Elections in Mexico: What's the Use?
Tagle, Silvia Gómez
Elections in Mexico: What’s the Use? A 2006 encampment of “the legitimate government” of Andrés manuel lópez obrador. Denunciations of electoral fraud and demands for a total recount of the...
...Latin American Working Group, the Center for International Policy, and the Washington Office on Latin America, “Blurring the Lines: Trends in U.S...
...The left that voted for López Obrador role in the electoral campaign...
...3 (May/June 2008): 31–33...
...In 2006, the denunciations of electoral fraud and the demonstrations in favor of “the legitimate government” of Andrés Manuel López Obrador can be seen as forms of must be able to change and perfect itself on the basis of citizens’ participation...
...dating of this “transition,” there is a great deal The PRI, for its part, was able to win elections, of oversimplification as well...
...Juan Antonio Zúñiga, “Creció 55 por ciento la importación de alimentos básicos en los pasados seis años,” La Jornada, January 16, 2007...
...Today, however, at to a lack of formal-sector jobs...
...Armoring NAFTA 1. See the official Web site, www.spp.gov/myths_vs_facts.asp...
...Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mouriño has been questioned for signing contracts with his family’s oil company while serving in public office...
...Ibid...
...Thus, the struggle for Mexican democratization has report: mexico ii branches of the federal government—executive, legisla- cynicism, especially among the younger generation...
...28 (July–December 2006): 117–58...
...That model recoma process of decentralization, regionalization, and a reas- mended budgetary discipline, financial and commercial sessment of subnational political units...
...Roberto González Amador and David Brooks, “Tensa al mundo en desarrollo altos precios de alimentos: FMI,” La Jornada, April 11, 2008...
...reforms did not lead to an appreciable reduction in povThe electoral rules we know today burst into political life erty levels...
...in fact, they increased inequalities and sent in the 19th and 20th centuries for the purpose of ensur- large numbers of people into the informal economy due ing the realization of popular rights...
...With the desee that eradicating corruption, or at least reducing it velopment of instantaneous communications—impossignificantly, has been an indispensable objective in sible to control within the “national space” under state this process.4 administration, which has occurred thanks to satellite technology—globalization reflects the “expanding tutions...
...17...
...In 1997, 2000, cause of the type of development achieved...
...process, like employment, social policies, and producIn Mexico, elections functioned for many years to lend legitimacy to an authoritarian regime in which only one party had realistic chances of winning...
...2 (1991...
...These economic measures, known as the Washington Consensus, have led to the deterioration of wages...
...10...
...Molina Ramírez, “El campo en cifras...
...5 In such cases, in the final analysis, the institutional actors (political even when they exist in a formal sense, democratic in- parties and rulers) are not making the real decisions...
...She is the editor of Revista Nueva Antropología...
...5. Norberto Bobbio, El futuro de la democracia (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1986), 25...
...The proliferation of drug trafficking creates a double-sided problem: On the one hand, the narcos attempt to infiltrate part of state apparatuses and control territories...
...growing unemployment...
...The state’s weakness has in 14 14 SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008 Further, the state has literally lost “pieces of its territory,” tive investment.8 which have been occupied by groups conducting economic activities that are not only informal, but illegal...
...And tive, and judicial...
...Indeed, the experiences of many nations show that the relationship between democracy and the free market is hardly as linear and harmonious as civil resistance in the face of electoral results that did some authors in the late 20th century came to believe...
...Here, homeless victims of mexico’s 1985 earthquake demand housing two years after the catastrophe...
...José M. Maravall, “Economía y regimenes políticos,” Working Papers, Instituto Juan March, no...
...41...
...org...
...6. David Held and Anthony McGrew, Globalization/Anti-Globalization (Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 13...
...18...
...11...
...13...
...3. North American Transportation Statistics Database, “Transportation and the Economy,” Table 2-3, “Employment in Transportation and Related Industries,” available at nats.sct.gob.mx...
...8. “México es tercer país receptor de remesas en el mundo, según Banco Mundial,” July 15, 2008, www.informador.com.mx...
...The political litical environments, and new opportunities...
...spectrum of political forces (including the democratic right and left) in the sense of demanding electoral rules study conducted on democracy, development, that permitted different parties access to power, withand welfare in 140 countries revealed that the out a specific concern for the content of the political correlation between development and democ- project of each party...
...Washington Consensus), from which the majority of the Moreover, within nation-states, globalization has spurred population is nowadays excluded...
...In Mexico, the regime to the test...
...Los campesinos del siglo XXI,” Nueva Sociedad no...
...12 (May–August 1992): 189–206...
...It gives meaning to the name of the center-left party that arose in 1989, following Cárdenas’s campaign for the presidency: Party fundamental concepts upon which the construction of of the Democratic Revolution...
...It must do this in the context of a tension between the market economy and a democratic political system.7 We encounter great contrasts in the opinions and historical experiences of different Latin American countries regarding the likelihood that a democratic regime may establish an efficient market economy and, at the same time, create a more equitable and just economic system...
...4. José Luis Calva, quoted in La Jornada, November 16, 1991...
...19...
...2. WTO study cited in Reuters, “Países en desarrollo pierden 24 mil mdd por subsidios al agro,” published in La Jornada, August 27, 2003...
...All Latin American countries, for example, regardless of their degree of democratic consolidation, have had to endure the negative effects produced by economic policies dictated from abroad by international financial institutions...
...Ulises Ruiz, governor of Oaxaca state, stands accused of authoritarianism and violent repression of the social movement...
...Mexican Studies, 2004), 88–95...
...usda.gov...
...stitutions are meaningless...
...Probably, for those who view the transition as “a pact of elites,” the support given to the winner of the 2006 election, the PAN’s Felipe Calderón, by the leaders and governors of the PRI constituted a signal of “consolidation” because it guaranteed the continuation of the system.9 report: mexico ii probably for this reason that the business community, 2006 was not between the right-of-center PAN and the the Catholic hierarchy, and the president himself— left-of center PRD, but between two coalitions whose institutions and leaders that in 2000 had remained rel- positions went beyond the positions taken by the two atively neutral and hadn’t intervened—played an active principal parties...
...2. Chantal Mouffe, Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship and Community (Verso, 1992), 13...
...racy is strong, though not definitive...
...His successful but stolen bid represented an attempt to democratize the legacy of the mexican revolution...
...the outset of the 21st century, we are becoming aware of As a result of neoliberal policies, the state has been sigthe limitations of political democracy due to the dimin- nificantly weakened, having lost its ability to influence, ishing confidence in political parties, the use of marketing control, regulate, or benefit from transnational processes, as a method for winning voters’ sympathies, and because or to withstand hegemonic tendencies in economic or politicians—who were elected by the people—cannot political plans being prepared in the centers of financial make many of the decisions affecting voters’ needs and power...
...6. International Crisis Group, “Latin American Drugs: Losing the Fight,” March 7. See the recent report by the international Civil Commission on Human 8. See Lourdes Godínez Leal, “Combating Impunity and Femicide in Ciudad 9. See Erich Moncada, “Mexico’s Military and the Murder at Zongolica (II),” 14, 2008, available at www.crisisgroup.org...
...A mobilization in which the right as well as the left participated consisted largely of civil resistance, like the blocking of means of communication, or the taking of municipal governments...
...One of the fundamental axes of these changes portant, but a deeper democracy requires that a govhas been the recognition that “the legitimate form of erning party be accountable to an “active, critical and access to power is the electoral way,” and that all po- well-organized citizenry,” and that the political regime litical competitors would respect the institutions of the be willing and able to incorporate the changes that relaw...
...on the other, their activity attracts the attention of Washington, generating new forms of external pressure...
...21...
...10...
...Juárez,” NACLA Report on the Americas 41, no...
...5. Comisión de Desarrollo Rural de la Cámara de Diputados, La soberanía económica de México en riesgo, cited in La Jornada, November 28, 2002...
...Neoliberal report: mexico ii has taken on new meanings...
...3. Jorge Carpizo, El presidencialismo mexicano (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1994), 121– 22...
...A he mass media t belonging to business groups with highly diversified economic interests act as “superpowers” limiting the sovereignty of public institutions...
...14...
...That is why the liberalization, privatizations, and a deregulation frameleft needs a different strategy to successfully insert it- work that at best places the state in a position as a referee self—and the demands of marginalized and nonprivileged between different interest groups...
...This returned in 2006...
...Therefore, the alternation didates he favored, and the widespread use of public in power might have represented a completely differresources in the campaign...
...8. Adam Prezeworski, Michael Álvarez E., José Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-being in the World, 1950–1990 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 164–68...
...Desolation 1. This article is a revised, updated version of Sergio Zermeño, “Desolación en México...
...9. Inter-American Development Bank, “Remittances and Development: The Case of Mexico” June 28, 2005, available at www.iadb.org...
...23...
...Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, “Sobre la situación de los derechos humanos en Chiapas, Balance Anual 2007,” available at www.frayba.org (translation by the author...
...er and those that had fought for power by democratic The institutions and pacts among the elites are immeans...
...Víctor Suárez Carrera, “La economía agroalimentaria, un desastre,” La Jornada del Campo, April 8, 2008...
...7. Ibid., 127, 131...
...Fox, in contrast, capitalized on a nonpar- “official” party, the PRI, were the pillars of tisan “useful vote for democracy” to bring the an authoritarian political power consolidated conservative National Action Party (PAN) to during the second half of the past century...
...Mario Marín, governor of Puebla, was recorded discussing the apprehension and harassment of human rights defender Lydia Cacho with a Puebla industrialist allegedly connected to the pedophile rings Cacho wrote about...
...4. “Aprueban diputados que se penalice el delito de terrorismo . . . ,” La Jornada, February 21, 2007...
...Gradual democratization resulted from a series of small victories achieved by citizens and opposition parties, each of which strengthened their chances of further gains...
...not enjoy full legitimacy...
...8. Luis Hernández Navarro, “La guerra de los alimentos,”La Jornada, October 22, 2002...
...Ribero, “Agrocombustibles...
...6 This has led to a decomposition of social well-organized citizenry that continually pressures its and political identities and a real modification of the country’s rulers and the leaders of its political parties...
...NarcoNews, April 10, 2007, available at narcosphere.narconews.com...
...José Galán and Laura Poy Solano, “Abierta violación al espíritu constitucional: expertos,” La Jornada, April 28, 2007...
...Ibid...
...political actors have lost cer- Further, widely touted economic reforms have not tain resources and gained others...
...Verónica Martínez, “Refleja México ineficiencia en agro,” Reforma, April 29, 2008...
...16...
...Now that there is a genu- traditional nation-states was grounded...
...Stronger links to the sectors—into this new national space...
...6. Associated Press, “Mexican President Decries Anti-Immigrant Tone,” February 14, 2008...
...Rights, available at cciodh.pangea.org...
...culture of the 21st century, in Mexico and the world Since the dimensions of countries’ political arenas over, has been characterized by widespread apathy and came to be modified, the concept of what is “national” 13 13 FridA HArtz NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas campaigns for president in 1988...
...The mass media dictatorship and a democracy in their general level of belonging to business groups with highly diversified development, democracy does make a difference in the economic interests act as “superpowers” limiting the specific characteristics assumed by the development sovereignty of public institutions...
...market have borne fruit at the macroeconomic level, but Political democracy, we should remember, was a gradual conquest of the masses against authoritarian regimes...
...3. Alejandro Estivill, conference on SPP, Universidad de las Américas (Cholula), June 12, 2008...
...Peter Rosset, “La hora de La Vía Campesina,” La Jornada, May 9, 2008...
...La Consulta, un logro del movimiento ciudadano,” La Jornada, June 23, 2008...
...12 12 FrAnk nowikowski NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS by Silvia Gómez tagle period bounded by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’s in power, but also of the rules of the democracy M be to thought to have taken place in the not only of the individuals who happen enewal— r and enovation r constant its guarantee l a n i t n e c i a r o to exico de ’s m m c uch c y” vau s nted o “ nv tran o sitio l n y acteristic is the existence of mechanisms that successful but stolen presidential bid in 1988 itself.1 A democratic polity thus allows for the and Vicente Fox’s election to the presidency broadening of representation and the resources in 2000...
...notes Displaced People 1. Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development, “Unauthorized Migration: An Economic Development Response,” Washington, D.C., 1990...
...3. Víctor Quintana, “Saldos del TLCAN,” La Jornada, December 31, 2002...
...9. John Ackerman, “Democratización: pasado, presente y futuro,” Perfiles Latinoamericanos: Revista de la Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Sede México 14, no...
...In Mexico— and in many other countries—drug-trafficking groups control significant amounts of resources as well as entire regions, where they wield a level of power similar to that of the state...
...12...
...Ibid...
...All this has given rise to new political actors, new poThis is what we are up against today...
...Alejandro Nadal, “Crisis alimentaria: ganancias para buitres,” La Jornada, May 7, 2008...
...The power for the first time, reversing more than power of the president came from his control seven decades of the PRI’s single-party rule...
...See also testimonies on the CCIODH video at cciodh.pangea.org...
...Antonio Sánchez, “Entrevista: Fernando Canales Clariond: comercio, la prioridad,” Reforma, January 22, 2003...
...González Amador and Brooks, “Tensa al mundo en desarrollo...
...7. Claus Offe, “El dilema de la sincronía: democracia y economía de mercado en Europa Oriental,” Revista del Centro de Estudios Constitucionales no...
...Only under parties, as had occurred in 2000...
...In demo- and 2003 the elections enjoyed reasonable credibility, cratic countries, income distribution is more equitable and many concluded that the political problem had and wages are higher...
...of the official party and of the legislative and While there is a great deal of truth in the judicial branches of the federal government...
...This gave him “meta-constitutional” the apathy and cynicism are even greater in countries powers, which allowed him great influence in designating local functionaries, from municipal presidents to state governors...
...Dictatorships, in contrast, grow been resolved...
...González Amador and Brooks, “Tensa al mundo en desarrollo...
...Nevertheless, authoritarianism disguised as political democracy permitted an extension of corruption, not only because high-ranking PRI politicians enjoyed remarkable levels of personal impunity, but also because the party found it literally necessary to “corrupt” the democratic institutions embedded in Mexico’s constitution to make sure that these could not function as spaces for the expression and defense of the citizenry...
...2. USDA, Foreign Agricultural Service, “Mexico: Trade,” available at www.ers...
...Democratic Revolution (PRD), the following The presidency and the country’s long-ruling year...
...24...
...the abandonment of agriculture...
...report: mexico ii Silvia Gómez Tagle is professor-researcher at the Center for Sociological Studies of the Colegio de México in Mexico City...
...Nonetheless, the elections of 2006 put this belief spond to a society that isn’t static...
...The breakdown of the He argued that the citizenry loses interest in political de- state as a territory within which power is wielded is bate when “politics is sequestered by just a few citizens, directly responsible for the discrediting of “politics” at the richest and the powerful, in order to satisfy their the national level, because the population realizes that, interests and perpetuate their mandate...
...4. Silvia Gómez Tagle, “Public Institutions and Electoral Transparency,” in Kevin Middlebrook, ed., Dilemmas of Political Change in Mexico (San Diego: Center for U.S...
...In Mexico today, the state has shown evidence of desires...
...Even business) acting as powerful lobbies that distort forms though there may not be major differences between a of genuine democratic representation...
...Silvia Ribero, “Agrocombustibles: secretos y trampas del Banco Mundial,” La Jornada, July 5, 2008...
...12...
...3 where social differences and poverty have increased over the past decade, because the citizens of those countries believe that their governments are generally not in a position to make decisions regarding their resources...
...5. Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development, “Unauthorized Migration: An Economic Development Response...
...25...
...A universal complaint and his Coalition for the Good of All wanted a much prior to the electoral reforms of 1996 had been against more fundamental social transformation than that repthe intervention of the president in support of the can- resented by the PRD itself...
...It has been a struggle to democratize Aity of capitalist development and modified th x e l comp the deepened that ocess , n i t ll o th ” is a is pr taking place has in the context of “globaliza e - - the legacy of the Revolution...
...meaning of national borders...
...16...
...Associated Press, “Report: Mexican Army Used Rape, Torture in Drug War,” September 21, 2007, available at www.usatoday.com...
...Military Programs in Latin America,” September 2004, available at ciponline...
...9. Alejandro Nadal, “Maíz, cosechar tempestades,” La Jornada, January 17, 2007...
...never involved the restoration of democratic institutions, which truthfully never functioned as such, but decrease in welfare policies in the areas of health, eduhas instead involved attempts to transform the many cation, and housing...
...4. Jeanne Batalova, “Mexican Immigrants in the United States,” Migration Information Source, available at www.migrationinformation.org...
...In with which it has been conceived than other known types this period there was a great consensus among a broad of political systems...
...Denunciations of electoral fraud and demands for a total recount of the presidential vote became widespread following the disputed 2006 election...
...6. Blanca Rubio, Explotados y excluidos (Mexico: Plaza y Valdés, 2001), 128–29...
...Nevertheless, democracy currently offers better possibili- This process first occurred at local levels, then at ties for developing citizenship in the myriad dimensions state levels, and finally at the federal level in 2000...
...16 SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008 Elections in Mexico 1. Portions of this essay draw on many of the ideas I developed in collaboration with Enrique Conejero in the introduction we wrote together for a book we coedited, Democratización y globalización en América Latina (Spain: Universidad Miguel Hernández, 2005...
...13...
...15...
...In the 1990s, left, like unions, progressive parties, and the state itself, a promise for development was devised in the form of have lost resources and strength, while others, like the a neoliberal economic model (the above-mentioned media and financial capital, have become more powerful...
...Once a country The demand for political democracy in itself permitachieves a level of development associated with per ted a joining together of political actors of the left and capita incomes of $2,500 to $3,000—as with Mexico, right around questions of democratic procedure without Portugal, Algeria, or Costa Rica—democracy makes a considering too closely the differences between the two difference, not so much because a democratic setting broad forces on questions of political economy, religious guarantees a higher degree of development but be- or secular morality, or ethnic diversity...
...their effects have not reached many citizens...
...But perhaps the greatest power of the president came from his ability to name his own successor, guaranteeing the continuity of the regime and at the same time its “ordered renewal...
...a But democracy is not simply a set of political instinow that there is a genuine, though uneven, process of democratization under way in mexico, we can see that eradicating corruption has been an indispensable objective...
...11...
...Víctor Quintana, “Drug Trafficking, Violence and Repression,” CIP Americas Program, May 8, 2008, available at americas.irc-online.org...
...Elections the limits and possibilities of that process came into must be seen as instruments that cannot only change the relief as we saw an intense confrontation that went beyond image of a party, but that can also change the content competition between members of different political of its policies and the project of the nation...
...190 (March/April 2004): 37–50...
...14...
...Hubert Cartón de Grammont, “El mercado de trabajo en el campo: unas reflexiones a partir de la lectura del libro Portraits de Bahia, de Hèléne Rivière d’Arc,” Revista Mexicana de Sociología no...
...More than 20 years ago, the political philoso- scale, growing magnitude, speeding up, and deepening pher Norberto Bobbio warned of the risks incurred by impact of transcontinental flows and patterns of social a democracy in the absence of an active, critical, and interaction...
...Power, soverine, though uneven, process of democratization under eignty, territory, and self-determination are all being way in Mexico, as in Latin America as a whole, we can redefined in this era of global capitalism...
...Changes in the institutions have been achieved by way of pressures exerted by social mobilization from below...
...2. Thomas Shannon, speech to the Council on the Americas, April 3, 2008...
...ternational private powers...
...But in 2006 the fight for the presidency on the basis of greater capital investment and lower acquired a much clearer ideological coloration, and it is 15 FridA HArtz NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Latin American countries...
...See also Tania Molina Ramírez, “El campo en cifras,” in Masiosare, a supplement to La Jornada, January 12, 2003...
...Rubio, Explotados y excluidos...
...To achieve a true consolidation of democracy, the state report: mexico ii turn led to the emergence of new de facto powers and wages: Since they can repress the workers, they can a proliferation of interest groups (especially related to pay labor poorly and use it rather inefficiently...
...Instead, many such decisions are undertaken in grave deficiencies vis-à-vis the interests of local and ininternational financial centers...
...17...
...5. See “A Primer on Plan Mexico,” available at http://americas.irc-online.org...
...Democracy” is a both at the federal and local levels, because of political system whose most fundamental char- the president’s ability to coordinate all three SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008 This authoritarian, though inclusive, arrangement thrived for more than 70 years in the form of a stable political system that was the envy of many Latin American countries...
...7. Office of the Press Secretary, the White House, “Fact Sheet: Fair and Secure Immigration Reform,” January 7, 2004...
...15...
...The confrontation of those conditions will it matter who wins...
...59 (1994...
...Imelda García, “Crece importación de fertilizantes,” Reforma, May 3, 2008...
...Traditional actors on the lived up to the expectations they generated...
...and, in general, unequal income democratic institutions that have been malfunctioning distribution...
...Israel Rodríguez J. , “El alza en alimentos cuesta a México 5 mil mdd: Banxico,” La Jornada, May 4, 2008...
...since they were founded in the long wake of the Mexican Revolution...
...ent political direction of political economy and soDemocratization has brought about a precarious cial policy, close to what has occurred in several other equilibrium between the political forces that had powA deeper democracy requires that a governing party be accountable to an “active, critical, and well-organized citizenry...
...must prove itself capable of attending to the demands In the long and complex electoral process of 2006, of a population with tremendous inequalities...
...With this in mind, we can affirm that while the Mexican transition to democracy began on the terrain of electoral institutions, its consolidation is taking place on the terrain of political culture and of the values of democracy (individual liberties, social rights, pluralism, equality before the law), because in 2006 the post-electoral protest was a way of demanding that the political rights of citizens be recognized...
...22...
...Cárdenas had broken away from the to guarantee citizens’ rights, always as a proauthoritarian Institutional Revolutionary Party cess and not as a definitive achievement.2 Both (PRI) to run an independent, pro-democracy of these processes—constant renovation and a campaign that sparked the founding of a left- broadening of citizens’ rights—remain weak of-center opposition party, the Party of the and problematic in Mexico...
Vol. 41 • September 2008 • No. 5
