Building the Fourth Estate: Democratization and the Rise of a Free Press in Mexico (review)

There can be no democracy without a free and independent press. Can there be a more familiar argument to Americans? We readily apply this dictum to ourselves and to Europe. But does it extend to the "emerging" world? Mexico is an ideal test case.

Until the late 1980s, Mexico was known, in the words of Mario Vargas Ilosa, as "the perfect dictatorship." The press was controlled in myriad ways by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (pri), the all powerful "official" party that traced its origins to Mexico's revolution of 1910. Control of the print media was exercised in visible and invisible ways. Perhaps the crudest way was control over the newsprint supply. If a newspaper were too critical of the administration, it would find itself without paper to feed into the presses. A second weapon was the placement of government advertisements, which often represented a crucial revenue source. When all else failed, the government resorted to assassination (by hired gunmen) of editors or reporters. More subtle were the reciprocal relationships that press moguls maintained with government ministries.

Control of the broadest media was no less direct. Television was crucial. Televisa, the dominant network, religiously followed government dictates. On the day when a newly founded competing network (which threatened to be independent) began transmitting, Televisa jammed its signal.

Only gradually, during the 1990s, did the government grip loosen aspart and parcel of the decline of pri power that resulted in the 2000 election of Vincent de Fox, the first non-pri president in sixty years. The press, both print and media, undoubtedly played a key role in this process.

What does this excellent monograph tell us generally about the role of the press in democratization? The author takes care not to claim that this role is determining. On the contrary, the gradual liberation of the Mexican press was only one among a bevy of factors that led to the end of the pri's seven-decade stronghold on power. But Lawson does describe the burst of creativity that Mexican journalists demonstrated when they gained their freedom. This development greatly contributed to the enrichment of Mexican public culture as democratic pluralism made its inroads.