Mexico

THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL development of Mexico, more than any other Latin American nation, has been shaped by the political left. The rise of the left, both radical and moderate, signaled the beginnings of a challenge to the hegemonic policies of a national elite in alliance with foreign capitalists. In the past 20 years, the left has challenged the legitimacy of the Mexican political system.

In seeking to explain the rise of the left in Mexico, the left's origins need to be carefully scrutinized and analyzed. In the early 20th century, Mexico underwent a social and political revolution. The goal of the revolution was to transform the exploitative social and political system, a system which had for centuries repressed the political demands of an urban proletariat and agricultural peasantry. Led by the middle class, the revolutionaries toppled the regime of Porfirio Diaz. Over the next seven years, the revolution would undergo phases.

In 1917, the different economic and political groups decided to write one of the most liberal and nationalistic constitutions in Latin America. Over the next 10 years, the left within the revolution assumed predominant power so that by the late 1920s, the political left, led by Alvaro Obregon, controlled the political and social system.

In 1934, one of the most leftist of the revolutionary leaders, Lazaro Cardenas, was selected to the presidency. Cardenas's policies, which have not been duplicated since, bordered for many on the political right as communistic. He nationalized a number of the most important economic sectors, including the petroleum industry. He nationalized the industry after a prolonged work stoppage by the oil workers' union against the exploitative [Page 308]practices in the oil field by Standard Oil. As a result, Cardenas was able to integrate the working-class unions and agricultural sectors into the main political party, the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI). The PRI ruled Mexico over the next 70 years, through World War II, the Cold War, and the post-Cold War period. The left had achieved, with its nationalism, hegemony within the political and economic sphere.

By 1988, the PRI had become an institution within the Mexican political system, essentially establishing a one-party state. The left within Mexico decided to act in a radical fashion. In 1988, the nation was slated for presidential elections. A former PRI senator and governor from the state of Michoacan, Cuauhtémoc Cardenas, decided to run for the presidency representing the leftist sectors of the political system who were vehement critics of the one-party rule of the PRI.

Organized as the FDN (National Democratic Front), Cardenas campaigned for the presidency against the PRI candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari. In the election results, Gortari claimed victory and was awarded the presidency. Cardenas and the left were astounded by the seeming corruption that the Gortaris victory symbolized. Essentially, Cardenas believed that the election had been stolen from him by the PRI. On May 5, 1989, spurred by his “loss,” Cardenas and a host of left-ofcenter factions formed the Democratic National Party (PDN) to offer candidates at the national, state, and local positions.

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