Looks at big Vicente Fox and a little Mexican village
Colburn, Forrest D.
MUCH INK has been spilled proclaiming the recent Mexican presidential elections epochal, monumental, even revolutionary. The election of Vicente Fox, the candidate of the National Action Party...
...But, according to residents, life is hard...
...So those who find work do little more than feed themselves with a simple diet and clothe themselves with secondhand clothes imported from the United States...
...Women are commonly paid less...
...Although she and others in the family work in town, it is her two brothers in Chicago who provide the decisive financial support...
...Some vegetables are grown, too, but the agricultural sector is severely constrained in the employment and income it can offer...
...No hope—or even interest—is vested in him...
...no one in Taxco Viejo speaks well of it...
...Alicia did not bother to vote in the election...
...Fox promised sweeping changes, "a new political future"—not a change of government, he said, but a regime change...
...There is a school, electricity, and potable water...
...Isn't Fox from the same economic elite that has always governed the country...
...Residents of Taxco Viejo rightly feel that in their all-consuming struggle for employment and income, they have to fend for themselves...
...The elections of July 2, 2000, brought a surprise...
...It lies in migration, abandoning Mexico altogether, crossing the border to live and work in the United States...
...The weight of history and poverty is heavy here...
...Many assumed that it would never surrender the presidency— and therefore assumed, too, that Mexico would never change...
...No political party in the world had been in continuous power for so long...
...The stories of Alicia, Eliut, and others in Taxco Viejo underscore just how important (illegal) migration to the United States is for the poor communities of Mexico...
...Although it is risky to generalize from what Mexicans in one small village have to say, the conclusions of the residents of Taxco Viejo are haunting...
...DISSENT / Spring 2001 n 59...
...The residents of Taxco Viejo are difficult partners in the construction and maintenance of a multiparty democracy...
...And the only salvation—migration to the United States—not only has nothing to do with the state, but means abandoning Mexico altogether...
...It is rational to conclude in places like Taxco Viejo that who runs the government and 58 n DISSENT / Spring 2001 POLITICS ABROAD what they do while running it are equally meaningless...
...wHERE is their salvation...
...Sometimes the decision to migrate is not made freely...
...The physical hardships of the trip north and of working in Chicago are accepted...
...There are some announcements for concerts in neighboring Iguala (Priscila and her Silver Bullets), as well as ads for Pepsi and Corona...
...The new regime is to be transparent, accountable, and responsive—"the new reality of power in Mexico...
...Growing opposition strength encouraged even more investigative journalism...
...The election of Vicente Fox, the candidate of the National Action Party (PAN), ended seventy-one years of rule by the Institutionalized Revolutionary Party (PRI...
...By breaking the hegemony of the PRI, Vicente Fox, cowboy boots and all, is leading Mexico into the messy and uncertain politics of competitive democracy...
...Taxco Viejo is a Mexican "backwater," far from the presidential palace...
...The residents of Taxco Viejo believe that there is nothing that the Mexican government can—or will—do to improve their welfare...
...But mostly, there are just houses built of cement blocks and the families who inhabit them...
...They are forsaken...
...It is the emotional difficulties—the pain of family separation, the anxiety and loneliness—that are heartbreaking...
...Import substitution" through the promotion and protection of Mexican industry has had no impact on Taxco Viejo...
...Other times, daughters wish to go, but, like Eliut, are told they must stay...
...Many villagers are quick to lump all politicians together, claiming that they are indistinguishable from one another, dismissing them as ladrones (thieves...
...Taxco Viejo lies just off the national highway linking Cuernavaca to Acapulco...
...It does not have a presence in the depressed agriculture sector, nor does it do anything to stimulate artisan activity or provide alternative sources of employment and income...
...But the economic crisis of 1982 emboldened the media and the nascent political opposition...
...But it is her brothers and sisters abroad who maintain what is left of the family in Taxco Viejo...
...Alicia is one of five siblings...
...A six-day workweek will earn a man three hundred pesos, equivalent to thirty dollars...
...Where will the hope of the new regime and the fatalism of Taxco Viejo meet...
...No "development strategy" has yet reached Taxco Viejo...
...Everyone is decently clothed and appears to have enough to eat...
...There is some work in agriculture, but it is seasonal...
...In Taxco Viejo, however, there is little interest in the difficulties—even dangers—that he and his colleagues face...
...Work is scarce, and what work exists is poorly paid...
...How different could he be...
...But most of Mexico, including many neighborhoods of Mexico City, is also a political backwater...
...The winner was Vicente Fox, a six-foot-five-inch, cowboybooted former executive of Coca-Cola, who stomped a plastic dinosaur during campaign appearances...
...There are a few small groceries, and other stores selling one thing or another, as well as the Estetico Unisex "Dani" beauty salon...
...Two of her brothers returned briefly to Taxco Viejo when their father died, and Eliut reports that they were uncomfortable, complaining of the dust and the poor sanitation of the village...
...Moreover, in his first few months in office, Fox has been swamped by the need to mediate bickering among the political elite of Mexico (including pipe-smoking, bandolier-wearing subcomandante Marcos in Chiapas...
...Migration may be the economic salvation of Taxco Viejo, but it comes at a high cost...
...Media revelations of corruption at the highest levels of the PRI led to public outcry and further strengthened the opposition...
...The picturesque church, set on a hill, dates back some three hundred years and serves as the center of the village...
...The PRI candidate lost...
...Artisans produce inexpensive jewelry sold in Taxco, Mexico City, and border towns frequented by tourists, but the income generated by this work is also limited...
...Eliut, for example, is the youngest of seven siblings and the only one left in Taxco Viejo...
...Migration is the development strategy of the poor in Mexico...
...These issues—along with the rain for the meager fields of corn—are what concern the people of Taxco Viejo...
...The land is rugged...
...Tomas and others are indignant about widespread corruption that runs from lowly police officers to past presidents (the truth about a president in Mexico is never known until he leaves office...
...There are Chevrolet trucks and Volkswagen beetles, and there are horses and burros...
...We are poor because we have been badly governed...
...The ideas Fox has revealed to date about promoting broad-based economic development seem very distant from the residents' prosaic struggle for a livelihood...
...The two thousand residents won't even give him a chance to deliver on his promises...
...Others say that while he may be "pure" and wellmeaning, he is one individual in a country of a hundred million, and how much can one individual do, especially when he is dependent on a political caste that has so many ties to the authoritarian, corrupt practices of the past...
...She, too, wanted to go to Chicago, but someone had to take care of their mother...
...How could the outcome possibly affect her...
...Moreover, this profound "reform of the state, breaking paradigms," will enable the Mexican government finally to tackle Mexico's pressing problems of poverty, inequality, unemployment, ethnic discrimination, and environmental degradation...
...The Mexican state is nowhere to be seen...
...And so it is elsewhere in the village...
...Not surprisingly, residents of Taxco Viejo take a keen interest in how to get to the border, how to cross it (no one has the money to get a passport and a visa to travel legally to the United States), and how to link up with relatives or friends in Chicago...
...Yet prices for the basic necessities do not differ much from those in the United DISSENT / Spring 2001 n 57 POLITICS ABROAD States...
...The government is so removed from their lives that who controls the machinery of state is irrelevant...
...They expect very little from the government...
...Ending the rule of the PRI, with its corrupt fusion of party and state, has to be positive...
...The village is spread out over a loose web of streets paved with irregular stones...
...cynicism is rife...
...People with resources can benefit or suffer from changes in state economic policy, but the poor remain unaffected...
...FORREST D. COLBURN is the author of Latin America at the End of Politics, forthcoming from Princeton University Press...
...it will open opportunities for democratic dialogue and compromise...
...Scattered everywhere are small fields of corn, grown with the most rudimentary technology...
...Parents tell sons that they must go...
...Tomas, an elderly man born during the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, echoed a common sentiment: "Mexico is rich: it is a large country with so many resources, including petroleum, and we Mexicans work hard...
...A facade of democracy scarcely masked its authoritarian rule...
...Still, until 1982, rapid if uneven economic growth and the adroitness of the PRI leadership bought political acquiescence...
...In the small village of Taxco Viejo in the western state of Guerrero, however, Fox is ignored...
...In fact, much of the labor force of Taxco Viejo is in Chicago...
...It is close to the city of Taxco...
...Arable land is scarce, as is water for irrigation...
...the climate is dry...
...Opposition parties increasingly won municipal, state, and congressional elections, but in a country where el senor presidente is the dominant political force, the PRI held on during presidential elections...
...The North American Free Trade Agreement has had no effect here...
...Her three brothers and two sisters are in Chicago, a fourth brother is in Mexico City...
Vol. 48 • April 2001 • No. 2
