DEMOCRACY AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN MEXICO
1- Presentation
Democracy and Civil Society in Mexico is the issue that I will, here, develop. It is necessary to point out that these terms have been recently inserted in Mexican politics. During decades, these concepts were practically inactive, in the best of the cases, relegated to second or third level in national politics. Throughout the revolution regime the privileged ideology sustained, an authoritarian Estate instead of democracy. This ideology was based in three main principles: the presidential institution, the official party and the power elite named the revolutionary family. Instead of civil society, what existed was a resistant corporative structure that linked social sectors organized in confederations (labors, peasants and popular) with the Estate by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (respectively the CTM, CNC and CNOP). This kind of structure is similar at extended webs of local organizations in the first floor that are related whit other webs of states organizations in the second floor and, finally, centralized at the top level in the main leaders of the corporations and the Presidency of the PRI.
These structures gave the country political stability and social peace for several decades. But the ways of the old system suffered a process of decay because Mexican politics and civil society opened up to pluralism and democracy. The development of the country produced a notorious differentiation of spheres. Politics, Society, and Economy have become more heterogeneous and more complex. Now a day no one has the possibility to exert hegemonic dominion upon the social body of the country.
It is important to mention that the struggle against authoritarianism took form of electoral vindication. The country has a large tradition of electoral frauds and it was necessary to take out the control of the government over the elections. New political factions entered into the public scene legally recognized for carrying a more equitable and transparent competition for power.
Nevertheless, along with the process of democratization emerged a consistent process of un-governance and the significant increment of social conflict. The old authoritarian order stayed back, however Mexico has not been able to consolidate a new democratic order. The political elite is deeply divided. The conflict originated from the elections of July 2nd makes this is evident, the economic growth doesn’t succeed in including the labor force and Mexican society suffers an abysmal inequality among the rich sectors and the poor mass.
In this essay I’ll try to interpret and explain the paradox of the modern Mexico and I’ll propose a possible way for solution.
1. Presidencialism, corporatism, and the revolutionary family.
The Mexican Revolution, initiated by Francisco I. Madero, takes democracy as the main impulse. In the book, The Presidential succession in 1910, Madero expounded the necessity that the power accumulated by General Porfirio Díaz during more than 30 years of being at the front of the country could, in a pacific way, be transformed in order to allow free elections (Madero, 1908). In the elections of 1910 Madero was victim of electoral fraud. The only alternative for Madero was to empower the San Luis Plan to the armed rebellion under the slogan “effective suffrage, no reelection”. The result of this rebellion was that the Dictator had to abandon Mexico in May of 1911 and afterwards Madero won the elections and occupied the Presidential Chair in terms of the same year. Madero governed until February of 1913 because the men of the usurper Victoriano Huerta and Vice-President José María Pino Suárez murdered him.
It is important stand out that the armed struggle against usurpation took place in many parts of the country without having a solid leadership. Among the high revolutionaries was the presence of the governor of Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza, who by the Guadalupe Plan repudiated Huerta’s government. Huerta was an ombudsman who was endorsed by the old oligarchy and Porfirio Diaz’s army. Victoriano Huerta, same as Porfirio Diaz, abandoned the country. Logically, still left to be done was the unification of the program and the direction of the multiple revolutions that had been registered in the national territory, for example the North Division forces guided by Pancho Villa (his real name was Doroteo Arango) and the Liberator South Army commanded by Emiliano Zapata, among other leaders and their revolutionary armies. Because of this, the Sovereign Revolutionary Convention was organized in the city of Aguascalientes between October and November of 1914. The program of the Convention considered the subordination of the Constitutionalist Army, headed by Carranza, to the sovereignty of the assembly. But Carranza didn’t accept and didn’t recognize the Convention. The program of the Convention had many of coincidences with Madero’s democratic project, for example, the restoration of the Constitution of 1857, along with the real federalism, and the predominance of legislative power. Social rights were also added to the program.
Unfortunately, no agreements were achieved among revolutionaries in the Convention so they returned to the battlefields and fought between them in what we know as “The War of Factions”. The Carrancista army defeated the armies of the Convention.
The Constitution of 1917,still current, was formulated in Queretaro by the carrancistas who explicitly excluded those which took the arms against them such as military forces and intellectuals commanded by Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. Official history has tried to hide the fact that the constitutional project of Carranza was different and even contrary to Madero’s project. We must remember that in the inaugural discourse of the Constituent Congress pronounced the 1st of December of 1916, Carranza explicitly pointed out that the Constitution wouldn’t carry on democracy but that it would carry on a strong government and by that he meant presidentialism. The left faction of constitutionalism added social rights in the articles: 3rd, 27th and 123rd.
The carrancista revolution already had a Constitution but it was necessary to institutionalize it and to put it into practice. The first thing that was done was to finish pacifying Mexico and to erect the National State, a State that had emerged from revolution. Very similar to the State that Thomas Hobbes had in mind when he wrote The Leviathan. The first step was to create the Revolutionary Party to agglutinate regional leaders. Plutarco Elías Calles makes this first step March 4th of 1929 and founded the National Revolutionary Party (PNR). The next step was the organization of the social base (peasant, labor and military) into the Mexican Revolutionary Party (PRM). This happened in 1938 during the regime of Lázaro Cardenas. During cardenism the presidential institution acquired the solidity and importance that would last many decades. With Cardenas was erected the corporatism that subordinated the social organizations to the Revolutionary Party.
It is curious and not insignificant that the National Action Party, the right party, was founded one year later of that happening in 1939. In was founded in order to offset the nationalist, statism, and popular politics from the revolutionary system. This party, lead by Manuel Gómez Morín, was managerial, clerical, and reactionary.
The military sector was excluded from the PRM during the government of Manuel Ávila Camacho (1940-1946). The peasant sector and the labor sector that were joined at the beginning came apart and the popular sector was added. Millions and millions of Mexicans were included in a corporative way when they were part of an organization that was incorporated in the official party.
The Institucional Revolutionary Party was finally created in 1946, time in which the first civil president takes power: Miguel Alemán (1946-52), exceeding this way one of the greatest political problems of Latin America: militarism.
In parallel, an informal structure of power in the apex immediately under the President of the Republic was formed. An elite that included the most important Secretaries of State, corporative leaders of the PRI, some manager chiefs, and ex-presidents of the Republic formed this informal structure. The elite were known as the “Revolutionary Family”. It is here where great agreements and decisions were concentrated in order to process and solve demands from social groups that did not have representation in the political sphere during the porfiriato. The program of nationalizations and the expansion of the public economy was formed in the middle of the Revolutionary Family. Moreover they planed the “social reforms” in order to make feasible the social justice in Mexico. It was inside this group where the most important problem of continuity for the Mexican political system: “presidential succession” was solved every six years. This is how the PRI (Institucional Revolutionary Party) maintained power since it was constituted in 1929 until 2000 when Vicente Fox from the PAN won the presidency of the Republic.
The characteristics of the ideology of the Mexican Revolution were the conception of the State as the center of political and economical life of the country, the union of different social sectors in an alliance of classes, the compromise between political power and people based in the creation of public institutions to serve people, and the acceptance of foreign capital kept under governmental control (Córdova, 1973). In summary, the predominance of a conception where individuals do not have any weight in real terms if they are not part of an organization or a corporative group connected with the State. So, Mexican post revolutionary society is organized into a State that turned into a powerful force highly legitimated.
The establishment of the regime of the revolution carried along the enforcement of national economy, where the State acquired an unlimited power of intervention. The revolutionary project, since its origins, supposed a strong State based in the power of the organized masses and a guided economy by nationalist criterions. This was the only way that seemed possible to obtain distributive justice, agrarian reform, social reforms, and industrialization. The essential element of this construction was the rigid link between social reforms and governmental institutions. This explains the notable increase of public administration, especially in the public enterprises sector since 1935.
The nationalizations turned in to a fundamental program of the regime: petroleum, railroads and electric industry. They were far from representing an administrative or economic fact; they were a way of making politics, of making viable the bond between government and social masses and from this bond they fought for the autonomy of the country.
The State that emerged from the Mexican revolution was developed in parallel to the Welfare State that in post-war years had its boom in Europe and Unites States. It is interesting to see how both types of States are based in the alliance of political, social, and heterogeneous factions. The Welfare State was product of an agreement among workers, governors, and managers in advance west democracies, the same as the Mexican political system that arose from an alliance of classes.
The Mexican Leviathan worked apparently perfectly since the middle of the 30’s until, at least, the beginnings of the 80´s. We have to recognize, among other things, that it guided the country through a civilizing path, it guaranteed the political stability and the social peace, and it gave continuity and stability to an authoritarian political system. That does not mean that it didn’t present difficulties in its actions. Corruption was a central element that lubricated the mechanism of this complex political machine, and the multiple institutions that were created suffered inefficiency and bureaucracy. The treatment with governors and popular groups was victim of paternalism. Lastly, huge patronage nets were established.
2.- The transition to democracy and its alterations
Even though the authoritarian order ruled in the mentioned period, there were restricted social movements of discontent and opposition to the revolution regime, for example the train workers of 1958 and the student movement in 1968.
One especially important moment was the struggle for braking out the hegemony of the PRI, through the exigency of a political opening. It is true that it was a civilest government but it is also true that it was an authoritarian government. During decades only three small parties existed, one that we have already mentioned; the National Action Party (PAN), the Socialist Popular Party (PPS) and the Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution (PARM). These small parties in the better of cases served as a testimonial function useful for the PRI as to demonstrate to the world that it was a party who respected democracy. However, every body knows that PRI’s government controlled the elections and that there was a lack of real competition that could bring on scene the alternation.
The first steps towards the democratic door appeared after the massacre of October 2nd of 1968 in the “Three Cultures Square in Tlatelolco”. Luís Echeverría (1970-1976) started to include persons related to the left Mexican faction in his cabinet as a symbol of political opening. Afterwards was discovered that he used a double language because he also used repression and excess of force to fight against the guerrilla and the left clandestine groups in what we know as “Dirty War” of the 70’s.
Seven years later, in 1977, during the administration of José López Portillo (1976-1982) emerged a really important change in national politics with the “political reform” which allowed, for the first time, the inclusion of political organizations that had been excluded from the institutional competence like the Socialist Party of the Workers (PST), the Revolutionary Party of the Workers (PRT), the Communist Party (PC), the Mexican Party of the Workers (PMT) and one right party, the Mexican Democrat Party (PDM). In these circumstances the demand of Francisco I. Madero and the Convention of Aguascalientes in favor of the respect of the vote, the equilibrium of powers, the revivification of social rights, and the real federalism.
Another progress was registered in 1986, during the government of Miguel de la Madrid (1982-1988) when a legislative reform was made to permit the formation of the coalitions of parties. This reform allowed in 1988 the creation of the Democratic National Front (FDN), a great coalition of middle-left organizations that supported the candidature of the Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of Lázaro Cárdenas, to the presidency of the Republic and that claimed his victory in front of the candidate of the PRI Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Finally Gortari was declared President of the Republic.
The democratic claim obviously included the necessity of taking away the electoral process from government’s control. This was obtained slowly with the creation of a new electoral legislation: The Federal Code of Institutions and Electoral Processes. This gave birth to the Federal Electoral Institute in 1991 and the progressive removal of the government from its directive corporation. There’s no doubt that such thing was a great advance to overcome an authoritarian government.
Meanwhile, the political system registered other transformations of enormous relevance: for example the PRI lost its old dominion over citizen representation organs and could not exercise a hegemonic control over them. In order to reform the Constitution the party did not have the power of the two thirds of votes in Congress that were necessary for it. In consequence the PRI had to establish and alliance with PAN in 1989 in order to sustain the reform programs proposed by Salinas de Gortari.
In this same context, the revolutionary family saw the rising of other elites that emerged from the political parties that had been reinforcing themselves in the electoral competence. In the same year of 1989 the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) was founded the as a descendant of the FDN. The revolutionary family originally composed by revolutionary and political personages with intimate connections to PRI corporations, modified its configuration by accepting people who were connected with bureaucracy. People that had made a carrier in the public administration instead of having carrier in the official party; public personnel of high educational level from private universities and masters in foreign institutions, basically in universities form the nort east of United States. In consequence, the real power of decision was displaced from the PRI to the technocratic government.
It is not exaggerated to say that the revolutionary family allowed the advance of a sort of a technocratic family. In summary, in the composition of the political elites there was a new plurality in joint with a technocratic transformation of the old elite emerged from the revolution.
Something convenient to point out is that the political change in Mexico coincided with what we know as “the transition to democracy” in Iberoamerica. This matter began between 1973 and 1974 in Portugal and in 1975 in Spain with the disappearance of the old military autocracies, which permitted the establishment of democracy. The democratic governments substituted the military regimes in many Latin American countries like Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Central American nations. It was a real and an accurate change of the system with out using violence. Guillermo O’Donell defined the situation with precision through the next terms: “We understand for “transition” the interval that extends between a political regime and another” (O’Donell, et. al,. 1991 p. 19).
In the autocracies power is extremely concentrated and does not have a real counterbalance. There are no institutional barriers for stopping abuses or there are very few. There isn’t an effective control over the conduct of governors, there is very few or no tolerance related to opposition, the civilian and political organizations have a low level of autonomy in relation with the State; the representative instances and electoral mechanisms are reduced to protocol functions, educational and political participation are unmotivated, the negotiation as a principal factor of political articulation is excluded to other non transcendental projects. In democracy the power is more distributed and is beneath institutional vigilance. As a consequence, exists control over the actions of public servers, there is tolerance in respect to dissidents; civil organizations and political parties enjoy their autonomy in respect with the governmental power; the respective instances and the electoral mechanisms work equitable; education and political participation are fomented; the agreement as an aggregation strategy occupies a fundamental place in the political activity.
Along with the presidencialism transformation, PRI’s loss the hegemony, and the pluralizing of the political elites, corporatism lost its domain over the Mexican society. The vertical mechanisms of mediation were being weakened because the political economy implanted by PRI’s government since Miguel de la Madrid broke with the corporative pact known as “classes alliance” disregarding many social issues and leaving them to be solved in the market. Mexican neo-liberals criticized the Welfare State created by the regimen of the revolution alluding to the failure of its economical project. This group is of the opinion that it was an experiment to expensive in which its application was supported in the expansion of the public economy, but that exceeded the limits expected. The remedy consisted in the application of the doctrine of the “minimal State”; to reduce the economical roll of the State until its minimum expression and let the particulars to take control of the sectors that the public power couldn’t administrate or did not know how to administrate. Consequently started the abandonment of the Welfare State as in many parts of the world, with the privatization program, drastic limits to the public expenditure, the massive dismisses of governmental employees and the application of the fiscal discipline.
The paradoxical issue is that the democratic transition that supposes the struggle for political equality was realized at the same time that the neo-liberal model was applied in the economical matter and has produced a crescent inequality in the distribution of wealth.
3.- The irruption of civil society
The concept of “civil society” appeared in the scene of the Mexican Republic in this contradictory environment. In my opinion two factors influenced the emergence of the concept of civil society. First, with the earthquakes of September 19 and 20, in 1985. This event put in evidence the incapacity and corruption of the government. In face off the immobility of the public authorities to help people that suffered damages, the citizens started to organize spontaneously and faced adversity; for example they removed the rubble trying to save people that were trapped, they rescued the dead bodies of families, friends, familiar people, and fellow citizens. They also organized shelters for protecting people that became homeless, they helped organize the traffic of the city that was immerse in chaos, and an infinity of activities that had to be done.
In the international field, the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 9th of 1989, which represents the collapse of communism in some countries of East Europe: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovak, East Germany, and later on Rumania and Baltic republics. The decisive factor of that liberation movement was “civil society”, referred, textually, according to the Anglo-Saxon word by militants and leaders of the struggle. The popular revolt was produced after long clandestine work against the totalitarian regime. The structure of totalitarian domination was loosing its influence until the discontent could crop out in public evidence. Ernst Geller affirms that “The turbulence in East Europe, which culminated with the dramatic happenings of 1989, brought a powerful reappearance in the interest of the civil society notion.” (Gellner, 1991, p. 495) We can add to this affirmation the opinion of one of the pioneers on this issue, John Keane, for whom the interest for the term “civil society” is bigger in comparison of the epoch in which he was born and matured: 1750 and 1850. The mobilization of civil society was the way of carrying forward democratic project, different from the domination scheme imposed by Stalinism (Keane, 1998: p. 32). As a consequence, the revival of civil society has been strongly related with the recuperation of the liberal-democratic culture based in plurality and tolerance.
The epoch initiated in 1945 with the mobilization of the societies in which the statues of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin fell finished (Cold War), and the period that began in (the Russian Revolution) 1917 also ended. Consequently, the ideals of 1789 were reconsidered. That’s why Jürgen Habermas qualified the revolution of the East Europe countries as a “recovering revolution” (Nachholende Revolution). Recovering the principles and values of the liberal democratic modernity.
The resuscitation of civil society has been accompanied, obviously, by theoretical reflection in which Habermas’ thought occupies a special place. This German philosopher has influenced the study of civil society in Mexico as in the international level. One of the most employed habermasian terms is the “public sphere” or “public space” (Öffentlichkeit), which must not be confused with state’s field. (Habermas, 1998: p. 3). The public sphere is the civil space in which persons can interchange their personal points of view for configuring, above all, an opinion designed in team. In other words: the public space is the place in which the public opinion is configured by communication. In a democratic sense, the opinion is conformed through discussion. That’s why the pubic sphere and its product: public opinion, have a civil nucleus and both serve as counterweight of the power of the State and of the market. This counterweight shouldn’t be exerted, privatively, through discussion; the equilibrium also has to be present by making public what remains in secret. In this sense it has to be seen in the democratic publicity in countenance with authoritarian secrecy.
Habermas remits to the values of modernity and in his opinion, modernity brought along the distinction of spheres. By this it means the economic sphere which specific medium is money, the civil sphere sustained in the transmitted culture through communication, and the politic sphere characterized by the use of force. In anterior historical stages the feature that was constant, was the permanent confusion between these spheres, so under the patronage system the political power was confused with the economical power of the civil and ecclesiastic authorities that at the time where also confused. Supported in clericalism, the spiritual authority had interference in the affairs of the State and in economic life. Modernity breaks this confusion, therefore this distinction –not isolation- appeared and, at the same time came into view the auto limitation of spheres which is one of the most relevant facts of modernity. In fact, civil society becomes mature according with the autonomy that acquires in their ambits of action.
4.- The contradictions of civil society
Within this context civil society in Mexico had to difference itself in opposition to a “civilist” government that was headed by civilian men, not military or clericals, even though it had a political interference in social ambits through corporatism, which I have already mentioned, provoking confusion between social and State realm.
In Mexico the autonomy from the social ambit in opposition to the State appeared because of various motives. In first place, because the process of economical development produced middle urban and rural class that corporatist nets couldn’t include. In second place because those middle classes had access to a lay, illustrated, and critical university education that supplied qualified personnel in to public institutions and private enterprises. In our opinion, the middle classes formed the core of the civil society in Mexico.
Another important point to clarify in the conceptual level is that during and after the student movement of 1968 a strong influence of Marxism in many institutions of high education was registered. Therefore, in accordance with the distinguished definition given by Karl Marx in the Preface of 1859 in the Contribution to the Critic of the Political Economy civil society punctually corresponded to the economic sphere: “structure”, in order to give fundamental value in which the political, juridical and ideological “super structure” is held up, so to adjudicate a subordinated value (Marx, 1970, pp. 36-37). With this reference in mind in certain academic and social Mexican circles “civil society” was used to design what happened in the economic field.
We have to point out that in Marxism is the presence of an author that has had and still has importance in the national political discussion: Antonio Gramsci. Even with the crisis of Marxism and the falling of the Berlin Wall. The newness introduced by Gramsci and what makes him current, consists in placing the civil society in the super structure. In a fragment of the Books of jail (1930-1932), Gramsci wrote: “For now two great super structural “planes” can be established, one that could be named “civil society” the joint of organisms vulgarly named “privates”, and the other one of the “political society or State” that corresponds, respectively, to the function of “hegemony” that exerts the dominant group in all society and the “direct dominium” or of command that is manifested among the State and the juridical government.” (Gramsci, 1975: p. 1518)
In the rank of super structure he uses the distinction between civil society and political society, in which civil society corresponds to the cultural hegemony and political society corresponds to coercion. This however, does not means that Gramsci exclusively focuses in this axle and that he excludes the binomial composed by structure and super structure. More likely, he moves indistinctly in both axles. He works with two dichotomies: civil society-political society and structure-super structure.
In fact, Habermas retakes this distinction from Gramsci in order to clarify the difference between the economical sphere, civil society, and politics. His idea is that the existence of limits is necessary among them. There mustn’t be an invasion or intent of colonization in between spheres. The roll of civil society is to win its own space stopping de interference of money and power in its nucleus.
In front of a State that lost its leviathanic character but that still conserves its natural patronage and a market formed by huge, even abysmal, deficiencies, Mexican civil society with its plural and heteronymous physiognomy is a central element of the contemporary life of the country. In which persons have found a way of participation that is not related directly with political parties, corporatism and patronage that still persists in some cases.
In the complexity of its composition and without pretending to be exhaustive we can said that Mexican civil society is composed by the next groups: 1) cultural (religious, ethnics, communes, and other institutions and associations that defend values, faith, and symbols), 2) informative and educational (dedicate to the production and diffusion of knowledge, ideas, news and information), 3) of interest (designate for advancing and defending the common interests of functional order or material of its members, such as workers, pensioners, professionals, etc), 4) of development (organizations that mix individual resources to improve infrastructure, institutions, and communal life quality), 5) oriented by theme (movements in favor of the protection of the environment, women’s rights, agrarian reform, or consumers’ protection), and 6) civic (that seek to improve the political system, making it more democratic through the vigilance of human rights, education, and electoral mobilization, observance and fight against corruption, but outside of the party system). In this categorization could also be included mass media communication such as press, radio, and television with the condition that they place social interests in first place rather than their commercial interests. In civil society there is also institutions related with cultural, educational, and intellectual activities. Universities, associations of writers, editorials, and organized artistic groups are also included Mexican civil society in. (Butcher, Serna, 2006).
We must add that since long ago civilian organizations of great importance related with the Catholic Church exist in Mexico. For example the Association of Boy Scouts of Mexico, the Family Christian Movement, Opus Dei, Knights of Colon, the group Pro Life, the Catholic Association of Youth of Mexico, CARITAS, and the Yunque. The power of convocation that different religious groups in the communities possess like the religious orders (Franciscans, Dominics, Agustins, etc) and diocesans (parish priests, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals) has to be considered. There’s no doubt that all of them exercise a profound social leadership and extend enormously in national territory.
Some of the mentioned catholic organizations, the most ancients, were opposed to the 3rd Constitutional Article which proclaimed that education had to be public, free, and lay. They also combated the Mexican State during the “Christ War” in the 20´s; they were opposed to the nationalization program of Lázaro Cardenas and now a day they still have affairs with the PAN. In some cases they accept the legal frame along with the plural and democratic coexistence; but in other cases its ideological position is antidemocratic and similar to fascism.
Considering these facts that reminds us that in Mexico still persists backwards nucleus ideologically, we should said that the associations of civil society do not have to be confused, as in old times, with the State nor the market. These associations are related to the State by forms of plural mediation in order to obtain concessions, benefits, changes in public policies, and public accountability of governmental performance in specific areas.
Civil associations are naturally very dynamic and they frequently establish nets among them in order to expand their influence in certain sectors of the public activity. Another interesting characteristic is that people can have a plural and vigorous adscription, via freedom of association. In consequence no one can become the one and only representative of a sector of the civil activity, and by no means act in name of the civil society: “that type of organization –such as religion-fundamentalist movements, ethnic-chauvinists, revolutionaries or millenaries- that try to monopolize some functional or political space by affirming that they represent the only legitimate way contradicts the pluralist and competitive nature of civil society” (Gramsci, 1975: p. 1518)
These kinds of movements or organizations with monopolist pretensions have profiles that make them impose its presence in the name of everyone, as if they wanted to embrace the social ensemble. This is what happened with the Zapatist Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional), which appeared in public scene in January 1st of in 1994, making as proclaim the First Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle (Primera Declaración de la Selva Lacandona) that vindicated, in our opinion in a legitimist and correct way, the legacy of the Aguascalientes Convention of 1914. But later on it deflected this first intention to embrace indigenism and the vindication of the local autonomies as if they wanted to construct little states inside the national State; such thing is contrary to the theory and the practice of civil society that postulates the national, juridical, economic, and territorial union as the base of personal, political and social rights.
In the expanded and contradictory spectrum of Mexican society we should mention what it is denominated by Nancy Fraser as “subordinate contrapublics”. For the Mexican case these contrapublics have a more radical connotation than the one adjudicated by Fraser. Contrapublics are parallel associations that carry out a militant opposition and in some cases this opposition is violent in order to defend their interests and claims. It becomes about expressions that act at the margin of conventional and pacific forms of participation. These contrapublics are proliferating in front of the weakness of public institutions. (Fraser, Nancy, 1997: p. 124)
A significant event was the happening of San Salvador Atenco between December of 2001 and February of 2002, when the holders of a share in common land, called “ejidatarios”, of this locality were opposed to the decree of expropriation for constructing the international airport their locality. The “ejidatarios” used “machetes” and exercised violence to make their protest with out the intervention of any public authority that was wiling to stop them. They declared themselves rebelliousness and constituted an autonomous municipality at the margin of any institutionalism and legality. Their idea of social vindication isn’t an idea linked to the aspirations of liberal democracy, but a proposal related to the direct democracy from the base in a Marxist way.
The opposite side of the coin can be seen in May of 2006, after years of impunity, when the state and federal governments repressed in excess the commoners of Atenco causing multiples violations to human rights. Sometimes for deficiency and other times for excess, the Mexican State wasn’t capable of granting civility because it did not respect the law nether was it capable of making the law respected.
Oaxaca is another case worthy of analysis. The teachers of the 22 section of the National Syndicate of Education Workers (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación, SNTE) burst out a strike in May 23rd 2006 looking for a reassessment in order to improve their salaries. It was responsibility of the federal government to respond to the claim, but the government didn’t want to shake the situation because the electoral campaigns for the presidency of the Republic were in apogee, so no solution was made and the problem was transferred to the local ambit. The governor Ulises Ruiz acted with no political delicacy and sought to move the teachers out the public central square of Oaxaca city. He did not succeed in his effort; instead the Popular Assembly of the Villages of Oaxaca (Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca, APPO) was founded. The APPO proclaimed just one exigency: the exit of Ulises Ruiz from the government of the State. The APPO committed many class of damages and destructions. Similar to the happenings in San Salvador Atenco, the perspective of the APPO was less related with liberal democracy and more with the revolutionary position of Marxist confection. During months the intervention of the federal government was required in order reestablishing law, but no result came along. A fortuitous and lamentable incident makes the happenings to take another course: the death of the North American journalist Brad Will in October 27th during a fight in the barricades of Oaxaca. Unfortunately only the death of a foreigner could make the federal government intervene, again in a violent way. Again the State used the same formula as in Atenco, first the deficiency and then the excess in the use of the public force.
Observed from a more general perspective, we should say that Mexican civil society is also surrounded by two problems of enormous relevance: one: drug traffic and the other: the massive emigration towards United States.
Drug trafficking has proliferated, in my opinion, for two fundamental motives. In first place, the weakness of the State that has gotten to levels in which it does not even succeed in its most elemental responsibility: to guarantee the empire of law. Drug trafficking has acquired such discharge capacity that has confronted federal and local authorities. In fact, drug trafficking controls certain portions of national territory, rural or urban zones. It has actually approached to attack by realizing executions of high commands of the local and federal policies. In second place, the economic power of drug trafficking in a political environment loaded with corruption turns in to a perfect mechanism to bribe employees and public functionaries of all levels and getting away, without any obstruction, with their misdeeds. These are the reasons why “narcopolitica” (the combination of drug dealers with politicians) is a common term used in Mexico. Samuel Gonzalez Ruiz, a known specialist in this problem, said that there are no huge crimes in Mexico without significant complicities from the high spheres of power.
In order to distinguish the physiognomy of drug trafficking in Mexico, it is important to point out that more of the 80% of the “drug bosses” are form Sinaloa. The explanation of this curious fact is that the cultivation of Poppy and the production of heroine and cocaine were permitted in Sinaloa for the supply of these substances as medicine for North American soldiers during Second World War. When the war ended, the producers from Sinaloa continued to depend on the drug to survive. They started to introduce drug illegally to United States thorough three border points: Tijuana (Pacific Coast), Juárez City (Center), and Matamoros (Mexico Gulf). This is the origin of the four most powerful drug cartels (nets of illicit organization): the Sinaloa cartel headed by the “Chapo” Guzmán, the Tijuana cartel controlled by the Arellano Félix family, the Juárez City cartel guided by the inheritors of Amado Carrillo “Sr. of the Heavens” and the Matamoros cartel in hands of Osiel Cárdenas. This also explains the conflict in between these cartels to lead the production and distribution of the drugs and the increase of executions in certain States of the Republic in order to control the main and secondary routes for the traffic of drugs.
It will be easily understood that in front of a suspended national economy, the probabilities of being related with drug trafficking is very high. In many places countrymen and agricultural producers decide to stop cultivating fruits, vegetables, and basic grains to start in the cultivation of narcotics. However, the problem is not only related with the countryside, it also strikes cities in various aspects, for example: the recruitment of unemployed or sub-employed people, the organization of drug retail, and extending their influence to diverse sectors such as; services, transportation, education, banks and finances, etcetera.
In the matter of massive emigration towards United States it is necessary to emphasize that Vicente Fox’s campaign promise, during presidential elections in 2000, was to create 1,300 million employments each year so at the end of his administration the country would have 7,800 million employments. The reality is that only 800 thousand employments were created, lots of them temporally or with less remuneration. Consequently, about 500 thousand Mexicans cross the north border each year. Certainly, this problem is not new; an estimation points out that 20 millions Mexicans of first or second generation live in the United States. The problem is increasing instead of decreasing, in my opinion, in direct relation with the current economical model that does not have among its priorities the attention of social problems.
Emigration is another of the challenges that are affecting intensely Mexico’s social tissue. Most of the families have one or more relatives that live in the other side of the border; no state of the Republic is exempt of the expulsion of labor force.
The remittances that Mexicans send to their country from the United States increased in 2005 to 16 billion dollars and in 2006 to 24 billion dollars. The remittances have turned in to a fundamental sustain of the national economy. Emigration is an escaping path for the population that could not be absorbed by the existing economic line. As contradictory as this might seem, it is a reinforcement that replaces the development model’s deficiencies, which would have already become a social conflict of enormous proportions if we weren’t neighbors with the strongest world economy.
4.- Civil Democracy
Mexican public institutions undergo serious operability issues. They do not succeed fulfilling the responsibilities which law points to them: sustaining public order. Those institutions could not establish economical policies that corrected deeply social inequalities. These institutions can even create a basis of subsistence for the poorest people, in order to grant access to health, education and housing.
The reestablishment of the State’s ability to sustain the political unit of the Nation is an urgent task that must be made. Not as the way of the old authoritarian Leviathan, neither through the old corporative and patronage mechanisms, even less through the rehabilitation of only one ruling elite. I mention this because in Mexico it is not uncommon to think in a direct relation between presidentialism and order and on a direct relation between democracy and chaos. Since the restoration of authoritarianism some conservative groups tempt to impose order, because for some conservative circles democracy is not a system of government adaptable to Mexican reality, where democracy restrains only to the electoral level. As neo-liberals affirm that the maximum admissible is the minimal State; conservatives sustain that the maximum that could be admitted is the electoral democracy in order to keep power concentrated in an oligarchy.
Certainly, Mexico’s achievement of free and competitive elections organized and sanctioned by jurisdictional independent authorities is a fact of historic relevance. Since the time of Madero, that was the abandoned objective until the authoritarian system finally was obligated to let go of elections’ control. Once reached the democratic goal that allowed political alternation putting Vicente Fox’s in charge of federal government administration (2000-2006) was the first time after 71 years of continuous rule from the Revolutionary Party, irregularities and suspicious of fraud reappeared in the federal elections of July 2nd in 2006. Felipe Calderon is a president with a deficit in political legitimacy and with a country deeply divided in political and social terms. What seemed an irreversible democratization process has suffered a regression that has to be remedied as soon as possible. We need a political and electoral reform of same reach and dimensions as the one effectuated by Reyes Heroles in 1977.
However, the adaptation of electoral democracy shouldn’t be the ending point of democracy in Mexico, but the starting point of a process in favor of democratic equality in several dimensions of the national activity because power and richness is still concentrated in a technocratic and financial oligarchy that monopolizes fundamental decisions. The democratic struggle in Mexico also has to fight against those monopolies. As stated in the magazine the Economist in a special number dedicated to Mexico “It is these bastions of unaccountable power, rather than Lopez Obrador’s antics, that are the real threat to Calderón’s government ant to Mexico as a whole.” (November 18-24 2006). The presence of this oligarchy has been reinforced through the pass of the years in which the neo-liberal model has been applied in Mexico.
As Danilo Zolo says, the creation of oligarchies in the last years in virtue of practicing free the market doctrine, has originated a truly and proper “bottle neck for the evolution of democracy” (Zolo, 1992: p. 132). This is what is necessary to modify in Mexico in order to advance in a democratic process beyond the electoral level.
Joseph Schumpeter was right when he said that democracy is not the absence of elites, but on the contrary, the presence of lots of elites in competence among them. The problem is not the existence of many leaderships, the problem is that power tends to concentrate in only one hermetic circle of persons. With this hermetic behavior it is logical the arousal of confrontations between the leaders of diverse economical and political groups. As a matter of fact, Arend Lijphart, made a typology of the political regimes. He emphasized that there are systems in which elites cooperate and others in which they confront (Lijhart, 1998). The first ones are identified with democracy in comparison to the seconds that tend to fall in chaos or tyranny. In other words, the consolidation of the transitional processes to democracy is achieved in virtue of collaboration between left and right faction elites. Seeing it from any perspective the truth is that this is not happening in Mexico. The political and economical elites are confronted, building up the situation of disorder in which the country is debating itself.
Certainly, there are lots of problems. Here we have mentioned some of them, the most important one in our opinion is the persistence of that cryptic oligarchy, the existence of abysmal inequalities, the absence of an economy which offers employment opportunities, the proliferation of the criminal violence, the presence of anarchic social movements, an electoral system still deficient, and the permanence of a patronage culture.
If we don’t agree that the only way to reestablish order in Mexico is the rehabilitation of the authoritarianism, then we have to establish an order, governance, attainable through democratization beyond the electoral level (without excluding this item). In my opinion, that is possible by giving orientation and viability to the healthy part of our politics, economy and our civil society.
We have to agree that the axle of the real transition to democracy, as many examples in disposition show, is the creation of a new coalition of economical, political, and social forces with aggregation capacities. To achieve this, we can resort to the example cited here of the struggle of the civil society in East Europe countries. Where they have recourse to what Vaclav Havel baptized as “the power of the powerless”. The power of word, of reason, of conviction, and of gathering so deep transformations can be made.
Civil society is not only a heterogeneous group of organizations integrated by topics, it’s also “seen as a system of ideas, values, ideologies, and, yes, interests understood primarily in sociological and political terms.” (Simone Chambers, 2002: p. 91). All civil society’s studious men agree in recognizing that the great historical changes have its origins in civil society sphere where a new culture and a new project is created not in the political sphere, where power is organized, nether in the economical sphere where goods are produced.
Even though there are still remains of corporatism and patronage mentality that, by the way, were used in the past campaign, the truth is that Mexico has reached a respectable grade of plurality and complexity that makes possible to affirm the presence of a civil society and a consequent public sphere, both capable to start a development process distinct to actual one. The problem is that the study and the practice of the “transitional” processes in Mexico were concentrated in a wrong way in State’s Institutions sphere, in what is known as the “constitutional engineer” and not in the “social engineer”. As Simone Chambers says: “[W]e value civil society because it makes democracy possible and we value democracy because, if authentic, it transforms domination into self-rule.” (Chambers, 2002: p. 99).
Today’s tendency in the world is to replace the importance of the democracy centered in the vote (obviously without resting value to elections) for the democracy centered in deliberation (the use of the word as a form of social and political aggregation). The same with other word is that the attention is moving from the political democracy to the social democracy: “Theorists are interested in how deliberation can shape preferences, moderate self-interest, sustain conditions of equality, enable dialogic empowerment, and produce reasonable justification for majority decisions. In other words, interest has shifted from what goes on in the voting booth to what goes on in the discursive interactions of civil society. While nineteenth-and early twentieth-century democratization focused on expanding the vote to include everybody, today democratization focuses on expanding the public sphere to give everyone a say” (Chambers 2002: p. 99).
This civil democracy, commonly known as deliberative democracy, tends to emphasize the integration processes through the accumulation of forces and having as propellant element the dialogue and the recognition of common purposes between people and social groups. It is the reinforcement of civil society through the enlargement of the public sphere and the power of public opinion as a form of pressure against the political sphere. Due to this association of forces, the State and the political parties could be pressed to include issues that are of common interest in civil society in their agendas. This way the public power could be influenced not to be absent and to stop the establishment of the “party-cracy” or the oligarchic logic on itself; to abandon patronage mentality, and equally reinforce the political, electoral, and social reforms in order to modify the current model of development.
Due to the action of the deliberative democracy it is possible to reinforce the existent connections between diverse political, economical, and social actors in order to form blocks of forces capable of rehabilitating the effective operability of the Rule of Law in Mexico, the reestablishment of the public order that condemns the proliferation of violence in its different expressions that are now registered in the country. It is all about seizing fields against subaltern contrapublics, the uncivil society, and the anti-spheres.
Peter Frumkin had proposed a scheme of understanding and action which seems worthy of consideration: democracy has as objective equality, which is an old and always present aspiration that has to be assumed as an objective by the civil society. This is the basis for civil society to influence in the transformation of public institutions. It is precise that democracy converts itself in a way of thinking and in a way of acting of the social unity; it is precise that democracy converts itself in habits and in culture.
If this has been possible in other countries, I don’t know why it cannot be achieved, in spite of the huge problems burdening us in Mexico.
References
Butcher, Jacqueline, María Guadalupe Serna (coord.), El tercer sector en México, CEMEFI-Instituto Mora, 2006
Chambers, Simone, “A Critical Theory of Civil Society”, en Simone Chambers and Will Kymlicka, Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society, Princeton University Press, 2002
Córdova, Arnaldo, La ideología de la revolución mexicana, México, ed. ERA, 1973
Fraser, Nancy, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy”, en Calhoun, Craig, Habermas and the Public Sphere, Cambridge Massachusetts, MIT Press, 1997
Gellner, Ernst, “Civil Society in Historical Context”, Internacional Science Journal, n° 129, august, 1991
Gramsci, Antonio, Quaderni del carcere, vol. III, Torino, Einaudi, 1975
Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Cambridge, Massachussets, MIT Press, 1998
Keane, John, Civil Society (Old Images, New Vision), Stanford University Press, 1998
Lipjhart, A. (1984), Democracies. Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Contries, New Haven, Yale University Press
Madero, Francisco, I., La sucesión presidencial en 1910, San Pedro de las Colonias, Coahuila, Ed. Jesús Carranza e hijos, 1908
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O'Donnell, G., Schmitter, P.C., Whitehead, L. (1989-1991), Transiciones desde un gobierno autoritario, 4 volúmenes, Argetina, Paidós
Zolo, Danilo, Il principato democratico (per una teoría realistica della democrazia), Feltrinelli, Milan, 1992
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