Mexico in Transition

Fall 2001

Mexico in a Nutshell


Carlos Monsiváis

What is Mexico? To avoid regurgitating a page from the dictionary or digging myself into a chavinistic hole, I'll offer some impressions: Mexico is, among other things:a

  • a bundle of co-existing forces and limitations unified by a common social, economic, political, and cultural landscape
  • a Republic governed for 71 years by the same political party, which maintained its authoritarianism through its achievements and, for decades, its manifest collapse
  • the semi-dictatorship of corruption (still partially existent)
  • extreme inequality aggravated by demographic fertility
  • customary solidarity among the popular classes?diminished but alive
  • the plunder that ignores future generations, specializing in ecocide (felling forests and wasting water)
  • maximum privatized growth due to neoliberalism
  • the incapacity of the state and social system to retain the millions emigrating in search of the essential utopia: a job to guarantee opportunities for the family
  • popular religiosity: comfort amidst anguish and sacrifices and intolerant practices from a moving aesthetic revolving around an ethnic virgin
  • a history of ritual slaughter and crushing opposition, mixed with slow but sustained advances in democratic sentiment
  • a joyous but ailing popular culture that reached its peak in the early 20th century, with roots in the indigenous population and undergoing mestizo fermentation
  • a century of Americanization obligating imitation, suppressing imagination, increasing tolerance, and taking classes in the contemporary world through vigilant observation of lo gringo
  • the defenselessness of those on the bottom in the face of the impunity of those on the top, and the lack of understanding of those on the top about the precariousness of life of those on the bottom
  • forced learning of individualism to compensate for the failure of communitarian impulses; the memory of communitarian sentiment before the disasters of individualism
  • the Insitutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which governed the country, created the rules for co-existence, permitted advances and the creation of infrastructure, and, when it collapsed (July 2, 2000), had lost effectiveness, convening power, and understanding of national dynamics and historic memory
  • the National Action Party (PAN), a synthesis of the Mexican right with its intolerance for the "eccentric" and the rights of women and gays, glued to conservative tradition and modernization through neoliberalism at its most savage the left, represented in part by the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and by disjointed groups of non-governmental organizations and civil society coalitions. Excelling at internal bickering and facile criticism, the left readily stimulates mass movements, then disintegrates them with arguments and leadership feuds
  • the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), which erupted onto the scene in January, 1994, and has maintained a notable presence since then, vacillating between high popularity and near invisibility. Among other things, Mexico owes the EZLN and its leader, Subcommandante Marcos, its recognition of indigenous people and the ensuing understanding of the depth of national racism
  • the great and frequent achievements of all aspects of national culture
  • July 2, 2000, the day the PRI's hegemony ended when, in casting their votes, the Mexican people not only elected Vicente Fox, but overwhelmingly elected themselves


In 2001, Mexico as it is known and memorized and studied and mythologized is entirely distinct from the country still evoked in novels, political speeches, popular beliefs, soap operas, and films. It is a Mexico whose incessant changes are linked nervously and energetically to the economy and industrial culture of North America?simultaneously modern in its ambitions and the rhythms of its transformations and premodern in the equitable distribution of contemporary visions of the world. Traditionalism, for so long the axis of social life, wins the battle with its veneer of respectability but loses the fight for the definition of modernity. The question is fundamental. Why and how are traditions globalized and who globalizes the past?

The fashion/mandate/urgency of globalization modifies the national perspective. The barriers of localism have been broken?as confirmed by the neoliberal discourse?and Mexico is already moving ahead at planetary speed. We leave behind forever the ranch, the neighborhood, complacency, timidity. And, continue the neoliberals, we stand at the cusp of Year Zero of our era. But you can?t go home again and we must continue this voyage into the unknown known?while the situation remains unresolved?as modernity in the North American sense of the word, that triumphalist excuse, crushing then resuscitating. It is not Year Zero. Although not totally satisfying, Mexico has several comparative advantages:

  • the Spanish language, learned at its moment of intense strength
  • the extraordinary Hispanic culture
  • the development of Latin American culture
  • western culture, in its initial version reverential and now constituted by different fusions
  • knowledge, begun in the mid-19th century, of resources and metropolitan wiles, assimilated from the periphery
  • the decision to continue to be a nation.

Carlos Monsiváis is a Mexican writer, cultural historian, and journalist. His latest book is Aires de Familia: Cultura y Sociedad en América Latina.
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