Palace Politics : How the Ruling Party Brought Crisis to Mexico

Chapter 7. The End of Stability

the end of stability Chapter 7 The unwritten rules established a role for what, in the United States, is called the loyal opposition. But unlike in the United States, this role was not woven into a fabric of public and legally enforceable institutions. Observance of the rules depended crucially on the president of Mexico, the ruler atop the Aztec pyramid of power. Luis Echeverría, president from 1970 to 1976, took fateful aim at the loyal opposition. His efforts to marginalize opponents and entrench ideological and personal allies in power after his constitutional term struck a fatal blow against the rules of elite political cooperation. Echeverría does not bear sole responsibility for undermining the unwritten rules because even if he had tried to sustain them, the climate of the early 1970s would have made his job difficult. Ideological “escalation,” in the phrase of Albert O. Hirschman, a U.S. economist intimately familiar with Latin America, took hold across much of that region in the late 1960s.1 Mexico, as always, was sui generis. Mexican political elites on the left did not move further left, nor did those on the right move further right; they maintained the same range of views from a pragmatic nineteenth-century liberalism to a pragmatic Marxism.2 Rather, the essence of ideological escalation in Mexico was a growing belief that fundamental change might occur. An apocalyptic battle of ideas was supposed to be shaping up. Whoever won might win decisively, and whoever lost might lose decisively. As grupos feared that the stakes in winning or losing would increase, conflicts tended to escalate. But ideological escalation just set the scene; Luis Echeverría staged the action. With a messianic obsession to right all the wrongs that had afflicted Mexico for five centuries and a genius for behind-the-scenes machination, he sought to install his like-minded grupo in power and establish a dynasty. Plutarco Elías Calles, first as president from 1924 to 1928 and then as strongman behind the scenes in the 1920s and early 1930s, had founded a dynasty, but President Lázaro Cárdenas had ended it. Three subsequent Mexican presidents are widely thought to have tried 130 palace politics the same, each time triggering drastic change. Miguel Alemán failed to build a dynasty as he prepared to leave office in 1951–52, and, in reaction, political elites forged the unwritten rules of cooperation. Carlos Salinas failed to build a dynasty as his term ended in 1993–94 and tore the ruling party apart. Luis Echeverría did a little better. Manipulating supporters, Luis Echeverría, president of Mexico from 1970 to 1976, sought to entrench his ideological approach, marginalize opponents, and install personal allies in power after his constitutional term. He thereby struck a powerful blow against the old rules of elite political cooperation. Photo reproduced with permission of the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States. the end of stability 131 firing opponents, and spending as if he only cared how fast the presses could print pesos, he managed to install a like-minded, politically indebted successor as president: his boyhood friend José López Portillo. In the process, he loosed elite struggle and caused the 1976 crisis. what went wrong? The causes of change under Echeverría are disputed. Aside from blaming exhaustion of import substitution (that academic theory) or populist demands (those ephemeral movements), many Mexicans point to Echeverría’s supposed efforts to restore political legitimacy. They say that he needed to restore legitimacy that the state had lost in 1968—and, as interior secretary, he had lost—when perhaps hundreds of demonstrators were massacred in anti-authoritarian protests at Tlatelolco Square. Others argue, as Echeverría himself proclaimed, that he ushered in change as the avatar of a new generation. Influenced by the 1960s, better educated, further left, and politically less experienced, this cohort of the political elite might have been different enough from its predecessors to change everything, and Echeverría was merely its conduit. These views deserve consideration. The first question to answer is simply what it was about the Mexican polity that broke so decisively from the past. Three breaks from the norms of the 1950s and 1960s under Echeverría can be agreed on: massive spending increases and fiscal deficits, unprecedented dismissals and turnover of high officials, and conflictive and erratic policymaking. There is no prima facie reason...