The Logic of Compromise in Mexico. How the Countryside was Key to the Emergence of Authoritarianism by Gladys I. McCormick (review)

How did the authoritarian government that dominated Mexico for most of the twentieth century overcome the powerful legacy of peasant resistance to the point that it even appropriated the historical memory of Emiliano Zapata? This innovative study of rural people living under Mexico's post-revolutionary regime in the former heartland of Zapatismo offers an innovative understanding of the undemocratic order that emerged between 1938 and 1962. The government Party of the Institutional Revolution (known by its Spanish acronym PRI) ironically had its origins in the populist project of president L azaro C ardenas, who carried out an ambitious program of land reform and created public enterprises like the cooperatives studied in this book. Gladys McCormick argues that Cardenista reforms founded the corruption-fueled clientelist politics that paved the way for domination. While others have made similar observations, this volume goes further in its emphasis on the darker side of Mexican authoritarianism, stressing that corruption and violence were central to its system of cooptation and negotiation.

The book centers on two case studies of Zacatepec, Morelos, and Atencingo, Puebla, similar sugar-growing regions that shared a common experience of Zapatista rebellion. In Morelos the revolution destroyed the old elite and Cárdenas was able to consummate his vision of a cooperative state enterprise that included beneficiaries of the agrarian reform (known as ejidatarios) and mill workers. In Puebla, on the other hand, elites recovered their control of the mills and lands by the 1920s. As a result, the cooperatives created there only incorporated the ejidatarios while the mills and the infrastructure remained in private hands.

McCormick proficiently narrates the experiences of the remarkable Jaramillo brothers to show how the State learned to adopt a combination of cooptation, patronage and murder to tame the revolutionary peasantry, lessons that it later used on urban populations. The best known of the brothers, Rubén Jaramillo, was a former Zapatista who rose to prominence in the movement that created the cooperative in Zacatepec under Cárdenas's patronage. The tensions in the project quickly became evident since the president wanted loyal managers who favored mill workers over the interests of cane producers. Rubén became the most outspoken defender of the ejidatarios, constantly challenging the government appointed mill managers.

Under president Manuel Avila Camacho, (1940–46) the costs of the Cardenista program became clear. After breaking a bitter strike at the cooperative in 1942 where Rubén hadunifiedmillworkers andpeasants, thenew administration moved to tighten control. Avila Camacho, under the pretext of wartime exigencies, split proletarians from cane growers by favoring a separate union for workers and rewarding them for their obedience. Rubén and his followers found themselves excluded and organized a short-lived armed uprising that ended in a negotiated surrender. The cooperative, purged of troublemakers, increasingly became a creature of appointed managers. Clientelism became the norm under the general manager Eugenio Prado who ameliorated his corrupt excesses by sharing with the communities and building patronage networks, as well as by a willingness to use violence. Prado delivered for the government by making production quotas that suited Mexico's industrialization program: as McCormick notes, corruption and efficiency went hand in hand.

Rubén's brother Porfirio participated in the Zacatepec strike but later took a different tack. After he was expelled from the Morelos cooperative, he went to Puebla where he organized ejidatarios that supplied the Atencingo mill. He sought to work within official channels to reform the cooperative and improve conditions for its members but since the Zacatepec mill was in the hands of a US entrepreneur William Jenkins who had the backing of the political boss of Puebla, Maximino Avila Camacho (brother of Manuel), he had little success. Even after Jenkins sold the mill, the government stonewalled Porfirio's initiatives, played the...