Distant Neigbors
Page, Joseph A.
Commonweal: 318 The biggest domino DISTANT NQGIBOBS A PORTRAIT OF THE MEXICANS Alan Riding Knopf, $18.95, 385 pp. Joseph A. Page ALAN RIDING'S Distant Neighbors is both less and more than a...
...Public service is an opportunity to milk as much financial gain as possible...
...Scandals associated with the administrations of Mexico's last two presidents, Luis Echeverria and Jose Lopez Portillo, have caused many Mexicans for the first time to link corruption and bad government...
...Riding's discussion of the ties between the United States and Mexico is valuable for its emphasis upon the need for respect which is deeply felt on the Mexican side...
...It gave impetus to what Riding terms a "veritable fiesta of borrowing" and an orgy of corruption which diverted petroleum revenues into private pockets...
...He points out the consistent failure of American officials to grasp the psychological aspects of the relationship and is especially critical of the current U.S...
...Bribery is a customary way of getting things done...
...Mexico City, overwhelmed by its 17 million inhabitants, has come to symbolize the urban nightmare...
...17 May 1985: 319...
...His task is to keep the various interest groups committed to the preservation of the status quo...
...Alan Riding deserves much credit for enabling readers to appreciate why Mexico has reached a crossroads...
...Stability, achieved after the consolidation of the Revolution, has long set Mexico apart from the rest of Latin America...
...It lacks a certain richness of detail and does not fully illuminate the Mexican culture, but Riding has a different objective in mind and he succeeds admirably in reaching it...
...The "domino theory" as applied to Central America posits that a series of upheavals spreading northward from El Salvador could destabilize Mexico...
...The system's credibility," Riding notes, "must be preserved in almost schizophrenic fashion: those on the outside must believe in its authoritarianism, with those on the inside convinced of its flexibility...
...The highhanded measures to which the government has customarily resorted when challenged may not work this time...
...The strength of Distant Neighbors lies in its explanation of the roots and parameters of the crisis...
...A strong conservative opposition party supported by large segments of the middle class has become a credible threat to the PRI...
...Distant Neighbors demonstrates that the real threat to Mexico comes from within...
...One-party rule seems no longer able to cope...
...A veer to the right would surely provoke labor, peasant, and student protests...
...But in the 1970s the system began to unravel...
...An essential component of the system — its oil and its glue, to borrow Riding's terms — is corruption...
...The disastrous developmental policies adopted by the government left the economy in shambles and created a foreign debt of $80 billion...
...In the decades following World War II the Mexican economy expanded at a six-percent rate...
...Central America may monopolize today's headlines, but Riding convincingly demonstrates that in the long run it is Mexico that ought to give us a deeper concern...
...Riding dissects the Mexican establishment and describes the system of relationships which enables the government to control, and at the same time share power with, institutions such as organized labor, the bureaucracy, the private sector, and the church...
...And yet, as Riding points out, ' "Tfee cost of appeasing the middle classes would be the worsening of the living conditions of the great majority of Mexicans...
...At the same time the population surged rapidly, reaching 77 million in 1984 and creating a need for social services which cannot be satisfied...
...The Mexicans must work out their own future, but they will need understanding and cooperation from their "distant neighbors" to the north...
...A series of presidents coming from the ranks of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (or PRI, its initials in Spanish), wielding virtually absolute authority, serving six-year terms without the possibility of re-election and then choosing their own successors, have ruled the country in an unbroken sequence since 1934...
...Nepotism, conflict of interest, and the peddling of influence are considered normal practices...
...ambassador in Mexico City, former movie actor John Gavin...
...The president, who appears to exercise absolute authority, in fact must strive to achieve conciliation and consensus...
...For Riding these are keys to an understanding of a crisis which may be the most serious the country has confronted since its Revolution in the second decade of this century...
...Foreign investment helped fuel a surge of industrialization which many felt provided a model for other developing nations...
...The current president, Miguel de la Madrid, has taken some steps to put an end to excessively corrupt practices, but as Riding acutely notes, these were political rather than moral measures, efforts to restore the smooth functioning of the system rather than to reform habits that have existed for centuries...
...The discovery of large oil reserves proved to be a bane of untold proportions...
...There is a sense of urgency to his portrayal of the shared commonality and diversity of the Mexicans...
...A crisis of confidence now besets the Mexican nation...
...His focus, as befits a first-rate foreign correspondent, is upon recent political trends and the critical dilemmas which are rapidly overtaking the Mexican nation...
...Joseph A. Page ALAN RIDING'S Distant Neighbors is both less and more than a social history in the distinguished tradition of "people books" such as Luigi Barzini's The Italians and Theodore Zeldin's The French...
...In perhaps the most striking chapter of the book, he analyzes the pervasiveness of illegal self-enrichment, a mode of behavior found not only in government but at every level of Mexican society...
...The government uses revolutionary, anti-imperialist rhetoric both at home and in foreign-policy posturing, as well as occasional doses of repression, to keep the left from achieving any degree of popular support...
...Proximity to the United States eliminated the need for an expensive and potentially politically intrusive military establishment, facilitated tourism (Mexico's lucrative "industry without chimney") and permitted the exodus of surplus migrant workers...
...Exercising tight control over the electoral process, the PRI has seen to it that the political opposition remains powerless...
Vol. 112 • May 1985 • No. 10
