Campaigning for Change in Mexico

Jorge Castañeda's book Mañana Forever was reviewed in the New York Times.

Jorge G. Castañeda was long involved in efforts to end the 70-year dictatorial reign of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) over Mexico. In 1988, he supported the presidential ambitions of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, who probably won the election that was officially called for the PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Cárdenas decided to contest local races across Mexico, and in 1989 Castañeda traveled to the town of Tepoztlán as an election observer. As he recounts in “Mañana Forever?” it became obvious that the PRI was tampering with the ballots in this election as well, and Castañeda urged the local cardenistas to put up a fight.

They demurred, coming up with several implausible explanations for their passivity. Finally, one cardenista copped to the real reason: contesting the results would make the PRI hacks angry. Well, yes. That was “entirely the point,” Castañeda writes, “to stop the old ruling party gangsters from stealing another election, even if they were ultimately unhappy about it.”

Castañeda decamped to Mexico City the next day, frustrated by the cardenistas’ response, but he came to understand their position. The local PRI guys would have made their lives hell. And historically, rebels haven’t fared well in Mexico. Not far from Tepoztlán, Rubén Jaramillo had advocated on behalf of landless peasants in the 1960s and was murdered, along with his pregnant wife and three children. The martyred Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata had staged his uprising in Anenecuilco, just miles away. It’s not a legacy that encourages principled defiance over cutting a deal.

In Mañana Forever? Castañeda contends that the behavior of the cardenistas in Tepoztlán is reflected in broader Mexican culture. Mexicans don’t believe in the efficacy of collective action. They shy away from confrontation and are too accepting of a corrupt status quo. That mind-set may have made sense when the country was dominated by a dictatorship and a vast majority of citizens struggled merely to survive. But since 1994 Mexico has enjoyed a flawed but functioning democracy and a growing middle class. Its future holds promise. As Castañeda persuasively argues, however, in order to realize that future, Mexicans will need to leave their old ways behind.