Transcript Mexico - Duluth High School

Mexico
Mexico’s Key Institutions
• Before 1924:
– Presidents came/left office
– Not normal way
• Ousted by elite, military coups, violence (assassinations)
• Four Constitutions since Independence
– Little constitutionalism
– Presidents:
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few limits on powers
Construct personalistic dictatorships
True of 3rd World Politics
Make own rules
Mexico’s Key Institutions
• Change?
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Est. 6 year terms
Stability settle for the rest of the century
Military answered to the PRI president
Personality of the President
Clientelistic System:
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major groups have been co-opted into cooperation
Have a stake in the system
Input in the government policy
Peasants
– Land reforms
• Workers
– Unions
• Bureaucrats
– jobs
The Six-Year Presidency
• Combines head of state and chief of
government
• 20th century more powerful the U.S. Pres.
– PRI pres. had a PRI maj. in congress
– 2000 election
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Fox: PAN
Congress: PRI
Made Fox less powerful
1st taste of “divided government”
The Six-Year Presidency
• PRI:
– Succession was in hands of presidents
• Not always a well-known person
– Pres. And Past Pres. Would determine party
nomination (called Dedazo)
– Candidate never lost
• Until 2000
• Won 90% of votes
• Would not look into corruption
– No choice was absolutely predictable
– Once in office departed from previous policies
Mexico’s Legislature
• Bicameral Congress
– Congreso de la Unio n
– Less important the presidency
– PRI would out supporters in congress
• Elections changes
– 1986 Election Reform Law
• Mixed member system
– Single member district seats
– Plus additional seats based on each party’s share of
the popular vote (proportional representation [PR])
Mexico’s Legislature
• Upper House
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mara de Senadores (Senate)
128 seats
6 year terms
96 seats filled by single member districts
32 by PR
• Lower House
– Ca
mara Ferderal di Diputados (Federal
Chamber of Deputies)
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500 seats
3 year terms
300 seats filled by district voting
200 by PR in five regions
Mexico’s Legislature:
2005, PRI biggest party
but no longer a majority
Senate
Chamber of
Deputies
PRI
60 seats
222 seats
PAN
46 seats
151 seats
PRD
16 seats
95 seats
Mexico’s Legislature
• 1997:
– PRI lost its majority
– PAN and PRD could out vote PRI
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From opposite ends of spectrum
Agree only in their dislike
PAN = Free market and curb on spending
PRD is the exact opposite
– Pan can do little in congress
• Majority status = unlikely
• Cooperation from PRI = very difficult
– Deadlock doomed FOX
Mexico’s
Dominate-Party System
• “One-Plus” party system
– Dominated by parties so big seldom lose
– Other parties are legal
– Dominate in media and civil service
– Voters acknowledge big party may be corrupt
– Voters like stability and prosperity
– Dominate party does not deliver: losses hold
Mexico’s
Dominate-Party System
• PRI:
– Founded by Calles in 1929
– Revolutionary and socialist
– Ca rdenas and A lvarez
• Leftist- Anti United States View
• Most moderate centrists
– Calles and Ca rdenas
• Designed with four sectors
• Strong patronage network
• Increase educated middle class sectors less important
– Votes have shrunk
– Still wins Central Mexico
– Gubernatorial elections possible good showing In 2006
elections
Mexico’s
Dominate-Party System
• PAN
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Founded 1939
Opposition to Calles anticlericalism
Felt martyred by PRI government
Catholic and Business (1980)
• Coexist but could pull apart
– Best Showing in Northern Mexico
– Vote for Fox was not a vote that they had become
conservative Catholics
• Vote against PRI
– Not expected to win 2006 election
Mexico’s
Dominate-Party System
• PRD
– Partido Revolucionario Democra tico
– Founded 1989
– 2005 won the governorship of the southern state of
Guerrero
– Cuauhte moc Ca rdenas may have won in 1988
(PRI rigging)
• Ca denas and a leftist part of PRI split from PRI
• Split over Free-market policies
– Little support= uphill struggle
– Andre s Manuel Lo pez Obrador (ALMO) strongest
candidate for president in 2006
Mexico’s
Dominate-Party System
• “Former dominant-party System”
– PRI has weakened
– Bilateral Opposition (left PRD; Right PAN)
– PRI decline
• Corruption
• Growth of educated middle class
– On way to multiparty or two-plus party
Mexican Federalism
• 31 states and Federal Districts of Mexico City
– Distrito Ferderal, DF (equivalent of our D.C.)
– Each state has a governor, one time 6 year term
– Unicameral legislature
• Concentrates power in the center (i.e. Soviet
Union )
– PRI hand picked state governors
• Most Presidents served as governors
• States get revenue from National Gov’t
– i.e. food chain
Mexican Political Culture
• Hard to comprehend b/c it is dysfunctional
– Several cultures
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Indian passivity
Spanish greed
Catholic mysticism
Populist nationalism
European:
– Anticlericalism, liberalism, anarchism, positivism, socialism
– Mexico is regionally, socially, and culturally badly
integrated
– Political culture was brought over in waves
• Never really “set in”
Mexican Political Culture:
Mexico’s Indian Heritage
• Indian
– Found in remote villages
– Food
– Religions: blend of pre-Columbian religions and Spanish
Catholicism
– Use to blood sacrifice
– Aztec+ early Mexican societies
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Strongly hierarchical
Peasants taught to defer to social superiors
Spanish took over use to subordinate behavior
Forced labor of haciendas or silver mines
– Spanish Conquerors were make
• Mestizos: of mixed descent
• Mestizaje (intermingling of Spanish and Indian) cultural and social
thing
Mexican Political Culture:
Mexico’s Indian Heritage
• Latin Americans
– Free of racial prejudice
– Money and manners count more
• Right language and culture
• “Money Lightens”
• Whites
– University, entering a profession, making lots of money, living in a nice
house
• Mexicans (Indian descent)
– High risk of infant death, malnutrition, poverty, and lowest paying jobs,
unemployment
– Historically better than US
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Nonwhites can rise to the top
i.e.: Jua rez (Indian); Ca rdenas (mestizo)
Economic and politics (most have been white)
All Mexicans celebrate the country’s Indian heritage
Mexican Political Culture:
Imported Ideologies
• Continent is a reliquiario
– A place for keeping saints, a piece of the true cross
– Sale of Old ideologies
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Liberalism
Positivism
Socialism
Rural socialism
Anarchism
Anticlericalism
Fascism
Communism
Mexican Political Culture:
Imported Ideologies
• Liberalism
– 19th century
– Rejected monarch; open society to new
forces
– US- took naturally to philosophy of freedom;
LA did not: encumbered by inherited social
positions, big bureaucracies, state-owned
industries
– No middle class, no liberalism
– Economic neoliberalism: building free markets
Mexican Political Culture:
Imported Ideologies
• Positivism
– Improve society through science
– Brazil motto “Order and Progress”
– Di az centi ficos typified the positivist spirit
– Conflicted with liberalism
Mexican Political Culture:
Imported Ideologies
• Socialism
– Europe: worked they had a lot of industry
– LA: had little industry
– No working class = no socialism
– Mexico invented and “coddled” unions to look
like a working class
– Some still see it as the Answer for Mexico
• Poverty
Mexican Political Culture:
Imported Ideologies
• Rural socialism
– Reject industry; favors small farms
– Returning to rural idyll of equality and
sufficiency based on family farming
– Zapata was its hero
– Idealizes the past
– Not enough land
– Peasant farming = poverty
Mexican Political Culture:
Imported Ideologies
• Anarchism
– Primitive socialism
– Argues end of national government = erase
class differences
– Several revolutions were influenced by
anarchism
Mexican Political Culture:
Imported Ideologies
• Anticlericalism
– Founded by French writer Voltaire
– Calles claimed church
• had too much power
• Favors the rich
• Keeps Mexico Backwards
– Did Catholic church really have that much
power?
Mexican Political Culture:
Imported Ideologies
• Fascism
– Founded by Mussolini; copied by Hitler
– Combines nationalism, corporatism, fake
socialism
– “Fascism with sugar”
– Not sweet and welcomed Nazi War criminals
– Ca rdenas hinted at national socialism
Mexican Political Culture:
Imported Ideologies
• Communism
– Marxist socialism
– Called for an end to continents drastic
• Inequality
• Poverty by the state taking over production
• Ending US exploitatoin
– Popular among intellectuals
Mexican Political Culture:
Imported Ideologies
• So addicted to ONE ideology
– Fail to notice the rest of the world has
discarded them
– Communism has collapsed
• Europe and Soviet Union
• Meaningless in China
• Alive in Cuba
Patterns of Interaction
• Calles and Ca rdenas
– Co-optation
– Promised peasants and labor a “good deal”
– Rural and workers unions
• Became demanding
• Government crushed them
• Professing socialism
– Tolerated no competition from Communists
– Mateos arrested communist; broke up strikes
• “Fakery” in PRI
– Served themselves
Patterns of Interaction
• Tried to co-opt students
– Nearly a free education
– Employed them as civil servants
– Cannot work forever; lack of money
– Students #’s and discontent grew
– Accused PRI of abandoning it commitments to
social justice
Patterns of Interaction
• President Gustavo Di az Ordaz
– Obsessed with order/tolerated no criticism
– 1968 Mexico City Olympics
• Feared student protest
• Mar his picture of a modern/happy Mexico
– October at the Plaza of the Three Cultures
• Police gunned down 400 student protesters
– What PRI could not co-opt they crushed
– Turning point in PRI rule
• The point at which it visibly began to destabilize
Politics inside PRI
• Two major factions;
– Poli
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ticos (politicians)
Populist seeking elected office
Pay attention mass needs and demands
Pay little attention to economic needs
Run up huge deficits (leads to inflation)
Di az (64-70), Echevarrri a (70-76) Lo pez
Portillo (76-82) depended on oil
Politics inside PRI
• Two Factions:
– te cnicos (technicians) to the world
Technocrats
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Tried to fix the economy
Worry less about mass demands
Free market
Fewer government controls
Neoliberalism
Politics inside PRI
• Hurtado (82-88) and Gortari (88-94)
– Presidents
– Tried to stabilize the fiscal chaos by overspending
– Fiscal technicians
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PRI implemented free markets
Reforms PAN also sought
Provided insufficient regulation
“freed” banks made bad and crooked loans
Financial sector crashed in 1995
Peso lost its value
GDP declined by 6.2%
Mexicans grew poorer
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Not education
Part-way economic reforms that provide freedom without rule of law
Expansion = crashes
Fox could accomplish very little
Mexican Catholicism
• Sleeper in Mexican Politics
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Roman Catholic Church
90% Mexicans are Catholics
Spirit since revolution has been secular
1910-1920 Revolution….saw the church as upperclass conservatism
– 1917 Constitution: imposed limits
• Land, educational institutions, and religious orders
• Found secret convents and closed them
• Priests travel in ordinary clothing w/o collar
– 20th Century the Church was put on the Defensive
Mexican Catholicism
• Church never gave up
– Catholic teachings
– Lay organizations
– Schools
– University
– 1939 founding of PAN
– Set the stage for the return of the Church
– Modern business-oriented future
Crime and Politics
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Most powerful interest group: Crime
Politics: the means of influencing the state
Crime: the means of avoiding the state
Each side understands each other
Politics needs money/pay little attention from
where it comes
• Crime needs protection of politics to continue it
enterprises
• Weak State politics turns violent
• Crime with little fear of the state, ignores their
powers
Crime and Politics
• Pancho Villa
– Blended banditry and revolution
• Madero (1914)
– Assassination of top leaders was common
• Still exist: nosy journalists, zealous prosecutors,
and aides to Ca rdenas
Crime and Politics
• 1994 killings
– Paved way for Fox’s victory in 2000
– Luis Donaldo Colosio
• PRI candidate to succeed Salinas
• Killed with a shot to the head in Tijuana
• Shooter was apprehended, but not the one who ordered the hit
– Jose
Ruiz Massieu
• PRI Party secretary General
• Shot dead
• Salinas brother was charged with the hit/ serving 50 years
– Salinas ends his term in disgrace /exiled in Ireland
– Massieu brother was assigned to investigate but resigned
• Accused PRI bosses of complicity and coverup
Crime and Politics
• Good:
– Two new trends:
• PRI was stinking more and more
• Mexicans were sufficiently educated and sophisticated to see
the system for what it was
– System of control and co-optation that could work
amid ignorance and poverty could not work amid a
substantial middle class
• 2000 marked ir first turnover in the power
another could mark a stable Mexican democracy
What Mexicans Quarrel About:
Population and Jobs
• Population Explosion
– 1934: 16 million
– 1960: 34 Million
• Growth rate 2.8%
• 1.2% a year
– Power of the economy can sovle the
population explosion
• Middle class naturally = smaller families
• Mexican rate is down due to emigration
• US rate is up die to immigration
What Mexicans Quarrel About:
Population and Jobs
• Quarrel about how to make jobs for the millions
of unemployed and underemployed
• Institutions and economy cannot keep up with
population growth
• Zapatista dream:
– Redistribution of land
• Will not work b/c not enough land to distribute
• State-owned industry
– Grow slowly and employ few
– PEMEX
• Generates lots of money
• Not a lot of jobs
What Mexicans Quarrel About:
Population and Jobs
• 4% of Mexicans own Mexico’s wealth
• 40% live below the poverty line
• No jobs and no land
– Mexicans flocked to cities
– Shanty towns
– Sell small items or stolen items
• 22 million Mexican’s work for the “informal economy”
– Black market
– Pay no taxes
– Contribute to the growing deficit
• Mexico City
– Over 10 million strong
– One of the largest cities in the world
– Worlds worst air pollution
What Mexicans Quarrel About:
Population and Jobs
• Interior South Mexico
– Extreme poverty
– Zapatista rebellion started in 1994
• Leader: “Subcomandante Marcos”
– Interviewed with face covered
– Speaks eloquently
– Accurate about Mexico’s history of exploitation and
poverty
– PRI’s betrayal of its promises to “uplift” the poor
– Embodies the romanticism of the Revolution
What Mexicans Quarrel About:
Population and Jobs
• Distribution of income
– Mexicans go hungry
– Many do not earn the minimum wage ($4.50 a day)
– No money to save
• Insufficient capital for investment and growth
– Middle class people save
• Generate capital for investments
– Poor:
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Trouble acquiring skills
Schools are inadequate in rural Mexico and shantytowns
High crime rates = little foreign investment
Poverty leads to more poverty
– Escape: sneaking into the United States
What Mexicans Quarrel About:
Population and Jobs
• “Cures”
– PRD
• Populists, leftists, trade unionist, nationalists
• Want to keep or restore state-owned industry
• Privatization of Pemex is deemed a sellout
– Mexico’s constitution prohibits any private ownership
(foreign or domestic)
– Lack of investment and shortages
– US trained economists
• State-owned industry are stagnant, inefficient, corrupt, and
employ too few
• People are Panistas or PRI te nicos
• Recent presidents have liberalized the economy (Fox wanted
to go further)
What Mexicans Quarrel About:
Population and Jobs
• Oil
– Skews development away from
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Long-term and balanced growth
Employs few
Concentrates wealth
Makes country dependent on rise and fall of oil prices
– 1970 new fields were found in the south
• Echeverri a and Lope z spent like crazy
• Felt rich
• Inflation and 1995 crash of the peso ended that thought
– Squander new oil reserves
• To present the illusion of wealth
– “Oil is kind of a drug that induces illusions of grandeur”
What Mexicans Quarrel About:
Population and Jobs
• If PEMEX was privatized
– Mark the coming of Mexican economic
maturity
– The “gringos”
• Want your oil
• Will pay for it
• Will bring new technological inprovements
The NAFTA Question
• Globalization
– Does it really exist?
– Does it uplift the poor countries?
• Cross out globalization and put “China
trade”
• Latin America plays a minor role
– Stagnant economic growth
– Proof it does not work in LA
– Strict class structure
The NAFTA Question
• Gap between rich and poor is increasing
• Inequality grows as economy modernizes
• Economy grows = middle class
– Inequality will dwindle
• So far has created few miracles in LA
The NAFTA Question
• Hailed and feared
• US thought “vast sucking sound” as jobs
were outsourced to Mexico
• Mexico feared US would dominate their
country
• Most optimist foresaw economic grwoth
for all
The NAFTA Question
• So what happened???
– Nothing
– That is the problem
– Fox saw less than a 1% increase in economic growth;
loss of 2.1 million jobs
– Could not compete with China
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Culture is flexible and adaptable
Class structure is egalitarian (everyone has a chance to rise)
Leadership is united in growth and foreign investments
Labor cost are low, productivity is climbing
– Mexico’s productivity has been declining
The NAFTA Question
• Globalization never asked the question
– What would happen if of free trade when one
large producer has incredible advantages
over all others?
– How many low cost producers can the world
take?
– Will China’s productivity capacity snuff out all
others?
– “Poor Mexico, so close to the US, so far from
China”
The NAFTA Question
• Politics revolves around NAFTA
– Left (including PRD) want to either scrap the whole
thing or seriously modify it
– PAN is for it
• Fox with his Coca-Cola background
• Fox celebrates globalization = answer to Mexico’s way out of
Poverty
– PRI negotiated and ratified NAFTA
• Still have lingering doubts
– Give it time and it will work
• But how much time does Mexico have?
• Two answers: immigration or drugs
Drugs:
A Mexican or US problem?
• Mexico
– Grows some marijuana
– They are the way station
– Boarder with US makes smuggling easy
• By air, tunnels, trucks, mules
• Every kilo = 20 or more get through
– Excess of supply over demand
Drugs:
A Mexican or US problem?
• Problem for both countries
– Led to the penetration of crime into the highest levels
of power
• Police, justice system, and army
• Corrupted by Drug money
• Salinas had a brother in the drug trade
– One characteristics of weak state
• Penetration of Crime
• Mexico Crime and Politics depend on each other
• Drug money helps politicians = politicians help traffickers
Drugs:
A Mexican or US problem?
• Problem is the lucrative US drug market
– Americans did not take illicit drugs
• Wide layer of LA crime would disappear
– Might pause long enough to consider the
narcotraficantes murder hundreds and harm stability
and growth of LA
– Catching traffickers and checking boarder crossings
has little impact
• Profits are so great many join the trade
• Where else can a poor man make so much
money?
• “We have meet the enemy, and he is us.”
Illegal or Undocumented?
• US = “illegal immigrants”
• Mexico = “undocumented workers”
• US-Mexico boarder
– Only place you can walk from 3rd world to 1st world
• Few Mexicans worry about breaking the law
• Push/pull factor
– Opportunity for a decent life
– Many jobs in the southwest depend on Cheap labor.
Illegal or Undocumented?
• It’s an American Problem
– Humanitarian effort
• Put out a comic book showing how to survive the dangers
and deserts of crossing the boarder
• Want US to accept more immigrants
– Legal or temporary immigrants
– Grant amnesty to illegals already here
• Most Americans do not want a flood of “Spanish Speakers”
– Clothing, manufacturing, meatpacking, and agriculture resist
limit
• Fox’s biggest defeats = not getting Bush to make legal
Mexican immigration legal
Illegal or Undocumented?
• 14 billion dollars is sent over each year
• Best thing we can do
– Make it safe and legal!!!!
– Work with Mexico
Modern Mexico
• For most countries in LA
– Mexico is the model for growth and prosperity
– With the right policies it could become the “Latin
Tiger”
• What is the right policy for growth?
– Low wages and good productivity
– Labor cost over time lag behind productivity growth
• Produce more and better and earn a share of the world
market
• Labor cost overtime will rise
– The Trick: keep productivity rising even faster
– Example: postwar Japan and Germany
Modern Mexico
• How can you tell if a country’s labor cost are too
high and productivity too low?
– Note whether foreign or domestic invest there
– If domestic businesses park their money overseas
(flight capital) signs of a problem
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Too many regulations
High taxes
State takeovers
Strike-happy unions
Crime
Corruption
– Clean these up and you can have rapid growth