Mexico: The Nation Under Dispute*
By Dr. Jaime Cardoso
Since the nineteen twenties, the Mexican State has imposed an economic, social and cultural project of the nation through the notion of Revolutionary Nationalism and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional-PRI). The goal was to eliminate by decree, racial differences, regional divergences, and gender distinctions to better control the population. The project worked for decades as the PRI held power for approximately seventy years. Mario Vargas Llosa, a recognized intellectual and writer, said that Mexico was the perfect dictatorship. The result of this iron political control was, among others things, a lack of democracy, government and police corruption, poverty, indigenous and peasant marginalization, manipulation of popular organizations (worker and peasant unions), and mass media control. The contemporary internal and external migration and criminality are just two more consequences of this economic and political situation.
However, people and independent organizations sought political options and cultural spaces to present their own national projects. Intellectuals, for example, used literature to launch their cultural codes of nationality. Literature is a symbolic zone relatively independent of social powers and the ups and downs of the economy. Consequently, it is a democratic space where writers and intellectuals are able to express their points of view, in this case, about the official project of nation and Mexican nationality.
The Twentieth Century presents remarkable moments in which the Mexican government and people disputed the national project of nation. Two of those crucial historical moments were the student movement in Mexico City of 1968 and the indigenous rebellion of 1994 in the state of Chiapas lead by the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN).
In the sixties, Mexican students and the government had confrontations in which hundreds of students died in Tlatelolco, a residential area near downtown Mexico City. Students from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Instituto Politéctico Nacional demanded rights such as democracy, the end of police corruption, and liberty for prisoners of conscience. On October second 1968, ten days before of the opening ceremony of the XIX Olympic in Mexico, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (the president at the time) suppressed the student rebellion through the use of the army and irregular armed groups (paramilitary). The president justified his decision by saying that student rebellions were threatening Revolutionary Nationalism and, consequently, national security. In addition, he argued that the government’s international image was deteriorating because of the student movement. He was concerned because the Olympics would start in a few days. The result of Gustavo Diaz Ordaz’s decision resulted in an undetermined number of individuals deaths.
The Mexican government received severe critiques from the international community, as well as internal intellectuals and non-governmental organizations. For example, Octavio Paz, the Mexican writer who later won the Nobel Prize in 1990, resigned as the Mexican ambassador of India in protest of the student murders.
This event triggered intellectuals to re-define Mexican nationality and in turn, create a new national project. After the massacre of students in 1968, intellectuals used literature to express their points of view regarding the social situation. They wrote innumerable essays, newspaper articles, novels, stories, and plays about the students’ movement. Intellectuals prepared linguistic codes to criticize or, in other instances, defend the aforementioned Revolutionary Nationalism. Despite social and popular forecasts of new a social order, the government simply implemented superficial changes. Thus, the Mexican burden to cope with corruption, financial crisis, migration, and other social problems continued.
Finally, in the nineties the government abandoned the concept of Revolutionary Nationalism and instead adopted a Neoliberalism ideology. In brief, Neoliberalism proclaims the end of public control of the economy in favor of a privatization, the creation of a more efficient government, and trade liberation. The Mexican government saw Revolutionary Nationalism as an obstacle for Neoliberalism and globalization.
The Carlos Salinas de Gortari government (1988-1994) promoted a new Mexican national project. Except for a few industries (like oil) Salinas privatized public industries such as the national telephone company, mass media, and roadways. He also made political reforms that broke with the ideology of the Revolutionary Nationalism and embraced Neoliberalism. For example, he redefined the relationship between the State and the Clergy. In the economic sector, the signing of international treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1992 signaled the arrival of new times. NAFTA came into effect on January 1st 1994. According to Salinas’ government, Neoliberalism (social liberalism in words of the president) would bring social welfare to the people of Mexico.
However, not everyone agreed with the President’s point of view and the day that NAFTA came into effect a rebellion started. The Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) declared war on the Mexican State in the southern part of Mexico in the state of Chiapas. Indigenous populations opposed the government’s global projects and criticized corruption, poverty, marginalization of Indian communities, and government economic programs which caused migration. They also defended cultural indigenous traditions. EZLN condemned Salinas’ version of Neoliberalism and Revolutionary Nationalism. Paradoxically, although both the government and EZLN looked for modernization and criticized Revolutionary Nationalism, they used different methods to reach their goals.
The first weeks of confrontation between the EZLN and the government were bloody. Tens of people died in San Cristobal de Las Casas and other towns of Chiapas. A few weeks later, the negotiations began and along with it a war of words. Various intellectuals defended government policies, some criticized it, and others took a neutral position. However, nobody was beyond the situation. Like in the sixties, literature was the space used for debate and the result was a vast production of essays, newspaper articles, novels, short stories, poems, and plays. The conflict had a profound impact on Mexican society. National and international non-profit organizations, governments and intellectuals demanded Salinas include indigenous projects in the development of economic, social and cultural national plans.
Almost fifteen years later the debate continues and literary criticism still analyzes the political situation in Mexico. The studies show, on the one hand, how the ideology of Revolutionary Nationalism enabled the government to maintain political, economic and cultural power and, on another hand, they illustrate the debate around diverging and mixed projects of the nation. In Mikhail Bakthin’s words, the literature refracts the social reality and its contradictions. Researchers are able to understand what takes place in a specific historical moment through analyzing the rhetoric of essays, novels, poems, and plays. They identify how literature captures the debate on the project of the nation and analyze documents such as presidential reports, newspaper essays, and articles. These types of papers reveal the rhetorical strategies of discourse or elocutio used by writers. Therefore, the analysis of the literature and the rhetoric discover the persuasive discourse of contenders, and also refract what is taking place in contemporary society.
The Mexican students in the sixties and the indigenous in the nineties challenged the Mexican State economic, social and cultural project of the nation. Finally, the government recognized regional divergences, gender distinctions, and ethnic differences. However, the struggle for democracy and against corruption, poverty, marginalization, mass media control, migration, and criminality continue to this day.
* From the author’s doctoral dissertation.
