Enrique
Krauze

Through its long and complex history, Mexico has enjoyed only a few years of real democratic life. Although the Mexican founding fathers envisaged for their country a political life literally copied from the admired American Constitution, the old political realities and habits that resulted from three centuries of Spanish rule prevailed over the most generous ideals. Even the mental remnants of the theocratic prehispanic cultures inhibited any kind of political modernization. Formally, Mexico was a federalist, democratic, representative republic with its three power system, a free press, universal suffrage, etc. Actually, except for a brief, shining period from 1867 to 1876, it was a de facto monarchy ruled by a president-caudillo.

From 1876 to 1910, Mexico was governed by one dictator: Porfirio Diaz. Under his rule, the country achieved immense economic progress but delayed for precious decades its political development. Political life resembled a huge pyramid: at the top, having the first and last word over the affairs of the country, the president-king. Beneath Diaz was a whole structure of civil servants whose careers depended directly upon the personal favor of Díaz. Elections were held with mathematical precision but nobody dared to care about the results. Nevertheless, during all those years, Mexicans enjoyed real civic and personal liberties. What kind of political system was this?

The American historian Richard M. Morse once explained the political archetype that lies beneath this Mexican -and, by extension- Iberoamerican way of understanding and practicing politics. In these countries political life resembles not an open plaza where people discuss -alike that characteristic of the anglosaxon democratic tradition- about a closed edifice within which all the conflicts could be resolved. Max Weber named this political design patrimonialism. In the Iberian tradition and according to the neothomistic theories that flourished in Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the State had the responsibility to deliver the "common good" of the people. In Mexico in particular, this design turned the ruler into the giver: money, grants, posts, privileges. Porfirio Diaz saw himself as an immense and benign father of all Mexicans. And many Mexicans, for their part, saw him likewise.

I have dwelled perhaps too long in the porfirian example because it represents clearly the way Mexican people have experienced political life since then until very, very recently. The Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920 changed many things in the country but not, in its essence, political life. True, in 1929 President Plutarco Calles founded the PRI, Mexico's ruling and virtually only party since then. But the party was not a conventional one by Western standards: it worked as an enlarged and collective Porfirio. Whereas the old dictator had inside the official edifice thousands of civil servants, the PRI put inside the new "revolutionary" edifice millions of workers, peasants, bureaucrats, intellectuals, soldiers, and even entrepreneurs, all of them material beneficiaries or concessionaries of the State. The process was successful for many decades in the sense that the country enjoyed a surprising rate of economic growth and very little political unrest. But in the end it proved to be costly, inefficient, and corrupt. Without any kind of political checks and balances with the sudden gift of oil, Jose Lopez Portillo, who served as president from 1976 to 1982, could see himself not as a father but as a God. He spent accordingly. Everyone by now knows the sad consequences. We Mexicans had to experience the severest economic crisis of our history to understand that without political progress, economic progress is always fragile and sometimes reversed.

Not surprisingly, in the presidential elections of 1988, the PRI and its candidate -Carlos Salinas de Gortari- met with the grimmest results in its history. The Partido Accion Nacional (moderate right wing) consolidated its second place after 50 years of civic struggle. But the real surprise was the upsurge of "Cardenismo." Its leader, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, is the son of Mexico's most revered president: Lazaro Cardenas. The enormous inherited charisma of that president, embodied now by his son, has proved to be a serious challenge for the government. That is how Mexico arrived at its present, paradoxical situation: the government of Salinas de Gortari and the main ranks of the PRI itself are decidedly in favor of political and economic modernization. But their dilemma is real: should they grant a share of power to the cardenistas, the heirs of the president that did much to build the most antidemocratic features of the system? The cardenistas are populists that still believe in the central role of the state and the other archaic features of the Iberian and Porfirian traditions. They are impossible democrats. Should enemies of democracy be allowed to have access to power if they win through democratic means, that is, in the ballot box. In my opinion, the answer is yes. People must learn through their choices and mistakes.

The problem is that if, in fact, the cardenistas should someday win the Mexican presidency, Mexico would face an immense and perhaps definitive historical setback. In our future we can envisage two possibilities. We can become fully a Western country like today's Spain. Or we can sink in a bottomless past, like Peru. The young people in the old PRI are trying to lead the country in the first direction. The old people in the young cardenista movement would lead the country in the latter direction. If only the PRI could gain a new legitimacy and become a real party not a government agency... If only the left wing cardenistas could learn more from their homologues in Spain or even in Poland.... Unfortunately for Mexico, both possibilities seem remote, the latter more than the former. But in spite of its paradoxes and dilemmas, nobody doubts that both economically and politically the country is on the move again ... and this time on the right track.

Vision. International Leaders Forum, vol. 1