Mexico: On the Threshold of Change : It Seems Ready to Step Off Toward Democratizing Its System

Two days before Mexico’s President Miguel de la Madrid left for this week’s state visit to Washington, the conservative party mayor of Chihuahua, Luis H. Alvarez, ended a 40-day hunger strike that took him perilously close to death and martyrdom. Alvarez, 66, had resorted to that Gandhian tactic of moral persuasion, so new to a Mexico where bloodshed and violent revolution have at other times been the fruit of discord, to protest the results of the July 6 elections in the state of Chihuahua.

Meanwhile, far to the south, 20 leading Mexican intellectuals forming a broad spectrum of ideological colors launched another crise de conscience. In a joint statement published in several Mexico City dailies three weeks ago they asked for the annulment of those same elections, which gave the near-monopoly Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, the governorship, all 14 legislative posts and 65 of the 67 mayoral offices in Chihuahua. Such an unprecedented coalition of otherwise politically uninvolved and highly respected figures focused national attention on the Chihuahua electorate’s persistent protests of the alleged fraud as nothing else could have done and, like Alvarez’s fast, brought a new argument and huge pressure to bear.

“These figures,” the statement read, “reveal a dangerous obsession for unanimity.” A large and diverse number of Chihuahua citizens, it said, do not believe that their vote was respected, and to express their discontent they have launched “peaceful acts of civic courage which make a lie of that unanimity and put in question the democratic cleanliness of the elections.”

Even voices from the left, traditionally bitter enemies of the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, are supporting its protests, its sit-ins and its blockage of international bridges connecting El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. Such strange bedfellows could not have been imagined even a few weeks ago, when leftist commentators dismissed PAN charges of electoral fraud and political opportunism just as they always have dismissed the PAN itself for being in the hands of wealthy businessmen, reactionary clergy and “foreign interests”--a catch-all phrase for everything from international bankers to the U.S. State Department. But now, after the elections in Chihuahua, things are different, and new alliances are forming out of new priorities.

In fact, it was several respected leftist leaders who finally persuaded the deeply committed Alvarez and two other PAN partisans to end their fast. “You will do more good fighting for democracy on your feet than dead,” they told Alvarez. Together with a large number of opposition partiesand professional groups, they have formed a new “democratic national movement.” Its leaders intend to march throughout the country, holding meetings and forming grass-roots organizations to defend clean elections and promote pluralism.

Looking beyond the rhetoric, this nascent movement appears to be less concerned with specific ideologies or party platforms than with a general and still largely unspecified democratization of the system. In the past few years Mexicans have had their raised expectations and political sophistication dashed by the hard realities of an ongoing economic crisis. They now want a government that responds to their real needs of today with answers, not with myths of the past.

The PRI government is uncertain about how to respond. For many people, the PRI itself is the problem. After half a century in power, it has become heavy, rigid, unable to reexamine and renew its concept of democracy. The very formula that has provided peace, stability and support to the marginal sectors of society for generations makes it difficult now for the PRI to become the leaner, more relevant force honoring the country’s demands. There are too many factions to please, too many feudal chiefs whose interests must be placated. Even the Mexican president’s far-reaching powers are severely curtailed by the force of competing sectors and pressure groups within the PRI. The party’s think tank, its ambitious young people and even its well-placed leaders, aware of the urgent need for modernization as a response both to the nation’s needs and to the opposition’s challenges, are frustrated by the slow progress. The PRI, the defender of the revolution’s gains, has turned conservative in its resistance to change.

Mexico is not on the threshold of violence, as some foreign observers contend. But it is on the threshold of pervasive changes in its political system. The PRI speaks often, and possessively, of the “social pact” that arose out of the Mexican revolution and that has successfully balanced the often-contending interests of the nation’s diverse groups and economic sectors. Today a new social pact is being created, organically and largely unperceived, that is based more on the individual than on the group or sector. So political reform, represented in part by the vitality of the Chihuahua electorate, is under way, inexorably.

“The authority should not ignore the importance of these demonstrations.” the 20 intellectuals warned in their open letter. “Today more than ever voters need to believe their votes have a meaning.”