Survival Strategies Among the Mexican Rural Elite

This article focuses on a sector of society that has received comparatively little attention in the recent historiography of post‐revolutionary Mexican rural society: the local elite. Using the district of Zacapoaxtla in the Sierra Norte de Puebla as a case study, it explores the ways in which external agents of change challenged pre‐existing relationships between communities, classes, and ethnic groups. It shows how, in trying to retain their positions of local dominance, the elite displayed remarkable degrees of pragmatism and willingness to compromise on long‐standing prejudices. Above all, the article offers a detailed example of how political patronage at national and regional levels enabled local factions to overcome formidable opposition.     

Some Considerations Regarding the Persistence of the Economic Elite in Mexico in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

This article presents an analysis of some of the most important works on the persistence of the economic elite in Mexico during the first half of the twentieth century. The study seeks to answer the following question: How did the formation and character of the Mexican economic elites change during this period? It examines the effect of events such as the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) and the agrarian reform programmes, as well as political instability and institutional uncertainty, on the persistence or weakening of the landowning and industrial elite who had consolidated their power during the Porfiriato period (1876–1911).     

The Literary Journalism of Guadalupe Loaeza and Cristina Pacheco

Abstract — This article examines the writings of the Mexican literary journalists, Guadalupe Loaeza and Cristina Pacheco. It traces the political agendas of the writers through an analysis of their work in two collected volumes, Las niñas bien (Loaeza) and Sopita de fideo (Pacheco). The paper argues that while each author focuses on opposite ends of the social scale, each piece of writing contains an implicit or explicit attack on the Mexican ruling classes which mismanage the economy, squander its wealth and condemn the majority to economic misery.     

Planteamiento teórico y evidencia del desplazamiento gradual del Estado autoritario al Estado pragmático en México: la transformación de las élites

Analyses of political change in Mexico since the government shift achieved in July 2000 have been undertaken with a focus on the democratic political transition that led to the so-called alternation, that is, from the stance of a classical approach about State transformations that led from an authoritarian stage to democratization. Analytical approaches in Mexico concerning political change are focused on the undeniable democratic practice at the ballot boxes; however, the outcomes' transparency, the adoption of a new regime, and the procedural condition of the young Mexican democracy make it appropriate to consider this shift from the realist view of the exercise of power and major mechanisms for the establishment of élites' political-governmental decisions. Thus, pragmatism is put forward as an alternative political approach. This article intends to establish that political change in Mexico has gradually changed from its past condition as an authoritarian State to become a pragmatic State, favored by the advent of governmental technocracy, globalization, the market, the us hegemonic ideology, and the obvious involvement of corporate elites contained in State power institutions.     

Blessed be Discord, 1910: Ricardo Flores Magón's Manifesto Mode

This article explores how Ricardo Flores Magón used images to transpose the graphic tradition of nineteenth-century Mexican political journalism into prose by deploying montage to craft both allegorical and prismatic images: while certain images are divorced from their original context and take on a new life, others, analogically related to a single idea, appear prismatically in fragments on the page. The affinities Flores Magón's writing shared with modernismo and the historical avant garde – as intensification of the former and precursor of the latter – have been a blind spot for literary history, to which this article attempts to restore the importance of his writing.     

Tlatelolco's Persistent Legacy: A Comparative Analysis of Three Mexican Novels

This article analyses how three Mexican novels, published between 1971 and 1999, respond to the effects of political violence on national identity. It focuses particularly on fictional representations of state-sponsored, politically motivated murder and on how survivors negotiate a social space forever changed by unsolved crimes. The article concludes that an important consequence of political violence is that it undermines the validity of systems of representation that once seemed capable of portraying the national community. Each of the three novels interpreted here adopts a different stance regarding literary language's relationship to its ever-changing sociopolitical contexts.     

Twenty‐First Century Socialism? The Elusive Search for a Post‐Neoliberal Development Model in Bolivia and Ecuador

The recent political, economic and social histories of Bolivia and Ecuador point to a broader, post‐neoliberal trend emerging in Latin America. Presidents Evo Morales and Rafael Correa have closely followed the basic model of twenty‐first‐century socialism as an alternative to free market capitalism. In theory, both leaders have successfully re‐founded their countries with new constitutions that encompass the interests of all sectors of society. In practice, however, we argue that a volatile economic climate, poorly implemented reforms, increased opposition, and low political tolerance all indicate limitations to the viability of twenty‐first‐century socialism as a post‐neoliberal development model.     

Post‐conventional Political Cultures via Processes of Direct Democracy: Theoretical Considerations Based on Jürgen Habermas and Lawrence Kohlberg

In this article, it is proposed to differentiate political cultures in two dimensions. First, inspired by Habermas' distinction of the contents of discourse, a distinction is suggested between moral, ethical‐political and pragmatic elements of political culture as well as of an element of culture of balancing interests. Second, inspired by Kohlberg's stage models for the development of the individual moral consciousness and for moral culture, a distinction is similarly suggested between two pre‐conventional, two conventional and two post‐conventional collective stages of political culture. It can be shown that from a normative point of view, only deliberations made in a post‐conventional political culture can produce reasonable or at least fair results. Conceptual considerations indicate processes of direct democracy as the method for promoting post‐conventional political cultures. The more liberty that the citizens have to formulate and trigger processes of direct democracy, the more one can expect from them to generate post‐conventional political cultures.     

Yucatecan–Mexican Relations at the Time of Independence: The Yucatecan Pronunciamiento of 1821

This article will explore local Yucatecan politicking and the Yucatecan–Mexican relationship at the time of independence, using Yucatán's pronunciamiento for independence in September 1821 as a case study. This examination will highlight the fact that, while local ambitions played a significant role in Yucatán's bid for independence, this did not necessarily detract from Yucatecans' attempts to not only engage with national political movements, but also to unite with Mexico. This in turn will take further historians' recent attempts to revise the traditional perception of Yucatán as one of the more pro‐autonomous and isolated states of early nineteenth‐century Mexico.     

Ausmaß, Strukturen und Implikationen präsidialer Macht im postkommunistischen Raum

This research note builds on recent results of the literature on presidentialism to develop a new measure of presidential power. The Index of Presidential Power (IPP) differentiates three dimensions: legitimacy, legislative and non‐legislative powers. The IPP can be used for all types of governmental systems in different political regimes. For the first time the IPP estimates presidential power granted by the constitution in all 28 post‐communist countries. This information is collected in the IPP data set, which is used to carry out analyses at the aggregate level as well as at the level of the individual presidential power dimensions. Results show that the semi‐presidential category is of little use. The comparison of the IPP with alternative indices of presidential power in post‐communist countries indicates that political analysis should give more attention to presidential power structures.     

Loyalty and Disloyalty in the Mexican Party System

Why do politicians in Mexico switch parties? The party‐switching literature suggests that politicians generally switch parties for office‐seeking or policy‐seeking motives, whereas literature on the Mexican party system suggests that switching may be related to party system realignment during the democratic transition. Using data on party switching across the political careers of politicians who served as federal deputies between 1997 and 2009, this study argues that party switching in Mexico can primarily be explained by the office‐seeking behavior of ambitious politicians. Only in rare instances do politicians switch parties because of policy disagreements, and party system realignment fails to explain a large number of party switches. This article also suggests that the ban on consecutive re‐election encourages party switching; after every term in office, Mexican politicians have the opportunity to re‐evaluate their party affiliation to continue their careers.     

The Student Movement of 1968 and the Mexican Press: The Cases of Excélsior and Siempre!

The Student Movement of 1968 was a watershed in Mexican political history. This article explores how it was reported in the daily newspaper Excélsior and the weekly magazine Siempre! from August to October 1968. It analyses the work of specific journalists to reveal the extent to which criticism of the government was voiced in a climate of apprehension and oppression. In doing so the important role played by Carlos Monsiváis in promoting and sustaining the students' cause, and the commitment to impartial news coverage of editors Julio Scherer García and José Pagés Llergo, become evident.     

Banking on Folk Art: Banamex‐Citigroup and Transnational Cultural Citizenship

This article offers two readings of The Great Masters of Mexican Folk Art, a travelling exhibition of the Fomento Cultural Banamex, AC's folk art collection that coincided with Citigroup's buyout of Banamex, Mexico's second largest bank. The first, a political economic critique, situates the exhibition within the neoliberal economic reform of the Mexican banking system and the designs of US‐based transnational banks on migrant remittances. The second, a material culture approach, focuses on the exhibitionary strategies employed to incentivise folk art consumption as a mode of cosmopolitan citizenship.     

Identity creation and the culture of contrition: Recasting ‘normality’ in the Berlin Republic

This paper considers transformations in the concept of national identity post‐unification. In particular, it is interested in examining the changed status of the NS past in contemporary formulations of national identity. Whilst during the Historikerstreit conservative thinkers predicated the plea for conventional patriotism upon a ‘normalisation’ or ‘reladvisation’ of the NS past, left‐liberal discourse based the case for a post‐national Verfassungspatriotismus upon the critical engagement with the NS period. The collapse of the Cold War political framework has profoundly altered the polarised discourse over the German past and during the 1990s the critical consciousness of National Socialism became a central tenet of contemporary formulations of national identity. The paper attempts to place the contemporary discourse on national identity within a broader historical context and to consider reasons for recent transformations in perceptions of the German national past.     

Another Textual Frontier: Contemporary Fiction on the Northern Mexican Border

This article approaches fiction writing from the northern Mexican frontier from the perspective of the border. It perceives the border between Mexico and the United States as a multispace that permeates fictional texts from the area. In clear contrast with most Chicano and Border Studies perspectives, the border is viewed here as a physical rather that metaphorical space whose dynamics formulates textual discourses and aesthetics. The fiction works of Luis Humberto Crosthwaite and Jesús Gardea are analysed from this perspective.     

A Tale of Two Families: The Mutual Construction of 'Anglo' and Mexican Ethnicities Along the US–Mexico Border

In the American Southwest and along the US–Mexico border, 'Anglos' and Mexicans are often viewed as the quintessential 'others'. This ethnographic study problematises the Anglo‐Mexican opposition with ethnographic data from interviews with a Mexican farmworker family and an 'Anglo' farmer family of the EI Paso Lower Valley. I argue that 'Anglo' hegemony is not based exclusively on cultural separation but often involves hybridity (including 'Mexicanisation') and patron‐client relations entailing 'benevolent' paternalism. I show how the concept of 'Anglo' is a contested identity constructed through interactions between Mexicans and Euroamericans. Through this study of border crossings in situations of asymmetrical power relations, I advocate a 'complicit' anthropology that presents competing ethnic groups in their full complexity rather than as stereotypes or caricatures of their 'others.'     

Judicial Performance and the Rule of Law in the Mexican States

What determines how judicial institutions perform? Prominent theoretical approaches, such as international political economy, institutional rational choice, social capital, and structural theories, suggest that international economic actors, political competition, political participation, and poverty may all be important forces driving institutional behavior. This study analyzes these various theoretical approaches and uses qualitative and statistical analysis to compare judicial performance in the Mexican states. It provides evidence to support the institutional rational choice hypothesis that political competition generates judicial independence. Poverty, political participation, and an export‐oriented economy seem to influence judicial access and effectiveness.     

Migration and Distributive Politics: The Political Economy of Mexico's 3 × 1 Program

Mexico's 3 × 1 Program for Migrants is a matching grant scheme that seeks to direct the money sent by migrant organizations abroad to the provision of public and social infrastructure and to productive projects in migrants’ communities of origin. To this end, the municipal, state, and federal administrations match the amount sent by hometown associations by 3 to 1. This article explores the impact on the operation of the 3 × 1 of a particular facet of Mexican political life: its recent democratization and the increasing political fragmentation at the municipal level. The study finds a lower provision of public projects in jurisdictions where a high number of political parties compete. This finding casts doubt on the claim that policy interventions such as the 3 × 1 Program actually improve local public goods provision at the local level under increasing political competition.     

Back to Basics Mexican Style: Radical Catholicism and Survival on the Margins1

Abstract— The significance of radical Catholic movements among the urban poor in Latin American cities has been the subject of much debate over recent years, though Mexican cases have received less attention. This paper argues that their practical, material objectives cannot be understood in isolation from the holistic religious and moral community in which participants project for themselves. It is also argued that the social justice sought within the base communities is as much a product of a long, if varied, radical, Christian tradition as it is of the particular circumstances of political and economic marginalisation in contemporary Mexican cities.     

Is Narco‐Violence in Mexico Terrorism?

Mexico's drug ‘war’ produced 100,000 deaths between 2006 and 2012. The extreme violence has raised the notion that Mexico has become a failed state wracked by terrorism. We categorise the forms of narco‐violence in Mexico in light of the literature on terrorism and contemporary Mexican politics. Our study suggests three overlapping dimensions of narco‐violence that should be considered terrorism: (a) narco‐terror as a struggle for regional political control; (b) narco‐terror as a practice ordered by cartel leaders rather than spontaneous violence of foot soldiers; and (c) narco‐terror as an expansion strategy from solely drug trafficking to other kinds of organised crime.