“A Revolutionary Regime Must Put the Interests of the Majority First”: Class, Collectivism, and Paternalism in Post-Tlatelolco Mexican Tripartite Relations

“A REVOLUTIONARY REGIME MUST PUT THE INTERESTS OF THE MAJORITY FIRST”: CLASS, COLLECTIVISM, AND PATERNALISM IN POST-TLATELOLCO MEXICAN TRIPARTITE RELATIONS∗ Joseph U. Lenti University of New Mexico In the four decades since the tragic happenings witnessed on October 2, 1968 in the Tlatelolco district of Mexico City, the status of ‘Tlatelolco’ as a parteaguas or watershed moment in Mexican history has been vigorously disputed. Most scholars now concede that the student movement created an opening – be it political, social, or both – for a generation of Mexicans to exploit, yet there is still room for debate.1 Enrique Krauze recently opined that the legacy of 1968 remained “uncertain” for the ways its ideological inheritors failed to consolidate its potential. He granted that those events contributed to democratizing the country though he felt that the “irreverent” qualities of the historic movement coupled with the riddled state of the contemporary Left in Mexico prevented crediting the students of 1968 with any significant achievements.2 This message echoed one conveyed earlier by Eric Zolov who viewed 1968 as a “turning point” in modern Mexico but cautioned that to lionize the students as “heroic youth doing battle against antiquated, reactionary systems of thought and power” risked overlooking the “messiness” of the movement.3 The findings presented herein contribute to said debate because they are predicated on the belief that, yes, the sequence of events that culminated at Tlatelolco represented a decisive moment that altered the nation’s modern political culture. This is not to say, however, that the tack of reform subsequently adopted by the government derived only from pressures exerted by student actions. It did not. Student protests called into question the “revolutionary” credentials of the Mexican state and its legitimacy as rightful heir to that legacy, yet they did not occur in a vacuum. Political reform implemented after Tlatelolco also conveyed the Mexican state’s desire to counter deeper-seated threats to its authority that emanated from ∗I wish to thank the late Adrian Bantjes for commenting on a panel I organized on this topic at the annual meeting of the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies held in Santa Fe, New Mexico on March 5, 2009. His insight was crucial in my conceptualization of this subject . Special thanks are also owed to Linda Hall, Michael Snodgrass, Gregory Crider, Jürgen Buchenau, and Colin Snider for providing useful comments on earlier manuscripts, as well as to Alliant International University, Mexico City for supporting the drafting of this essay. C  2010 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 163 The Latin Americanist, December 2010 other societal sectors and most importantly, from organized workers who had militated at heightened levels since the late-1950s. In the decade that preceded Tlatelolco unionists in diverse sectors agitated in demand of better wages, safety, medical, and housing provisions, and the right to elect union leaders. The resurgence of labor militancy hinted at the contradictions inherent in the Mexican state’s development strategies and cancelled the relative labor peace that characterized the past two decades. Worker militancy, in contrast to student activism, posed a real threat to topple the regime. The state was required to respond. It would be organized workers, therefore, they who formed the sector most ascribed with historical symbolism and deemed most capable of destabilizing the regime, that would become the chief target of state rhetoric and primary beneficiary of public policy after Tlatelolco.4 This thesis means to accompany, not defy, prevailing interpretations that have considered political reforms of the era vis-à-vis the ways they galvanized unionists to push for democracy and oppose state control. Certainly, the “democratic opening” as promised by President Luis Echeverrı́a Alvarez encouraged the emergence of reformist groups inside the tightly regulated organized workers movement, a point concisely made by Kevin Middlebrook and others.5 Nevertheless, state goals were multifaceted and not mutually exclusive. While democratic-minded policymakers were willing to permit rank-and-file dissent among workers, they also coveted the opportunity to revive a modus vivendi with top union brass reminiscent of an earlier time. This essay assesses how the state sought to pay the political costs of 1968 by solidifying...