Intellectuals. . . were always searching for the balance between influencing the state and being used by it.
Julia Preston and Sam Dillon, 2004331
The 1968 student movement continued into the 1970s—at least in the printed word. Essayist and social critic Carlos Monsivais commented that the suppression of that movement led to “the rejection of official mythologies.” This was evident in his own work. In 1971, he published Dias de guardar (Days to Remember), a rambling chronicle of Mexico’s difficult transition to modernity and the 1968 student movement.332
In 1971, Elena Poniatowska published Noche de Tlatelolco, a collection of her reports from survivors of the October 2, 1968 killing of students. In this work, which Monsivais to referred to as an “extraordinary multi-testimony,” Poniatowska combined the words of both government officials and survivors with her own reflections. Noche de Tlatelolco went through fifty-six printings and was published in English as Massacre in Mexico (with a preface by Octavio Paz).333
In response to writers such as Monsivais and Poniatowska, Echeverria sought to woo intellectuals back to the establishment. He found them easy to befriend and disarmed the left-leaning intelligentsia by adopting its rhetoric. He gained further legitimacy by increasing spending on universities and by supporting Cuba, Allende’s Chile, and Third World causes in general. Carlos Fuentes, who up until the Echeverria administration had been best known for questioning the effects of Mexican modernization, was one of the many intellectuals embracing the administration. In 1971, he wrote: “Echeverria lifted the veil of fear that Diaz Ordaz threw over the body of Mexico. Many Mexicans felt free to criticize, to express themselves, to organize without fear of repression.” Echeverria’s supporters, such as Fuentes, were amply rewarded. Echeverria appointed him as ambassador to France and selected writer Rosario Castellanos as ambassador to Israel. In addition, Echeverria courted the intelligentsia by inviting its members to presidential dinners, soliciting their advice, lavishing funds on the arts and research institutes, pledging to steer the state back to the true course of the Mexican Revolution, and inviting them on his frequent Third World junkets. The press plane on such trips was so packed with intellectuals that cartoonist Abel Quezada quipped that if it crashed, Mexican culture would cease to exist.334
During the Echeverria administration, the Mexican intelligentsia divided into two groups that would endure for the rest of the century. One was led by Octavio Paz, who after resigning his ambassadorship to India in 1968, remained aboard until 1971. That year he returned to Mexico and founded Plural, a cultural supplement to the paper Excelsior. After the removal of that paper’s editor in 1976, he resigned from Plural to protest the removal (see page 528) and founded the independent magazine Vuelta, where he was joined by historian Enrique Krauze, many of whose works are cited in this book. Vuelta became highly influential even though its circulation never rose above 18,000.335
In 1978, as a counterpoint to Vuelta, a group of writers founded the magazine Nexos, modeled on the New York Review of Books. While democracy was the central goal of writers at Vuelta, the Nexos group saw democracy as one goal among many, including social justice. Its founders brought academic research to bear on public policy and took on topics the mainstream press considered too hot to touch. Writers at Nexos generally supported militant, even armed, action to bring equality and justice for the poor.336
The fraudulent 1986 elections in Chihuahua brought the intellectual community together again briefly. In response to the fraud, a broad range of writers, including Paz, Krauze, Monsivais, and Poniatowska, signed a letter of protest that appeared in several daily newspapers. It stated:
Citizens as well as the national and international press have documented sufficient irregularities to sow reasonable doubts about the legality of the entire process. To clear away these doubts, which touch the very fiber of the credibility of politics in Mexico, we think the authorities, acting in good faith, should reestablish public harmony and annul the Chihuahua elections.337
Rather than keeping the intelligentsia united, the 1988 elections split it, with most intellectuals considering the election fraudulent and backing Cardenas. In response, Salinas surrounded himself with intellectual advisors and offered the intelligentsia dinners in the National Palace and junkets abroad. Paz switched from being anti-regime to being one of the firmest backers of Salinas and his economic polices. He declared: “I applaud the opening with all the world and especially the opening with the United States. It’s the first time in my lifetime when I feel there have been important changes in the country.” Both Paz, editing Vuelta, and Hector Aguilar Camin, the editor of Nexos, were drawn to Salinas, depriving these magazines of critical bite.338
The death of Paz in 1997 symbolically marked the end of the era of the intellectual in Mexico. Paz—who received the Nobel prize for literature in 1990—is remembered for his vast oeuvre, which includes almost thirty volumes of poetry and more than thirty volumes of essays, as well as his founding journals and contributing to public discourse. As critic Rafael Perez Gay noted, Paz was “first and foremost a poet, and wanted to be remembered this way, his works combine contemplation and action, reflection and criticism, the local and the universal. His literary interests were as vast and diverse as his own work.”339
After Paz’s death, Vuelta ceased publication, and his intellectual heir Enrique Krauze founded a new magazine, Letras Libres. However, neither Letras Libres nor Nexos would exercise the influence that the Vuelta and Nexos had in the 1980s. Their influence was diluted by other journals of political analysis. Also, the mainstream press began publishing a wider range of views for an ever-wider audience. Pundits such as Soledad Loaeza and Lorenzo Meyer, who had previously published in highbrow journals such as Vuelta and Nexos, not only wrote columns in daily newspapers but increasingly used television to reach a broader audience.340
World History
