There Is a High Cost for Answering to No One in Mexico

So far, more than 100,000 copies of Jorge Castaneda’s latest book, “La Herencia. Arqueologia de la sucesion presidencial en Mexico” (“The Legacy. An Archeology of the Presidential Succession in Mexico”), have been sold in Mexico--testimony, I think, to a deep-seated need among Mexicans to understand the inner workings of their government. Mexicans are desperate to know more about the struggles at the top of the political hierarchy. And not just gossip about who is up or who is down at any given point but a more fundamental need to understand how it is possible for one person--in this case whoever is president at the time--to have so much power that he can name his successor, negotiating from a privileged position with only a few major players, mostly big Mexican entrepreneurs and representatives of the United States. They are eager to discover how one man can make a decision that affects the lives of millions.

This is a profoundly anti-democratic political system overseen for decades by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), yet it has been praised in some circles for more than half a century as a blessing that brought stability and social peace to Mexico. In “La Herencia,” Castaneda demonstrates just how excessive the price of that stability has been.

The book is centered on four long interviews with Mexico’s most recent former presidents: Luis Echeverria Alvarez, Jose Lopez Portillo, Miguel de la Madrid and Carlos Salinas de Gortari. The focus of the interviews is how each chose his own successor. Accompanying the interviews are other versions of the same process told by other individuals who were involved in the choice, either as protagonists or privileged witnesses. The book ends with a critical analysis by the author.

At the end of the day, what emerges from the book is a portrait of the PRI--which under another name began its dominance of Mexico’s political scene in 1929--that is neither reassuring nor sanguine. The central theme of the book, in fact, is not that the PRI and its nominal leaders are far more astute and wise, or that the PRI’s process of presidential succession is full of tricks and pitfalls. The bottom line, for me, is the feeling, shared by many, that we are witnessing the death throes of an outmoded system. It is like the climactic scenes in the “Wizard of Oz” where the erstwhile wizard tries to maintain his thunderous voice even after his all-too-human identity has been revealed.

As the credibility of Mexico’s old political system collapses amid the expectations of a new generation of Mexicans, there is a vigorous search for viable alternatives. Yet what this book makes clear is that none of our living former presidents has a clue what an alternative might be. In fact, they seem almost annoyed to be queried about Mexico’s real problems, preferring instead to justify what they did while in office. Nothing else. They are not interested in debating ideas but only in protecting themselves from recriminations or in telling the world of their grandeur. There is no self-criticism because no one is accountable. Whatever faults may be attributed to their tenures in office are dismissed as either a plot hatched by political enemies or the result of circumstances beyond their control.

Consider for example that Echeverria, who as a powerful cabinet minister in 1968, had absolute control over national political intelligence. He claims in the book to bear no responsibility for the killings of student protesters that year in the infamous massacre of Tlatelolco. Another example: Carlos Salinas denies emphatically that the election of 1988 was marred with fraud. In both cases, there is ample evidence to the contrary, yet both men simply refuse even to consider the possibility that their version of events is untrue or even incomplete. These former presidents show no respect for the facts simply because former Mexican presidents speak ex-cathedra. They see themselves as incapable of lying because they truly believe that the political system that created them defines what is the truth. And the truth is what they say it is--just as when they were in power.

What is most significant about “La Herencia” is how anachronistic are the lessons spelled in the book. The former presidents visit the confessional too late--their testimony is more an affront than a revelation. Their heritage is like a mausoleum or, better still, it is like a luxurious common tomb to their aspirations for historical vindication.

As it stands today, the traditional Mexican presidentialism, the ideology and practice that sustain the omnipotence of a person for a six-year period, is in shambles. That is why the intrigues and fatuousness of the party hierarchies laid out in the book now seem old and passe. And all those skillful strategies developed to win the presidency end up leading to banality as each new administration travels carelessly through costly mistakes and pervasive corruption. Even their occasional successes reflect the system’s endemic weakness when dealing with global financial centers. The more energetically they act, as happened with the Salinas administration regarding the economy, the harder they fall.

Of course, all four presidents imply, things could have been worse. Worse for whom? For those who under the bitterest circumstances had to emigrate to the United States? Or for the several millions of Mexicans who remain unemployed at home? For those who are forced to live in poverty? For the pensioners who have to get by with worse-than-miserable wages? For those who died of illnesses that are not necessarily lethal? For those who are the victims of the extreme irresponsibility of the government?

Maybe it could have been worse for them, and for all of us. But a careful reading of “La Herencia” leaves me convinced that our politicians have led Mexico to the brink of disaster. In this book, a bunch of “enlightened” professionals remember how they (mis)handled a country exactly the way they wanted. Lacking a viable vision for the nation, they managed to squander the country’s wealth by creating the equivalent of a monarchic court to preside over their pathetic ambitions. “Boy, was I good,” they all conclude, “and if I were still in power I would do the same thing.”

The PRI may very well win the next presidential election in 2000, as some analysts are predicting. But the public faith that created the party so very long ago is definitely dead. “La Herencia” is its epitaph.