Mexican Shock

I picked up this book for 80 pesos in a closing-down sale at a bookshop in San Cristobal. I spotted it walking in, and a few minutes later Charlotte also picked it up and said “I reckon you’ll love this”. After that, I couldn’t say no…

The only reading I’ve done about Mexico and its politics is some occasional coverage of the country and its relations with its Northern neighbour (including NAFTA) in the news orThe Economist.

This was enough to make me aware of Enrique Peña Nieto, the previous president, as well as AMLO (Andrés Manuel López Obrador), the current one.

Such articles covered bits of their politics (rampant corruption and reformist dreams shattered for the former; an old-school austere dinosaur for the latter) and their policies (modernising energy and education reforms, hotly debated under Nieto; cancellation of a new airport and fossil-fuel boosterism under AMLO), as well as major events such as the murder of 43 student teachers back in 2014, or the huge earthquake of 2017.

Still, this reading was hardly comprehensive, especially for a country that, as I have gradually found out on our travels, has such a complex and varied society and history.

A year that shook Mexico

The book aims to provide a description and explanation of the series of crises that wrought havoc in Mexico around the year of 1994.

In late 1993, the Clinton administration ratified NAFTA, opening Mexico up to a huge amount of American investment and competition whilst offering it little in return in the form of protections or guarantees for Mexican companies and workers.

Shortly after, and as a reaction to NAFTA, on January 1st Subcommandante Marcos and the EZLN rebels took over San Cristobal and other towns across Chiapas, protesting against the trampling of indigenous rights, the neoliberal reforms occuring in Mexico, and the disfunctional political system that dominated Mexican politics.

Although the Zapatista armed rebellion stopped after a dozen days, negotiations with the government and subsequent on-off ceasefires and resumptions of hostilities carried on throughout the year, providing a slow-burning backdrop to the rest of the turmoil of 1994.

Barely a few months later, the Presidential candidate for the main party, the PRI, Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, was murdered at a campaign rally.

Given that the PRI had been the only party in power since the revolution in the 1920s, Colosio would have been the new President after the elections in July 1994. Given that Colosio was seen as a reformist, progressive candidate that might overhaul the corrupt and ineffective PRI from the inside, his assassination mattered. A lot.

Shortly after the elections, where the PRI’s substitute candidate Ernesto Zedillo won a tighter-than-expected race, the PRI’s secretary-general Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu (and brother-in-law of the previous President, Carlos Salinas) was assassinated. Again, another devastating blow to the PRI as a ruling party, and an indication of the political havoc being wrought across the country, right in the highest echelons of the ruling class.

Finally, in the last months of December, after the newly-elected Zedillo had been in power for barely one month he was forced into devaluing the Mexican peso steeply against the US dollar – a move that the outgoing Salinas administration had refused to do.

The devaluation led to a wide, deep recession throughout the following year. Following several years of spluttering growth that didn’t keep up with population increases, this was a final blow to Mexico’s economy, alongside the political turmoil that 1994 had already unleashed.

The solution: not shock therapy

I appreciate the unfamiliar names and whirlwind of crises above is daunting, especially to those who know nothing about Mexico. Still, bear with me, as these issues provide so much context for the Mexico that appears today.

Jorge Castañeda, the author of the book, provides an excellent overview of the lead-up into these crises, including the various economic reforms undertaken by the Salinas administration.

He is at his most insightful, though, when trying to identify the long-term structural problems facing both the Mexican economy and political system.

Castañeda had served as an advisor to Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas (I promise, this is the last name of the cast list!), a left-of-centre reformist candidate who had narrowly lost (or, been robbed of by vote rigging) the election of 1988 that Salinas won.

Given Castañeda’s academic economist background, the critiques of NAFTA (rushed and heavily biased to be pro-USA), suggestions for NAFTA renegotiation and political reform (international oversight of elections, pacts between opposition parties), and outlines for future governments (combined political and economic reform) all have a blend of academic and political considerations.

These read well, and come across convincingly, most notably the calls to stop mindless neoliberal economic reforms at the behest of US politicians, and for either a national coalition to rescue the country or a totally new opposition party (outside of the PRD of the left, and the PAN of the pro-business right) to kick out the PRI.

You can tell that much of the content was written as newspaper columns: they make for snappy reading, although they do also lead to some inevitable repetition throughout the book.

Politics viewed with 20×20 hindsight

The beauty of reading this book, beyond the great overview of 90s politics in Mexico, is the fact that it was written in 1995 and has not been updated since (at least, not my version!).

So, we now know everything that happened following this period, and we can try to map it onto the solutions that Castañeda called for, from political reform to the addressing of Mexico’s rampant poverty and stagnating growth.

On the political front, the PRI were finally kicked out of power in the elections of 2000 following some minor political and democratic reforms under Zedillo. However, it wasn’t a new opposition party that slayed the dragon, but the familiar PAN, led by businessman Vicente Fox, which had been able to win a few state as well as the congressional elections in the previous years.

Intriguingly, notwithstanding his centrist background and PAN-scepticism, Castañeda agreed to serve as Secretary of Foreign Affairs in Fox’s administration. In my eyes, this shows Castañeda’s deep belief in contributing to Mexican politics and the shift against the PRI and its hegemony, above all else.

After that, in 2004 Castañeda announced he would try running for the Presidency as an Independent candidate, with no formal support from any registered party (the PRI, PAN or PRD). He appealed to the Supreme Court of Mexico to allow this, but his run as an independent was not allowed.

Did all of his reformist dreams die with this? Not quite.

In 2008 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that, by banning his run as an independent candidate, Castañeda’s human rights had been violated, and they recommended that major political reform take place in Mexico. In 2011, a bill allowing independent candidates to run for the Presidency was passed by Congress – a substantial political reform that was a direct consequence of Castañeda’s candidacy in 2004.

By 2012 the PRI were back in power with Nieto, after 12 years of PAN rule. Clearly, the change in style and substance of government under the PAN was not enough to convince Mexico’s people that the PRI were still beyond the pale.

Intriguingly, within a few months Nieto had corralled the PRD and PAN into a ‘Pact for Mexico‘, similar in style to what Castañeda had been calling for back in the 90s. This was designed to continue democratic reforms and strengthen both the state and the role of citizens in society – it led, amongst other things, to the major education reform passed one year later.

Although not a full-blown coalition, this pact went some way towards what Castañeda had been calling for, in political terms. However, I believe he might argue that the agreement (and subsequent reforms) did not go far enough; for example in the book he repeatedly and clearly argues that any coalition agreement must lead to both political and economic reforms at the same time, which was not the outcome of the 2012 pact.

Indeed, the Pact for Mexico does not seem to have been particularly effective in addressing economic development, poverty and inequality in Mexico. Since 2008, let alone 2012, GDP per capita in Mexico has barely budged whilst inequality remains very high.

So, we now get to 2018, where AMLO gets elected under a newly-formed party, Morena, tearing up the three-party system that had existed previously (AMLO used to be a PRD member).

Castañeda is clearly no fan of AMLO, seeing him as authoritarian and ineffective as a reformist President.

However, as I have tried to outline above, I don’t think you can get to a situation where AMLO was elected without many of the political steps and reforms that Castañeda was calling for, which is quite interesting.

It’s easy to view this all with 20×20 hindsight, arguing that if the proper economic and political reforms had been carried out back in the 90s and a new, effective opposition had materialised, you’d never get into a situation where you have a leftist populist authoritarian leader who bullies journalists (and still can’t help reduce poverty).

This didn’t take place, and Mexico is now still stuck, with nearly half the population living in poverty and a political system that is clearly more democratic and participatory than in the past, but that is unable to address the issue of drug violence and is headed by a man determined not to allow a free press to flourish and hold politicians to account.