Chapter 10: The United Mexican States

SOVEREIGNTY, AUTHORITY, AND POWER

• Mexico is a federal republic, borne out of two major revolutions.
• The first established Mexico as a newly independent country from Spain in 1821, and the second removed a military dictator in 1911, beginning Mexico’s transition to constitutional republicanism.
• Authoritarianism did not end in 1911, however, as a single political party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), came to control every aspect of the political process for most of the twentieth century.

Geographic Influences on Political Culture

• Mexico has mountain ranges, deserts, beautiful coastal beaches, fertile valleys, high plateaus, and rain forests.
• Mountain ranges and deserts divide Mexico, so regional politics are important.
• After independence, Mexico's development was slow due to a lack of arable farmland, but recently discovered natural resources have modern uses.
• Like the silver discovered by Spanish colonial masters in the 1500s, these resources are mostly benefiting a small elite at the top of Mexican society.
• Mexico's 2,000-mile border with the world's most powerful nation, the United States, has shaped its history.

Components of Mexican Political Culture

• POPULISM AND CELEBRATION OF REVOLUTION: Ordinary Mexicans stood up against powerful elites in Mexico’s major nineteenth- and twentieth-century revolutions, and charismatic leaders led popular movements to revolutionary victory.
• AUTHORITARIANISM: While seemingly contradictory to populism, Mexico has a long tradition of authoritarianism running from Spanish colonial rule, through the military rulers of the nineteenth century, and up to the PRI bosses of the twentieth century.
• CATHOLICISM: Spanish colonization built society in Mexico with the Catholic mission as the center of daily life and political organization.
• PATRON-CLIENTELISM: The regional divides of Mexican politics were brought together among top elites through a favor-trading system of quid pro quo, which benefited everyone at the top mutually.
• SPANISH LANGUAGE: Mexicans are united by near universal use of the Spanish language.

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGE

• The history of Mexico breaks neatly into three distinct eras, each separated by a major revolution that reshaped the regime.
• Changes to the regime, though, did not alter the major themes of Mexican political history, namely, authoritarianism and the system of patron-clientelism.

Colonial Rule (1519–1821)

• In 1519, Hernan Cortes, the first Spanish conquistador in Mexico, conquered Tenochtitlan and ruled the Aztecs.

• Spanish soldiers who were not allowed to bring their European families to the New World quickly mixed with the native population, creating a new mestizo ethnicity.

• Mexico's population is mostly Amerindians and mestizos.

• Spanish social order was based on race.

  

• The Spanish encouraged and sometimes forced native conversion to Christianity.

• Spanish missions organized agriculture and meals.

Independence (1810–1911)

• Mexico's independence from Spain began in 1810, but it wasn't fully restored until 1821.
• Father Miguel Hidalgo, a Spanish priest, organized 90,000 poor indigenous farmers to fight the Spanish army for the right to grow crops prohibited by law to protect Spanish imports.
• Hidalgo's army was defeated and scattered, and he was executed, but other Mexicans, especially criollos with few opportunities in colonial society, joined the Latin American revolution to overthrow colonial rule.
• After 1821, Mexican politics were unstable.
• Armed camarillas led by caudillos fought for territorial control, causing constant bloodshed.
• Vice presidents often led coups against presidents, and presidents often left office to fight rebellions elsewhere.
• Thirty-six presidents served between 1833 and 1855.
• General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who served as president ten times, usually left office after a few months to fight.
• Taking advantage of Mexico's instability, the US annexed Texas in 1845, the Mexican Cession in 1848, and the Gadsden Purchase in 1853.
• President Porfirio Diaz (1876–1911) ended the instability.
• After losing the 1871 presidential election, Diaz, a Juarez general, planned a coup.
• After overthrowing the government in 1876, he ran for president, promising to serve one term and resign after fair elections.
• He ruled for 35 years after breaking his promise not to run again.
• Underground political critics cleverly changed the comma in his campaign slogan Sufragio efectivo, no reeleccion ("Effective vote, no reelection") to Sufragio efectivo no, reeleccion.
• Despite his broken promise, Porfiriato supporters remained.
• The characteristics of the Porfiriato included:
  • STABILITY: The fighting among camarillas came to a close, and there was not another internal revolution until 1910–1911.
  • ECONOMIC GROWTH: Diaz centralized control over all decision making in the Mexican economy, and invited foreign investment to develop Mexican industry, particularly mining.
  • INEQUALITY: Massive economic growth came at a high cost.

Revolution of 1910 and the Establishment of the PRI (1910–1934)

• Elites and poor, displaced Mexicans demanded a new election and Diaz's removal in 1910.
• Diaz obstructed the 1911 election and was ousted.
• Mexico's camarilla factions battled for nearly a decade after Diaz's abdication.
• The defeat of many of these generals, including Emiliano Zapata and his southern peasant army and Pancho Villa and his northern soldiers, allowed northern constitutionalists to draft the Constitution of 1917, which still governs Mexico.
• In 1929, revolutionary generals founded the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to end violence.
• "Shared" power revolutionaries.
• The first three post-PRI Mexican presidents were constitutionalist generals.
• While each president served his six-year term (sexenio), former generals and revolutionary leaders held key government positions.
• Each president willingly handed over power after one term.
• The giant PRI umbrella covered so many influential leaders that the competition was meaningless.
• The party's massive patron-client network ended Mexico's caudillos' fighting.

Reform Under Cárdenas (1934–1940)

• Lazaro Cárdenas' 1934–1940 presidency was the PRI's most eventful.
  • Revolutionary general Cárdenas was charismatic.
• Unlike his predecessors, he campaigned across the country to build a loyal power base.
• Cárdenas’s reform agenda centered on three areas:
  • LAND REFORM: Cárdenas used new powers of the state in the constitution to acquire large commercial tracts of land (called haciendas) previously controlled by private landowners, and converted them into agricultural collectives (called ejidos) in which the peasants would cease paying rents to the landowners, and would have rights to keep the proceeds of selling the crops, provided they did not fail to use the land for more than two years.
  • LABOR REFORM: Cárdenas’s administration encouraged the formation of peasant and workers’ unions, and strictly enforced Article 123 of the Constitution that guaranteed an eight-hour work day and other rights of workers.
  • NATIONALIZATION: Foreign businesses that had been in operation in Mexico since Diaz were forced to leave the country, and their property was expropriated.

The Pendulum Theory (1946–1980s)

• By 1946, the PRI's founding president/generals had retired, and a new generation of leaders was emerging.
• President Miguel Aleman reversed Cárdenas's ejido system and ISI, encouraging entrepreneurship and reviving foreign investment in Mexico.
• Presidents alternated between Cárdenas' leftist model and Aleman's right-wing model and the new Mexican middle class for the next few decades.
• By the 1970s, the early PRI "politicos" were losing power to a new generation of educated, technical experts (called technicos).
• The PRI adopted a neoliberal economic model of private entrepreneurship, limited government, privatization of nationalized industries, and free trade after the technicos took power.
• These reforms led to the 1980s "Mexican Miracle," when Mexico's GDP grew significantly and developing nations looked to Mexico for economic solutions.
• Unfortunately, most 1980s growth was due to high oil production and inflated oil prices, which crashed in 1982.

Structural Adjustment and Reform (1982–2000)

• Mexico needed help from the International Monetary Fund to repay its debts to develop its national oil industry after oil prices plummeted in 1982. (IMF).
• The IMF gave Mexico loans to avoid default in exchange for a structural adjustment program.
• Mexico stopped running annual budget deficits after structural adjustment.
• Mexico had to privatize many state-owned companies to raise cash, cut government spending significantly (and lay off many government employees or cut their pay), and open its borders to foreign competition and free trade.
• Mexicans struggled during President Miguel de la Madrid's (1982–1988) reforms.
• His term saw 0.1 percent GDP growth and 100 percent inflation.
• Mexico's "lost decade" was the 1980s.
• PRI corporatist power networks and vote rigging kept it in power during this economic crisis.
• The government called the 1988 election results a "breakdown of the system" because the computers crashed.
• After the "breakdown," Carlos Salinas de Gortari was declared the winner.
• Former President Miguel de la Madrid admitted that the PRI rigged the 1988 election and burned all the ballots in 1991 to hide the evidence.
• The Federal Election Institute (IFE), now the National Electoral Institute (INE), was created in 1990 to ensure that the 1994 election would not be tainted by the 1988 election.
• First-time international election observers were allowed in Mexico in 1994.
• Mexico had a turbulent 1994. Southern indigenous rebels called Zapatistas in honor of Emiliano Zapata began an armed uprising in Chiapas the day NAFTA took effect.
• A mysterious crime assassinated the leading PRI candidate.
• As investors fled, the peso plummeted against the dollar.
• The 1994 election was Mexico's most free and fair, but Ernesto Zedillo, the PRI candidate, won, likely because voters chose stability over the fear of what might happen if Mexico were governed by a party other than the PRI.
• In 2000, Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN) defeated the PRI after seventy-one years of rule.
  • This election showed Mexican democracy that opposition candidates could win in the new system.
• The PRI has reinvented its message and appeal to reclaim its place in Mexican politics after many predicted its demise.

CITIZENS, SOCIETY, AND THE STATE

• Mexico is in transition from a long history of authoritarianism and corporatism, attempting to build a democratic and pluralist political culture.
• While this cannot be accomplished overnight, Mexico has made observable progress in building a political culture in which broader citizen input is increasingly significant to political outcomes.

Significant Social Cleavages

URBAN VS. RURAL

• Mexico is 79.2% urbanized.
• In recent decades, rural people have moved to cities in large numbers. Industrialization and modernization in Mexico have made cities the best places to find jobs.
• International firms set up maquiladoras in northern Mexico to take advantage of low-wage Mexican labor and export tariff-free to the US market.
• Urban Mexicans earn more and are more literate.
• Voting patterns vary.
• Rural voters have shown a greater willingness to support the PRI in recent elections, while urban voters have favored the right (PAN) and left (PDC) (PRD).
• Rural voters seem more interested in short-term gain, and the PRI's ability to curry favors from the patron-client network seems to keep them loyal.
• Urban voters are more likely to support major reforms to remove the PRI's patron-client power base, even if their candidate can't bring federal dollars to their city.
• In 2012, many urban voters voted PRI, changing these trends.
• Rural voters remain PRI's core support.

SOCIAL CLASS

• With a Gini coefficient of.43, Mexico has one of the highest economic divides in the world for a large population.
• Mexico's top 10% earn 39.2% of national income and 27 times the bottom 10%.
• NAFTA created new jobs for multinational firms in the north and border area but had little impact on growth or employment in central or southern Mexico, contributing to rising inequality in the 1990s.
• Small entrepreneurial ventures, not factories, are driving growth now, reducing inequality.
• Despite a GDP per capita of $10,000, over 30% of Mexicans live on less than $5 per day.

ETHNICITY

• Mestizos make up 65 percent of Mexicans, Amerindians 17.5 percent, and whites 16.5 percent.
• Mestizos dominate Mexico's wealth and politics and live everywhere.
• Indigenous descendants live throughout the country, but most are in the south, where many still speak indigenous languages as well as Spanish.
• Mestizo policymakers neglect and isolate Amerindians, who are poorer than other groups.
• The ongoing conflicts with the EZLN Zapatista Movement, a leftist armed resistance group that has periodically established autonomous municipalities in the south, demonstrate this.

Forms of Political Participation

• The transition from authoritarianism to democracy and from state corporatism to pluralism, in addition to growing prosperity in Mexico over the last three decades, is rapidly expanding the opportunities for political participation in Mexico.

CIVIL SOCIETY

• Patron-clientelism based on the generals' camarillas supported the PRI.
• The PRI divided its authorized groups into labor, peasants, and middle-class business. (Initially, it was mostly government employees.)
• These groups could complain to the government if they didn't challenge the PRI.
• Many groups outside the PRI's corporatist umbrella still publicly expressed frustration with the PRI, but few Mexicans were involved in civil society until later in the century.
• The National Action Party (PAN), founded in 1939 by disgruntled businessmen, opposed Cárdenas' massive state intervention in economic matters.
• As Mexico developed economically and liberalized the political system in the late 20th century, civil society became increasingly pluralist, with citizens free to join groups and pursue political, charitable, religious, and recreational causes without much state interference.
• By 2008, Mexico had over 10,000 civil society organizations, up from 2,500 in 1994.
• The Catholic Church still dominates the nation, as 25% of these organizations are religious.

PROTESTS

• TLATELOCO PLAZA: Just before Mexico’s hosting of the 1968 Summer Olympics, farmers and workers unions frustrated with the government’s lack of attention to their plight organized a number of highly visible rallies.
  • On October 2, 1968, over 10,000 students gathered in Tlateloco Plaza to listen to speeches in a peaceful protest.
• 2006 ELECTION: The 2006 election was the closest in Mexico’s history, with PAN candidate Felipe Calderón defeating PRD candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador by only about 250,000 votes (just over 0.5 percent of the total).
• YO SOY #132: Many Mexicans believed Televisa, the largest media company in Mexico, heavily biased its coverage in favor of PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto in the 2012 election.

POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

• Mexico’s democratic transition has involved the creation of a few new institutions, but has mainly occurred by reforming existing institutions dating back to the Constitution of 1917.

Linkage Institutions

POLITICAL PARTIES

The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)

• After the Mexican Revolution, competing caudillos formed the PRI to end the instability and bloodshed that had plagued politics in the early 20th century.
• The longest-ruling political party in history, it ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000.
• Its longevity was due to favorable media relations, a corporatist patron-client network that favored local constituents, and election fraud in some elections.
• The PRI's election-day events, which offered free food and entertainment in exchange for votes, were notorious worldwide.
• The PRI ruled most states after losing the presidency in 2000.
• In 2009, the PRI won back the legislature, and in 2012, Enrique Peña Nieto won the presidency.

The National Action Party (PAN)

• Business leaders frustrated with PRI repression and corporatism formed the PAN, which opposed the right until Vicente Fox was elected president in 2000 and Felipe Calderón in 2006.
• From 2000 to 2009, PAN held a plurality of seats before the PRI took over.
• The PAN's economic policy has always favored free enterprise, privatization of national industries, trade liberalization, and small government.
• Fox's inability to govern Mexico without the PRI's corporatist network and legislative gridlock prevented him from implementing most of the PAN agenda.

The Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD)

• Since the fraudulent 1988 election, the PRD has opposed the left as the PRI's splinter movement.
• It has generally supported human rights and social justice for disadvantaged Mexicans, particularly in the southern region with the highest concentration of poor and indigenous Mexicans.
• Globalization and free trade have weakened Mexico's labor unions, weakening the PRD in urban areas.
• In 2006, Andrés Manuel López Obrador almost won the presidency and called on PRD supporters to protest in Mexico City.
• In 2012, Peña Nieto defeated him again.
• After getting well over 20% in recent elections, the PRD barely crossed 10% of the vote in the PR portion of legislative elections in 2015 after Obrador left to form the National Regeneration Movement.

The National Regeneration Movement (MORENA)

• After losing the 2012 elections, former PRD member Andrés Manuel López Obrador founded MORENA.
• National Regeneration Movement is MORENA.
• It is a coalition of leftists and evangelical right Mexicans that ran for the Chamber of Deputies for the first time in 2015 and won 47 out of 500 seats.
• For the first time in 2018, MORENA supported Obrador and won the most Senate and Chamber of Deputies seats.

ELECTIONS

• Mexico is a democratic federal state, and its people elect officials at many different levels and different branches at each level.
• The principle of non-reelection was once built into every office at all levels, but reforms signed into law in 2014 will now allow legislators to be reelected to a limited number of terms.
• Governors and presidents may still only serve a single sexenio.

Presidential Election

• Mexico’s president is directly elected every six years in a single ballot plurality system.
• Under PRI rule, it was typical for an incumbent president to choose his successor, and party machinery would fall in line to arrange the orderly election of his choice.
• Today’s elections are generally believed to be free and fair, though there are still some allegations of irregularities.
• Each party nominates one candidate for the presidency, and voters cast their vote.
• The candidate with the most votes wins the presidency, regardless of whether the candidate received a majority or simply a plurality.

Legislative Elections

• Mexico elects members to the Chamber of Deputies and Senate of the Congress of the Union.
• The Chamber of Deputies has 500 members, 300 of whom are elected to three-year terms from single-member-district (SMD) constituencies based on which candidate gets a plurality (not necessarily a majority) and 200 from party lists by proportional representation (PR).
• Since 2018, these legislators can serve four three-year terms.

State Elections

• At the state level, each of Mexico’s 31 states directly elects a governor to a six-year term, though the years of the election are staggered state-by-state.
• Voters also elect deputies to state congresses, and local officials such as mayors.
• These races were once completely controlled by the PRI, but have become competitive in Mexico’s democratic transition.

INTEREST GROUPS

• Reforms in the 1980s and 1990s broke the PRI's state corporatism model, allowing independent pluralist interest groups to influence policymaking.
• The Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), PRI corporatism's workers' union, exemplified this theme.
• From 1940 to 1982, CTM used its position in the PRI establishment to improve workers' living conditions, but the collapse of oil prices and the IMF's austerity reduced the union's power, especially as PRI administrations negotiated and signed free-trade agreements.
• As unions lost power in the PRI to the new technico elites, the CTM became more conservative and was seen by workers to negotiate disputes in favor of the employer.
• Workers turned to independent unions to voice their concerns, and the CTM is now one of many labor advocates.

THE MEDIA

• The PRI manipulated the media for favorable coverage during its rule.
• No state media agency existed, and media outlets were privately owned.
• The PRI directly subsidized friendly media outlets and paid journalists to write stories.
• Many media companies could earn two-thirds of their revenue from official announcements, state industry ads, and PRI campaign ads.
  • Thus, without PRI cooperation, outlets could barely survive.

State Institutions

• Mexico’s state institutions were created by the Constitution of 1917.
• While Mexico’s political culture and functional political processes have changed dramatically, the structural institutions have remained in place.

THE PRESIDENT

• Mexico's president is the ceremonial head of state and government and serves a six-year term.
• Most Mexican presidents were generals with armed forces.
• After the Revolution, the Constitution barred presidents from serving in the military for six months before the election.
• The Constitution gave presidents broad powers and massive influence over PRI party affairs.
• Presidents filled every level of government with political loyalists, creating a massive patron-client network with the president at the top, resulting in the "six-year dictatorship" of Mexico.

THE CONGRESS

• Both houses of the Mexican Congress of the Union make policy.
• It was a "rubber-stamp" body for most of the PRI's rule, but after 240 opposition party deputies were elected out of 500 seats in 1988, it became a check on the president.
• Even with the PAN holding a plurality through 2009, Presidents Fox and Calderón struggled to pass reforms due to legislative gridlock by 2000.
• Enrique Peña Nieto's PRI led in seats after 2012.

THE JUDICIARY

• The Supreme Court of Justice is Mexico's highest court, with eleven judges appointed by the president to fifteen-year terms with Senate approval.
• Judges can be renominated.
• Supreme Court justices appoint lower-court judges.
• In 1995, the PRI's patron-client network for judicial appointments was replaced by a merit system of competitive examinations for prospective judges.
• These reforms are increasing judicial independence.
• The Supreme Court of Justice can strike down unconstitutional laws after one-third of Congress, one-third of a state congress, or the attorney general requests it.
• Code law governs Mexico.
• Congress or the president enacts detailed legal codes to answer most legal questions.
• Unlike in common law, judicial precedent does not influence law interpretation.

THE BUREAUCRACY

• Mexico's federal bureaucracy employs 1.5 million people.
• The patron-client network corrupted and incompetent bureaucracy.
• As a new president took office, most bureaucrats were unfamiliar with their jobs because the agency head was often reassigned to a new agency along with the entire staff.
• Mexicans expected to bribe bureaucrats for approvals or certifications.

THE MILITARY

• The military ruled Mexican politics in the 19th and 20th centuries.
• Most presidents from independence to 1946 were generals.
• The Constitution prohibits military authorities from performing “any functions other than those that are directly connected with military affairs” to limit their political power.
• Military officers had to wait six months before taking government jobs.

STATES

• Mexico was federal under the PRI, but state governments were puppet governments under the president's patron-client system.
• Election reforms that gave voters real choices about state leaders gave states new independence and significance.
• Mexico's 31 states elect their own governors, congresses, and judicial systems.
• Like the president, governors and legislators can only serve one six-year term, but they can run for additional nonconsecutive terms.
• Mexico is constitutionally and functionally federal. States have many powers today.

PUBLIC POLICY

• A few decades ago, Mexico was easily classified as a less-developed or developing country with an authoritarian political system.
• Mexico’s transitional state has created new policy concerns, which voters and political elites must navigate in order to ensure the survival of the reformed regime.

Economic Policy

• Mexico's economy has been neoliberal since the 1982 fiscal crisis that required IMF intervention.
• Globalization and free trade are Mexico's development strategy.
• NAFTA initially brought high-wage jobs to the north, especially to maquiladora districts where factories can import raw materials duty-free and export anywhere in the world without Mexican state restrictions.
• Since 2000, maquiladora factories, which employed 17% of Mexicans, have declined.
• Mexico's factories offer the best jobs at low wages.
• Mexico disputes NAFTA's efficacy.
• Since NAFTA, Mexico's economy has grown 1.5 percent annually and the wealth gap has grown.
• Some estimates suggest that food and clothing costs have been cut in half, allowing many Mexicans to live better than before the agreement.
• Subsidized U.S. agricultural products flooded the Mexican market and drove many farmers out of business, possibly encouraging illegal immigration to the US.
• Mexican agricultural exports to the US have tripled since NAFTA.
• NAFTA may cause decades of political conflict.

Drug Violence

• Since 2006, Mexico has waged a "war on drugs" to quell violence in many northern cities.
• The problem is drug cartels competing for US distribution networks.
• The cartels bribed local officials, including police, to ignore them.
• As Presidents Fox and Calderón attempted to root out local corruption, cartels saw opportunities to move into territory previously held by rival cartels, sparking violent cartel wars.
• Local officials and reporters trying to stop cartel activity or identify members are brutally murdered.
• Drug-related violence killed 60,000–120,000.
• Peña Nieto's strategy worked better than Fox and Calderón's bloody military campaigns against drug gangs.
• Many worried that Mexico was becoming a narco-state where drug gangs had more political power than legitimate authorities, but the situation appears to be stabilizing and many of the cartels' high-profile leaders have been arrested.

Corruption

• Corruption has long plagued Mexico.
• Mexico ranked 135 out of 180 on the 2017 Corruption Perceptions Index.
• In 2014, 43 students were kidnapped and burned in Iguala.
• Federal investigators traced the kidnapping to the Iguala police and the mayor and his wife, who ordered it out of fear that the students would disrupt the wife's announcement to run for mayor.
• Corruption has plagued the president.
• In 2015, Congress passed a new anti-corruption law to monitor and punish corrupt officials and companies.
  • This law may reverse Mexico's impunity.

Foreign Policy

• Mexico's bilateral foreign policy has historically focused on the US. US focus is for many reasons.
• Mexico exports 90% to the US. Remittances from US workers—many undocumented—make up 2.1% of Mexico's GDP.
• Mexico is the third largest US trading partner.
• After September 11, 2001, the US prioritized counterterrorism and security over NAFTA expansion.

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