Commentary No. 25, Oct. 1, 1999
"The Mexican Time Bomb"
Mexico has spent 200 years too close to the United States. There is not much that it can do about this geographical proximity, but it has led to a situation today whose consequences may be felt far beyond Mexico and the United States. The historical background is quite simple. As the United States expanded westward during the nineteenth century, absorbing areas that had been controlled by Native Americans, it came to share frontiers with two countries that had been colonies of European states: Canada and Mexico.
Canada remained a colony of Great Britain until 1867 and after that slowly acquired full sovereignty. Its British protective armor meant that the United States could not really bully Canada too much. Mexico however was different. Spain was not much of a protection and in any case Mexico became an independent state early in the nineteenth century. Mexico was militarily weaker than the United States, and U.S. settlers appropriated a goodly chunk of northern Mexico - what became Texas, the southwest United States and southern California.
Mexican politics has been a maelstrom of elements common to most Latin American countries: a large Indian population, oppressed and rebellious; a small wealthy elite oriented to Europe and the United States: a significant populist intelligentsia, inspired by the French Revolution and later by the Russian Revolution and generally anti-gringo; a military that has not hesitated to act directly whenever it deemed it necessary, which was usually when either the Indians or the intelligentsia or both seemed to get too strong politically; caudillos, whose political impact was by and large ambiguous.
But Mexico had some special elements as well: considerable oil resources, and proximity to the United States. Proximity to the United States had three major consequences. One, it was easier to migrate illegally to the United States than from other Latin American countries. This illegal migration was, and is, often abetted by U.S. employers who sought the cheap labor. Secondly, the U.S. military found it easier to intervene against caudillos who were too rambunctious or anti-gringo, or to defend the frontier when it was thought that there was too much illegal immigration. Thirdly, the oil concentrated attention, especially that of the U.S. government.
Mexican oil is today only a small part of world production. But in the earlier part of the twentieth century, it played a statistically more significant role. To tell that story however one must tell the story of the Mexican Revolution. The Mexican Revolution was the first of the great antisystemic revolutions of the twentieth century. It is usually dated as having occurred in 1910, with the rising of Francisco Madero against Porfirio Diaz. This predates the first Chinese revolution (1911) by one year and the Russian Revolution by six.
The Mexican revolution had very ambiguous results. Madero, a classical liberal, was ousted and killed by military leaders. Emiliano Zapata led an Indian revolution within the revolution, which succeeded for a while but was militarily suppressed. And after about a dozen years, the general situation was stabilized by the creation of a single-party state (a well-known twentieth-century invention) under the aegis of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). The name itself is extraordinary. The party is the party of "institutionalized" revolution. But to institutionalize a process of rapid change (a revolution) is of course to contain it and to tame it, which is what happened.
The PRI created a single-party regime that had the usual features of a network of affiliated structures (trade-unions, women's movements, etc.) that acted as transmitters of policy and mechanisms of limited feedback to the political elite. They did however establish another unusual feature in addition to the name. It was called the sextennio, which means a six-year term. Each President, who was the all-powerful figure in the PRI system, was elected for six years. He was elected without serious opposition, and the candidate was always chosen by the current president.
In 1934, the new President that was elected was Lázaro Cárdenas. He was a populist intellectual who took the revolution more seriously than his predecessors and successors. The world was in the midst of a great depression. There was political ferment everywhere. In 1936, Cárdenas decide to nationalize the oil industry, almost entirely owned by U.S. firms. And Franklin Roosevelt, who had initiated the so-called good neighbor policy, decided not to intervene. This was a high point in Mexican power and in Mexican pride.
There was another element on the Mexican scene. The French revolutionary tonality of Mexican intellectuals expressed itself also in a strong anti-clericalism. Mexico of course is a largely Catholic country, and the Church was widely perceived as a reactionary political force, supporting in Mexico (as in Spain - this was the moment of the Spanish Civil War) right-wing landlords. The PRI outlawed the wearing of clerical habits and in general restricted the rights of the Catholic Church. Furthermore, Mexico offered its country as a refuge for defeated world revolutionaries - the Spanish republicans after 1939, Trotsky (who was assassinated by the Stalinists in Mexico City). Mexican art too was "revolutionary" - notably Diego Rivera, Freda Kahlo, and Orozco.
This moment of PRI "radicalism" was followed by a long descent from 1940 to today, as the PRI became more and more a corrupt set of functionaries with no particular political objectives, and they tended to make themselves into wealth-seeking businessmen. Some of them clearly became involved in narcotraffic. In the world revolution of 1968, the Mexican government was particularly repressive and slaughtered a significant number of students coming from the prestige national university (UNAM) and other schools. This slow process of liquidating the Mexican revolution reached a culminating point in the 1990's. Three things occurred. First, the Mexican government went far towards integrating the Mexican economy into being a lower-wage supply area of the United States via the NAFTA agreement, as well as denationalizing public enterprises.
Secondly, the Mayan Indians in the state of Chiapas renewed the struggle of Zapata, calling themselves the Zapatistas. But they did this in an unusual way, having learned the lessons of the twentieth century. They did not seek state power. They did not even seek warfare with the central army. Rather, they sought to install themselves in village power, and to mobilize national and international support through an exceptionally able and remarkably successful political campaign. The government was forced to give in to important demands in the San Andrés agreement, which however the government has in fact refused to implement. Thirdly, the Mexican left seceded from the PRI and formed the Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD) under the leadership of the son of Cárdenas, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. In 1992, there was the first serious presidential election of the twentieth century. There were three parties in contention: the PRI, the PRD, and the Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN), a conservative party combining Catholic forces (upset with the anti-clericalism of the PRI) and business elements.
PRI then seemed to be falling apart. Mexico seemed poised to have a more honest and social-democratic successor regime, one that would come to terms with the Zapatistas and hold the country together. It is generally believed that the PRD won that election, but that the PRI government stole it. An opportunity passed. Ever since, PRI has been maneuvering to survive, and by containing the PRD and limiting PAN, it seems likely to get a plurality in the 2000 elections. Today, in Chiapas, the PRI has mobilized "counterguerillas," and the army has been preparing to try to liquidate the Zapatistas by force.
PRI has become a hollow political shell. Mexico is being internally polarized as a result of the change in economic policies. All it needs is a sharp economic turndown for the state to fall apart. What then will happen? It is anyone's guess. The military may try to assume power. There may be guerilla movements of a more old-fashioned kind in various provinces. Illegal immigration to the U.S. will expand notably and there will be no Mexican government to constrain it. The United States may begin to feel extremely uncomfortable with "anarchy" on its borders, and face the hard decision of whether or not to send troops in. The internal consequences of any kind of U.S. military action will be far greater than sending troops to the Persian Gulf or to Kosovo, or even to Vietnam. The world civil war could then come home to the United States.
This is why Mexico is a time bomb.
[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315.
These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen
from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]
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