Thursday's Notes (4/9)

sorry, my computer keeps messing up the bullets...

In 1929, the National Revolutionary Party held its first convention. It became the official party in a one-party state for over 70 years. It changed its name to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
1934-1940, Cardenas was president.
Presidents had 6-year terms and were not eligible for reelection.
Under the Cardenas administration, peasants and urban workers had their first success in pressing the government for land and increased wages.
This led to a period of unprecedented strikes, protests, and petitions to break up large estates.
Under Cardenas, there was more land distribution than by all of his predecessors combined.
By 1940, the land ownership system had changed, breaking the tradition of haciendas. A large economic sector of peasant farmers emerged. They received land from the government under the agrarian reform program and were known as ejidatarios.
New organizations of peasant farmers and urban workers formed into mass confederations (like those in China). The confederations were taken over by the PRI and Mexico turns into a corporatist state.
Weapons were given to rural militias
Foreign oil companies were nationalized
Mass organizations were not very strong. Immediately after WWII, economic expansion in industry, commerce, and finance allowed elites to regain their power over these businesses.
The heritage of Cardenas is still alive in Mexico:
Redistributed income
Full employment
State patronage to help the weak sectors of society
Cardenas’ legacy includes:
Established the presidency as the primary institution of political structure (strong and dominant).
Sweeping powers for the president
Cooperative military, didn’t carry out coups
Mass organizations provide a mass base of supporters for the official party, the PRI.
Democracy was relatively slow to develop in Mexico.
The influence of mass organizations over government policies was quite limited in actuality.
Until 2000, Mexico was a 1-party state. The PRI won every presidential race from the founding of the PRI in 1929 until 2000. They held a majority in the lower house of Congress from 1929-1997. For the last 25 years or so, the PRI has been challenged by the PAN- National Action Party.
President Salinas was in power from 1988-1994. His term was marked by extreme corruption in the government and PRI, causing the PRI to stumble a bit and citizens look at the PRI in a different light.
During the early 1990s, there was a debate in the late 1970s inside the PRI (similar to the ones in China and Russia) between old guard autocratic members of the PRI (called dinosaurs) who lost out in party politics and reform-minded free-market technocrats. The dinosaurs wanted government control over the economy and a rest on foreign investment. They rose in the system by being good party members, not like the technocrats who advanced through education and expertise.
Beginning with the 1970-76 Echeverria administration, to Portillo (76-82), to De La Madrid (82-88), to Salinas (88-94), to Zedillo (94-00), old-line politicians lost out to rising technocrats. They opened the economy to foreign trade, signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, joined GATT, joined the World Trade Organization, passed laws leading to industrial development, and established maquilladoras (foreign factories using duty-free imported components. Mexicans assembled the products and exported them. These factories were like China’s Special Economic Zones). By 1990, there were 1,500+ maquilladora plants.
The dinosaurs’ trace the decline in the PRI to the last 20 years and to an increase of elitist, US-educated technocrats who had never run for an elective office and were out of touch with politics.
The technocrats implemented reforms, privatized industry, liberated trade, and changed electoral laws (making multi-party elections easier). The changes struck hard at the PRI core constituencies and moved Mexico away from a socialist route.
The reform of the authoritarian and corrupt political system was the focus of President Zadillo. He sent a number of constitutional amendments to the states for ratification. Elections were out of the hands of the ruling elite and put into the hands of the independent election committee. This committee supervised balloting, issued registration cards, gave the Supreme Court the authority to adjudicate election challenges, equalized political party access to the media, set campaign spending limits, and allowed any political party to use the Mexican colors in campaign material.
Zadillo tried to change the fraud rampant in the PRI, but he ended up being the last PRI president.
There were 3 recent problems with Mexico that were beyond PRI control:
1. Economy
The Mexican currency collapsed when Zadillo devalued the peso by 34%. Clinton gave Mexico $40 billion in loans to guarantee the debt. This loan was the largest international aid since the Marshall plan in 1948. The market gradually stabilized by 1996 and Mexico paid all of the money back.
2. Indians
In January 1994, Mexican peasants of Mayan descent came out of the jungle calling themselves the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN in Spanish). They occupied towns, calling for economic development. They issued the “Declaration from the Jungle,” showing peasant conditions. They complained that 2/3 of people never completed primary school, objected to development projects using their rivers for hydroelectricity when their homes weren’t even wired for electricity. ½ of them had dirt floors in their homes. They rejected the pay scale were 80% earned less than $5/day. The Mexican government had difficulty dealing with the EZLN. They fought on and off from January 1994-98. The Zadillo administration sent troops in and citizens were tortured, disappeared, or were sent to detention centers. Eventually the EZLN lost steam and the peasants calmed down.
3. Narco-corruption (illegal drug trafficking)
In 1996, the US and Mexico collaborated and formed new army units to fight the drug war. Within 2 years, 80 members of the army were under investigation from drug trafficking themselves.
In 2000, President Vicente Fox won the election. Although he was not a PRI member, Congress was still dominated by the PRI and refused to pass almost all of his legislation. By midterm elections, very few of his campaign initiatives had been carried out, leading to a PRI revival in Congress. They went from having 207 to 222 seats in the lower house and from 202 to 151 in the upper house. Fox became a lame duck in his final 3 years of office. Fox faced a new problem by the mid-2000s--China had become competitive with Mexico in manufacturing because China could often produce products at cheaper prices.