Mexico's 'Parti Unique'

...suspicions of Mexican policy—towards Castro, for instance) has focussed on specifics, and not on the PRI...

...The critical question, therefore, is: How does the PRI, which like the parties in these other countries derives from a revolution, maintain representative government and avoid totalitarianism...

...But the crucial points are whether the party offers democracy within its own ranks, whether it effectively reflects the tendencies of the nation or is merely a machine at the disposal of the power of a dictator...

...it also provides the broad outlines for the party's platform, a set of limits within which each six-year period has its tasks...

...It remains a unifying force...

...For a variety of reasons, Mexico's Revolution bore no more significant theoretical fruit than a wave of anti-clericalism that has now passed, and a vaguely communal form of property ownership...

...The party accomplishes this in three ways: by its selection of personnel, by information, and by forcing the executive to think beyond his own period of office—which is why the party grants each outgoing President the most important decision of his term: choosing his successor...

...As professional politicians—and, in the wider sense, as leaven to an unpolitical mass— the PRI personnel are first-rate...

...Absorption of possible opposition begins at the bottom, where the issues are likely to be local or personal, and can be resolved before discontent spreads...

...Sincere opponents usually catch at the bait, since there is always a chance to exert influence inside the party...

...Similarly, it does not restrict freedom of action when action is necessary since its field of battle is exclusively Mexico...

...Under present conditions in Mexico, where the problems are those of industrialization, poverty, education, and rural action, this is satisfactory...

...In Mexico, power exists to be used...

...Applied to Mexico, no one seems to mind...

...In contrast, no one really believes the Mexican Revolution will ever be reversed, and party leaders, in answer to accusations from a segment of the intelligentsia that they have sold out the Revolution, declare the PRI to be not merely a "successor" party to the Revolution but its final incarnation...

...but only the majority has the right to decide...

...It is business conducted among men who are without exception products of the same environment, and it is quite impossible for any leader to isolate himself to any considerable extent from this calculated middle ground...

...When the denominator of a group is so common, it becomes difficult for the leadership to see the deeper problems involved in its daily activity...

...Operation within a national "consensus," so that the forces behind the party greatly exceed those available to the opposition...

...Higher up, a technique known as responsabilizar is applied: The opposition is given responsibility instead of being excluded...

...What is more, authority in Mexico, does not function in the public eye: There is no effective congress to represent the national will, no independent judiciary, no crusading reformer with access to the press, no organized opposition...

...The PRI does not conform to the traditional image of the parti unique, even though to all intents and purposes it is one, and one whose executive has almost unlimited powers: It has checks within itself against the abuse of executive office...

...Join us and continue your struggle within the majority, for only the majority has effective power...

...To this day, the PRI continues to weaken all other political sectors by embracing the entire center of the political spectrum and alloting to each tendency within the party a definite sphere from which it can legitimately—though always within the majority—exert its pressure...

...While it undoubtedly increases the internal democracy of the party by allowing full participation, without prejudice, in the political process to any who are capable, the method also decreases the amount of articulate expression available to the party and forces it to waste much time in coordinating ill-prepared provincialisms...

...In addition, the Revolution still provides restraints against excesses of private development, keeps alive such issues as land distribution and investment in the public sector and, finally, has already laid down the basic operating procedure of Mexican life: the labor laws, social welfare, secular education, the ejido (or community agrarian development), and the principle of no reelection for a second term to the Presidency...

...Even the Communists are allowed to flourish, with the government's permission, which is in itself a proof of the PRI'S solid majority support...

...Steady formation and promotion of competent cadres who give more than political service to the nation...

...And this "middleness" in the PRI is maintained with almost miraculous equilibrium...

...its revolution is not yet over, nor is its survival guaranteed...

...he is loyal, responsible and obedient...

...More fundamentally, there is a vast difference between Mexico and most other one-party countries in the extent to which ideology determines national policy...

...It is through the party—in its Youth Section, its Women's Section, its Agrarian or Industrial Sectors—that the masses encounter a world where values transcend the individual, their families and their immediate communities...

...And it is through the party that the State becomes aware of the needs, complaints and intentions of its citizens...

...Most Latin American political parties are successors to 19th century parties based on European or American models...

...Likewise, the party will offer different sectors of activity to different pressure groups—the "Left" may be given foreign policy, which does not count for much in Mexico, the "Right" the various development ministries, from which it can profit...

...The PRI official is likely to be deeply rooted in his local situation, to be more a product of his functions than vice-versa...

...Indeed, it is as though the PRI considered open political warfare both unnecessary and unseemly, the main virtues of politics unity and decorum, and anarchy the only alternative to stability and continuity...

...Not the least important, it has evolved its own authentic solutions to the political reality of Mexico...

...The presence of so many divergent groups in one political organism gives rise to a curious inner mechanism which determines the juste milieu...

...Second, though the policy of the country is planned on top, it is defined from the bottom up...

...Similar acrobatics are performed with culture (for which the government is the only patron), with business (which can grow or fail to grow according to the government's good-will), with newspapers, radio and television (which the government more or less keeps on the payroll), and with nearly every other sphere of ostensibly "private" activity...

...Freedom of access to the party...

...The party is, in addition, open to every kind of tendency within itself and clearly operates with solid public support, without the need of coercion or reprisal...

...Such ideology as the Mexican Revolution did bring is indigenous...

...Effective information reaching the higher party officials...

...The PRI has 25 years of practical work behind it, and experience counts for far more than a revolution become largely symbolic...

...The PRI politician is almost faceless, which is something like having the common touch...

...in the long run, it tends to limit politics to action and to keep thought at a distance...

...Autochthonous growth, rather than imitated forms, which would favor action over theory, and imply flexibility rather than ideological rigor...

...He is, moreover, tied to the party by bonds of loyalty that are as much social and cultural as political: The party is his home and hearth, library and stock-in-trade...

...it provides accurate information for the determination of policy and, besides providing the human material for the state, educates its members for service...

...They are able to do this, first, because government in Mexico remains personal...

...The matter of "choice," constantly raised against the one-party government, is surprisingly irrelevant in the political, historical and economic situations of most countries outside the Communist bloc living under single-party systems...

...Not being related to any global theory, it has no need to be dogmatic for external reasons...

...This brings us right back to our point of departure: the use or abuse of authority in a parti unique...

...yet the Revolution so rocked the old structure of society that the New Class actually corresponds to the vast majority of the Mexican population...

...HOW IT WORKS Mexico's 'Parti Unique' By Keith Botsford Mexico City After the experience of Fascist and Communist dictatorships, modern democracies have developed a horror of one-party systems...

...The extremes are like scouting parties on the Left and the Right, and the degree of support that either can muster from the uncommitted groups in the party or from "public opinion" determines the drift of PRI policy without committing the party beforehand to a course it might later regret...

...Yet failure of the President would imply failure of the party...

...Yet as I write, President Adolfo Lopez Mateos of Mexico, put into power by the Partido Revolutionano Institutional (PRI) and picked from its ranks by his predecessor, is about to name his own successor who will rule by, with and through the party for the next six years...

...It is now closer to a government corporation dedicated to providing certain services and personnel as well as a link between the citizen and the state...

...In Latin America, only two parties owe their existence to revolutions of authentic social and economic transformations: the Cuban Partido Unido de la Revolution Socialista (PURS) and the Mexican PRI...

...But that is where their similarity ends...

...Homages, cloying rhetoric, sycophantic tributes, the pomp of inaugurations—all these contribute to the idea of Presidential sanctity...

...For another, both the good and the evil that may result from the concentration of executive or party power is limited by the conditions existing in a particular country...

...Viewing the Mexican scene in the last year of a Presidential term (when a chief executive is usually attacked most, since he is about to lose his power), one cannot fail to be impressed with how deeply the power of the executive represents a tribute to Authority itself, quite apart from the man who exercises it...

...He is not inventive and, though he knows all there is to know about his job, he is probably neither curious nor informed about anything beyond his immediate boundaries...

...One man governs the succession, and one party insures it...

...It is through the party that each citizen meets the state and learns why water will not arrive this year, or why elections are important...

...Perhaps for these reasons, international pressure on Mexico (which means U.S...

...Finally, the chief executive is not only the head of the state, but also the head of the party...

...Thus the decision-making process, in a country where everything and everyone depends on the executive, is essentially secret, what the Mexicans call tapado...

...Effective sub-structures—unions, farm groups, industrial associations, etc.—that operate as genuine pressure groups...

...Keith Botsford is The New Leader's correspondent in Latin America...

...The personnel comes from the same class that managed affairs in the last century, and usually you can spot a politico a mile off by the wave of his hair, the glint of his sun-glasses, or the self-satisfaction of his smile...

...Some of the criteria that might be used to distinguish the nontotalitarian from the totalitarian versions of the parti unique include the following: • Freedom from the cult of personality (which is not always possible or desirable when the revolutionary "leader" may be the only unifying factor in a country previously without any political system at all...

...It also provides the many sub-structures which —as the party itself parallels the government—parallel the unions, co-operatives, professional organizations and so on in multi-party countries...

...The party's latitudinarianism begins with membership, which is open to all "who accept the principles of the Mexican Revolution...

...After the assassination of Alvaro Obregón, the revolutionary leader, it became evident that there was a need for a majority party that would both embody the Revolution and yet, through self-cancelling internal structures, would prevent a "struggle for power" among the caudillos...

...This is not put on...

...In reality, the PRI'S "revolutionary" program is always a little ahead of the actual program and serves as a stalking-horse, or a sounding-board of public opinion...

...The answer is that just as the President acquires his unchallenged power from the people through the party, the people and the party are able to retain effective, though indirect, influence on the executive...

...In a world where the majority of nations lives under some form of parti unique, they nevertheless insist on an approximate balance between government and "loyal" opposition, on free choice, and on separation of powers—as if these elements from their own systems, desirable though they may be, are alone capable of producing representative government...

...As a system, however, the PRI'S approach cannot be recommended unequivocally...

...For one thing, most of these parties came into being after a revolution which, ostensibly at least, expressed the popular will...

...The majority in the center will usually be found in firm control of the ministries of the Interior and of War—of stability and continuity...

...It has been responsible for most of Cuba's present difficulties because the Cuban leaders are profoundly ignorant of modern Marxist theory, and because rigid and newly converted Communists generally bring about a powerful contraction of the economy...

...The Mexican Revolution brought into power a New Class which owes its existence and its strength to the Revolution...

...at the same time, it is watched, kept isolated and buried within a majority...

...Nonetheless, the Revolution still has its values in Mexico...

...the question is whether they will be as effective as executors and instruments of a parallel government in a modern society...

...his identity is clear...

...This form of organization, divided and sub-divided ad infinitum, until it can truly be said that no Mexican has to remain without an official group to which he can belong, is the product of the postrevolutionary conditions that saw the foundation of the PRI in 1928...

...True, the singleparty system usually involves a disciplined march toward a specific goal (the eleboration of a revolution in its recent past), and in this march many individual freedoms are lost...

...The President's relations to his party are such that the same organization that grants him his power—as the representative of its members, who are a vast majority in the country —sees to its proper use...

...The Cuban party is an evolving form...

...Responsiveness within the party to its lower echelons...

...But when the general level of the society rises, will the party rise with it...

...Only an infinitesimal minority of today's government or party personnel—for want of sophistication, background, education, means, etc.—could have held office in the pre-revolutionary society...

...For all those reasons, it might be wise to set aside our prejudices, study the PRI'S functioning in detail, and see if it is not in something like Mexico's parti unique and the Revolution from which it grew that Latin America may find its future...

...The widespread graft I consider irrelevant...

...Before that question can be answered in detail, it must be realized that the parti unique often is really more a front, an agglomeration of tendencies, than a monolithic structure...

...he fits...

...it is real and the party has always recruited personnel with a special image in mind —that of the man who is at once a leader and an integral part of what he governs...

...At the same time, it is the PRI that draws up this census of the state of the nation and taps its moods, just as it is within its ranks that the nation's new leaders are recruited and trained...

...The fact is, however, that what obtains in the case of Mexico also obtains where Cuba, Algeria, Ghana, or the Soviet Union are concerned, with the one difference that in Mexico the president has a successor (which in itself is not necessarily vital to internal democracy...

...Were the same statement made about Algeria's President Ahmed Ben Bella it would cause shrieks of pious outrage ("What...

...it exists as a channel of power between citizens and the state as well as vice-versa...

...it is not an abstraction...

...In effect, it says to any opposition, "Why fight us...

...Reaction to Cuba reveals the contrary: Intelligent critics have challenged its political structure, not its Revolution...

...One becomes aware that good, bad or indifferent, speculator, visionary or drudge, Leftist or Rightist, the President's fate can only be the addition of yet another hideous monument to the many piles of brick and mortar that already clutter up the capital and every plaza in the country...

...This point was underlined in President Mateos' message to Congress proposing changes in the electoral law: "The minority as well as the majority has a right to its opinion, to discussion and to vote...

...every country has its group that benefits from its power—industrialists, the army, technocrats and so on...

...Ideology has, for example, dominated the internal and external policies of Cuba since soon after the Revolution—after, that is, the Cubans who led the Revolution and had no real ideology were dominated by Cuban Communist party elements who did...

...As the Revolution recedes into a background of pieties (in the sense that to the generation now growing up it is a tale told by grandparents), the PRI has become something much different than the usual political organization...

...nor has economic planning ever gone beyond a realistic approach to current problems...

...Why, then, is it not more substantially abused...

...There are no real restraints on the power of the executive in Mexico, and the President probably wields more power than any other chief of state in the non-totalitarian world...

...Part of the PRI'S extraordinary power can be traced to its service as politicizer of that nine-tenths of the Mexican population that lies below the educated classes...

...It will go to almost any lengths to keep its front intact, and its potential schismatics in the fold (a lesson that President Romulo Betancourt of Venezuela might learn with profit...