Could Mexico Come Unglued? : Interest Groups May Be in Open Conflict if Regime Loosens Up

When the Reagan Administration and its critics debate U.S. policy on Central America, they disagree on a lot of things. But on one point their views frequently converge: In terms of the national interest, the fate of El Salvador and Nicaragua are important mostly as they relate to Mexico.

This country shares a long and largely undefended border with its neighbor to the south. Mexico is the United States’ third largest trading partner. Millions of Americans have family and cultural ties there.

Revolution or serious instability could send an avalanche of refugees pouring across the border that would seriously threaten economic prosperity and social peace within our own society. California and Texas would be especially affected.

Inside Mexico, such an upheaval could produce an anti-U.S. leftist regime, far more dangerous to American interests than the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Or it could bring right-wing repression that would sow the seeds of explosive violence a little further down the road.

Mexican officials publicly pooh-pooh the idea that their country’s political stability might be endangered by events in Central America. However, their actions suggest uneasiness.

Mexico, under the banner of non-intervention, has a history of minimum involvement in events outside its own borders. The Mexican government has nonetheless joined with Panama, Colombia and Venezuela in efforts to negotiate peace in Central America.

The chief concern of this Contadora Group seemingly is to avoid an outcome that might upset the centrist political balance in their own countries by energizing the forces of the left or right. They would prefer that the radical revolutionaries not triumph in El Salvador, and that Nicaragua not become an out-and-out Marxist-Leninist state. But they also are anxious to avoid direct U.S. military intervention, with all the unsettling effects that this would have throughout the area.

Mexico, on the record, is not very vulnerable to revolutionary upheaval. It is a one-party state that nobody could call democratic with a straight face. The gap between rich and poor is appallingly wide. Political opposition is tolerated within bounds, but bad things tend to happen to people who exceed those bounds.

However, the ruling party, the PRI, has been a marvelously effective sponge. It makes room for folks ranging from union leaders and leftist intellectuals to extremely conservative business leaders. Successive presidents have projected an image of sympathy to Marxist movements outside Mexico in order to curry favor with the country’s homegrown leftists, who might otherwise exploit the disgraceful social injustices inside Mexico itself.

The Mexican armed forces are reliable but unthreatening. They might conceivably be tempted toward a coup to save the country from chaos, but are not disposed to challenge civilian authority.

Imperfect as it is, the system has provided Mexico with a half-century of peace and political stability matched by few other countries. However, the ruling elite does face serious, potentially dangerous, problems.

Despite the huge oil revenues of recent years, the Mexican economy is in trouble. Petroleum prices are down, and Mexico’s oil exports have dropped to their lowest level in four years. Exports of manufactured goods are sagging, too. Inflation is rampant, and economic growth is not high enough to make a dent in the huge army of jobless and underemployed citizens who eke out marginal existences.

Meanwhile, the ruling PRI’s monopoly of power is under unprecedented challenge. Although opposition parties are tolerated in Mexico, it has been generally understood that they are not supposed to win. Thus the PRI controls the presidency, the federal Congress, all the country’s 31 governorships and state legislatures and the vast majority of city administrations.

However, PAN, a middle-of-the-road party, has been gaining support from Mexicans who blame corruption and official ineptitude for Mexico’s economic miseries. PAN candidates have captured local governments in several cities in northern Mexico, and are given a chance of capturing at least one governorship in the elections next weekend. Some party activists are threatening violence if the party is cheated out of victory by the PRI.

In the judgment of many foreign experts, Mexico’s one-party system--and the huge bureaucracy and network of state-run enterprises that it has spawned--has outlived its usefulness. Whatever happens in this month’s elections, the PRI may be forced to make way for a more genuinely pluralistic system.

However, such a transition would not necessarily be peaceful. Keep in mind that the patronage growing from PRI’s all-embracing political power has been a major factor in keeping the country glued together. As that patronage is eroded, labor, business and other interest groups that have worked out their differences inside the PRI could come into open conflict.

If an unraveling of political consensus were to coincide with a sharpening of the economic crisis, the continued docility of Mexico’s destitute millions (and their relative lack of interest in Marxist-Leninist solutions) might come into question.

The challenge facing Mexico’s moderate political and business leadership is to loosen the PRI’s control without triggering these unfortunate side effects. The chances for success surely will be greater if unsettling winds are not blowing from Central America. Much depends, therefore, on the effects of U.S. policy on events not only in El Salvador and Nicaragua but in Honduras and Guatemala as well.

Even more, however, may depend on how the United States and the world financial community manage trade, credit and other policies that bear directly on the Mexican government’s ability to provide jobs, and hope, to the Mexican people.