Contesting Neoliberal Globalism and NAFTA in Rural Mexico: From State Corporatism to the Political-Cultural Formation of the Peasantry?

Abstract

Throughout most of the twentieth century, Mexico’s political system was variously described as an authoritarian, one-party-dominant, or semi-democratic regime. Three features of this system stood out and accounted for Mexico’s legendary political stability and solid domination by the ruling party. First, this party had dominated Mexican politics since its foundation in 1929, even though it changed its name twice: from the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR — National Revolutionary Party), to the Partido de la Revolution Mexicana (PRM — Party of the Mexican Revolution) in 1936, and then to the current name of Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI — Institutionalized Revolutionary Party) in 1946. The PRI finally lost the presidency in 2000, but continues to be a major force in Congress and holds most state governorships. Second, the corporatist nature of the state had been under construction since the Mexican Revolution, which lasted for almost a decade, from 1910 to 1920, and in which one million people died in combat. State corporatism meant that subordinate groups and classes became organized, but their organizations had to be acknowledged and legitimized by the state, a feature that continues after 2000. In fact, the formation of organizations was often initiated and encouraged by the state, as was the case with the Confederation Nacional Campesina (CNC — National Peasant Confederation), the major peasant organization.

This chapter is based on an article published in the Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies in 2005. Thanks are due to anonymous reviewers of this journal and to Jeffrey Ayres for useful comments on a previous version. Gerardo Otero gratefully acknowledges research funding from the Social Sciences and the Humanities Research Council of Canada through various projects from 1994 to 2006.