dividuals)
believed that social
justice
had been
"very"
or "somewhat ful-
filled,"
but
53.9
percent
(786) thought
that it had been
"slightly"
or "not-
at-all fulfilled." At the most
extremes, only
4.4
percent
(54)
of Mexico
City
residents and 4
percent
(59)
of the nation
surveyed
indicated that
social
justice
had been
"very fulfilled,"
and over a third
(35.3
percent,
432 individuals)
of Mexico
City
residents and one-fifth
(20.2
percent,
297
individuals)
of the nation
surveyed responded
that "Social
Justice"
had been "not-at-all fulfilled."
Tellingly,
when a cross-tabulation was run
with
region,
no
respondent
within southern Mexico indicated that so-
cial
justice
had been
"very
fulfilled,"
and 41.1
percent
(60)
believed that
this
goal
was "not-at-all fulfilled."
Mexican
Studies/Estudios
Mexicanos
Indicating
that the
principle
of social
justice might
remain an im-
portant
but unrealized
goal
in
Mexico,
the
question
results that
tap
the
perceived
fulfillment of social
justice
correlate with two
separate
1997-
1998
national
survey question
results,
but
only very weakly.
One
ques-
tion measured the extent to which social
equality
is
important
for democ-
racy,
and its results are
significant
at the .01
level,
Pearson two-tailed test
(.084).
Of
course,
social
equality
is not
precisely
the same
thing
as so-
cial
justice.
Nonetheless,
they
are
very
similar
concepts.
The
respondents
were also asked to assess the
degree
to which
they
believed that several
factors, conditions,
or
meanings
were associated with
democracy.
Almost
40
percent
(39.8
percent,
635 individuals)
felt that social
equality
was
very
much associated with
democracy.
The other
survey question
tapped
the
perceived injustice
of income
distribution,
and its results are
significant
at the .05
level,
Pearson two-tailed test
(.054).
Almost 70
per-
cent of the
survey respondents perceive
Mexico's distribution of income
as either
"unjust"
or
"very unjust."
The second least fulfilled basic
principle
of the Mexican Revolution
is "National Economic
Sovereignty,"
with
only
19.7
percent
(241)
of the
Mexico
City
and 27.5
percent
(406)
of the national
survey respondents
seeing
this
goal
as
"very"
or "somewhat fulfilled." This
perception
is not
surprising given
NAFTA and Mexico's increased
integration
into the
global capitalist system.
Globalized neoliberalism has
changed concep-
tions of nationalism and
sovereignty,
which becomes evident since "Na-
tional Economic
Sovereignty"
is neither
perceived
to be
important
nor
fulfilled.
Apparently
most Mexicans indeed understand the obsolescence
of this
principle,
or
they
now have a new
meaning
for economic na-
tionalism.
Supporting
this
understanding,
the "National Economic Sov-
ereignty" question
results
weakly
correlate with the results from two na-
tional
survey questions designed
to
tap perceptions
of Mexico's external
dependence
and
policy flexibility.
The
relationship
is
significant
at the
.01
level,
Pearson two-tailed test
(.175).
The first
question
focused
gen-
erally
on the
perceived degree
of the Mexican
president's independence
from external sources in
foreign policy
formation.
Interestingly,
51.3
per-
cent
(739)
felt that the Mexican
president
is either "somewhat
depen-
dent" or
"very dependent"
on external
(global)
influences in Mexican
foreign policy
formation.
The second
question
focused
specifically
on the
perceived degree
of Zedillo's
independence
from the United States in domestic
policy
for-
mation. This
question
results
weakly
correlated with the
1997-1998
na-
tional
survey's
"National Economic
Sovereignty"
variable, significant
at
the .01
level,
Pearson two-tailed test
(.081).
The results
appear
in Table
3,
the
question being: "Regarding
domestic
politics,
to what extent do
you
think that President Zedillo and his
government
are
independent
from
384
Gawronski: Mexican Revolution in the Era
of
Globalization
Table
3.
Perception:
US. Constraints on Zedillo and His Government
Frequency
Percent Valid Percent
Very Independent
139 8.5 9.8
Somewhat
Independent
370 22.5 26.1
Somewhat
Dependent
495 30.1 35.0
Very Dependent
412 25.1 29.0
Don't
Know/No
Response
226
13.7
Total 1642 100.0 100.0
the United States?
Very independent.
Somewhat
independent.
Somewhat
dependent. Very dependent.
Don't
know/No
response."
From Table 3
and
combining
the valid
percentages
for "somewhat
dependent"
and
"very dependent,"
it can be seen that 64
percent
(907)
of Mexicans
surveyed
believe that President Zedillo and his
government
were constrained
by
Mexico's
relationship
with the United
States,
and
29
percent
(412)
see Mexico as
"very dependent."
Not
surprisingly,
the
national
survey respondents
indicated that "The Land
Belongs
to Those
Who Work It" was almost as unfulfilled as
"SocialJustice,"
which makes
sense
given
the close
relationship
between social
justice
issues and land
tenure
problems
in the
countryside, especially
in southern Mexico. A
separate question
on the
1997-1998
national
survey
addressed the de-
gree
to which the
respondents
felt
protected by
Mexico's labor
laws,
and
buttressing
the
point,
64.1
percent
(965)
indicated that
they
saw
themselves as
enjoying
little or no
protection,
but this
question's
results
did not correlate with the
corresponding
"Land
Belongs
to Those Who
Work It" and
"Respect
for Labor
Rights" question
results.
The "Land
Belongs
to Those Who Work It" and
"Respect
for Labor
Rights"
are more or less
tied, according
to
perceptions
of
revolutionary
(non)
progress. Approximately
23
percent
of Mexico
City
residents and
roughly
30
percent
of the national
survey respondents
believed that these
two
goals
had been
"very"
or even "somewhat fulfilled." While these two
basic
principles might
be viewed as the Revolution's most resilient
pro-
grammatic
core,
very
few Mexicans on the
1997-1998
national
survey
believed that these basic
revolutionary principles
had been
"very
ful-
filled"
(only
5.6
percent
and
3.7
percent respectively).
Several recorded
comments from the Mexico
City survey directly
addressed the land tenure
and labor
protection principles,
and
they
were
hardly positive:
"La tierra es de
quien tenga
dinero, para comprarpapeles que
demuestra
que
son duenos
y comprar abogados."
("The
land
belongs
to those who have the
money,
to
buy papers
that show that
they
are the owners and to
buy lawyers.")
385
Mexican
Studies/Estudios Mexicanos
Table 4. The PRI: Out
of
Touch? Mexico
City
and the Nation
Compared
1997 1997-1998
Mexico
City Survey
National
Survey
Valid
Frequency
Percent
Frequency
Percent
Out of touch
392 32 397 25.0
Somewhat out of touch
429 35 608
38.3
Neither in touch
nor out of touch
n/a n/a 384 24.2
Somewhat united 274 22.4 185 11.7
Very
united 66 5.4
13 .08
Don't
know/No
response
64 5.2 55
Total 1225 100.0 1642 100.0
"Mas
bien,
la tierra es del
gobierno y
se
trabajapara
61.
("Rather,
the land be-
longs
to the
government,
and
you
work for it
[the government].")
"Derechos
laborales,
como lo dice una
palabra,
s6lo han sido
principios,
en la actualidad se cambia la Constituci6n
para beneficio
del
gobierno y
no
delpueblo." ("Labor rights,
as one
says
in a
word,
have
only
been
principles,
really
they changed
the Constitution to benefit the
government
and not the
people.")
"No
hay
casi
campesinos y
los
pocos que hay
estdn en la miseria
y
endeu-
dados,
no se valen las
huelgas,
el PRI
siempre gana y
la
justicia
se
perdi6
y
no se encuentra."
("There
hardly
aren't
any peasants,
and the few that there
are,
are in
misery, indebted;
strikes don't
accomplish anything,
the PRI
always
wins,
justice
is lost and can't be
found").
Therefore,
from the
1997
Mexico
City
and the
1997-1998
national sur-
veys,
it can be
tentatively
concluded that Mexicans
generally
see the PRI
regime
as
falling
short in
achieving
the basic
goals
of the Mexico Revo-
lution. A
separate question measuring
the extent to which the PRI is seen
as
having
been in touch with the
general
needs of
elpueblo
lends
sup-
port
to this
finding.
The
respondents
were asked to finish the
following
phrase,
and the
possibilities
were read to them: "With
respect
to the needs
of the
population generally, during
the
1980s and
1990s
the PRI has
been ... out of touch with the
people;
somewhat out of touch with the
people;
neither in touch nor out of
touch;
somewhat united with the
people; very
united with the
people;
Don't
know/No
response."
Comparing
the results
(see Table
4),
it is evident that the
majority
of both Mexico
City
and national
survey respondents
believed that the
PRI was "out of touch" or "somewhat out of touch" with
society
dur-
386
Gawronski: Mexican Revolution in the Era
of
Globalization 387
ing
the
1980s
and
1990s.
Perhaps
even more
telling
is the
very
small
percentage
of
respondents
on both
surveys
who felt that the PRI has
been "somewhat united" or
"very
united" with
elpueblo.
Because a fifth
option ("regular,"
a kind of
"maybe"
or
"so-so")
was not
provided
on
the Mexico
City pilot study,
the "somewhat united" cell is
probably
in-
flated for Mexico
City, especially
since the
capital
has had
very strong
leftist
sympathies
since the
1985
Mexico
City
disaster.
Most
revealing,
the Mexican Revolution "fulfillment"
question
re-
sults,
with all the basic
principles collapsed
into an additive index vari-
able,
resulted in statistical
significance
in an
Ordinary
Least
Square
(OLS)
multiple regression
model
using
the "out of touch"
question
results as
a
dependent
variable.
However,
the two variables are correlated
only
moderately, significant
at the .01
level,
Pearson two-tailed test
(-.145).
Multiple regression
reveals the
degree
to which a set of
independent
variables
predicts position
on the
dependent
variable-that
is,
multiple
regression analysis
is a method of
analyzing
the
variability
of a
depend-
ent variable
by relying
on information available from two or more inde-
pendent
variables. The OLS
procedure
for
multiple regression passes
a
line
through
a
plotting
of the values of cases on several variables in such
a
way
as to minimize the sum of the
squared
distance of each
point
from
that line. While
imperfect,
this statistical
procedure
allows for some
measure of the interaction of several
independent
variables simultane-
ously
on a
dependent
variable. Because the "fulfillment"
question
results
were
significant
as an
independent
variable in the OLS
regression model,
the
following interpretation
can be made: Because the PRI was "blessed"
by
the
"Revolutionary Family,"
the endorsement increased
pressure
on
the
party
to
carry
out the
principles, goals,
and ideals of the Mexican
Revolution. From the
interpretation
of the statistical
relationships,
then,
perceived
failure to achieve these
goals-especially
when
they
are
per-
ceived as relevant-could translate into a failure to meet
society's
ex-
pectations
and the
corresponding
assessment of
being
"out of touch."
However,
a
separate
OLS model that focused on
perceptions
of eco-
nomic and
political stability
revealed that the Revolution's basic
prin-
ciples having
not been carried to fruition does not
directly
influence
perceptions
of
political
and economic
stability.
That
is,
the Revolution
"fulfillment" variable did not result in statistical
significance
in the OLS
multiple regression
model
predicting perceptions
of
political
and eco-
nomic
stability.
The Mexican Revolution basic
principles collapsed
into an additive
index variable did not result in statistical
significance
in the
regression
model as a direct influence on
stability,
but the extent to which the PRI
is
perceived
as
addressing society's
needs
during
the
1980s and
1990s
did hold
up.
That
is,
the "out of touch" variable resulted in statistical
sig-
Table 5 Potential Variables
Predicting Respondent Perceptions of
PRI Attentiveness to
Expectations
in the 1980s and
c0
1990s
Linear
Regression:
Unstandardized Standardized
Coefficient Std. Error Coefficient t
Significance
(constant) 3.173 .311 10.189 .000
The 1985 Disaster and Political
Participation
.366 .063 .183 5.798 .000
Satisfaction with Zedillo 8.075E-02 .017 .157 4.670 .000
Stability:
Economic and Political.
-8.365E-02 .022
-.130 -3.801 .000
1988 Election Problems 9.716E-02 .026 .118
3.779 .000
Confidence in Government without
Presidency
-4.590E-02 .013 -.117 -3.417 .001
Economy:
Five Years
Ago
-4.902E-02 .015 -.102
-3.263 .001
Opinion
of USA
-7.925E-02 .028
-.097 -2.881 .004
Fulfillment of Mexican Revolution -2.562E-02 .009 -.088
-2.730 .006
Model
Summary:
Adjusted
Std. Error
Degrees
R
Square
R
Square
of
Estimate
of
Freedom
.229 .221
.8833
C
p
CL
-
u:
_.
828
Gawronski: Mexican Revolution in the Era
of
Globalization
389
nificance in the OLS
multiple regression
model
predicting
Mexican
per-
ceptions
of
political
and economic
stability.
This seems to indicate that
perceptions
of fulfillment of
revolutionary principles
and
goals might
be
indirectly influencing perceptions
of
stability
because the Mexican
Revolution variable resulted in statistical
significance
in the OLS model
explaining
assessments of PRI
performance
in the 1980s and
1990s.
This
possible two-step relationship,
however,
is not
very strong
because these
variables are not
especially powerful
as
independent
variables in their
respective
models,
but this
relationship
to
perceptions
of
instability,
while not
overtly apparent,
is
very important.
If the idea of the Mexi-
can Revolution is still
driving
at least some
peoples' political
and social
expectations,
and if the
regime
can no
longer provide gratifications
based
on those
expectations,
then Mexico could find itself in classic "relative
deprivation"
scenario.
However,
procedural democracy
now seems to
be
supplanting
the
average
Mexican's
political
and social
expectations,
but democratization must deliver
strong psychological gratifications
and
substantive benefits to become the
primary
source of
legitimacy
for
twenty-first-century
Mexico.
The
survey
results and the
analysis suggest
that Mexican
feelings
about the Revolution are
strong,
but Mexicans
apparently
realize that
the PRI has not been
substantively
committed to
revolutionary goals.
Apparently
most Mexicans still cherish
many
of the Revolution's basic
tenets, goals,
and ideals and understand the
meaning
of those basic
prin-
ciples.
It also seems that Mexicans
comprehend
that the Mexican Rev-
olution has been
quasi-officially
ended without ever
being completed.
Nonetheless,
the Revolution still carries enormous rhetorical and
sym-
bolic value. It seems
doubtful, however,
that it will continue as an ide-
ological
and
symbolic
national
adhesive,
which means that it will be
difficult to
keep
the
Many
Mexicos cobbled
together
based on the Rev-
olution's basic
principles.
The
problem, put simply,
is that so much has
changed.
Mexico is now much more
deeply
embedded in the
global
capitalist system
and therefore must accede to the
prevailing globalized
ideology
of
neoliberalism,
an
ideology
antithetical to
revolutionary
so-
cialism and national economic
sovereignty.
The Mexican Revolution
gen-
erated the
founding principles
of the
post-revolutionary regime.
How
the
average
Mexican understands these
principles,
however,
is
open
to
debate
largely
because the Revolution has been so
variously interpreted,
which is not
surprising given
that Mexicans
experienced
different rev-
olutions
simultaneously,
and as
Benjamin
(2000: 20-21)
noted:
La Revolucion
emerged
as successive official memories in a
process
not unlike
geological
formation: an uneven sedimentation of
memory, myth,
and
history.
It
was
named, historicized,
and reified
quite early
on. As the
postrevolutionary
state
Mexican
Studies/Estudios
Mexicanos
tried to consolidate
power
and
authority
in the
1920s, however,
the existence of
different, partisan revolutionary
collective memories and
myths-codified
in time
into
competing revolutionary traditions,
each with their own heroes and
villains,
sacred and bitter
anniversaries, myths
and
symbols-retarded
the
process.
Indeed,
Fuentes
(1996: 35) argued
that the Mexican Revolution was "at
least three revolutions":
Revolution number 1 -fixed forever in
pop iconography-was
the
agrarian,
small-
town movement led
by
chiefs such as Pancho Villa and Emiliano
Zapata.
This was
a
locally
based
revolt,
intent on
restoring village rights
to
lands, forests,
and wa-
ters. Its
program
favored a
decentralized, self-ruling,
communitarian
democracy,
inspired by
shared traditions. It
was,
in
many ways,
a conservative revolution.
Revolution number
2,
more
blurry
in the icons of the
mind,
was the
national,
centralizing,
and
modernizing
revolution led
originally by
Francisco
Madero,
then
by
Venustiano Carranza after Madero's assassination in
1913,
and
finally
consoli-
dated in
power by
the two forceful statesmen of
1920s Mexico: Alvaro
Obreg6n
and Plutarco Elias Calles. Their
purpose
was to create a modern national state ca-
pable
of
setting
collective
goals
while
promoting private prosperity.
Somewhere between the
two,
and
definitely
dim in the collective
memory,
an
incipient proletarian
revolution number
3
took
place, reflecting
the dis-
placement
of Mexico's traditional artisanal class
by
modern
factory
methods.
Whatever the number of its
iterations,
The Revolution still lives in
Mexico's collective
memory,
and the
goal
of "No Reelection of the Pres-
ident of the
Republic"
continues to be
very
relevant to Mexicans and to
Mexico. In
fact,
it is the most fulfilled basic
revolutionary principle.
How-
ever,
the
Revolution-generated goal
of "Social
Justice"
is
simultaneously
the least relevant but the least fulfilled basic
principle,
which is more
problematic
and
points
to Mexican frustration and
likely cynicism.
Social
justice may simply
be too
amorphous
a
concept
to test in a
public opinion poll.
It
may
have too
many
dimensions and
interpreta-
tions,
and the
respondents may
have been confused
by
the
question.
However,
if we conclude that
they
were not
confused,
then we can ex-
plain
the
response:
Mexicans are
truly cynical
about the
prospects
of
achieving
social
justice, having
lived without it for so
long. They
have
developed strategies
for
surviving
in a
country
rife with
injustices
and
with one of the most
unequal
distribution
profiles
of income in the world.
After
all,
the Mexican
political system
has
only recently begun
to
meaningfully change.
Social
justice
will
likely
continue as an almost
mythic goal,
but as Mexico's economic
policies
enrich the
few,
not the
many,
social
justice may
take on more concrete
interpretations
and be-
come even more relevant to the
average
Mexican.
Put
simply,
Mexico's current economic
policies simply
do not coin-
cide with the Revolution's basic
principles. James
F Rochlin
(1997:179),
in his work on Mexican
"security" issues, aptly
noted:
390
Gawronski: Mexican Revolution in the Era
of
Globalization
391
It has been
argued
that the
myth
of the Mexican Revolution was traded for the
myth
of First World
insertion,
especially during
1988-1994. The
myth
is a
metaphor
for
society's
faith and
hope
in the
nation,
and a
key subjective
ele-
ment of social cohesion. A
chilling component
of the NAFTA
period
is that Mex-
icans find themselves with no national
myth
at all.
Revolutionary
nationalism
has
evaporated,
and the
myth
of First World status was laced with false
prom-
ises. With the absence of
hope
in a clear national
project,
at the turn of the cen-
tury
Mexico finds itself mired in the
process
of
disintegration.
The
goal
of national economic
sovereignty
is moot in the era of NAFTA
and
globalized
neoliberalism. As
Stephen
D. Morris
(1999: 393) stated,
essentially "globalisation
erodes the
power
and
purpose
of the nation-
state." And the
ejido system
has been
officially
ended.
Respect
for labor
rights, moreover,
becomes ever more difficult as labor becomes a fluid
commodity
that transcends
political
borders.
Conclusion: Mexico in the Throes of Transition
The Mexican
political system
is in
period
of
political
transition, moving
from classic semi-authoritarianism to a
possible full-fledged democracy,
which in
many ways
is
truly revolutionary
for a
system
that for so
long
sacrificed
democracy
for
political stability
and
one-party
rule. This tran-
sition connotes not
only change
in
political practices
and institutions
but also a fundamental shift in the Mexican
regime's
sources of
support
and
political legitimacy.
The
legitimacy
of Mexico's
postrevolutionary
political system
has
historically
rested on a socialist-nationalist and rev-
olutionary ideology,
which no
longer
holds in the
globalized
neoliberal
era. The more traditional sources of
legitimacy
are
withering
as
proce-
dural
democracy promises
a better future for Mexico and
Mexicans,
but
the
government
of Vicente Fox
may
find itself between a rock and hard
place
when it comes to
actually satisfying
needs and value
expectations,
especially
since
people may
be
harboring unrealistically high expecta-
tions.
Democracy
itself can be an
important
source of
legitimacy,
but
Mexicans must see their lives as
improving,
and as the traditional sources
of
legitimacy
wither,
Mexican
political
and social
expectations
will rise.
As Roderic Ai
Camp
noted
(2000: 636):
"The
majority
of Mexicans ex-
pect equality
and economic
progress
from
democracy,
not
liberty
or fair
elections." These
expectations
can not outrun
regime performance
for
very long.
There will be a time
lag
as the Mexican
people
and the
regime
come to terms with the more modern and
legal-rational
sources of le-
gitimacy
associated with
developed
democracies. It is
during
this time
lag
that
democracy
is most
fragile.
Fox will
definitely
have a difficult road
ahead of
him,
and it is
highly likely
that the PRI will
attempt
to
capital-
ize on
any
difficulties that he
may
have while in office. So
far,
Mexico
Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos
has
procedural democracy
without true
political
liberalism,
despite
the
gains
made in the last few elections. Until
democracy
is
fully
consoli-
dated,
the Mexican
political regime
still runs the
danger
of
delegitima-
tion,
democratic
breakdown,
and
instability.
Nonetheless,
Mexicans now feel more comfortable
voting
for the
opposition
because the economic situation
appears
to be stable and im-
proving.
In this era of economic and
political
liberalization,
party sup-
port
and
voting
behavior are
becoming increasingly complex,
but
many
Mexicans fear
change
and
many
are still concerned with the
possible
lo-
cal
consequences
of not
voting
for the PRI.
Voting
for the
opposition
at
the national level
likely generates
fewer local effects than
voting
or not
voting
for the PRI at the local level. Mexico
certainly
seems to be
pro-
gressing
into an era of the
genuine
alternation of
power
between
polit-
ical
parties
and the
negotiation
of
rule,
but the
process
could still
stag-
nate
politically
and break
down,
which would then exacerbate
existing
social tensions. What is most certain is that Mexico's
political system
is
in flux and democratization is
unleashing potentially
more conflictive
forces,
and the
promises
of
democracy
can fall far short of social
expec-
tations.
Democracy
must deliver noticeable and substantive benefits-
that
is,
a better
quality
of life-and in a
country
like Mexico where so
many
live in
poverty
and where authoritarian tendencies still run
strong,
democracy
could as
easily
break down as consolidate.
Does liberalization and the PRI's first
presidential
defeat end the
legacy
of the Mexican Revolution? Not
yet,
at least from a
political
cul-
ture
standpoint.
Of
course, nothing
is assured in
Mexico,
and we can
not
yet put
the Mexican Revolution
entirely
to
rest,
even as Mexico more
vigorously integrates
into the
global economy
and as elites
apply
more
neoliberal
policies.
The
country
is
currently experiencing
a kind of mass
and
regime cognitive
dissonance as the arena of
public
discourse widens
beyond
the PRI and the rhetoric of the Mexican Revolution.
For decades the
ideology
of the revolution has
effectively
marked the bound-
aries of
public
debate,
thereby limiting
the
emergence
of alternative discourses.
This
ideology
acted as
unifying
and formed the basis of an exclusive claim to
po-
litical
power, thereby hampering
the
development
of
ideological pluralism.
(Pansters
1999: 238)
While the basic
principles
of the Mexican Revolution live on in the hearts
and minds of
many
Mexicans and still fuel
many
social
expectations,
Mex-
ican elites have killed the
programmatic agenda
of the
Revolution,
de-
spite continuing
to use the Revolution as a rhetorical reference
point.
But since the PRI is the "official"
party
of the Mexican
Revolution,
rev-
olutionary
ideals and values are still associated with the
PRI,
and that
party
has
finally
met its first electoral defeat for Mexico's
highest
exec-
392
Gawronski: Mexican Revolution in the Era
of
Globalization
utive office.
However,
because of
continuing
and
strong ideological
and
emotive
associations,
a
great
number of Mexicans still
support
the PRI.
Lending support
to this
notion,
Lynn Stephen
(1997: 41-42)
discovered
that it is
possible
to be both
"pro-Zapatista"
and
"pro-PRI"
because the
discourse and
legacy
of the Revolution are so
deeply
embedded in
Mexico's
political
culture:
This
convergence
of historical
symbolism conflating Zapata
and the Mexican Rev-
olution as
employed by
state
agencies,
the historical consciousness of
eji-
datarios of their own
agrarian struggles,
and the
emergence
of the
Zapatista
movement have created a
complex
set of discourse and behavior
concerning
Mexican
agrarian politics, political ideology,
and
voting.
However,
in
Chiapas,
where the
Zapatista problem
has been
festering
since
1994
and where the PRI has
traditionally
and
authoritatively
dominated
politics,
the PRI was defeated in the
August
2000 race for
governor by
an
opposition
coalition candidate.
Apparently,
the Mexican
people
had
had
enough, publicly declaring
that
they
would vote PRI but then se-
cretly voting PAN,
and democratic
procedures
do matter.
People
now
feel safer
voting
for the
opposition
and a demonstration effect is occur-
ring.
This was
especially
evident when
Chiapas
state voted PRI in
July
2000 but then for an
opposition
coalition candidate one month later.
With the PRI now
internally
divided and faced with
coming
to terms
with its
possible
(but
not
likely) demise,
and with Mexicans
feeling
more
comfortable and safer
voting
as
they
see
fit,
it is now
possible
to con-
template
the consolidation of
democracy
in Mexico.
Nonetheless,
the Rev-
olution was
tacitly
ended without ever
being completed,
and the
regime's
traditional rhetorical and
symbolic
commitment to it no
longer
makes
much
ideological
sense. In
fact,
many argue
that the Revolution was
frozen during
or soon after the Lazaro Cardenas administration. That
is,
certain
revolutionary goals
were cemented
early
on to
placate
the masses
while others were never to be
truly implemented, replaced
instead with
empty
rhetorical commitments. In
fact,
postrevolutionary
Mexico's
most
enduring
dilemma has been how to reconcile the rhetoric of the
Revolution with the
reality
of state
practice
and
policy.
While the Mexican Revolution remains
deeply
embedded in Mexi-
can
political
culture,
it seems
unlikely
that Mexico will
experience
an-
other full-blown revolution. This does not
mean, however,
that dissatis-
fied and frustrated Mexicans will not
engage
in
regional
violent
political
protest.
If the
Chiapas
and Guerrero situations and the
increasing
levels
of crime in Mexico
City
are
any
indication,
apparently
at least some Mex-
icans are now more
willing
to
engage
in violent behaviors-some with
overtly revolutionary-political goals. Nevertheless,
there are now
many
more avenues for
political participation
and
protest,
and Mexicans seem
393
Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos
willing
and
ready
to use those avenues since the recent
procedural
dem-
ocratic transition. Democratization continues
apace-yet
to
fully
con-
solidate,
because one or two clean elections do not a
full-fledged
democ-
racy
make-and will
likely
forestall a second Mexican Revolution, but
only
if Mexicans
begin
to see their standard of
living improving.
In
sum, the
survey
data and
analysis
demonstrate that Mexicans
gen-
erally
see the
regime falling
short in
achieving
the basic
goals
of the Mex-
ican Revolution. Moreover, since the PRI was
charged
with
carrying
to
fruition the
programmatic agenda
of the Mexican Revolution, it is not
surprising
that Mexicans also see the PRI as not
being
in touch with the
general
needs of
elpueblo during
the 1980s and 1990s. Now that Mexico
has embraced both neoliberalism and
globalism
can
procedural
democ-
racy
serve as the national adhesive to cobble
together
the
Many
Mexi-
cos? Because of the democratic transition the Mexican Revolution is
play-
ing
less of a role as a source of
political legitimacy. However, there are
strong
indications that the Revolution-understood as collective mem-
ory, myth, history,
and national
identity-still
holds a
place
in
political
discourse and rhetoric, even if it makes little
logical
sense in the era of
globalization.
The idea of the Mexican Revolution does
continue,
but
the defeat of the PRI indicates that
average
Mexicans no
longer
consider
the PRI the
legitimate
standard-bearer not
only
of
everyday hopes
and
aspirations
but also of the Revolution. The current
political system,
de-
spite
its
many transformations,
is
still, ultimately,
the
product
of the Mex-
ican Revolution. The
system
is indeed in
flux,
but no one is
yet speak-
ing
of
post-postrevolutionary
Mexico nor can
anyone seriously
claim that
Mexico is now a
full-fledged democracy.
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