Mexican Political System-

The modern Mexican political system is the product of the first major revolution in Latin America in the twentieth century. The revolution, in turn, was a reaction to the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz and the social and economic system upon which it was grounded.

The Era of Porfirio Diaz (the Porfiriato): 1876-1910- After fifty years of conflict between regional strongmen (caudillos), liberals and conservatives, and machinations of the French who imposed Archduke Maximilian as emperor of Mexico in the 1860's, Porfirio Diaz emerges as the strongman of Mexico. He imposed an authoritarian unity onto the country throught the rural police (rurales) which ruled the countryside with an iron hand. These were the characteristics of the period.
-love of everything foreign. The British and Americans controlled the oil fields of Mexico.
-four year cycles of "re-elections"
-liberal policies which eliminated Indian communal landholdings.
These policies gave rise to an opposition coming mostly from the Mexican bourgeoisie that resented foreign control over Mexico because it limited its power as a class. Under the slogan"effective suffrage, no re-election" and under the leadreship of Francisco Madero, it rose up against Diaz and forced him from office.

The Revolution:1910-1920

What began as a political revolution led the the upper and middle class, became a more radical revolution as peasants mobilized by Emiliano Zapata called for land and bread while workers mobilized by Pancho Villa (Doroteo Arango) called for work and decent wages. The more radical forces fought the more conservative federales. The differing factions united sufficiently to write the 1917 constitution that still "governs" Mexico today. The constitution is a nationalist document which states that all subsoil minerals belong the the state. It limited the authority of the church and proclaimed that the land should go to those who till the soil. It established ejidos (comunal landholdings) which gave peasants access to land. The ejidos could not be sold but they could remain within the same family and inherited. The constitution established the principle of no re-election of presidents and established a federal political system. One million people died (out of a population of some 12 million) and another 1 million left Mexico. By 1920, the country had bloddied itself enough for one general, Alvaro Obregon, to bring the conflict to an end. He purchased the loyalty of the generals and those who could not be persuaded were either exiled or killed.

Obregon's successor was Plutarco Calles was responsible for the following:
-creating the political party (in 1929) that has governed Mexico for the last 60 years.
-recognizing the labor movement which was quickly coopted by the political party.
-eliminated the church as a factor in Mexico's political life when he crushed a Catholic-led uprising known as the Cristero Movement in 1928. Calles continued to rule through a group of puppet presidents until 1934 when his hand-picked president, Lazaro Cardenas, sent him into exile.

Lazaro Cardenas was closest in spirit to the Mexican revolution. He was a populist president who did the following:
-carried out the largest land reform in mexican history.
-nationalized the oil fields of Mexico in 1938.
-modernized the party into three sectors (labor, peasant, and popular) while removing the army as a political force through professionalization and forced retirements of politicized military officers. Following Cardernas, Mexican presidents veered to the political right and adopted more conservative policies.

Miguel Aleman stressed less social reform and more business and economic development through a form of state capitalism under which the government made loans to Mexican businesses, built infrastructure such as roads, and controled labor unions keeping wages low and preventing strikes. The name of the party was changed to its current name, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutionalized Revolutionary Party), to emphasize the revolutionary change was over. From 1940 to 1970 Mexico grew and an average rate of 6% per year but the poor majority of Mexicans reaped little from that development. A bureaucratized party state was formed that extracted resources from the society that it sought to control in the interest of Mexican economic elites. The power of the PRI rested upon:
-its ability to control elections by using government funds to conduct campaigns and to buy the vote. The Federal Elections Commission oversaw all elections and it was controlled by the PRI.
-repression of independent labor and peasant organizations.
-control of the communications media through a bribed press. T.V. also served the interests of the government.
-the presidential power was not balanced by the other branches of the government. Each president picked his successor and exercised virtually unlimited power for the six year term that he had in office.
-funds were controlled at the capital, Mexico City, and thus the state governors had to tow the line with the president.

By the 1960's the strains in this system were evident. In 1968, the government killed hundreds of students (some say thousands) at the time of the Olympic games. Mexico was one of the most unequal societies in the entire world with a relatively small share of the population controlling most of its wealth.

During the 1970's, in the presidency of Luis Echeverria, major new oil deposits were discovered and the government went into massive debt. The debt was incurred to develop the oil but one-half of all of the debt has never been accounted for. By 1982, Mexico was unable to pay the intrest on its debt and the presidency declared its bankruptcy. Since 1982, Mexican presidents Miguel de la Madrid, Carlos Salinas, and Ernest Zedillo have imposed governments led by technocrats favoring stringent austerity programs that restrict meeting the needs of the Mexican people in order to pay for a foreign debt from which they have received little or no benefit.

Miguel de la Madrid (1982-1988) restricted wages, lowered tarriff barriers to foreign capital, a lowered government spending in an effort to reduce the budgetary deficits. Carlos Salinas (1988-1994) continued these policies only widening and deepening them. Subsidies on torillas for the poor were reduced, the price of gasoline was allowed to increase, spending for health and for education was reduced. Most Mexicans cannot afford to eat meat and many , live on a diet of corn tortillas and beans. The wages of Mexicans and their consuming power had been reduced by more than 50% since 1982. Salinas was elected in 1988 in the most fraudulent elections in recent Mexican political memory. Thirty thousand ballot boxes disappeared. Burnt ballots appeared at beaches. The ballot tally was declared a national secrret and Salinas was decalred the winner by a bare majority by his own political party. The opposition party, the Partido Revolucionario Democratico (PRD), headed by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, had several of its leaders murdered. 36 new reporters who had covered the PRD favorably and who wrote against the corruption of the major party (the PRI) were killed as was Norma Corona (the government's commissioner on human rights).

Salinas integrated Mexico into the U.S. economy by pushing for a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). With the support of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, Salinas privatized the economy selling state-owned industries to well-connected cronies at bargain prices. Mexico had 4 billionaires when he entered office and 29 when he left office. Most of the billionaires had made their fortunes through privatization. His brother, Raul Salinas, was a major drug trafficker who earned more than 300 million dollars from the drug trade. The Swiss banking authorities have traced his accounts to drug transactions.

As the election year of 1994 began, impoverished Indians in Chiapas (Mexico's poorest state) took over 5 towns under the leadership of the Zapatista Liberation Army (EZLN or Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional). Since then, the Mexican army has occupied Chiapas and has driven the EZLN into the jungles. Local paramilitary groups organized by local leaders of the PRI murder Mayan Indians that they identify as Zapatistas. In December of 1997, 45 persons ( mostly women and children) were killed at at village named Acteal. Foreigners who serve as witnesses and who thus offer protection to the EZLN and to the indigenous peoples are harrassed. They have to have invitations from someone in the area and are allowed to stay only for a limited amount of time. A French priest who had lived in Chiapas for years was expelled from Mexico sharged with being a Zapatista.

The officially designated candidate of the PRI, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was killed in March of 1994. Many think that his assassination was ordered by PRI conservatives linked to the drug rings of Mexico who traffick in an estimated 35 billion dollars of drugs per year. At the end of 1994 and beginning of 1995, Mexico defaulted on ten billion dollars in bonds. The Clinton administration loaned Mexico 20 billion dollars and arranged for another 33 billion dollars to be loaned to Mexico to bail out foreing investors (many of them Americans). The 20 billion loaned by the U.S. was paid, with interest, by oil sales reciepts that were deposited directly at the First Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Mexico paid three years in advance by once again deferring in meeting the needs of its people. As we enter the 21st century, Mexico is at a crossroads:
-More than 30% of its bank loans are no longer producing and the privatized banks have been looted by unscrupulous owners.
-The economy cannot provide sufficient jobs for the 1 million new workers entering the labor force each year.
-Petroluem accounts for the biggest share of Mexico's export earnings. The price of oil is approximating 10 dollars per barrel. This drop in oil prices ahs means several cuts in the government's budget. Although the government claims that existing social provision will not be reduced, many don't find that position credible.
-The government has asked the Congress (whose lower house is now controlled by opposition parties) to approve tax increases totaling 60 billion dollars to help bail out the banks that are holding billions of dollars in bad loans.
-Mexico's debt is over 157 billion dollars. The service (interest) on this debt alone eats up billions of badly-needed dollars each year.
-Five drug cartels have corrupted the political class associated with the PRI as well as the police. -Hundreds of federal police hasve been removed from their posts but the corruption problem in the police remains unabated. Police are involved in crime rings. Crimes such as the kidnapping of prominant persons for ransom has reached epidemic proportions.
-The quarter or so of the population that is in the dollar economy is doing quite well well the rest of Mexico is worse off than it was before.
-As opposition in the form of guerrilla movements in Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas and three other places develops, there has been a militarization of Mexican society.
-The federal government, the center of the power of the PRI is no longer as able to deliver patronage to its regional and local clients. Thus state and local elites of the PRI have begun to develop their own sources of patronage tied to drug trafficking and other forms of corruption. This has been described in the Mexican press as "the feudalization of power in Mexico."
-Politically, the PRI allows the more conservative Partido Accion Nacional (PAN party) to win a few state governorships and mayoralty positions. But it cancels election victories by the leftist PRD wherever it can. Nonetheless, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the PRD was elected mayor of Mexico City and is expected to be a challenger to the PRI in the elections of the year 2000. meanwhile, he struggles with a city that is ungovernable with a PRI that is not going to do much to ensure that he succeeds as mayor.

Mexico is in for some interesting times that could prove to be a further tragedy for the long-suffering people of Mexico.