Mexico stands out as a paragon of political stability within contemporary Latin America.
Peter Smith, 199092
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the PRI became the world’s longest-running political act. Since 1934, all its presidents had come and gone every six years as scheduled. In 1991, Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa visited Mexico and observed that Mexico was a “perfect dictatorship.” He noted that the PRI political machine had overcome the fatal flaw of Porfirio Diaz’s earlier political machine—the lack of a succession mechanism. By choosing a new president every six years, in theory the PRI machine could last forever.93
One of the keys to Mexican political stability was rigid adherence to the “no reelection” rule for the president. The forced retirement of the president every six years kept the politically ambitious in check by providing them with a chance at power six years later. They remained in the PRI since that party was correctly perceived as the only route to high public office. The regular changing of administrations provided a chance for the talented to move up to higher positions in the public sector and for the incompetent to be winnowed out.94
Another key to Mexico’s long-term political stability was the concentration of power in the president. The Mexican president exercised the powers normally associated with the president of a constitutional democracy, such as being commander-in-chief of the armed forces. In addition, he exercised a wide variety of other powers, referred to as “metaconstitutional” powers. Given the lack of checks and balances, no person, group, or institution could challenge the president when he exercised these powers. In addition to choosing his successor, an outstanding metaconstitutional power was the president’s control of the ruling political party, the PRI. Exercising his metaconstitutional power, the president would name the president of the PRI. This enabled him to make crucial decisions on PRI nominees for senators, federal deputies, governors, and sometimes mayors.95
Political scientist Lorenzo Meyer described Mexico’s Congress as “an assembly of unconditional supporters of the executive who approved almost everything the president sent it and never questioned him effectively nor called to account those responsible for political actions.” As late as 1974, Congress had yet to reject a federal legislative initiative. Most legislation was submitted to Congress by the president and passed by acclamation.96
The key to presidential dominance over Congress was the legal prohibition against the immediate reelection of congresspersons. This meant that congressional representatives had to look to the president for their next position in the public sector. Having served one’s constituency admirably had nothing to do with a congressperson’s ability to continue in public service.
Rather than being selected to formulate policy, congresspersons were selected as a reward for faithful service or as a possible first step up the political ladder for a talented neophyte. The allocation of seats in the Chamber of Deputies maintained the loyalty of PRI sector leaders. In 1970, forty-one deputies came from the peasant sector, seventy-two from the popular sector, and twenty-two from the labor sector.97
Since Mexico lacked a tradition of an independent judiciary, presidentially appointed judges, who were approved by the presidentially controlled Congress, lacked independence. Legislation passed in 1949 prevented the Supreme Court from hearing disputes involving elections. This prevented aggrieved candidates from raising legal challenges to electoral fraud, as had happened earlier in the 1940s.98
Another factor contributing to the durability of the “perfect dictatorship” was sustained economic growth. Between 1950 and 1970, Mexico’s per capita GDP increased at an average annual rate of 3.35 percent—well above the Latin American average of 2.40 percent.99
While the fruits of this growth were inequitably distributed, economic development between 1940 and 1970 did result in increased income for a substantial majority of Mexicans. As a result the PRI enjoyed genuine support. Journalist Alma Guillermoprieto commented:
For all its inefficiencies and other faults, the patrimonial system worked well enough to pull a
Largely rural and illiterate population into the twentieth century, insuring levels of education,
Health care, public services, and social mobility which comparable societies (Peru, Brazil, and
Colombia, say) never achieved.100
Even though the PRI was not involved in choosing its own presidential candidates, it performed a number of functions that maintained the system. Its sectors gave average citizens, such as street vendors, factory workers, or ejidatarios, at least the perception that there was an official channel that would respond to their complaints. The PRI also recruited political cadres, controlled mass organizations, carried out social and welfare roles, and organized elections to legitimate the regime. The party was so effective at organizing elections that, through 1970, it never lost a presidential, gubernatorial, or senatorial election. A 1964 CIA report observed: “The party-government complex has become so large and intricate in the attempt to be all things to Mexicans of all political views, that its orientation defies conventional definition.”101
The PRI could tap government personnel, resources, and finances on an overwhelming scale unavailable to other parties. In the absence of open accounting, office size can serve as a proxy for budget size. The floor space of the headquarters of the popular sector of the PRI exceeded the combined floor space of the national headquarters of all the opposition parties. The popular sector headquarters in turn paled in comparison with the PRI national headquarters in Mexico City, which resembled a small college campus.102
The PRI worked closely with the government to keep the peace and stage elections. The PRI enjoyed a multiplicity of resources to ensure its candidates won. If one tactic failed or seemed imprudent, it had many alternatives.
In shantytowns, PRI municipal governments provided clinics, schools, lighting, water, land titles, and street paving on a discretional basis. Residents were expected to show support for PRI candidates and attend rallies in an implicit quid pro quo for obtaining these services. To petition for any of these services, one had to be a member of a recognized residents (colonos) association. Such associations became a source of political control since they were automatically incorporated
Figure 21.2 PRI-organized rally of Its peasant sector, with Mexico City cathedral In background Source: Reproduced courtesy of Archivo General de la Nacion
Into the PRI. Residents would work through the officially sanctioned associations, since the government was the only source of land titles and needed services. However, just in case they decided to bypass official channels, the law providing the framework for residents associations stipulated that any unrecognized neighborhood group would be “immediately dissolved.”103
Co-opting members of opposition parties and movements served to maintain PRI control. This was an effective tactic since collaboration with the PRI was one of the few avenues of social and economic mobility open to many Mexicans, especially those in the lower classes. Co-opted leaders would sell out their constituencies for cash or a cushy job. The co-opted leaders claimed, or may even have believed, that their constituencies would be better served if they worked within the system. Many veterans of the 1968 student movement soon became upwardly mobile by working in technocratic government posts. Co-optation became so predictable that one of the best ways for a college student to assure himself an attractive job offer after graduation was to build a reputation as a militant leftist student leader. Many of the choicest plums in the state and party hierarchy were reserved for the most articulate, charismatic, and, hence, politically dangerous leftist students.104
Once important decisions had been made and personnel selected to fill public offices, elections were staged with great fanfare. Millions would be spent to hold campaign rallies, often using rented trucks and busses to haul in people to create the appearance of widespread support for the PRI. A single 1961 PRI rally in San Luis Potosi cost $74,520 to stage. The largest single cost was $2 paid to each of the 15,000 attendees. In 1970, a peasant at a PRI rally told political scientist Judith Hellman:
I go to the demonstrations and shout “vivas” along with everyone else, because they give you five, sometimes ten pesos and a meal. Besides, if you refuse to go when the truck comes to the ejido to pick you up, you only make enemies in the CNC and trouble for yourself.105
The official party carried out a wide range of activities that could be termed “dirty tricks.” These ranged from the benign to the lethal. At a 1946 opposition rally in Mexico City, PRI sympathizers passed out free movie tickets to lure attendees away, if in fact they arrived at all, since public transportation had been halted to lower attendance. In Zacatecas, the PRI used loudspeakers to drown out PAN speakers at a rally staged to support its 1958 presidential candidate, Luis H. Alvarez. In 1951, in Tlacotepec, Puebla, a Henriquez Guzman campaign convoy was not only denied passage through town but also fired on, leaving five dead.106
If the outcome of an election was in the slightest doubt, the PRI had a multi-layered defense to guarantee victory. Through its control of election machinery, polling places could be established far from areas known to favor the opposition or such polling places could be given insufficient ballots or opened late and closed early. After the polls opened, the PRI had several colorfully named methods of enhancing its vote count. A “taco” was simply a wad of ballots already marked for the PRI that a single voter would deposit in the ballot box. A “pregnant ballot box” was one filled with ballots marked for the PRI before the voting started. “Flying squads” went from polling place to polling place to repeatedly vote for the PRI. Little ingenuity was needed for such scams, since election judges were under PRI control.107
If, due to some oversight, after polls closed the outcome of the election was still in doubt, it was not too late to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. In Baja California, PAN candidate Salvador Rosas Magallon noted that after polls closed in his 1959 gubernatorial race, soldiers appeared and carried the ballot boxes back to their barracks. A PRI victory was later announced without PAN members having any idea of how the announced vote totals were determined. If all else failed, elections could be annulled, as occurred in 1968 when the PRI-controlled Baja California state legislature annulled municipal elections in Tijuana and Mexicali, where PAN candidates presumably won.108
Dissidents could be charged with “social dissolution,” the crime that members of the 1968 student movement demanded be removed from the books. The statute defining social dissolution, Article 145 of the penal code, declared:
Any foreigner or Mexican, who orally, in writing, or by any other medium, spreads political
Propaganda among foreigners or Mexicans or disseminates ideas, propaganda, or courses of action
Of any foreign government, which disturb public order or affect the sovereignty of the Mexican
State, shall be imprisoned for Irom two to six years.109
One of those charged this offense was muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. He was imprisoned for paraphrasing President Lopez Mateos’s statement that he was administering “on the left within the constitution.” Siqueiros described Lopez Mateos’s administration as being “on the extreme right and outside the constitution.”110
If attempts at co-opting regime opponents failed, the result was frequently violence. Small-scale violence was especially common in rural areas as a repressive tool. At least twenty-two members of Henriquez Guzman’s party were murdered during his presidential campaign. The mass repression of the 1968 student movement reflected the government’s inability to either co-opt or repress individual leaders, whom the students frequently rotated in their positions to prevent just that.111
Those firing on political protestors, those running election-day scams, and those engaged in the massive transfer of wealth from the public sector into the hands of well-connected individuals all relied on one factor—impunity. Since the government, the PRI, the Congress, the president, and the judicial system formed a seamless whole, political control and loyalty to the system could be maintained. Spanish human rights activist Carlos Castresana commented, “It is useless to pretend that democracy can take root in nations, such as Mexico, where there is systematic impunity with respect to the most serious, repeated violations of human rights.”112
A final key to regime survival was ideological flexibility. As historian Jesus Silva Herzog noted, even the president considered to be the most conservative, Miguel Aleman, would “oscillate to the right or left, according to both international events and to the internal pressure of the most active political parties and social organizations. . .” Examples of major policy shifts include Avila Camacho’s decision to ally with the United States during the Second World War and Aleman’s decision to emphasize industrialization. Essayist Jorge Castaneda commented on Mexican presidents, “Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, they have proved remarkably successful at changing just as much as necessary to ensure the system’s survival.”113
World History
