The forces leading the Mexican Revolution to victory came from the North. This same region is now home to forces that propose to bury the Revolution.
Abraham Nuncio, 1986130
Jose Angel Conchello’s 1972—1975 term as PAN president marked a turning point in the history of the party. Conchello, a Nuevo Leon businessman, considered that Echeverria’s fiscal policies were irresponsible and that the increasing economic role of the state was detrimental to the market and to private property. This emphasis on economic policy soon drew the wrath of traditionalists under the leadership of 1970 PAN presidential candidate Efrain Gonzalez Morfin. Traditionalists argued that the political upstarts, led by Conchello, were threatening to undermine the party’s identity and open the way into the party for political opportunists who had no interest in the party’s doctrine. The heated debate over the direction the party should take went on almost unnoticed by the public. The lack of public interest in the PAN is indicated by the fact that the party won only nineteen mayoral elections between 1970 and 1976.131
The party remained divided as it convened to nominate a candidate for the 1976 presidential race. One faction in the party advocated an aggressive electoral campaign to seek out new supporters. The other felt the party should maintain its more traditional position, prioritizing civic indoctrination, even if that meant losing elections. PAN party statutes required that a presidential nominee receive 80 percent of the votes at the convention. Neither the traditionalists nor the modernizers, who soon became known as neo-PANistas, could muster 80 percent of the convention delegates, so the party did not nominate a candidate.132
In the 1979 mid-term elections, given the general ineffectiveness of electoral opposition to the PRI, the PAN remained as the principal opposition party, winning four single-member congressional districts. None of the other seven opposition parties participating won a single-member district. These elections also marked the beginning of a shift of the PAN vote to northern Mexico. As a result of this shift, which became more pronounced in the 1980s, the northern border states displaced the Federal District as the party’s center of gravity.133
Three events moved the PAN from civic education to contending for power, especially in northern Mexico. The first was President Echeverria’s massive 1976 land expropriation in northwestern Mexico. The second was the 1982 bank nationalization ordered by President Lopez Portillo. The third was the economic crisis of the 1980s. These events convinced many, including large numbers of small and medium-sized business owners, that the PRI could no longer be trusted with the reins of power and that the PAN was the logical alternative. Early in De la Madrid’s 1982—1988 term, these three events, plus the welcoming of those bearing free market ideology, led to a wave of electoral victories in northern Mexico.
While there is no evidence that the PRI as a party was responsible for the 1982 bank nationalization, it was the PRI as a party that bore the brunt of electoral punishment for that unpopular decision. Up until 1988, discontent with the PRI resulted in increased support for the PAN, rather than for the increasingly marginalized left. The PAN’s image as a consistent, dependable opposition party enabled it to pick up the bulk of the protest vote. The 1977 electoral reform made it possible for increased support for the PAN to be quickly reflected in an increased number of PANista deputies in the lower house of Congress.134
As the old political and economic model was collapsing in the 1980s, the PAN successfully capitalized on discontent based on: 1) its long-term opposition to an overarching state, 2) opposition to an all-powerful presidency, 3) its advocacy of private enterprise, and 4) its promotion of municipal and states rights. The party de-emphasized its earlier adherence to Christian doctrine. Instead it became a vehicle for middle-class protest. Critiques of the incumbent government dominated its campaigns. The party increasingly emphasized individual merit and the notion that the state had very limited social responsibility. The PAN, which had been considered as an anachronism during the Mexican economic miracle of the 1960s, emerged as the standard-bearer of modernity. By the 1980s, as the PAN rode a wave of democracy and free-market economics, the authoritarian PRI increasingly appeared to be the anachronism.135
Despite the influx of northern businessmen and members of the middle class, during the 1980s, the PAN remained very much a minority opposition party. In 1987, only eighteen of Mexico’s 2,400 mayors came from the PAN. PAN mayors together administered less than 1 percent of the population.136
For the PAN, the 1988 elections were a disappointment, as the party’s vote total lagged behind both Cardenas’s and Salinas’s. Rather than supporting PAN candidate Manuel Clouthier, those who sought to either replace or at least severely punish the PRI voted for Cardenas. Systematic vote fraud during the Salinas administration (1988—1994) caused those opposing the PRI to shift their protest votes back to the PAN, since they felt that PRD election victories were unlikely to be recognized.137
During the 1980s, the primary goal of the PAN remained “democracy,” which meant free elections, a true multiparty system, and freedom of expression and assembly. The party also favored transferring as much governance as possible to the state and municipal level. As political scientist Soledad Loaeza observed:
PAN members feel threatened, not by the marching proletariat, nor by an armed peasantry,
Not by a closed and distant bourgeoisie, nor by a leftist government, but by a State which it
Considered inefficient and corrupt, incapable of creating a more egalitarian country. . .138
During the Salinas administration, dealing with a regime of dubious legitimacy presented the PAN with a dilemma. Luis H. Alvarez, who served as president of the party between 1987 and 1993, decided the best interests of the party would be served by positioning the PAN as an alternative governing party. Salinas needed the PAN to enhance his own democratic image. Alvarez used the threat of breaking off contact with Salinas to ensure the recognition of PAN electoral victories and to leverage political and economic reforms to his party’s liking.139
Regardless of whether they were compatible with traditional PAN doctrine, the policies adopted by the party during the Salinas administration were an enormous success electorally. The PAN’s vote increased from 3.2 million in 1988 to 9.0 million in 1994. In 1987, fewer than one million Mexicans lived under a PAN municipal or state administration, while by November 1995, more than 30 million did.140
In 1994, much of the PAN’s strength lay in the rapidly increasing youth vote. A surprisingly large 45 percent of all PAN voters were under twenty-nine. By comparison, only 38 percent of PRI voters were that age or younger and only 37 percent of PRD voters were. By 1994, the PAN had become a party with a nationwide base. That year it was placed second in twenty-three states and the Federal District. This was especially significant since, according to new proportional representation rules, it received a senate seat to represent each state where it came in second.141
The party’s momentum continued into the Zedillo administration (1994—2000) since: 1) after Ruffo won the governorship of Baja California, the PRI was seen as vulnerable, 2) the party was considered to be a peaceful path to change, as opposed (especially) to the Indian rebels in Chiapas,
3) existing PAN governments were considered more efficient and honest than their PRI predecessors,
4) the PAN had developed the image as a stable, well-established party, and 5) the party made effective use of radio and TV. As columnist Arturo Martinez Nateras noted in 1995, “Today, the PAN is the only party which is growing and whose vote in increasing.” That year the PAN held four governorships and the mayoralties of eleven state capitals and governed thirteen of the twenty largest municipalities.142
The 1990s saw the party extend from its power base in the north into central Mexico. After winning its first two gubernatorial elections in border states, it won several gubernatorial elections in the center, including Jalisco (1992 and 1998), Guanajuato (1994 and 2000), Queretaro (1997), and Morelos (2000). After the 1994 peso crash, the PAN moved into more open opposition to the PRI, leaving behind the conciliatory posture it had adopted during the Salinas administration. In 1997, this conciliatory stance came back to haunt the party as protest voters associated the PAN with the by then unpopular Salinas and cast fewer votes for the PAN than for the PRD. This dip in the PAN’s voting strength proved to be temporary. As of June 1999, there were six PAN governors and 215 mayors. The party held 24 percent of the seats in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate and administered 33.1 percent of the population at the state or municipal level (almost three times the percentage under PRD administration).143
At the end of the century, the neo-PANistas held sway in the party. They brought the PAN much needed financial resources, leadership styles, organizational capabilities, and new advertising techniques drawn from their own private-sector experience. They often emphasized the link between leader and voter, ignoring the party and the government. They envisioned a sharp reduction in the state’s role in Mexican society and were guided by an aggressive individualism and the notion that the best government was the least government.144
World History
