The End of the Miracle
THE MEXICAN STATE WAS BORN OF REVO- lution. One out of eight Mexicans-some 2 million people-were killed between 1910 and 1917 when millions in the countryside, in the mines, in the...
...II, no...
...When the companies' appeal to the Supreme Court also ended in defeat, they refused to abide by the decision, in a direct challenge to Mexico's government...
...Soldiers then opened fire into the gathering...
...2. Jos6 Juan de Olloqui, "Estados Unidos: La bdsqueda de una political hacia M6xico," Perfil, supplement, La Jornada (Mexico City), January 10, 1987...
...Exports, 90% dependent on the U.S...
...The possibility of worker and peasant alliances with the student movement posed a powerful threat to the government...
...Radl Macin, Ruben Jaramillo, profeta olvidado (Mexico: Editorial Di6genes, 1984...
...T HE CONSTITUTION OF 1917, STILL IN force today, is among the most progressive in the world, establishing Mexico as a federation of states, with separate executive, legislative and judicial structures and guarantees of all the fundamental rights of classical liberal democracies...
...market, served as catalyst to this mercurial economic pace...
...Trejo in Gonzilez Casanova, Historia del movimiento, p. 44...
...He declared that far more dangerous than the alleged communist agitation were those who oppose the laws and programs of the revolution...
...With the Vidriera strike fresh in their minds, on February 24, 1936, 4,000 delegates, representing over half a million workers in 3,000 unions, founded a new labor federation, the Federation of Mexican Workers * One hectare equals 2.4 acres...
...8. Liisa North and David Raby, "The Dynamic of Revolution and Counterrevolution: Mexico Under Cardenas, 1934-1940," LARU Studies, Vol...
...Moreover, it reflected the consolidation of organized labor resulting from confrontations with business and government, as in the Vidriera case...
...The program's primary purpose was to fulfill a social need and, as such, it was a political success...
...In the fields they die for political reasons, killed by the hundreds...
...Year 1940-1954 1955-1961 1962-1970 GDP % growth 5.8% 6.0 7.6 Industrial Sector % growth 6.6% 7.4 9.7 The Mexican "miracle" was at hand.' 2 But it was a miracle in which the majority had no share...
...Industrialization, partly financed through agricultural production and exports, ultimately drained support from the ejido sector, making peasant livelihood ever more marginal...
...59-61...
...It was from the CTM that Cdrdenas gained his fundamental backing to confront the interests and power of the private sector...
...Mexico City would soon be among the largest cities on earth...
...Unlike the corrupt rule of the previous 17 years, in which workers and peasants suffered at the hands of landowners and factory bosses, the new government encouraged the union movement, halted repression and implemented agrarian reform through a vast redistribution of land, addressing the very question that had initially ignited the revolution and thereby winning peasant support...
...Leading this drive was CTM president Fidel Velazquez, who at 86 is still in power today and considered one of the most influential personages in Mexico's political circles...
...Suddenly, at 6:20 p.m., helicopters dropped green flares over their heads...
...In all, Cirdenas distributed 18 million hectares* to 800,000 peasants-about onethird of Mexico's rural population-more than all his post-revolutionary predecessors combined...
...he formed a peasant cooperative at a sugar refinery and established forms of communal agricultural work, based on Zapata's principles...
...Moreover, revenue is generated through exports...
...Instead, its fruits were reaped by a new elite, a new property class and some reformers who understood that Diaz was blocking "progress" through the semi-feudal relations he defended...
...Over half its working people have no full-time employment...
...88-91, 105...
...47-48...
...In 1942, troops attacked a protest march in support of the strike at the National Polytechnic Institute in downtown Mexico City and 11 students were killed...
...That would be patriotic...
...As historian Manuel Camacho sees it, "Cdrdenas recognized the existence of the class struggle at all times, except instead of fearing it, he attempted to channel it toward the construction of a national state, autonomous from class relations and of the international relations of domination...
...Mexico paid about $24 million to the companies, who had demanded $450 million for their losses...
...Throughout the course of Mexican development, the labor federation has remained the most important component of the ruling party's social base...
...In 1943, after long fruitless attempts at political negotiations with officials, Jaramillo and his followers took up arms and launched a series of guerrilla actions in the state of Morelos...
...peasants, via CNC...
...2 0 In the countryside, a new peasant leader, Rub6n Jaramillo, a veteran of the revolution who had served under Zapata, organized to demand the implementation of the reforms Zapata had fought for...
...Visitors to the Olympics saw progress on many fronts: a diversified industrial base, an export agriculture, education, health, an expanding middle class...
...Tlaltelolco became the symbol of the system's brutal response to popular demands...
...Although the enormous upheaval of these seven bloody years broke the reactionary forces of Diaz's Mexico to open the modern era of the nation, the lack of a national political program, among other factors, led to the failure of the popular revolution...
...Mexico had indeed achieved world recognition as a modern, rapidly growing and stable nation over the 30year period between 1940 and 1970...
...Rolando Cordera and Adolfo Orive, "M6xico: Industrializaci6n subordinada," in Cordera, Desarrollo y crisis, p. 157...
...Railroad workers led the most militant movement in Mexico's recent history...
...At continuous student marches and street rallies, cries for an end to repression and respect for the rights of all Mexicans to work, adequate food and shelter, were greeted with raised fists and V signs-for venceremos...
...On May 28, 1937, some 18,000 workers struck against U.S.-owned oil companies that monopolized that industry, demanding a new contract with improved economic benefits...
...Some 10% of the wealthiest households earn close to 40% of all income while the poorest 10% earn 0.9%-giving Mexico one of the most inequitable distributions of wealth in the world...
...7 In less than a week, a new collective contract was signed...
...57-59...
...B Y 1960 MEXICO HAD BECOME AN URBAN nation, as city-dwellers outnumbered the rural population for the first time...
...Charro" (government-imposed)* leaders took control of the union-Demetrio Vallejo, railroad workers' strike leader but railroad cars throughout Mexico would carry "Viva Vallejo" slogans for many years to come...
...Rather, his project was to create a state re16flecting the interests of and supported by the mass sectors, without advocating a "workers' state" in the communist sense...
...Department of State briefing and background papers, 1987...
...Due to this it is not only congruent but necessary to impel the evolution of democratic capitalism in Mexico...
...Bartra, Herederos, pp...
...Numerous accounts of beatings and mass arrests were reported...
...Parastate companies were set up in "strategic" areas of the economy, such as communications, electricity, roads, railroads, food marketing and the energy sector (primarily PEMEX...
...Financial support for ejidos was curtailed, leaving peasants increasingly marginalized on their own land while workers were again locked into disadvantageous wage agreements as their leaders exchanged labor "discipline" for political gain...
...While Cdrdenas was institutionalizing the party's social base, however, reactionary factions with powerful alliances outside the PRM were consolidating against the progressive Cardenista alliance...
...In 1936 the workers of the Vidriera Monterrey glass factory struck for better wages and working conditions...
...if the country can't export enough non-oil products at a sufficient volume to generate this revenue, we are left with only oil income...
...As economist Rolando Cordera defines it, "Mexico's industrialization was as much a result of its internal structural conditions as the product of the evolution and the nature of capitalism on a global level . . . a growing subordination to the great corporations which, internally, was expressed in underdevelopment...
...Some became laborers on their own land, working it for the benefit of those who had capital to replace state supports...
...5. Baird, Beyond, p. 29...
...they turned to the agro-industries or supplied their unskilled labor to the new industrial centers...
...Within the overall strategy of developing the nation's economic infrastructure, the agrarian program also provided financial credit and established state agencies for investment in agricultural production and distribution...
...For the majority of Mexicans, however, despite its unprecedented dimensions, this crisis is a continuation and deepening of a much older crisis, one that exacted a high social cost for Mexico's economic "miracle...
...2 2 Urbanization, the rise of the middle classes, new generations of professionals and mass communications brought new dimensions to social movements...
...After an election in which the democratic leadership won by an overwhelming majority, it called for immediate wage negotiations...
...Its new slogan, "democracy and social Is REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 18justice" served to replace all past references to socialism and the rights of workers...
...Respect for political parties would have been respect for the caciques [local rulers] and the military parties...
...He moved swiftly to implement radical reforms that would revitalize the revolution, breaking the entrenched private interests controlling industry and agriculture...
...4 On April 7, 1945, the CTM and the Confederation of Industrial Chambers (representing part of the business sector) announced a new "labor-business pact" that called for unity in pursuit of economic development and in "defense" of national autonomy from the uncertain foreign threats of the postwar economic order...
...Under this agreement, labor leaders committed themselves to cease their protests over price hikes and immediate wage demands...
...The massive student movement of 1968 was to give voice to the popular anger against the corruption and authoritarianism of the political system...
...19Mexio v4 te Amc as Mexico Genaro Vdzquez in the mountains of Guerrero diers crushed their movement and assassinated its leaders...
...Created by decree, at the time it offered survival as well as legitimacy to the fragmented movement...
...Led by Demetrio Vallejo, on March 25, 1959 the union struck against two companies that refused to negotiate, receiving immediate support through solidarity actions across the nation...
...Ibid., pp...
...The cost was constant migrations of rural workers, including the one heading north in search of work across the border, and increasing number of landless peasants still denied the promise of the revolution: la tierra para los que la trabajan (land for those who till it...
...Those businessmen who feel themselves fatigued by the social struggle are welcome to deliver their industries to the workers or the government...
...Tenants in the housing projects that ring the plaza opened their doors to offer refuge...
...8 POPULAR REACTIONS TO THE AUSTERITY conditions imposed by the model of development were met by the state through limited concessions and calculated repression...
...In July 1934 General Lazaro Cirdenas was elected president...
...Trejo in GonzAlez Casanova, ed., Historia del movimiento, p. 41...
...Peasants who could not subsist on their land without state assistance were forced to seek work elsewhere...
...Despite severe repression, insurrections continued throughout the 1960s, in Chihuahua to the north and Guerrero to the south...
...Industrialization was pursued through the "import substitution" strategy, based on national production of goods once supplied by imports...
...Private business interests, as such, were not represented...
...N A SIMILAR MANNER, CARDENAS CONsolidated the labor movement...
...On March 28, the union leadership was arrested and "foreign communists" blamed for the actions...
...Manuel Camacho, El futuro inmediato (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 1985...
...It also establishes free and compulsory education, institutionalizes agrarian reform and guarantees the right to strike and organize...
...In 1958, telegraph workers, the democratic movement within the national teachers' union, oil workers and railroad workers resisted deteriorating economic conditions and fought for the democratization of their own organizations...
...Armando Bartra, Herederos, p. 66...
...2 1 But by then land invasions and coordinated mass protests were taking the place of guerrilla campaigns as manifestations of popular opposition...
...Trejo in GonzAlez Casanova, Historia del movimiento, pp...
...Initially, the students, in universities and high schools, were quite isolated and were even resented by workers and peasants for their privileged positions...
...Federation of Mexican Workers (CTM...
...Less than 14,000 owners controlled 83% of all privately held lands with the result that landless peasants numbered 2.3 million by the beginning of the 1930s.' Many crossed the border to seek work...
...In 1958, 740 strikes were called, in contrast to 193 the preceding year...
...It is the capitalist world's 13th largest economy, the lth largest nation in population, the fourth largest oil producer and the principal silver exporter...
...Located in the city of Monterrey in the north, Vidriera was in the heart of the most militant sector of private enterprise...
...Rius, "Halcones: se sigue investigando," Los Agachados, pp...
...I) p. 37...
...7. Ratil Trejo Delarbre, "Historia del movimiento obrero en M6xico, 1860-1982," in Pablo GonzAlez Casanova, ed., Historia del movimiento obrero en america latina (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 1984, Vol...
...As Mexico's distinguished social scientist Pablo Gonzilez Casanova argues, the political realities of Mexico in 1917 would have made the application of *Full identifications are listed on p. 39...
...The media and a number of politicians in the United States cried out for intervention in defense of "our interests" against the "communist conspiracy at our very border...
...In response, on March 18, 1938, Cdrdenas unilaterally expropriated the oil industry, implementing Article 27 of the constitution which gives the state sovereign rights over all natural resources in Mexico...
...In your hands is the will and the power to save it...
...It is the second largest nation in Latin America, and the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world...
...companies set up an oil boycott, unofficially endorsed by the State Department.8 But the United States was enmeshed in its own urgent domestic difficulties and concerned with the growing threat of war in Europe...
...The CTM's slogan, "For a classless society" was replaced with another: "For the emancipation of Mexico...
...Growing at an annual rate of 8%, this sector fueled the growth of the economy-at an annual rate of 6.7...
...The CTM's formation took place in the context of the rise of the great national unions, such as the railroad workers, mine and metalworkers and oil workers unions...
...After long litigation, Mexico's labor arbitration board ruled in favor of the workers...
...Six years later the economy collapsed...
...Oil income is destined to service the debt...
...The inequalities that define an underdeveloped nation had grown in the very process of creating unprecedented wealth...
...For the elites in" It is simple...
...But the creation of this national state, capable of guiding the process of growth by effectively organizing social forces, consolidating resources and establishing its authority in both economic and political realms, would not be achieved until the 1930s...
...By institutionalizing the ejido, however, Cardenas appropriated the banner of independent radical agrarianism, implementing some of its demands and absorbing its long-term struggles...
...IN THE NAME OF "NATIONAL UNITY," THE government and the new CTM leadership moved to "purify" labor's ranks of progressives and Communists, prevent independent organizing and block militant labor actions...
...Government owned and parceled out with the condition that they had to remain in use and never rented, ejidos were distributed by the endowed community to individuals or were worked collectively...
...The owners refused to negotiate and, in their support, all commercial establishments in Monterrey raised the national flag outside their establishments, closed their doors and paralyzed local business...
...3 From pursuing its mandate as a representative of labor's rank and file, the CTM underwent a process of bureaucratization that transformed it into an instrument of political pressure for the government party...
...Popular cultural activities, promoted by the new government, flourished...
...The next day, Cdrdenas arrived in the city...
...classical theories-of democracy, as literally interpreted, absurd: "Respect for the balance of power would have been respect for the conspiracies of a semi-feudal society...
...But the injustices of a dependent, underdeveloped nation remained...
...MEXICO IS AMONG THE WEALTHIEST AND the poorest countries in the world...
...In 1952, an opposition movement protesting the repressive policies of President Ruiz Cortines (1952-1958) became new victims of those very policies: on July 8 Army troops killed some 200 demonstrators...
...15 in La Clase Obrera en La Historia de M6xico collection), p. 39...
...But the document reflects the compromise between the ideals of the revolutionaries and the program of the new elite, a formal statement of rights which would never in fact be implemented...
...2 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 14At the same time, more than half of Mexico's population suffers from malnutrition...
...But the challenge sounded by Emiliano Zapata would continue to resound through the following decades: The revolution has not triumphed...
...Mexico: A Country Study (Washington, DC: Area Handbook Series, U.S...
...Perhaps appropriately, in 1946 the ruling party again changed its name, to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI...
...Moreover, industrial imports increased in the 1940s and 1950s to meet the needs of these growing industries, especially the pivotal auto industry...
...On a larger scale, it represented perhaps the first visible rupture between the Mexican state and society since the revolution...
...The state's ability to manage the permanent instability and contradictions inherent in this model of growth sprang from the fact that the mass organizations had been created by the state, albeit for other purposes, and were dependent on it as arbitrator of rights, wage demands and agricultural supports (prices, distribution, land titles, technical assistance...
...In addition, a commission with the power to suspend any strike for ten months was established and acted in hundreds of cases...
...In 1940, 11 labor leaders were machine-gunned outside the president's house while petitioning for solutions to their demands...
...Today, many who refer to the promise of the revolution point to the establishment of the mass organizations and the enlightened social policies carried out during the time of Cirdenas...
...4. Pablo Gonzalez Casanova, Democracy in Mexico...
...Sustained economic growth required not only massive state investment and protectionism, but a restrictive wage policy and a controlled labor force...
...The backbone of CArdenas' agrarian reform was the ejido...
...Such actions were a main expression of peasant opposition until 1974, when some 24,000 solSEFPEMBER/DECEMBER * The term charro refers to the nickname of Diaz de Le6n--''El Charro"-who in 1948 was forcibly installed by the police as leader of the railroad workers union...
...Cirdenas' policies, however, were not anticapitalist...
...Protectionist measures, massive public investments in economic infrastructure and the development of state-owned and operated industries and economic agencies were essential props for industrial vitality...
...Business and government justified the inequitable balance between high profits and low wages-in part sustained by low food prices-as necessary to attract new private investment...
...Meyer & Sherman, The Course, p. 655...
...3. Data from National Institute of Nutrition (INN), Mexico...
...Nine thousand workers were ultimately fired and, in this way, the movement broken...
...James D. Rudolph, ed...
...The initial reliance on foreign sources never stopped, and key sectors of the economy ended up in the hands of the transnationals...
...4 Faced with powerful foreign interests and national monopolies as well as regional power-holders grown stronger over the seven years of revolution, a highly centralized presidentialist regime was essential to establish and maintain political stability...
...In 1962 and 1963, respectively, Salvador Gaston and Arturo Gamiz led guerrilla bands in Chihuahua...
...and the organized "popular" sector, including civic associations and government employees...
...Moreover, he notes: "To maintain unrestricted rights of ownership would have meant to maintain semi-feudal and foreign ownership and a statusquo that could not allow for the creation of an internal market and national capitalization...
...In 1938, to consolidate the peasant movement, the Cdrdenas Administration organized the National Peasant Federation (CNC), the only national peasant organization granted official recognition...
...the military...
...It also responded to the emergence of intense new industrial growth...
...Baloy Mayo, La guerrilla de Genaro y Lucio (Mexico: Di6genes, 1980...
...As a result, the next four decades were years of crisis for the majority of Mexicans, a crisis which long preceded-and may well outlast-the one that bankers proclaimed in 1982...
...In 1960 the electrical workers union (SME) and the telephone workers union launched another series of labor actions, and that same year, the struggle for union democracy within the teachers' union reached its peak...
...Ibid., pp...
...Yet, as the movement gained momentum through the summer and fall of 1968, the solidarity expressed by students for popular demands began to provoke a response...
...Troops occupied railroad facilities around the country...
...As labor historian Ratil Trejo notes, "with this process of bureaucratization, it was not to be the workers who became partners with the government (as Cirdenas had hoped) but their union leaders...
...For the peasants, accustomed to expect little from life but grinding toil, this extraordinary campaign allowed them to articulate as well as simply feel the sense of worth to which their victorious struggles for land had entitled them...
...It is their 58 years of political domination, after all, that is being challenged...
...Then the Harris Act (a precursor of the Simpson-Rodino immigration law) forced tens of thousands of Mexicans to return home between 1930 and 1933...
...Conceived more as armed self-defense than efforts to take "state power," their actions included spectacular tactics, such as the kidnapping of a senator, bank robberies and disarming military bases...
...If we don't generate revenue to import technology, our economy will keep going backward...
...To compound it, Mexico was preparing to host the 1968 Olympic Games for which it invested enormous sums to convey an international image of stability and democratic progress...
...The "night of Tlatelolco," October 2, 1968, is indelibly marked on Mexico's conscience...
...Foreign investment became increasingly concentrated in the most dynamic sector, SEPTEMBER/DECEMBER I 17kefloa 0 e Aoleya Mexico manufacturing, reaching a quarter of all the investment by 1950...
...The capitalist-controlled agricultural sector grew at a faster pace than the overall economy-7.3% annual average-and quickly became a major export sector.' " Perhaps peasants are fewer, and their economic weight is less, but the conflict is bloodier in the countryside than in the cities...
...Hundreds were hauled off to clandestine military prisons-many never to be seen again...
...Revolutionary leaders Emiliano Zapata and Francisco Villa, their troops and programs defeated, soon after were mythologized by the bourgeois supporters of the victorious Carranza who set out to "modernize" Mexico in their name...
...In 1967, Lucio Cabafias, a union leader, and Genaro Vizquez, a rural schoolteacher, took to the sierra in separate campaigns to lead a seven-year guerrilla war in the state of Guerrero...
...Nineteen sixty-eight was the generalized expression of protest against the unpopular forces directing Mexico's course...
...Some 10,000 people had gathered in support of a student demonstration in the neighborhood of Tlatelolco, in downtown Mexico City, built around a pre-Hispanic plaza...
...Five days later, 200,000 people joined in a march of support in the capital, while celebrations were held throughout the nation and congratulations poured in from around Latin America...
...Despite these assaults, the worker and peasant movements continued to confront government claims that the inequality was a temporary sacrifice that would result in future prosperity...
...That message would remain contemporary...
...Somewhere between 300 and 800 students were killed in the massacre...
...The U.S...
...Popular education programs-so important to peasants' stake in their future-were abandoned...
...this response would never be forgotten as its brutality would never be forgiven...
...OR OVER A DECADE OF POST-REVOLUtionary turmoil, marked by revolts, assassinations and plots, increasingly corrupt governments were more concerned with power struggles than with reforms, and the Great Depression had wreaked havoc on the fragile economy...
...On May 23, 1962, Rub6n Jaramillo, his pregnant wife and three children were massacred at the pyramids of Xochicalco, Morelos, by soldiers disguised as peasants...
...New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp...
...The enormous growth in the wealth of the nation was concentrated in the hands of an emerging national capitalist class, and did not find its way into worker pay packets or ejido support projects...
...In addition, Cdirdenas promoted an extensive, socialist-oriented educational program, especially in rural areas...
...Trejo in Gonzdlez Casanova, ed., Historia del movimiento, p. 50...
...Other campesino leaders, less well-known, were killed in Oaxaca, San Luis Potosi, Guerrero, Chiapas, Puebla and Zacatecas as they engaged in protest movements in 1959, 1960 and 1962...
...Under Cdrdenas' successors the norm of "revolution" was replaced with "institutionalization" and the implications of the shift were clearly expressed in the policies of the ensuing years...
...In 1946 and again in 1952 he gained national prominence...
...One out of eight Mexicans-some 2 million people-were killed between 1910 and 1917 when millions in the countryside, in the mines, in the textile mills rose up against the 34-year dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz...
...Bank of Mexico, "Informaciones Econ6micas PIB, 19601977" in Cordera, Desarrollo y Crisis, p. 156...
...In some cases, he even armed peasants to defend their land from attacks by wealthy landowners...
...While its effects are profoundly felt throughout the population, la crisis is more precisely one of the political and economic premises upon which Mexico's halfcentury of relative stability has rested...
...B EGINNING IN 1940 MEXICO UNDERTOOK an accelerated process of industrialization based on renewed dependence on the United States, setting the stage for sustained economic growth which would last through the 1970s...
...but if, unfortunately, you do not, the shades of Cuauhtemoc, Hidalgo and Juarez and the heroes of all time will stir in their tombs to ask: What have you done with the blood of your brothers...
...1 (October 1977), p. 40...
...To respect the 'system of checks and balances' would have been to tolerate the regional caciques and caudillos...
...But in time, due to its subjection to the official party, it would become the movement's prison...
...3 In 1976, when Mexico's vast new oil deposits were discovered, the government proclaimed that the national problem was no longer poverty but how to deal with prosperity...
...Some leaders, including Vallejo, would spend years in prison...
...Trejo in GonzAlez Casanova, Historia del movimiento, p. 48...
...Cirdenas argued, simply and successfully, that their investment had been returned many times during their years of profitable enterprise.' JN ORDER TO SOLIDIFY THE PROGRESS UNder Cdrdenas the ruling party was restructured in 1937, changing its name to the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM), to formally incorporate four sectors that together constitute its social base: labor, via CTM...
...REFERENCES The End of the Miracle 1. Peter Baird & Ed McCaughan, Beyond the Border (New York: NACLA, 1979), p. 27...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICAS (CTM), which remains the most important labor organization to this day...
...their stoppage is not...
...Over 5,000 soldiers and 300 military vehicles closed in on the trapped crowd...
...Initially successful, this strategy increased rather than decreased foreign dependence...
...it is also the developing world's second largest debtor...
...Tlatelolco remains a pivotal event in the evolution of today's dissident movements...
...Armando Bartra The first decade of this "development" rapidly generated wealth both in the industrial and agricultural sectors, but workers lost up to one-third of their real wages while the cost of living almost tripled...
...In the rural sector, where the majority of the population lived, state financial and technical support for ejidos slowed to a trickle and was rechanneled to benefit those involved in the growing large-scale capitalist export sector...
...With the justification that only through the "industrialization" model would Mexico "modernize" itself out of underdevelopment, Mexico was increasingly integrated into the postwar international economy characterized by the rise of transnational corporate power...
...8-10...
...So, if we can't get that revenue through the non-oil exporting sector, we will have to decide to not pay the debt, or part of it, whatever the political consequences.' ' -Hector Aguilar Camin, editor* volved in resolving the crisis the problem is how to manage the multi-contradictions of Mexican society...
...New York Times, October 19, 1986...
...Cdrdenas stated that "land distribution is indispensable for developing the country's economy and, SEPTEMBER/DECEMBER15 SEPTEMBER/DECEMBER 15Repcrt on t4 Amecas Mexico moreover, the violent situation which reigns in the countryside between hacendados [large landowners] and peasants requires it...
...The CTM and the CNC, subordinated to the official party since their creation, were made to serve the pro-capitalist development policies of the post-C.rdenas regimes-in effect, to betray the principles upon which they were founded...
...Mexico is a violent country, and for some it is spectacularly violent...
...9. Michael C. Meyer & William L. Sherman, The Course of Mexican History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 603...
...Rolando Cordera, "Industrializaci6n subordinada," p. 158...
...President Franklin Roosevelt held with his position of non-intervention in the Americas and, instead, swiftly moved toward a settlement...
...In Mexico transnational corporations, especially U.S.-based ones, would largely condition the form, limits and the factors of Mexico's integration into the world economy...
...Foreign capital and technology provided the inputs to establish new national industries, but instead of industrial autonomy, the government bought the lasting presence of transnational corporations...
...the plaza was surrounded by riot police and Army units while plainclothes police in the crowd seized leaders and other key participants...
...6. Armando Bartra, Los Herederos de Zapata (Mexico: Ediciones Era, 1985), p. 62...
...Government/American University, 1985), p. 163...
...In fact, the ability of the government to manage social tensions, to maintain "stability" today rests upon the Cardenista social pact...
...Roberto Cabral, "Industrializaci6n y politica econ6mica," in Rolando Cordera, ed., Desarrollo y crisis de la economia mexicana (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1981), p. 96...
...The CNC, meanwhile, pledged loyalty to the new era by stating, in 1947, "For a lapse of unforeseen duration, Mexico has no path other than that of capitalist growth...
...68-69...
...In 1964 and 1965 medical workers took to the streets, and like the movements preceding them, were met with government repression...
Vol. 21 • September 1987 • No. 5
