An indigenous uprising, political assassinations, kidnappings, and former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's dramatic political demise have transformed Mexico into the country of uncertainty. Along with unprecedented political turbulence, Mexico has been wracked by a severe economic crisis, triggered by the December 1994 devaluation of the peso. Gross domestic product fell 10.5 percent in the first months of 1995, over a million people lost their jobs, and tens of thousands of businesses closed, broken by plummeting sales and unpayable debts. This combination of events has contributed to the rapid erosion of the Institutional Revolutionary Party's dominance, loosening the grip PRI has held since its inception in 1929 and opening new avenues of political change. Mexico has undoubtedly embarked on a transition from authoritarian rule, but the final outcome of this process remains unclear.
As Mexico slouches from economic meltdown to recalcitrant recovery, several questions loom large in the minds of pundits and investors, Mexicans and foreigners alike: Will President Ernesto Zedillo maintain current economic policy or will he succumb to political pressures and electoral cycles? Will the social fabric unravel or will it withstand the brunt of "adjustment fatigue"? And is the predicted demise of the PRI likely, or will the party display its traditional resilience?
Among the most significant political developments to occur in the postcrisis era has been the decline of presidential authority in Mexico. As head of a disciplined, loyal, and united PRI, and at the helm of a system devoid of checks and balances, the president had ruled supreme. However, political and economic turmoil have dismantled many of the sources and instruments of presidential power, including the PRI's unchallenged hegemony. As a result, the Mexican presidency has become much more constrained, and much less omnipotent. The demise of presidencialismo is partly the result of economic and political turbulence, but it is also the product of a deliberate decision by the current occupant of the presidential chair, Ernesto Zedillo, who has inaugurated a new presidential style.
Zedillo's immediate response to the political challenges created by the devaluation was to announce what he called the "modernization" of the Mexican presidency. Zedillo's intention has been to transform a historically activist and interventionist presidency into a neutral arbiter and enforcer of the rule of law. He has offered to reduce discretionary policymaking, promote a new federalist pact, decentralize power, and bring an end to the symbiotic relationship between the presidency and the PRI. Zedillo has argued that a presidential retreat will allow other institutions, such as the judiciary and Congress, to flourish. Zedillo also believes that the legitimacy provided by his relatively clean election has endowed him with a mandate to deepen economic reform, which means subsequent efforts to build popular consensus are not required.
The retrenchment of presidential authority under Zedillo has significant political implications. A leaner presidency is strengthening other political actors, including legislators and opposition party leaders, and contributing to the creation of a more accountable political system. However, Zedillo's seclusion has been criticized as an abdication of responsibility that is creating rather than solving problems. Members of traditional factions in the PRI are taking advantage of a perceived presidential weakness to strengthen their personal fiefdoms in states such as Guerrero, Tabasco, Yucatán, and Puebla. Hard-liners at the helm of several PRI-controlled governorships constantly oppose the president, question his decisions, and jeopardize the governability of their states.
In many geographic regions and in many economic activities, Mexico is still characterized by the existence of powerful cacicazgos. The country seems to be witnessing the growing "feudalization" of the PRI, with local power brokers governing their states as they see fit, often resorting to violence, fraud, and repression. To win the 1994 election, Zedillo allied himself with some of the more traditional power brokers within the PRI. As a result, he often appears to be constrained by political commitments and reluctant to push forward a significant political modernization agenda against traditional fiefdoms.
Zedillo's policy preference has been to restore financial stability, and during his first two years in office he has tended to discount--or ignore--the political and economic needs of the ruling party. Consequently, the president has been unable to elicit widespread support from prominent PRI members, and his efforts have repeatedly been blocked by unwilling groups within the political elite. The Zedillo team has frequently underestimated the ferocity of PRI resistance to policy initiatives such as the increase in the value-added tax (IVA) from 10 to 15 percent, the creation of a pension fund system, and the privatization of the petrochemical industry. Within the ranks of the PRI there is growing disaffection with Zedillo and the general thrust of economic decision making. In March 1996, 250 PRI congressmen drafted an open letter to the president that called for a rethinking of his economic policies and an end to neoliberalism. During its last assembly in September, the PRI passed a resolution that bars technocrats who have never been elected to public office from running as PRI presidential candidates. Next year could witness the strengthening of groups that call for an unprecedented break with the president and a return to a more populist, center-left political stance.
Zedillo's term has been characterized by erratic policy maneuvers: the president announces a specific policy, is confronted with opposition from affected interests, and as a result, the initiative is abandoned. The president pledged to promote clean elections throughout his term, but then proceeded to support a fraudulently elected PRI governor in the state of Tabasco. Zedillo vowed to establish the "rule of law," and forced the governor of Guerrero to resign for his involvement in the June 1995 massacre of 17 peasants, only to subsequently exonerate him. Zedillo launched an attack against the Salinas family, only to later indefinitely postpone investigations into the Salinas' alleged involvement in corruption and assassination scandals. The president promised the inauguration of a "healthy distance" between the presidency and the party, only to recently name an unconditional supporter and traditional PRI hack, Roque Villanueva, as its new head.
These schizophrenic and often contradictory presidential decisions have undermined Zedillo's credibility as a democratic reformer. Given the dilemmas created by the weakening of dominant party rule, the presidency will be a key factor shaping the prospects and limits of the Mexican transition. In the past, Mexico had been unable to fully achieve democratic rule because of the unlimited power of the presidency; in the future, presidential strength will be required to undertake the critical task of institution-building and political control over antireform-minded groups. Zedillo will have to use the presidency to strengthen representative institutions that can order the country's political life and eventually act as counterweights to the presidency and the PRI. The real challenge for Zedillo throughout the remainder of his term will be to strike a balance between what he calls a "modern" presidency and what others perceive as an "invisible" presidency. He needs to decentralize power, but retain enough leadership to sanction and control members of the old guard who want to defend the prevalence of the PRI as a way of life in Mexico.
While PRI electoral victories were once the norm, and opposition parties occupied a symbolic and secondary role, the reverse is the case today. Competitive elections at the state and municipal level are changing the very nature and functioning of the political system. The PRI is no longer an unchallenged hegemonic party; in almost every area of the country it faces stiff electoral competition, and in all likelihood this trend will become more important.
The center-right opposition National Action Party (PAN) has become the primary beneficiary of the "voto de castigo" (punishment vote) against the PRI. As a result of the economic crisis, it is evolving into an electoral force to be reckoned with. PAN has gradually been able to extend its support beyond the confines of the urban middle class and garner a growing number of votes in the countryside. The party's next goal is to win the majority in Congress in 1997 and the presidency in 2000.
In the past PAN had not adopted a clear position on economic or social policy, partly because it did not need to. The party had traditionally been a loyal opposition with few chances of actually governing. That may change in 1997, when for the first time in its history PAN has a real opportunity to gain control of Congress and also win the election for mayor of Mexico City. As that possibility looms larger, PAN will be forced to clarify what its positions are on the exchange rate, monetary policy, inflation, social policy, and redistributive issues.
In the short term, PAN leaders will also have to decide whether they will continue to support the tacit center-right alliance struck with the government during the Salinas term, or whether the party should be less loyal and more of an opposition. The Zedillo term could witness the radicalization of intemperate sectors within PAN--possibly led by the charismatic governor of the state of Guanajuato, Vicente Fox--for whom the costs of perpetuating conciliatory tactics are outweighed by the benefits of a frontal attack against the Zedillo government. PAN would thus abandon its strategy of "concerted gradualism" in favor of a more "critical gradualism." 1
One of the main concerns among longtime PAN leaders is the loss of the party's soul as the result of its spectacular electoral ascent. Ideologues in the party fear that the more confrontational political style displayed by a new breed of panistas, led by Fox, could undermine PAN's ideological backbone. Those advocating confrontation argue that PAN should worry about achieving power first and leave the defense of doctrinal purity for later. The traditionalists advocate a strategy baptized as "winning the government without losing the party" and argue that PAN should remain loyal to the socially conservative platform it has espoused since its inception. This unresolved struggle for definition has produced numerous public attacks among PAN leaders, and revealed a lack of internal unity that the party had been immune to in the past.
Meanwhile, the left has experienced a political renaissance under the leadership of a new party leader. Although Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas remains an important moral force within the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), his political protégé, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has emerged as a successful national figure. López Obrador heads a political current within the PRD that supports a hybrid incarnation of the party, known as "partido-movimiento" (party-movement), that seeks to combine organizational and institutional development with mass mobilizations and marches to protest electoral irregularities and government policies. Through popular demonstrations that pressure the government into negotiating on key issues--such as forcing the government oil monopoly pemex to invest in development projects in the state of Tabasco--López Obrador has inaugurated a tough but compromising strategy that is becoming the PRD's trademark. López Obrador's leadership has already produced good results for the party, including recent electoral inroads in the state of Mexico, where the PRD tripled its vote in November 1996.
The growing electoral clout of the opposition led the PRI to approve-without the support of opposition parties-an electoral reform that is far from "definitive." Although the 1994 presidential election was generally perceived as the cleanest in Mexico's history, the consensus among opposition parties was that many of the electoral system's structural imbalances prevailed. Among the main sources of contention stemming from that election were issues of campaign finance, unequal access to the media, the biased role of the Federal Electoral Institute, and many extralegal sources of government support for the ruling PRI.
On assuming office, Zedillo called for a "definitive" accord that would decidedly eliminate suspicion and recrimination from the electoral process. After two years of difficult negotiations, the main parties reached an agreement in November 1996. However, at the last minute, the PRI refused to budge on the issue of campaign financing and used its majority in Congress to push through a reform that continues to grant the dominant party privileged access to government funds. Although it is undeniable that the reform is a significant improvement on existing electoral legislation, its rejection by PAN and the PRD suggests that postelectoral conflict is far from over.
The political backlash created by the economic crisis has strengthened the prospects for a highly contested congressional race in July 1997, and the possibility of an opposition victory in the presidential election in 2000. Although the Mexican economy is limping toward recovery, the benefits of renewed economic growth have yet to translate into concrete benefits for the majority of the Mexican population. The PRI will therefore not be able to campaign on assurances of prosperity as it had in the past. Economic liberalization policies have cut to the core of traditional sources of party patronage, including political slush funds that oiled the party's clientelist machinery.
Tensions among contending groups in the PRI will undoubtedly escalate as the party heads into the midterm elections. PRI leaders believe the survival of the party's historic control over Congress-and seven governorships-will be at stake, and are currently devising strategies to assure PRI's predominance. More traditional factions, led by Minister of the Interior Emilio Chuayfett and a constellation of hard-line governors (from the states of Tabasco, Puebla, Yucatán, Veracruz, and Aguascalientes) are determined to ensure the PRI's staying power even if the use of patronage, intimidation, and electoral fraud is required.
Although the PRI faces increasingly strong competition, predictions of its impending demise may be exaggerated. The party has demonstrated a remarkable capacity to reinvent itself in the face of adverse circumstances, as it did during the 1994 presidential race. In many regions of the country the party's clientelist machine is deeply entrenched and will not be easily dislodged. The PRI also benefits from a divided opposition, which enables it to retain a relative majority of the vote. Among opposition leaders there is a growing perception that only a broad coalition front that unites the left and the right will have the capacity to remove the PRI from power. However, PAN is reluctant to join forces with the left, since PAN leaders believe they can win Congress without the assistance of the PRD. The congressional elections will undoubtedly be a testing ground for this proposition. If PAN is unable to achieve a congressional victory, it might be willing to support the prospect of an opposition coalition in 2000.
Economic malaise has created a much more volatile and much less loyal electorate for the PRI, and has opened up windows of opportunity for opposition parties on both the left and the right. However, whether parties will be able to bridge the chasm of distrust that currently separates them from an increasingly disaffected population is an open question. Economic decline could lead to widespread disillusionment with the existing political options offered by parties and to the strengthening of opposition movements working outside party channels.
While the party system has matured, parties and elections do not fully represent or encapsulate the demands of many social groups. As a result, parties are routinely eclipsed by other protagonists in civil society, including guerrilla groups and their sympathizers, nongovernmental organizations (NGOS), drug traffickers, the media, and groups of disaffected intellectuals. Although in the electoral sphere Mexican politics is becoming more institutionalized, and more actors are willing to play by the rules of the game, several key groups and individuals continue to operate at the margins of established politics.
The dramatic appearance of the guerrilla Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) underscores the disaffection that looms large in the Mexican countryside, and the distance that separates modern, market-driven Mexico from its impoverished, rural counterpart. The EPR feeds on this anger and finds sympathy among millions of Mexicans who are bearing the brunt of a crisis brought on by mismanagement, corruption, and the hubris of an insulated technocratic elite. (A recent public opinion poll revealed that over a third of those surveyed justify the use of violence to combat injustice.) Although many Mexicans may not applaud the EPR, they support combating a government that fails to bridge the divide between the haves and the have-nots.
But poverty itself is not the only explanation for guerrilla insurgency. The EPR is active in the states of southern Mexico-Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero-that are saddled with exploitative politicians and corrupt caciques. Zedillo's much-touted political reform has failed to reach the hills and hamlets of rural Mexico, where the worst aspects of authoritarian rule continue to thrive.
The Zedillo government has attempted to discredit the EPR by arguing that it has no social base. This analysis is probably misguided and underestimates the EPR's influence. As with most guerrilla movements, the EPR's social base is fluid and largely invisible: members of the EPR are guerrillas one day and peasants the next. The EPR's mobility and capacity to maintain a presence in several states simultaneously underscores the generous endorsement it receives from rural communities in the form of food, shelter, and safe haven. This behind-the-scenes support allows the EPR to engage in the low-intensity guerrilla warfare that has become its trademark; the EPR attacks a military convoy or army base, then retreats into the hills and melts away into the jungle.
Just as the EPR has baffled analysts and investors, it has made life much more difficult for Mexico's other guerrilla incarnation: the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). In 1994 the Zapatistas captured the imagination of millions of Mexicans and became a fulcrum for greater political change. The mercurial and seductive Subcommandante Marcos garnered international media attention and public praise for focusing attention on the plight of the indigenous. But after two years of inconclusive peace talks and army encirclement, the EZLN's star appeared to be waning. Unable to extract any clear concessions from the government at the bargaining table, the EZLN seemed to be merely treading water.
The emergence of a more radical and more confrontational guerrilla organization has highlighted what many believe is the EZLN's perennial weakness: its incapacity (or unwillingness) to use weapons to advance its cause and pose a real military threat. By stealing part of his thunder, the EPR will undoubtedly force Marcos to toughen his stance toward the government. Marcos understands that the EPR is gaining ground--even in the Zapatista stronghold of Chiapas.
The EPR also poses important challenges to more politically sophisticated members of the Mexican left, including the leadership of the PRD. Conceived as a political voice and vehicle for impoverished Mexicans, the party must now deal with a guerrilla organization that rejects party politics. The EPR offers an immediate outlet for age-old grievances; the PRD can provide only gradual political change through the ballot box. If the PRD distances itself from the guerrillas it will ostracize those who believe in the need for deep and dramatic reforms. If the PRD sides with the guerrillas, the party will once again be branded as an instigator of violence and lose its appeal among the conservative middle class. The PRD does not know whether to cater to the EPR--whose political ideology suggests that they are the cavemen of the left--or behave as a modern, institutional force that condemns violence in any incarnation. The situation is currently at a stalemate; an impasse in which the government has the upper hand in military if not moral terms. Popular sympathy for the EZLN and the EPR is widespread and could grow as the persistence of monumental income disparities becomes evident.
In addition to guerrilla groups, drug traffickers have become an increasingly destabilizing force in states such as Jalisco, Baja California Norte, Sinaloa, and Guerrero. During the Salinas term the Mexican government led an uneasy coexistence with drug traffickers, and in some cases even provided political protection for them. Drug cartels established ties with high-level government officials, state governors, and money-laundering corporations, and cajoled Mexican authorities to deal with them on the management of the United States-Mexico drug enforcement relationship. To shore up his credibility at home and abroad, Zedillo may break many of the unwritten rules that have governed relations between drugs and political power by arresting regional drug lords. If he does, violence and retribution could become an integral part of Mexico's political landscape á la Colombia.
Other actors, such as the debtors' movement known as El Barzón (The Yoke), and Manuel Camacho, the former mayor of Mexico City, constitute significant challenges given the unpredictable direction of their actions. El Barzón began as a union of indebted farmers in the western state of Jalisco, has captured news headlines with its protest marches and bank boycotts, and claims to have 4.5 million members in 300 groups affiliated across the country. The debtors' movement is a spontaneous, grass-roots uprising, now overwhelmingly middle class and with no apparent ties to political parties. El Barzón lost some momentum with Zedillo's $1 billion plan to restructure private debts, but if interest rates remain high and economic recovery is sluggish, El Barzón could gain renewed appeal.
As for Camacho, he has indicated that he intends to run for the presidency. The former mayor's strategy has been to sit at his doorstep and watch the corpses of his political enemies roll by. Camacho would like nothing better than to be the Mexican Fujimori, and he hopes that if economic recovery fails to materialize, Zedillo loses credibility, and the PRI is unable to reinvent itself, he can take advantage of the resultant political vacuum. As historian Lorenzo Meyer suggests, "Camacho sees himself as a de Gaulle figure, waiting for the call to come as the country's political situation deteriorates." Camacho might attempt to create a fourth political party, positioned at the center-left of the political spectrum, that would serve as a "catchall" option for those disaffected with the existing parties.
In his efforts to decentralize power and depoliticize and shrink the authority of the executive, President Zedillo has disarticulated lines of control that had granted the political system its enviable stability. This presidential retreat may ultimately lead to a decentralization of power favorable to democratic evolution. But it has also empowered the leaders of authoritarian enclaves, who are taking advantage of the president's weakness to strengthen their fiefdoms. In the midst of a difficult transition, the critical issue has become how to sustain public confidence in the Zedillo team, given that there are no clear indications of the relatively quick success of the president's economic policies.
The only way the ruling technocracy can survive the current impasse is to channel discontent through the ballot box and hope that democracy becomes an effective containment policy. Throughout the rest of the Zedillo term Mexicans will vote their pocketbooks, and the PRI may lose a host of state elections. In the best case scenario, the deepening of economic reform will entail the inevitable unraveling of the PRI and the electoral ascent of PAN; in the worst case, electoral politics will be unable to contain social disaffection.
Zedillo has not developed a clear strategy to generate political consensus for economic adjustment. Maintaining the current course of economic policy, despite the long-term wisdom of doing so, could create governability problems in the short-term. Under Zedillo, Mexico's stricken economy will have to generate jobs for a labor force that is growing more than 3 percent a year. More than 40 percent of the Mexican population continues to live in poverty and real wages have declined to pre-1980 levels. Extreme inequalities in income and social well-being prevail among states and regions, and between urban and rural areas.
These disparities were accentuated in the first six months after the devaluation. In addition, the benefits of greater integration with the United States have been unevenly distributed within Mexico, deepening regional disparities between a prosperous north increasingly tied to the United States economy and a backward south (especially the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Guerrero) plunged into agricultural stagnation. Mexico is becoming a "dual society" wherein a growing portion of the population does not enjoy the bounties of free trade and economic reform.
For the neoliberal experiment to survive, Mexico's leaders will need to broaden the coalition of beneficiaries of economic reform and lessen both economic and social polarization. As Jorge Castañeda pointed out in the July 1996 issue of Foreign Affairs, "as long as Mexico delays the changes that will bring prosperity to all, the country will remain stalled, divided between a minority whose lot depends on the United States and a majority periodically buffeted by economic and political crisis."
One lesson from 1994--Mexico's year of living dangerously--is already clear: widespread economic modernization in Mexico cannot survive and flourish without substantive political modernization. The lack of institutionalized mechanisms to generate consensus, scrutinize politicians, and create checks and balances may render Mexico's nafta-based growth strategy vulnerable to political and economic upheaval.
Mexico will not reap the benefits of free trade and renewed growth until and unless those benefits reach the dispossessed, and until and unless clean and fair elections reflect the popular will of the country's marginalized groups. As the Chiapas uprising underscored, NAFTA, fiscal discipline, surging exports, and external support are no longer sufficient to keep the "other" Mexico at bay. And as the devaluation revealed, even economic dream teams--when they operate without accountability --can and do make mistakes. Until and unless Mexico institutes reforms that ensure government accountability, electoral transparency, and the rule of law--the stuff of which democracy is made--Mexico's future will continue to be tumultuous and uncertain; a constant struggle between upward mobility and downward drift.
Denise Dresser is a professor of political science at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (itam). She is the author of several articles on Mexico, including "Mexico: The Decline of Dominant-Party Rule," in Jorge I. Dom’nguez and Abraham F. Lowenthal, eds., Constructing Democratic Governance: Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1990s (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), from which this essay draws.
1 See René Delgado, "Elecciones: evolución o involución?" Reforma, May 27, 1995.