Reviews
Bordering on Chaos: Guerrillas, Stockbrokers, Politicians and Mexico's Road to Prosperity by Andres Oppenheimer, Little Brown, 1996, 367 pp., $25.45 (cloth). The Mexican Shock: Its Meaning for...
...Roett, a well-connected financial consultant, has assembled a group of analysts to celebrate the ability of neoliberal regimes in the rest of Latin America to avoid the pitfalls of Mexican naivete and inexperience...
...readers that Mexicans do not in fact dislike them, and are truly anxious to make NAFTA work...
...readers would be ill advised to rest complacently with the notion that increased trade will bring widespread prosperity to all concerned, or that Mexico's internal problems need not affect their northern neighbors...
...Access to elite sources also comes easy to Castafieda, the scion of a prominent Mexican family and one of the better-known Mexican writers in the United States...
...He criticizes the U.S...
...interests further south, placing greater emphasis on the rewards of integration with other Latin nations...
...His central concern is to reassure his U.S...
...With one exception, however, instead of leaving us in a position to understand current events and predict the direction in which Mexico may evolve in the coming years, what they give us is a better understanding of the authors themselves...
...It "disintegrates in the face of international naivete and domestic indifference," he says...
...With his press credential and his highly visible column in The Miami Herald, Oppenheimer was easily able to interview notables from every part of the political spectrum...
...Ultimately, it is in these struggles that the potential for change in Mexico lies...
...These thoughtful essays stand out for their value in helping North Americans understand the daily reporting of local conflicts and economic disarray that will continue to plague Mexico in the coming years...
...In the end, the weakness of most of this writing lies in the authors' convictions of the importance of their own ideas, their contacts and their privileged information...
...In his own essay, Otero seeks to identify a democratic basis for a stable political order to assure longterm economic growth...
...press for leaving its public unprepared for "the shock of discovering that for whatever reasons, the Mexican house of cards could come crumbling down once again...
...He is less certain than Oppenheimer, however, that the present ruling class is up to the task of government...
...He is accustomed to being treated well-to the point that he chastises Subcomandante Marcos for keeping him waiting...
...This team of policy pundits suggests that one major product of the "errors of December"-as the 1994 devaluation crisis has been baptized-is the redirecting of U.S...
...by Jorge G. Castahieda, The New Press, 1995, 254 pp., $23 (cloth...
...In contrast, the analyses of grassroots movements stimulate more optimistic judgements...
...Oppenheimer's book-length pamphlet, for example, is an unabashed effort to convince the reader that the writer's privileged access to the major actors and sources hidden from the eyes of mere mortals gave him special insight into the Mexican character...
...In the end, however, we gain more insight into the reporter than his subject...
...must eventuate in a period of social conflict" whose outcome is indeterminate...
...Castafieda sets out to provide just this preparation, but because his analysis remains on the level of interactions among elites, he fails to offer a guide to the complexity of the transition in which ordinary Mexicans are engaged...
...Given the economic transformations underway, however, he can only offer the troubling prediction that the "dismantling of social institutions...
...The Mexican Peso Crisis: International Perspectives edited by Riordan Roett, Lynne Rienner Publications, 1996, 130 pp., $13.95 (paper...
...Only when the writers choose to allow their protagonists to shine, as in some of the Otero essays, does the reader gain insight into the process of grassroots struggle against the elites who have done such a terrible job in governing Mexico...
...Like the analysts brought together by Roett, Otero's team also traces the failures of neoliberalism in Mexico...
...He offers up a country with only inconsequential problems and much to contribute to the emerging continental alliance-a country most observant Mexicans would not recognize...
...Otero has assembled ten thematic essays to explain the deepening political and economic crisis in which the government is floundering as it attempts to design an effective set of management tools...
...The Mexican Shock: Its Meaning for the U.S...
...Neoliberalism Revisited: Economic Restructuring and Mexico's Political Future edited by Gerardo Otero, Westview Press, 1996, 278 pp., $19.95 (paper...
...While the collection is somewhat pessimistic about the possibilities for a peaceful transition, some of the contributors manage to go beyond the standard elite analyses to identify some of the potential sources of conflict and change that offer a promise of something other than palace coups or musical chairs among caciques competing for the reins of power...
...The sensitive examination of the changing role of peasants (Gates), workers (Carr) and rebels (Stephen and Harvey) contrasts starkly with Oppenheimer's arrogant dismissal of these newly mobilized actors...
...David Barkin...
...Most of the books reviewed here are based on privileged access to information which ought to give the reader more insight into Mexico's ongoing crisis...
Vol. 30 • January 1997 • No. 4
