Abstract
Recent political and economic events have left Mexico-watchers wondering which of the different faces of this nation of over 94 million people reveals the reality and probable future of Mexico. On the one hand, there is the Mexico that has prided itself for decades on being the most stable country in Latin America and the Third World, even claiming First World status. And on the other, there is the recent Mexico of political assassinations, Indian and guerrilla insurgencies, drug mafias, and economic chaos. Is Mexico on the verge of a revolution in the revolution, with the democratic transformation of the oldest remaining one-party-dominant system in the world? More immediately, will the mid 1997 elections see the ruling Party of the Institutionalized Revolution, or PRI, lose control of the National Congress and the Mexico City government for the first time in 68 years?1 Is one of the most successful cases of one-party dominance since the disintegration of the former Soviet Union coming to an end? After all, we are reminded that “one-party dominance is an art far more than it is an inevitability.”2
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Notes
Julia Preston, “rn,” in New York Times (13 December 1996): p. C1;
Julia Preston, “Mexico Leader Shifts to Political Gear,” in New York Times (19 January 1997): p. 7.
T. J. Pempel, ed., Uncommon Democracies: The One-Party-Dominant Regimes (New York: Cornell University Press, 1990), p. 32.
For a comprehensive history of the party, see: Dale Story, The Mexican Ruling Party: Stability and Authority (New York: Praeger, 1986).
Dan A. Cothran, Political Stability and Democracy in Mexico: The “Perfect Dictatorship”? (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), p. 210–211.
Isidro Sepúlveda, “Mexico’s Political Transition: The Emergence of Civil Society,” in Donald E. Schulz & Edward J. Williams, Mexico Faces the 21st Century (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), p. 47. Also, for slightly different percentages,
see: Andrés Oppenheimer, Bordering on Chaos: Guerrillas, Stockbrokers, Politicians and Mexico’s Road to Prosperity (New York: Little, Brown, 1996), p. 169. For the PRI presidential vote since 1934
see: Daniel Levy & Gabriel Székely, Mexico: Paradoxes of Stability and Change (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), p. 72.
James L. Busey, Latin American Political Guide (Boulder, CO: Juniper Editions, 1995), p. 8; Levy & Székely, Mexico: Paradoxes of Stability and Change, p. 72.
Joseph L. Klesner, “Broadening toward Democracy?” in Laura Randall, ed., Changing Structure of Mexico: Political, Social and Economic Prospects (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996), p. 282–83; Oppenheimer, Bordering on Chaos, p. 83–90.
Alma Guillermoprieto, “The Shadow War,” in The New York Review of Books, vol. 42, no. 4 (2 March 1995): p. 34–43; Oppenheimer, Bordering on Chaos, p. 244, 256. Oppenheimer quotes Zedillo’s memorable assertion that the Zapatistas were “neither popular, nor Indian, nor from Chiapas.”
Julio C. Tresierra, “Mexico: Indigenous Peoples and the Nation-state,” in Donna Lee Van Cott, ed., Indigenous Peoples and Democracy in Latin America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), p. 188–189, drawn from an ethnographic demography series by Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (1987). This is a conservative estimate which would make the Indian population about 6 percent of a total national population of 94 million. Another source estimates the Indian population at 16 million; “This Land Is Our Land,” in Latin America Press, vol. 27, no. 36 (5 October 1995): p. 3.
David Barkin, “The Specter of Rural Development,” and Julio Moguel, “Salinas’ Failed War on Poverty,” both in NACLA Report on the Americas, vol. 28, no. 1 (July–August 1994): p. 29–41.
Sam Dillon, “Mexicans Trace Rebels’ History,” in New York Times (5 September 1996): p. A1, A3; Oppenheimer, Bordering on Chaos, p. 242–244.
Catan, “Giant Stirs,” p. 47–52; Kate Doyle, “The Militarization of the Drug War in Mexico,” in Current History, vol. 92, no. 571 (February 1993): p. 88.
Doyle here cites Roderic Ai Camp, Generals in the Palacio: The Military in Modern Mexico (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Joachim Bamrud, “Corruption, the Other Face of Business in Latin America,” in Latin Trade (September 1996): p. 38;
Sam Dillon, “A Fugitive Lawman Speaks: How Mexico Mixes Narcotics and Politics,” in New York Times (23 December 1996): p. A6;
Julia Preston, “Salinas Denies Being Told His Brother Might Have Drug Ties,” in New York Times (25 December 1996): p. A4.
Julia Preston, “Another Top Drug Official Is Gunned Down in Mexico,” in New York Times (16 September 1996): p. A6.
Eduardo A. Gamarra, “The Art of Narcofunding,” in Hemisphere, vol. 7, no. 2 (1996): p. 26.
Samuel Blixen, “Money laundering taints much of the region,” in Latin America Press, vol. 25, no. 18 (20 May 1993): p. 1.
Silvana Paternostro, “Mexico as a Narco-democracy,” in World Policy Journal, vol. 12, no. 1 (spring 1995): p. 41–47.
Dale Story, Industry, the state and Public Policy in Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), p. 33.
Menno Vellinga, Economic Development and the Dynamics of Class (Netherlands: Van Gorcum Assen, 1977), p. 45.
For an in-depth look at Business Chambers in Mexico see: Robert Jones Shafer, Mexican Business Organizations (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1973), p. 49–50.
Keith Bradsher, “Back from the Brink, Mexico’s Giant Alfa Slims Down for Hard Times,” in International Management (September 1986): p. 66.
Roderic Ai Camp, Entrepreneurs and Politics in Twentieth Century Mexico (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 245.
Judith A. Teichman, Policy-Making in Mexico: From Boom to Crisis (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1988), p. 114.
Alan Riding, Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans (New York: Knopf, 1985), p. 124.
Miguel Basañez, La lucha por la hegemonía en México, 1968–1980 (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1981), p. 193; quote from Camp, Entrepreneurs and Politics in Twentieth Century Mexico, p. 28.
Paul Luke, “Debt- and Oil-led Development: The Economy Under López Portillo, 1977–1982,” in George Philip, ed, The Mexican Economy (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 51.
Douglas P. Handler, “The Mexican Economy in Perspective,” in A.C. Neilson Company (1996).
Pedro Aspe, Economic Transformation the Mexican Way (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), p. 248–249.
Anthony DePalma, “Losing Control, for Mexicans, Democracy Exacts a Scary Price,” in New York Times (27 March 1994): Sec. 4, p. 1.
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© 1999 Marco Rimanelli
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Morales, W.Q., Young, C.B. (1999). Mexico: Revolution in the Revolution?. In: Rimanelli, M. (eds) Comparative Democratization and Peaceful Change in Single-Party-Dominant Countries. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312292676_11
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