Mexico’s middle class emerged as a result of: 1) urbanization, 2) education, and 3) government jobs. Due to these factors, by the 1970s, the middle class encompassed roughly 30 percent of Mexico’s population. This figure declined by a quarter after 1980 due to the economic crisis.214
At one point, Mexico’s middle class was dominated by professionals and small independent businessmen. Then, as the economy grew, an increasingly large percentage of the middle class was composed of salaried workers, especially in government. There is considerable variation in income and social status of those within the middle class. Since it is never clear just who should be included in the middle class, estimates of its size vary substantially.215
At one time Roman Catholicism was a major influence on the middle class. However, in the latter part of the twentieth century, universities, consumerism, mass media, and the state bureaucracy exercised an increasing influence. Values generally espoused by members of the middle class include individualism, private property rights, personal merit, family authority, order, and (until the end of the Cold War) anti-communism.216
The early 1980s economic bust and bank nationalization turned the middle class against the system. Its members were especially hard hit, since they were highly reliant on salaried income, which declined by 36 percent between 1981 and 1985. Fewer middle-class jobs were created, and many were eliminated, especially in government.217
The middle class joined the economic elite in blaming their plight on an inefficient and corrupt state. The sudden switch to viewing the state as an obstacle, not a solution, dovetailed nicely with the PAN position, so many members of the middle class began to actively support the PAN. As crime increased after 1982, the middle class shared the upper class’s security concerns. By 1990, democracy had become the principal demand of the middle class.218
By the 1990s, the cumulative effects of the 1968 student movement, repeated economic crises, and the fraudulent 1988 presidential elections had cost the PRI middle-class support. As Dennis Gilbert noted in his study of the middle class, “By the late 1990s, middle-class Mexicans had little faith in the dual myths of the revolution and the Mexican economic miracle.” Not surprisingly, in the 2000 election, PAN presidential candidate Vicente Fox received 58 percent of the middle class vote.219
After the 1994—1995 economic crisis, neoliberal economic policies favored the middle class as well as the elite. The number of families with monthly incomes in the $600 to $1,500 range rose from just over 5 million in 1992 to more than 9 million in 2004. As has been the case throughout Latin America, this newly emerging middle class is increasingly linked to the market, not the state. Gilbert noted that in 2000 the middle class was “bigger, better educated and more affluent than it was in the early 1980s.”220
During the Fox administration (2000—2006), members of the middle class enjoyed increased access to consumer credit. This enabled them to purchase such middle class trappings as refrigerators and washing machines. Lower interest rates resulted in a housing boom as mortgage rates tumbled and twenty-five-year mortgages became available. Previously lenders offered only ten-year mortgages. In the first five years of the Fox administration, 2,355,000 housing loans were issued, more than twice the number issued under Zedillo.221
Together the elite and the middle class constitute roughly a third of Mexico’s population. They, along with another 10 percent of the population, skilled workers who disproportionally work in export-oriented industries, have been the beneficiaries of the neoliberal policies adopted in the 1980s. These three groups—the elite, the middle class, and skilled labor—constitute just under half the population.222
World History
