The Mexican election
Jaramillo, Angel
ON THE NIGHT OF July 2, 2006, millions of Mexicans listened to the calm, slow-paced voice of Luis Carlos Ugalde, president of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), announcing what many...
...In Mexico the end of the myth of revolution and the opening up of the country to the world—with NAFTA a key symbol— require a rejection of what many people, mostly from the left love dearly...
...Had he won, he would have been the first Mexican president in the modern era to require an interpreter when speaking to his American counterpart...
...That is the case with Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet in Chile, who came from the old Socialist Party and have supported a liberal-democratic model that has proved to be very successful...
...During its long reign, many guerrilla movements—the Zapatistas being only the latest and best known—aimed to topple the regime...
...There were also national and international observers ranging from The Carter Center to the European Union, who were able to be present in almost every precinct in the country...
...it needs to include the many people left behind...
...After the collapse of the Soviet Union, some old leftists undertook a journey into the democratic camp...
...The situation is not very different from that of the discussions that divided Slavophiles and Westernizers in Russia under the reign of Nicholas I. The tale of Mexico's last fifteen years might be read as a dramatic poem by Pushkin...
...Young people— both poor and rich—supported the right-leaning candidate, while older Mexicans voted for the left-leaning candidate...
...i. Percent paid and/or requested circulation (15c/15f x 100): average no...
...publisher, business manager, or owner: Debra Plastrik, Business Manager...
...Lopez Obrador came of age politically in the PRI in the state of Tabasco...
...Publication name: Dissent...
...As with the 2000 presidential election in the United States, both candidates claimed they had won and hired lawyers and political advisers to defend their victory claims...
...In his Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War, Mexican scholar Jorge G. Castarieda suggested that after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Latin American left might at last come to terms with liberal democracy...
...He belongs to the tradition of archaic, authoritarian populism that also includes, in addition to Chavez and Morales, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina and Alan Garcia in Peru...
...On the first point, and for all his antiestablishment arguments, Lopez Obrador DISSENT / Winter 2007 n 19 POLITICS ABROAD never said from where he would get the funds to raise government investment and channel new resources towards the underdog...
...He supported free trade, globalization, foreign investment, and "sound" monetary and fiscal policies, and made a point of affirming his commitment to the rule of law and the protection of human rights...
...Many voters also felt disappointed in what they saw as an inefficient federal government that has not delivered the goods it promised...
...Mexicans transferred control of the elections away from the ruling party and the state, putting it in the hands of an independent body...
...3) sales through dealers and carriers, street vendors, counter sales, and other non-USPS paid distribution: average no...
...Chavez and Castro are oriented outward...
...Extent and nature of circulation: a. total no...
...of issues published annually, four 6. Annual subscription price, $24 individual: 534 inst...
...Another contention was that Fox violated the rules that prohibited a sitting president from helping one of the candidates...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 7,732...
...3685) 1. Publication title: Dissent...
...Alejandro Encinas, one of the top aides to the former mayor of Mexico City...
...Although issues and policies were sometimes discussed, their impact was marginal...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 7,446...
...This rite, which celebrates the beginning of the fight for Mexican independence from Spain in 1810, has normally been performed by the president himself...
...The Harvard-educated CalderOn's chief handicap was that, at age forty-three, he was relatively unknown in Mexican politics...
...At a time when the modern left in 20 n DISSENT / Winter 2007 Europe and other parts of the world is focused on the future, Lopez Obrador appeared to be anchored in the past...
...It is set apart because Mexico had, for most of the twentieth century, a postrevolutionary regime— a regime created as a result of a victorious revolution...
...The IFE gathered 909,575 citizens to organize an election in which more than forty-one million people voted...
...Issue date for circulation data below: Summer 2006...
...In this regard, the Fox administration's legacy is twofold...
...nor was it about party agendas, as in most European elections...
...The rise of Lopez Obrador is more in tune with the authoritarian, populist left than with the liberal, democratic one...
...The Latin American Context The Mexican elections took place in the context of victories of left-wing parties all over Latin America: the left was in power in Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia...
...3. Filing date, September 12, 2006...
...Date: September 12...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 3,910...
...2. Publication No.: 158-080...
...Petersburg...
...actual no...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 1,981...
...actual no...
...On the second point, Lopez Obrador rightly criticized the corruption of the political and economic elites in Mexico...
...On the other side, Chavez and Bolivian president Evo Morales have not reacted to the challenge of the fall of communism—partly because they never thought about it...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 7,315...
...Democratic reform in Mexico has already embraced one element espoused by the French Revolution: liberte...
...What are the reasons for his defeat...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months: none...
...This year it was performed by the mayor of Mexico City...
...Owner: Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc...
...The PRI has always had all the trappings of a socialist party: it takes pride in being a full-fledged member of the Socialist International...
...The result was the creation of one of the most modern voting systems in the world...
...This was a mistake, because the tradition of the Mexican left required it to discuss any issue concerning the state of the country...
...He hinted that liberaldemocratic institutions might have to be suspended until inequality was reduced...
...But unfortunately many of the social democrats migrated from the PRD during the nineties to become journalists, join nongovernmental organizations, or work for the reform of the electoral system...
...310 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10025...
...actual no copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 10,000...
...The trouble with the Mexican left is that there is a lack of social democratic thought dealing concretely and cogently with the problems of modernity...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, none...
...actual no...
...How did Lopez Obrador manage to lose such a clear advantage...
...Who was this man who, after having lost what was one of the cleanest elections in Mexico's history, had himself proclaimed the real president...
...He set out to accomplish the redistribution of wealth that Mexico requires and he called loosely for a fight to renew the Mexican republic...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 9,7 )3...
...It was about the soul of Mexico...
...His style of governing was characterized by the informal structure of mediation through which political favors were granted without going through formal republican institutions...
...2), (3...
...The polls gave his party an average lead of 8 percent...
...Believing himself well ahead, Lopez Obrador did not participate in one of the two important debates, and his aides seem to have been ordered not to discuss the issues with the other parties...
...f. total distribution (sum of 15c and 15e), average no...
...8. Complete mailing address of headquarters or general business office of publisher: same as above...
...His campaign never took off...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 297...
...He did not make any big mistakes during the campaign and mounted an effective offensive campaign against the leader in the polls...
...Immediately, he became a charismatic leader and helped lift his party's popularity...
...The Contenders At the beginning, the election shaped up as a three-way contest...
...As a result, the PRD was vulnerable to inroads on the part of the old populist vanguard represented by Lopez Obrador...
...310 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10025...
...But how could fraud have existed if the citizens themselves were the ones who counted the votes...
...Enrique Krauze, a widely respected liberal historian, once said that the last communist in the world will likely die in a Mexican university...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 3,301...
...Chavez comes from the Latin American military culture and Morales from the struggle of the cocaleros in Bolivia...
...Signature and title of editor...
...The Tsar's statue, with its arm reaching out toward the future, was a symbol of modernity for many in St...
...No wonder that—as though he had just finished reading Machiavelli's Prince— Lopez Obrador outmaneuvered the few socialist and social democrats within the party and put former priistas, from the authoritarian left that governed the country for decades, into high party posts...
...9. Full names and complete mailing addresses of publisher, editor, and managing editor...
...In truth, Lopez Obrador spent more on television advertisement than any other candidate...
...function, and nonprofit status of this organization and the exempt status for federal tax purposes has not changed during the preceding twelve months...
...actual no...
...Some pundits have argued that Lopez Obrador represents a model very similar to that of Chavez and Fidel Castro...
...actual no copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 3,717...
...According to this view, there is a "blue" poor Mexico opposed to a "red" opulent Mexico...
...What was at stake in the minds of many was nothing less than Mexico's destiny...
...The behavior of political and economic elites in Mexico is marked by a radical lack of social consciousness...
...copies (net press run): average no...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 98.24 percent...
...Neither a communist state nor a military dictatorship, Mexico was rather a single-party regime whose standard rhetoric was revolutionary...
...Shortly afterward, a multitude of Lopez Obrador's partisans raised their hands to "elect" him the legitimate president of Mexico...
...d. free distribution by mail (samples, complimentary, and other free) (1) outside-county as stated on Form 3541 average no...
...In what follows I will suggest that the first two reasons were never proved to be true and that the third does not sufficiently account for Lopez Obrador's defeat...
...In addition to this, new parties were created and strengthened, new rules for the legislature were put in practice, and limits to the power of the presidency were imposed...
...The first of these is authoritarian, antiliberal, and in the end antidemocratic, while the second is committed in principle to a liberal-democratic order...
...As the election approached, it became apparent that Lopez Obrador held an authoritarian and populist worldview, according to which capitalists and politicians were conspiring against him, and he was the mythic righter of cosmic wrongs...
...That was not their issue...
...But his condemnation of these practices did not translate into sound government when he himself held executive office...
...In fact, a section of the Latin American left—including former communists of various kinds—has learned important lessons concerning theoretical and practical weaknesses of the models they espoused in the past...
...And Lopez Obrador, coming from the authoritarian PRI, biographically and theoretically, has more in common with Chavez and Morales than with Lagos and Bachelet...
...5. No...
...7. Complete mailing address of known office of publication: Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc...
...entries of single issue published nearest to filing date: 131...
...Lopez Obrador was shrewd enough to take advantage of the murky terrain in which a country finds itself when making the transition from an authoritarian to a democratic regime...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months, none...
...People from across the social spectrum were visiting his campaign headquarters in Mexico City to greet the man they believed would be the next president...
...On the one hand, he led the country to a kind of political gridlock...
...c. total paid and/or requested circulation (sum of 151)(1...
...Beginning as communists, many ended up embracing the ideals of social democracy...
...The three leaders are indeed very much alike in their rejection of the main tenets of liberal democracy...
...To understand the ideological debate taking place in Mexico today one has to go back to a different time and place...
...and the presidential candidate of Mexico's left-wing Democratic Revolutionary party (PRD), Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador...
...But mistakes like these only partly explain why Lopez Obrador lost his early advantage...
...they are internationalists...
...Third, there is the view that Lopez Obrador's overconfidence and hubris led him to an unexpected defeat...
...He sees himself as the natural next messianic leader destined to save the downtrodden, on a list that includes Juarez, Madero, and Zapata...
...After the election, the defeated candidate claimed that there was fraud...
...Defenders of Lopez Obrador argued that he would not have ruled as an authoritarian caudillo, even if tempted to do so, because POLITICS ABROAD democratic checks and balances would have restricted his powers...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 97.28 percent...
...Misreading the Aftermath After the election, Lopez Obrador's campaign tried to convince Mexicans, as well as potential sympathizers abroad, that the election was analogous to the one in Ukraine in 2005, which produced the so-called Orange Revolution...
...He denounced real injustices, but also the legitimate efforts to combat them, without proposing anything useful...
...Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owning or holding I percent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities: None...
...He put the issue of poverty at the top of the political agenda, but his legitimate cry for justice was never backed by a thought-out program to tackle head-on the many ills from which Mexico suffers...
...Having defeated Fox's dolfino, former Secretary of Government Santiago Creel, in the primaries, CalderOn was never seen as a Fox protég...
...Now it needs to incorporate egalite and fraternite...
...However, there has always been some ideological and practical distance between two different lefts, best represented by the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez and the Chile of Michelle Bachelet...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 139: actual no copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 72...
...Those charges were never proved, albeit the episode shows that most Mexicans think of Chavez's model as undesirable...
...4) other classes mailed through the USPS, average no...
...On the other, he and Ernesto Zadillo are the first presidents in the modern era to have left office without leaving the country in a financial and economic crisis...
...Victories for the Left Although Lopez Obrador lost the presidential race, the left is now the second-largest force in the Congress, while Marcelo Ebrard, the left-wing coalition candidate for mayor of 18 n DISSENT / Winter 2007 Mexico City, won almost 50 percent of the vote—an outstanding victory by any measure...
...And yet, they all fought for the same cultural and political ideals that the PRI claimed to defend, which explains why the left in Mexico has always been schizophrenic...
...While his ideas were presented in old-fashioned nationalistic sound bites, his intentions were indeed to revoke features (including the North American Free Trade Agreement) of the liberal path Mexico has followed through a new system of popular plebiscites...
...Although this is a common practice in every democracy in the world, Mexicans are still haunted by the specter of the allpowerful presidents of the past...
...3) other classes mailed through the USPS: average no copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 71...
...He suits neatly what the Mexican poet Octavio Paz once described as a caudillo in the HispanicDISSENT / Winter 2007 n 21 POLITICS ABROAD Arabic tradition, albeit embedded within the Mexican political condition...
...Time and again debates were held without a representative of Lopez Obrador's party in attendance...
...The corrupt PRI, which ruled Mexico for seventy-one years, chose a candidate of the old guard, Roberto Madrazo, who had flourished as a party apparatchik...
...This Statement of Ownership will be printed in the Winter 2007 issue of this publication...
...h. paid and/or requested circulation (I) paid/requested outside-county mail subscriptions stated on Form 3541 (include advertisers' proof copies/exchange copies), average no...
...In the end, the Federal Court found that Fox's support of Calderon could have put the election at risk, except that his intervention had no influence on the results...
...ON THE NIGHT OF July 2, 2006, millions of Mexicans listened to the calm, slow-paced voice of Luis Carlos Ugalde, president of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), announcing what many had feared: that the election to designate a new president of Mexico was too close to call...
...This was small consolation to his supporters, because ten days before, the Federal Electoral Court had declared the right-of-center liberal candidate Felipe CalderOn the winner of the cliff-hanger election...
...For almost a century it governed Mexico and, at the same time, was the main force opposing the government...
...Mexican democracy needs to be improved...
...People in the northern states voted overwhelmingly for CalderOn because they have on the whole benefited from the economic growth spurred by NAFTA...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 59...
...At the same time, only a handful of countries in the world can be said to have produced such an amazingly fiery, leftwing political opposition...
...4): average no...
...He went so far in his contempt for the rule of law as to state that justice, as he defined it, need not comply with the laws...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months, none: actual no...
...When the reformist wing of the party was sidelined by the technocrats led by former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, he switched allegiances and helped to found the PRD...
...After a careful deliberation, the Federal Electoral Tribunal—one of the most respected public institutions in Mexico—ordered a recount of around 9 percent of the total, most of them places where Lopez Obrador hoped massive fraud could be proved...
...He tried to convince Mexicans that the Fox administration was akin to the PRI without realizing that, for all his shortcomings, Fox is seen by most Mexicans as the symbol of democratic change...
...He presented himself as the candidate of change, but his lieutenants represented a bygone era...
...POLITICS ABROAD There is more than a grain of truth in the contention that the defeat of Lopez Obrador had mainly to do with his errors during the campaign...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 321...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 10,000...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: none...
...The candidate boasted that not even a coalition made up of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) and the rightofcenter National Action Party (PAN)—the other two big Mexican parties—would prevent him from winning the election...
...At the beginning of 2006, Lopez Obrador's campaign seemed to be unbeatable...
...They supported a candidate in favor of budget restraint, pro-market economics, and a friendly view of the United States...
...According to this view, a long series of inequities vitiated the political campaign from start to finish, beginning with Fox's and private corporations' illegal backing of CalderOn, the PAN candidate...
...actual no...
...That Lopez Obrador was not committed to this new democracy was obvious throughout the post-electoral period...
...At least three reasons have been offered...
...At first glance it would seem that the electoral map fits this picture...
...Ideologically a DISSENT / Winter 2007 n I7 POLITICS ABROAD chameleon party, the PRI did not have a clear stance on any of the main issues...
...In any case, Lopez Obrador's supporters are caught in a contradiction: how is it that the very person, Vicente Fox, that they accused of being highly unpopular and ineffective, was also able to increase Caldenin's chances of victory...
...Lopez Obrador and the Mexican left, on the other hand, have always been inwardlooking...
...In a way he and his supporters mistook the country in which they live...
...The Mexican Left Perhaps a deeper explanation of Lopez Obrador's rise and fall has to do with the peculiar nature of the Mexican left, which is different from any other Latin American left...
...actual no...
...These political groups will need to be fought in the future...
...And here one can find an error of vision on the part of Lopez Obrador...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 2,554...
...Madrazo was never able to rise above third place in the polls...
...15g: average no...
...Those who made these charges, however, overlooked the efforts undertaken over the last fifteen years to consolidate democratic institutions in Mexico—years that can be seen as a slow-motion, protracted, peaceful democratic revolution...
...ANGEL JARAMILLO is a journalist and political scientist based in Washington, D.C...
...The creation of the PRD in 1989 made possible the convergence of these two lefts...
...2) M-county as stated on Form 3541, average no...
...But the time has come for Mexicans to escape from what anthropologist Roger Bartra has shrewdly called "the cage of melancholy" and embrace not an allegedly glorious past but a risky yet unavoidable future...
...The recount showed only minimal differences between the original and the revised count...
...Most citizens in Mexico City and the south voted for Lopez Obrador because they have suffered severe damage under economic reform...
...But what are the main tenets of this condition...
...actual no...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 7,522...
...4. Issue frequency quarterly...
...h. total (sum of 15f...
...even his supporters had little confidence in him...
...4) outside the mail (carriers or other means): average no...
...actual no...
...And those reforms were undertaken...
...In the end, the election turned out not to be a plebiscite on the Fox administration, but, oddly enough, a plebiscite on Lopez Obrador...
...But what ought to be attempted is a great leap forward to a more liberal democracy, not a leap backward to an old-fashioned despotic populism...
...This seems also to be the case with President Luiz 'flack) Lula da Silva of Brazil, who has become a moderate reformist leader...
...Neither in his style nor in his ideas is Lopez Obrador a modern, liberal social democrat...
...First, some argue that the election was marred by fraud: the IFE and Vicente Fox's administration maneuvered successfully to deprive the PRD of the victory it actually earned...
...When CalderOn was chosen as the PAN candidate, Lopez Obrador said that Calderon made him yawn...
...However, things can be seen from a different perspective...
...This contention is unconvincing, because the main point Lopez Obrador tried to make during the campaign was that the political system—with its liberaldemocratic institutions—favored the powerful...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 9,713: actual no...
...In Mexico the richest 10 percent of the population controls about 70 percent of the national income...
...He was able to garner popular support because of his ability to play the victim, and many Mexicans voted for him because they do not support the conservative right-wing ideology of sections of the PAN, imbued by a reactionary, corporatist Catholicism...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, none: e. total free or nominal rate distribution (sum of I5d (1), (2), (3), 4)), average no...
...In "The Bronze Horseman," the Russian poet set a scene where modernizers and Slavic melancholics are fighting to win the soul of poor young Yevgeny...
...That Lopez Obrador does not hold a passport and does not speak any language other than Spanish is very telling...
...actual no...
...However, Lopez Obrador's defeat was so surprising for his supporters that other victories have been overshadowed by it...
...But there is an essential difference...
...It seems that Lopez Obrador was betting on nostalgia for the authoritarian presidents of the past...
...All the political parties had representatives at almost every ballot place...
...Lopez Obrador insisted that the election pitted the poor against the rich...
...Weeks afterward, on September 15, countless citizens gathered at the Zocalo square in Mexico City to witness the traditional ceremony of El Grito, or the cry of independence...
...The PRD's main contention was that Fox and the powers that be had loaded the dice in favor of CalderOn...
...The purpose...
...However, his tenure as mayor was marred by the corruption of close aides and by a lack of accountability...
...Publisher: Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, 310 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10025...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 210...
...Since the triumph of the revolution in 1917, the Mexican regime has been a hybrid: half liberal, half socialist...
...Insofar as one can tell, Lopez Obrador's proposals were aimed at tackling two real problems...
...2006 STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP AND CIRCULATION (Required by 39 U.S.C...
...actual no...
...However, today there are many limits to the power of the Mexican presidency...
...The talk of the town was the imminent, first-time-in-history victory of the Mexican left...
...The election was not about particular policies, as has normally been the case in American elections...
...He requested a recount of 100 percent of the polling places, but warned that he would not accept unfavorable results...
...David Alfaro Siqueiros, the painter who once plotted against the life of Trotsky, was a fierce enemy of the PRI...
...Managing Editor: Maxine Phillips, 310 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10025...
...As mayor of Mexico City from 2000 to 2005—the second most powerful political position after the presidency— Lopez Obrador carried out major public works, and laid the foundation for his presidential bid...
...22 n DISSENT / Winter 2007...
...Second, there are those who contend that even if there was no fraud in the election proper, the IFE permitted a radically unfair electoral process...
...Editor: Mitchell Cohen/Michael Walter, Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc., 310 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10025...
...Instead of relying on the social democrats of his party, Lopez Obrador sought the support of former priistas (as PRI supporters are known), some of whom had played a key part in keeping the corrupt, kleptocratic PRI in power...
...It alleged that there was a "dirty war," which, through a campaign of television ads, distorted the image of Lopez Obrador by associating him with the radical politics of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez...
...2) paid incounty subscriptions stated on Form 3541 (include advertisers' proof copies/exchange copies): average no...
...I will propose an alternative interpretation—that the authoritarian and populist left he represents was rejected by a modern and complex citizenry rising in Mexico today...
...The real contenders were the PAN's Calder& and the PRD's Lopez Obrador...
...Many voters seemed to have understood that the cure for the arbitrary exercise of power does not lie in choosing someone who was going to exercise arbitrary power...
...He defended the importance of Mexico's partnership with the United States...
...This structure was almost an exact copy of the model set in place by the PRI during its long reign...
...g. copies not distributed: average no...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 3,291...
...His critique was aimed not at the unfair outcomes of the system but at its very nature...
...A new generation of journalists, intellectuals, professors, politicians, and artists realized that extraordinary reforms needed to be undertaken to set the groundwork for true democracy...
Vol. 54 • January 2007 • No. 1
