Mexican Politics Slips Its Leash : Cardenas Visits U.S. as the Formal Opposition, Not as Loser

While it has become traditional for opposition leaders from nearly every country in the world to visit the United States to explain their positions and enhance their stature, Mexicans have generally frowned on the practice. It has been seen as either a pretense to covera weak domestic position or a form of inviting U.S. meddling in Mexican affairs. Only a Mexican leader with widespread popular support and impeccable nationalist credentials could break this taboo.

This is perhaps the deeper meaning of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas’ visit last week to Washington, New York and Boston, despite its perils and potential pitfalls. Some sectors will denounce Cardenas--Televisa, the private television quasi-monopoly, has already done so--for “washing Mexico’s dirty linen” abroad. Others will feel that he’s going too far in trying to delegitimize the recently inaugurated Salinas administration. But through his agenda--meetings with newspaper editorial boards, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Bill Bradley, New York bankers, student groups at Georgetown and Columbia, as well as grass-roots and religious organizations--Cardenas is breaking new ground in Mexican politics. He is bringing the Mexican opposition--and, with it, traditional Mexican nationalism--out of the closet.

The purpose of his trip is twofold. He obviously hopes to dispel the fears and dissipate the image of a fire-breathing, rabble-rousing hard-left radical, as a number of Mexican and American sectors have cast him lately. This is particularly true with regard to the now-notorious full-page advertisements taken out in major American newspapers this fall, warning of an imminent communist takeover in Mexico, which Cardenas supposedly would lead.

The negative-image campaign has been directed at Cardenas ever since he began his quest for the Mexican presidency more than a year ago. Now its effects have, indirectly at least, come to play an important role in the support that President Carlos Salinas de Gortari enjoys in the United States. This has given new urgency to Cardenas’ attempt to overcome his image as a radical. It is clear to many people in Mexico that part of Salinas’ strategy for obtaining more U.S. funds is to frighten potential creditors--namely, the U.S. government--with a Cardenas scarecrow. While this is certainly not Salinas’ only card, the worse Cardenas looks as an alternative, the better the Salinas administration appears, whatever its intrinsic weaknesses or drawbacks. Simply by presenting himself and being seen for what he is--a mainstream Mexican politician, just more honest and straightforward than most--Cardenas should be able to improve his image in the United States considerably and, consequently, undermine Salinas’ subliminal claim that the choice is between him and chaos.

Beyond such tactical and preemptive considerations, it seems evident that Mexico’s most important opposition leader since the revolution is touring the United States for positive reasons, too. Cardenas realizes that his economic programs probably will not have a favorable hearing in the United States, even though they are far less populist, autarkic or statist than made out to be. Yet he clearly believes that his struggle for the democratization of Mexico might encounter a great deal of sympathy north of the border. There is a certain logic to this: While Realpolitik and cynicism may prevail at higher levels of the U.S. policy-making Establishment, traditional--if often naive--American idealism is a guarantee of a fair hearing and a degree of support for any foreign opposition leader fighting electoral fraud and corruption. The initial large, enthusiastic turnout for Cardenas on several East Coast campuses seems to confirm this analysis.

Of greater importance is the more subtle message that Cardenas is bringing to the United States, one that Americans may not easily understand at first. In a nutshell, his point is that most of Mexico’s problems, particularly those that affect the United States--drugs, corruption, immigration, political stability--can be solved or dealt with only by a government that is strong, honest and legitimate in Mexicans’ eyes. The point is not whether Mexico’s authorities come from the left or the right, or whether they favor market-oriented economic reform or more mainstream, development-oriented economic policies; it is something more intangible. The type of changes, the painful reforms and difficult decisions that must be made in Mexico in the next few years, and on which the country’s stability depends, can be carried out only by a government that truly enjoys broad popular support. Anything short of that will mean either paralysis or mayhem.

Cardenas’ stature as an opposition leader ensures that this not entirely pleasant message will be heard where it counts in the United States.