From the book: The Politics of Economic Restructuring.
Edited by Maria Lorena Cook, Kevin J. Middlebrook, Juan Molinar
Horcasitas
Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies
University of California, San Diego
1994
ISBN1-878367-18-8
The art and Implications of Political Restructuring in Mexico: the case of urban popular movements.
BY Paul Lawrence Haber
Economic restructuring in Mexico has compelled important changes in relationships among the state, political parties, and collective actors in civil society. The so-called popular sectors in Mexico-the urban poor, the peasantry' and the organized working class-are all incorporated through corporatist institutions. While de la Madrid administration (1982-1988) was careful to guard against labor militancy that could have impinged upon the ability to implement far-reaching reforms, other sectors were not so carefully managed. Popular sectors increased their activities outside official corporatist channels in ways that weakened the regime's capacity to ensure that political activity remained supportive of the regime. This chapter begins by analyzing how social movements were able to form among the least incorporated of these sectors-the urban poor-and the extent to which these movements were able to influence political outcomes as relatively autonomous actors during the de la Madrid administration. The chapter then turns to its primary focus, analyzing how the administration of Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) exercised the art of political restructuring so as to decrease the power of the tentative alliances that formed between social movements representative of the urban poor and the nationalist populist electoral effort headed by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas.
The 1988 election results demonstrated the costs of assuming that existing corporatist mechanisms were adequate for incorporating the expanded range of social actors that had either emerged or significantly augmented their memberships and political resources during the 1980s. The pace of neoliberal restructuring achieved during the first half of the Salinas administration would have been impossible without damage control to reinforce the Mexican presidency, an office whose image had been badly tarnished during the López Portillo (1976-1982) and de la Madrid administrations. Once in office, Salinas lost no time in establishing himself as an activist president willing and able to take bold actions. Motivated by a perceived need to establish a popular image and to underscore his demand for loyalty from elites willing and able to further his modernization scheme, he moved against unpopular business leaders and corporatist kingpins. Salinas showed no hesitancy in removing from office, by whatever means necessary, political elites who questioned his authority and direction or who were unable to contribute to a "new PRI."
Because it took office in the midst of political crisis, the Salinas administration-in sharp contrast to its predecessor-recognized the fundamental need to rebuild political relationships with the urban poor and with urban popular movements. Salinas worked diligently and effectively to establish a host of new relationships outside traditional corporatist mechanisms. These created new sources of regime support (or at least minimized antagonisms) while simultaneously undermining the coalition strength exercised by the National Democratic Front (FDN) during 1987 and 1988. Salinas's enthusiasm for establishing new relationships with popular movements helped ensure that the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) would be unable to maintain the broad-based support Cárdenas elicited from civil society in 1988. It is important to remember that Cardenas's main support in the 1988 presidential election was urban. It was no surprise, then, when Salinas directed substantial efforts to disrupt the kind of popular movement and FDN alliance that had encouraged high levels of voter turnout in favor of opposition candidates.
The Salinas reforms affected many actors, representing the full range of Mexico's class diversity: peasants, the nonunionized urban poor, unionized workers, middle sectors, and owners of domestic and foreign capital. This chapter highlights the new relationships formed between Salinas and urban popular movements within the general context of concertación social (which the regime claimed decreases authoritarianism in favor of "partnership") and through the policy mechanism of the National Solidarity Program (PRONASOL), the Salinas administration's high-profile antipoverty program. This chapter presents information in support of the contention that concertación allowed Salinas to quicken the pace of neoliberal restructuring while creating serious divisions among popular movements and between popular movements and the PRD.
URBAN POPULAR MOVEMENTS, POLITICAL PARKS, AND THE DE
LA MADRID ADMINISTRATION
Mexico is still paying for the fiscal excesses of President López Portillo. He began 1981 with high expectations of establishing his place in Mexican history through a spending frenzy of long-term capital projects, one of the hallmarks of his administration. When revenues did not meet the administration's unrealistic expectations, deficit spending was financed with short-term leans. Mexico's balance-of-payments deficit grew from U.S.$6.7 billion in 1980 to U.S.$11.7 billion in 1981, a historical record (Banco de México 1982). By the end of 1982, the fiscal deficit was 17.6 percent of gross national product (GNP), a Mexican record; total foreign debt was U.S.$85 billion (89.9 percent of GNP); and interest payments alone absorbed 43.6 percent of the total value of exports (Heredia 1989: 9).
This left de la Madrid with the excruciating task of economic crisis management. Austerity measures and unpopular and divisive economic reforms encouraged popular participation in instances of collective dissent that mobilized millions of individuals, including large sectors of the middle class and the urban poor-along with smaller but still important sub sectors of organized workers and the peasantry-that had previously been unwilling to participate as active members or supporters of the opposition. Popular organizations prospered on the local level, and national organizations capable of challenging political norms and procedures, as well as election and policy outcomes, were formed.
Mexico's extremely rapid transition from a rural- to an urban-based society is the key structural transition that made possible the scale of urban popular movement emergence in Mexico during the 1980s. Massive rates of rural-to-urban migration since the 1950s have transformed the urban poor into the single largest population group in Mexico today. Rapid demographic changes created a massive pool of potential recruits for urban popular movements during the de la Madrid administration when cuts in state services combined with slow growth and inflation to undermine the urban poor´s standard of living. Housing shortages began to emerge as a political liability for the regime in the 1970s. When continued high rates of rural-to-urban migration combined with economic crisis in the 1980s, the housing shortage became acute.
The emergence of urban popular movements that focused on this housing shortage and demanded government attention to it transformed housing issues into a serious political problem for the regime, particularly in Mexico City in the wake of the 1985 earthquakes. Self-help housing is certainly nothing new in Mexico. As is the case throughout Latin America, it is the most common form of construction. Beginning in the 1970s, however, and accelerating markedly during the 1980s, urban popular movements with radical political agendas directly opposed to the state assisted individuals who had previously acted alone or through links to PRI or state officials.
The popular-movement sector is highly dependent upon its ability to furnish housing to the urban poor, oftentimes acting as effective representatives in negotiation with the state and, to a much lesser extent, domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and international agencies. During the course of the de la Madrid administration, urban popular movements were responsible for turning attention to a "politics of consumption" that, at the very least, altered the left's traditional preoccupation with the "politics of production". They demonstrated a remarkable ability to assist both renters and shantytown dwellers with housing issues. Success in this area was at the core of the movements' ability to garner political support and to transfer this political support to Cárdenas in 1988.
The rising tide of urban popular movements lobbying federal agencies on issues related to housing and other basic necessities-such as potable water, sanitation, electricity, roads, rent control, health, and education-during the 1982-1988 period further eroded the adequacy of existing corporatist arrangements formally charged with channeling the demands of the urban poor. The National Confederation of Popular Organizations (CNOP), the principal corporatist mechanism for controlling and channeling the demands of the urban poor, was clearly not up to the task during the 1982-1988 period. The de la Madrid administration did little to help shore up the CNOP's capacity to meet the twin challenges of increased migration flows into the cities and severe cuts in federal spending. Urban popular movements prospered during this period in large part because they proved able to fill the vacuum left by inadequate corporatist bodies.
De la Madrid failed to initiate significant reforms in traditional corporatist arrangements, and he provided few auxiliary mechanisms to reinforce decaying and increasingly ineffective organizations. As a result, the regime lost legitimacy and support to urban popular movements that galvanized large numbers of the urban poor against the regime. In the Mexican political system, if corporatist relations prove inadequate and are replaced by opposition movements, then the inclusionary nature of Mexico's authoritarian regime is jeopardized. There are only three viable options: (1) the inclusionary system can be reformed by strengthening traditional institutions and creating new means for incorporating important social actors; (2) the regime can harden and be transformed into the kind of exclusionary regime that terrorized the Southern Cone dazing the 1960s and 1970s; or (3) the regime can democratize. The de la Madrid administration identified a fourth, nonviable option (that is, nonviable over the long term): ignoring political liabilities while concentrating on macroeconomic crisis management. The danger of this course of action was most visible in the electoral results of 1988, in which the Institutional Revolutionary Party's (PRI) presidential candidate did exceedingly poorly, particularly in urban areas.
De la Madrid came into office in 1982 seemingly unaware of, or uninterested in, the fact that urban popular movements had experienced rapid growth and organizational development between 1979 and 1982. Particularly relevant was the increasing severity of the housing crisis and the inability of PRIísta organizations and leaders to address the problem adequately. Shortages of housing available to low-income populations were the key appeal of urban movements, which demonstrated to the urban poor an ability to gain access to housing, an ability often outstripping the capacities of local PRI leaders.
De la Madrid increased spending for federal housing programs, particularly in response to the 1985 earthquakes. Unfortunately for the party/state, there was no parallel effort to incorporate the urban poor into these federal programs in ways that significantly improved the government's, let alone the PRl's, popularity. That is, new funding was made available for housing, but the regime did not create mechanisms to implement effectively the new housing programs, nor was it able to create a public relations victory. Moving to fill this vacuum, the urban popular movements established new cooperative forms, such as the National Coordinating Committee of the Urban Popular Movement (CONAMUP) and the Coordinating Committee for Earthquake Victims (CUD). These actions, along with increased levels of state repression, stimulated the formation of sectoral alliances and new horizontal relations among popular movements, thereby initiating forms of political action antithetical to state corporatism.
The 1979-1984 period was widely known as the "golden age" of the coordinadoras, those sectoral coordinating bodies made up of individual popular movement organizations. The three most important were a peasant-based movement, the National "Plan de Ayala" Coordinating Commitee (CNPA); a movement for union democracy within the larger PRI-affiliated teachers' union, the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers (CNTE); and the National Coordinating Committee of the Urban Popular Movement (CONAMUP). The coordinadoras, and popular movements in general, challenged the de la Madrid administration on the grounds of being antinationalist. The president's refusal to incorporate these radical movements, thereby reducing their organizational power, further eroded his nationalist credentials as popular movements enlarged their membership and expanded their influence on public opinion.
Popular movements also enlarged their scope of activities during the early 1980s through the formation of three multisectoral fronts, two national strikes in October 1983 and June 1984, and what have been referred to as "pre-party formations", known in Mexico as political currents. The most important new current to form during the early 1980s was the Maoist organization known as the Revolutionary Left Organization-Mass Line (OIR-LM). The importance during the early 1980s of the OIR-LM-along with other political currents such as the Revolutionary National Civic Association (ACNR) and the Socialist Current (CS)- derived precisely from a long history of deep antagonism and distrust between political parties and popular movements. The absence of strong working relationships between movements and parties had hindered the ability of leftist parties to make stronger electoral showings. Those political currents provided important opportunities for individual popular movements to rethink their electoral strategies. Whereas in the 1970s most popular movements maintained an antielectoral strategy, over the course of the de la Madrid administration most came to favor active involvement in elections. The electoral reforms of the late 1970s provided the initial impetus. The electoral opportunities generated by de la Madrid's policies and his lack of attention to party reforms encouraged many popular movements to initiate their electoral participation prior to the emergence of Cárdenas as an independent political force.
How are we to explain this relative lack of attention to the widening gap between the regime's incorporative capabilities and popular sectors, the most significant being the urban poor? De la Madrid was necessarily focused on the macroeconomic dimensions of the economic crisis he inherited from his mentor, José López Portillo. While the president had to have, at a minimum, strained support from most of organized labor, this did not extend to the urban poor. The fact that influential members of his administration did not perceive or alert the president more effectively to the growing opposition emerging outside existing channels is in part explained by the simple fact that no multiclass coalition of forces had proved even remotely capable of challenging the regime on the national level since at least 1940. The most serious threats between 1940 and the 1980s had been largely sectoral in nature, the most important being the 1968 student movement. The system of alliances developing among independent labor and peasant sectors, urban popular movements, and from within the middle classes in support of a renegade political leader capable of coalescing those forces into a multi-class electoral force was a political development without precedent.
If the element of surprise in part explains de la Madrid's inattention to the deterioration of state power, the composition of his top aides reinforced the administration's inability to accurately perceive the growing trouble in civil and political society. Both the López Portillo and de la Madrid administrations were narrow; they were dominated by younger technocrats with weak links to the PRI and the provinces. This undermined the multiclass nature of the Mexican elite structure, previously characterized by broad regional representation by seasoned politicians who had risen through the party structure. The tendency for técnicos to dominate all aspects of federal decision making in Mexico reached its pinnacle under de la Madrid, to the extent that only one appointee in his initial cabinet had any prior electoral experience (Camp 1985). "The most remarkable feature of the new cabinet was the virtual monopolization of the financial specialists over the whole executive branch. Almost half of the new ministers came from the Ministry of Budget and Planning . . . and the rest came mostly from the Finance Ministry or from the Central Bank" (Heredia 1989:11). The configuration of de la Madrid's inner circle in part explains the administration's concern with fiscal restructuring, inflation control, and the dismantling of the import-substitution industrialization (ISI) model, without parallel concern for the political fallout that resulted from the implied end of the traditional "social pact". Indeed, de la Madrid's policies signaled the end of a social pact that had acted as the foundation of the Mexican political economy for decades, with high degrees of elite cohesion and popular support.
The exclusion of politicos with regional ties and extensive networks of political loyalty known as camarillas not anly translated into a shortsightedness regarding the implications of economic restructuring without political reforms, but it also encouraged políticos to support Cárdenas when he formed the Democratic Current (CD) in 1986. The austerity measures implemented by de la Madrid as part of the restructuring process weakened the corporatist system because it became less capable of maintaining patron client relations through the provision of material rewards in exchange for political loyalty. This gave a significant advantage to popular movements, which found themselves in a much better position to compete with the PRI in the pursuit of state concessions and in opposition to the president, the PRI, and the regime in general. Popular movements competed with the PRl's corporatist sectors by mobilizing and organizing peasants and members of the nonunionized urban poor and by effectively presenting to the state their demands for material benefits. The PRl's National Peasants' Confederation (CNC) and the National Confederation of Popular Organizations (CNOP) found themselves competing against popular movements that were not only able to deliver services (oftentimes more effectively than these "official" organizations) but were also able to enlist enthusiastic rank-and-file support.
URBAN POPULAR MOVEMENTS, POLITICAL PARTIES, AND THE
SALINAS ADMINISTRATION
The costs of implementing economic reforms and austerity measures without paying equal attention to the need to reinforce, and in same cases rebuild, the system of state alliances became increasingly apparent in the summer of 1988 as the 1980s politics of opposition reached its zenith. Although there had been no shortage of elites and political observers warning the president and his closest associates that the form and content of the administration were undermining the regime's stability, these voices had gone largely unnoticed (or at least unheeded) by the commanding technocrats. This situation could not continue into the next administration without putting the entire regime in jeopardy, and it did not.
Even before the election results were in, Salinas was rebuilding the alliance system and devising ways to put a new, more popular face on economic reforms and austerity measures. Decision making remained highly concentrated, as it was during the de la Madrid administration, within the Office of the Presidency. What had changed was the governing style and the impression that more people were participating in concertación with the president. Rebuilding the system of international and domestic alliances-the most important actors being big business, the U.S. government, the National Action Party (PAN), and social movements-was a priority of the Salinas presidency. In combination with a partial economic recovery and internal splits within the opposition, the Salinas strategy succeeded in taking back from the opposition the momentum of increasing support and the "rightful" place of the president and his administration as primary implementors of the nationalist project and fulfillers of the revolutionary promise.
The new president's inner circle had impressive, diversified credentials and strengths designed specifically to deal effectively, as the previous administration had not, with the political implications of economic restructuring. Salinas created an "economic cabinet" out of his personal team, appointing individuals dedicated to the neoliberal project and educationally prepared to administer the economic side of his project. The notable aspect of the administration of Carlos Salinas, in contrast to that of de la Madrid, was that he did not stop there. Salinas also created a "political cabinet" loaded with políticos prepared to carry out the president's reforms. The políticos would be able to strengthen the authoritarian system by virtue of their own political networks, which contained the kind of connections likely to facilitate implementation of the reforms and also closely monitor the politics of implementation.
Salinas began his programmatic reforms while still on the campaign trail. Multiple reforms were designed to instill new vigor into the traditional corporatist system, as well as to establish new linkages between the state and civil society. The following discussion will explore both types of reform. Attention will focus on "neocorporatist reforms," particularly the National Solidarity Program. PRONASOL will be analyzed primarily in terms of its ability to strengthen the regime and weaken the political opposition. The final section of the chapter examines how these initiatives have affected two of the most important urban popular movements in Mexico, the Popular Defense Committee (CDP) in Durango and the Assembly of Neighborhoods (Asamblea de Barrios) in Mexico City.
NEO-CARDENSIMO AND URBAN POPULAR MOVEMENTS, POST-
JULY 1988
While Salinas was designing and implementing strategies for rebuilding the system of state alliances, Cárdenas was taking a number of positions that badly damaged his credibility with popular movements. Soon after the July elections, work began on the development of a new political party that would group some of those who had joined forces under the FDN banner. Internal cleavages had become apparent even during the campaign, for while all the parties within the FDN had supported Cárdenas for president, it had been impossible for them to agree on common candidate slates for the large number of federal, state, and local offices up for election. In most races the various parties ran competing candidates, thereby canceling out much of their force and allowing PRI candidates to win more offices than would have been possible had consensus been reached more often.
The FDN was a loose organizational coalition of parties, political currents, and social movements; it was destined to last only until the l988 campaign and immediate efforts to mobilize against official electoral results had come to a close. Once it became clear that Cárdenas had lost his presidential bid, efforts to build a new political party became the focus. Throughout the first half of 1989 the basic characteristics of neo-Cardenismo remained unclear. The difficulty of building a single political party out of the FDN generated confusion and uncertainty, and this had a direct bearing on the fate and future political conduct of popular movements. Several key questions remained unanswered. First, would Cárdenas lead a social movement as well as a political party, or would his attentions, and those of the organization he headed, focus almost exclusively on electoral competition? Second, what would be the balance of power within the party among "ex-PRIístas" (or "neo-PRIístas," as they were sometimes called), members of leftist political parties (particularly representatives of the Mexican Socialist Party [PMS]), and the leaders of political currents and popular movements? Related to this last point, what would be the party's position on acceptable standards for relations between popular movements and the Salinas administration? This last issue was at the top of the agenda, made more immediate by the fact that same movements such as the CDP in Durango had already begun the process of negotiating agreements with Salinas himself.
Over the protests of many popular movements, political currents, and intellectuals, the PRD and Cárdenas became concerned almost exclusively with running elections and protesting unfair and corrupt procedures alleged to have occurred during the multiple state elections held between 1989 and 1991, as well as the important federal elections in August 1991, in which the PRD was badly defeated. In the view of many, the PRD began its history with misplaced priorities, and this cost it clearly. Up until at least 1990, Cárdenas and the PRD spent inordinate amounts of time, energy, and resources in continuing to promote Cárdenas as the lawful president of Mexico and refusing to accept the validity of the Salinas presidency. In addition, it seemed at times that Cárdenas's 1994 campaign for president began in 1989. Although the PRD controlled a number of municipal governments, these were concentrated in a small number of states, and most of the PRD municipalities were in politically unimportant areas. "By 1991, of the 176 municipalities in opposition hands, 116 were under PRD administration, and 40 were with the PAN. Most of the PRD victories were in villages and towns in a handful of states, however. (Hernández and Fox 1991:17). Lack of funds (the Mexican federal government controls the overwhelming bulk of resources) further limited the influence of these victories on national politics, although some had important local implications.
While same rural and urban popular movements remained in the party (such as the Assembly of Neighborhoods), many others left or distanced themselves from party activities. It was not uncommon for even those popular movement leaders who stayed active in the party to suggest that intraparty tensions existed between popular movements and the PRD leadership, including Cárdenas himself One representative example is an article by Leopoldo Enzástiga, who was affiliated with one of the PRD's strongest urban popular movement affiliates, the Union of Popular Neighborhoods (UCP). In the article, the "Popular Cardenista Movement is defined as a mass movement that includes, but is not limited to, the PRD. Despite repeated but little-explored claims regarding successes of the Cardenista movement outside the electoral arena, toward the end of the article Enzástiga admits that Cárdenas's determining influence in the development of the PRD contributed to the fact that "the relation between the PRD and the popular movement appears as the weakest link" in the development of the movement (1990:11).
Enzástiga's statement represents both the optimism and pragmatism of those movements that remained faithful to Cárdenas and the PRD, despite the short shrift given to popular movements in the party's agenda. Many movement leaders maintained their ties to the Cardenista movement in spite of the caudillismo (personalistic leadership) of Cárdenas and other top leaders from the Democratic Current, such as Porfirio Muñoz Ledo. They did so because they believed that Cárdenas -and the PRD represented the best hope for a leftist front. Leaders' levels of optimism differed as to the prospects for increasing the influence of the popular movement agenda, an agenda that in most ways was considerably more radical (in terms of both political and economic orientation) than were the priorities and orientations of the CD leaders who retained firm control over the direction of the party through 1991.
The disenchantment of many popular movements with the PRD resulted in part from the judgment made by many movement leaders that they were underrepresented in key decision-making arenas of the party (for example, on the executive committee). Much more important, however, was PRD leaders' determination that the party was taking an overly rigid position concerning relations between popular movements and Salinas. The PRD position was that movements should undertake no actions that could serve to legitimize Salinas or his policies. Even before Salinas was inaugurated, he was promoting a policy of concertación in which he negotiated deals with diverse social actors in an effort to broaden support for his modernization policies. The PRD leadership responded by insinuating that public endorsement (such as the signing of public agreements known as convenios de concertación) violated basic PRD tenets.
Many movement leaders took strong exception to the moralistic and pedantic tone of PRD representatives who argued that gaining material and political favors from the state through high-profile programs that legitimated and reinforced the president's power and prestige was not only an inappropriate, but also an immoral, strategy. Because Salinas (judged by the PRD to be an "immoral president") was so closely identified with concertación's most important policy instrument, PRONASOL, those who lent their support through participation in the program became immoral actors as well.
Strains developed as many popular movements refused to follow PRD guidelines concerning concertación and PRONASOL. By 1990, a deep split had opened between movements loyal to Cárdenas (such as the Assembly of Neighborhoods in Mexico City) and movements such as the CDP of Durango that were unwilling to give up the political and economic advantages of reaching tactical agreements with the Salinas administration. By late 1989, some commentators already spoke of popular movements as if the entire move toward unity during the 1980s had never happened. In late 1990 this split was given important organizational acknowledgment in the formation and temporary recognition of the Labor Party (Pl), which was made up in large part of popular movements participating (or wishing to participate) in concertación agreements with the Salinas administration. Although Cárdenas eventually changed his position in 1991 and acknowledged the fact that acceptance of PRONASOL funds by popular movements and PRD municipalities could not be avoided, the damage had already been done.
It was to be expected that Cárdenas would be unfavorably disposed to close collaboration between popular movements and Salinas. Because a key political motivation behind PRONASOL was precisely to undermine popular and popular-movement support for Cárdenas, this program was bound to be contentious. Two things became clear in 1989 concerning the relationship between Salinas and popular movements. First, PRONASOL proved to be an important element in Salinas's strategy for recapturing political ground and legitimacy lost during 1982-1988. Second, the Salinas administration sought to reduce criticism of the president and his policies from the levels that existed during the two previous administrations. As movements moderated their behavior in exchange for the political and economic resources associated with participation in PRONASOL, the program itself became the center of contention.
Although tension between PRONASOL beneficiaries and the PRD was probably inevitable, same schisms could in all likelihood have been avoided or at least mitigated had Cárdenas taken a more decisive and realistic position. Rather than simply arguing that participation in PRONASOL was wrong, Cárdenas should have forged a party position that recognized the inevitability of PRONASOL funding. Such a position might then have led to negotiations on a case-by-case basis between party and movement leaders regarding the politics of PRONASOL and to the design of movement strategies (and perhaps even the parameters of acceptable behavior) that would have lessened support for the president and the authoritarian political system in general. Clearly Cárdenas was at a disadvantage in competing with Salinas for movement support due to the immense resources available to the president and the relative lack of resources that Cárdenas could offer. It seems, however, that an opportunity for damage control was lost. Cárdenas appears to have forgotten, or discounted, the fact that the role of a popular movement leader is to secure material benefits for his or her constituents. Failing to deliver on this front almost always translates over time into a decline in the leader's appeal and, absent a change in leadership, a decline in the movement itself.
SOCIAL CONCERTATlON
Salinas took office in December 1988 against the backdrop of a highly mobilized opposition with substantial multiclass support for the proposition that his presidency was illegitimate, the result of massive electoral fraud. Well before going public with his ambitious plan to increase the pace of North American economic integration via the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it was clear that Salinas fully intended not only to continue but to speed up the pace of economic restructuring in which he had been so centrally involved during the previous administration. By 1990 it was also clear that Salinas had no intention of overseeing serious democratic reforms; rather, he fully intended to strengthen the authoritarian regime so as to make it more capable of overseeing "Salinastroika."
At the outset of the administration, many observers believed that Salinas was serious about political liberalization. He entered the presidency arguing the need for change in the political system. Along with a perhaps misplaced perception regarding Salinas's personal commitment to political liberalization, many observers reasoned that Salinas had little choice in light of the 1988 presidential vote. Those who thought liberalization possible reasoned that the costs of postponing it could prove disastrous or even fatal for the regime. It was, after all, 1989, a period in which the democratization of Eastern Europe created high expectations for the ability of democratic movements to force the liberalization of authoritarian regimes.
By 1991-1992, it became increasingly apparent that Salinas's political reforms were designed to strengthen the inclusionary authoritarian regime and that political liberalization had been definitively postponed. A process of democratic opening in Mexico requires above all a radical change in the existing relationship between the "official" party and the state. Salinas was quite explicit that such a reform would cause disruptions capable of threatening his economic liberalization program. He was decidedly, and unwaveringly, unwilling to risk what was clearly the hallmark of the administration. Mexico under Salinas reinforced the view that political and economic liberalization are not necessarily mutually interdependent.
It also became apparent that political liberalization was unnecessary for maintaining or reinforcing political stability, at least in the short ran. Salinas moved aggressively to improve relations with those social strata with the most potential to disrupt. Relations between Salinas and business, while not without conflict, continued to improve because the neoliberal project was in net terms conducive to the interests of big capital. Small businesses, which were potentially more adversely affected, did not have the political clout to cause substantial political damage. The middle class had been quelled with the strong peso and the lifting of import restrictions. The urban poor had been courted with the promises of PRONASOL.
An aggressive policy of neoliberal economic reforms meant continuing the policies of fiscal austerity and inflation control via wage and price controls. That is, Salinas faced the challenge of dividing the opposition and incorporating important social actors "into the system". And he had to accomplish this without the kind of fiscal expansion available to President Luis Echeverria (1970-1976). Both Salinas and Echeverría were dedicated to quelling opposition voices and incorporating (sometimes "reincorporating") important social actors into the fold. While Salinas followed the Echeverrista policy of bringing members of the opposition directly into his administration (particularly within PRONASOL), he also created the political ideology and associated programs of concertación social and channeled a substantial proportion of social spending (probably at least 50 percent) through the neocorporatist mechanisms of PRONASOL. Fiscal constraint required that Salinas direct PRONASOL funds to those social actors with the political resources to disrupt the neoliberal project and threaten the overall legitimacy of the regime.
Concertación social and PRONASOL became vital means for reestablishing the state's nationalist credentials, particularly in relation to the poor and the working class. Concertación also provided the rubric for reconciling competing interests so as to gain support for Salinas's new and evolving definition of the "national interest." Under this rubric were programs that addressed the interests of important social actors (business sectors, the urban poor, middle classes, the peasantry, and labor) by promoting economic development and distributing wealth in ways that promoted the national interest. The implementation of concertación, particularly through PRONASOL, was also designed to ensure that the coalition of forces gathered together into the FDN would not emerge intact in the PRD. Salinas needed a program capable of offsetting the political negatives of wage and price controls and continued austerity policies, both within and outside traditional corporatist relationships. In this sense, concertación was extremely successful.
PRONASOL: FOCUS ON URBAN POPULAR MOVEMENTS
PRONASOL provides a particularly illustrative case for analyzing the way in which Salinas attempted to legitimize his development model and modernization course within the confines of Mexico's "new nationalism" (which allowed for closer U.S.-Mexican relations, a more market- arid export-oriented economy, and a reduced role for the state in economic production and the provision of subsidies). It was also one-perhaps the most-important expression of Salinas's intention to modernize corporatist relations through reform of existing relationships and the creation of new, "neocorporatist" relationships with powerful social actors heretofore operating outside the inclusionary system's boundaries. The way in which PRONASOL was implemented demonstrates well the degree to which concertación social was politicized under Salinas. It was the single most important element of the Salinas strategy for establishing new forms of political relations with important urban popular movements. Salinas demonstrated a willingness to provide not only the economic, but also the political, resources associated with PRONASOL to "cooperative" urban popular movements when they engaged in regional conflicts, such as disputes with governors.
Salinas introduced PRONASOL as an arm of concertación social soon after taking office. Purportedly funded by proceeds from the sale of state-owned enterprises and other savings associated with increases in government efficiency, PRONASOL's official budget remained relatively small, although it grew from less than U.S.$1 billion in 1989 to almost U.S.$2 billion in 1991. Many observers noted, however, that actual outlays were well beyond official figures, pointing to the use of discretionary funds in the budget of the Office of the Presidency and other public funds that went unmonitored (Dresser 1991).
Although the program undoubtedly addressed issues of concern to the "poorest of the poor, it was certainly inadequate to meet their needs, whatever the actual outlays may have been. Furthermore, it became increasingly obvious that the program's central intent and implications were not to be found in mitigating poverty. The intent of the program was clearly political, and in this sense it succeeded. PRONASOL did not keep up with overall cuts and hardships suffered by the poor during the first years of the Salinas administration, let alone redress the decline in living standards for the poor between 1982 and 1988. The reason that PRONASOL was so successful politically was that it was targeted at important actors in order to mitigate their opposition to the president and to the regime, introduce competition to moribund corporatist mechanisms (by subsidizing popular movement competitors), and draw the movements out of the neo-Cardenista fold.
The partial success of the PRI and the state in persuading the public that PRONASOL supported the administration's claim that "modernization is for everyone" combined well with the effort to entice important FDN supporters to participate in the program. PRONASOL divided the left by creating tensions between those who participated and those who chose not to, between those who participated and those who were not able to receive funds or felt they had not received a just share, and within individual movements, between those who wanted to participate and those who did not.
As many observers of individual movements have pointed out, and as new social movement theorists in particular have been at pains to emphasize, social movements are not monolithic entities but rather comprise a host of identities constantly in creative and destructive flux. It follows, then, that a decision as important as whether or not to participate in PRONASOL would generate divisions within many movements. This is precisely what happened. Splits occurred within sections of the peasant movement, the independent labor movement, the urban popular movement, and others. Many observers have argued that PRONASOL's strategy of dividing organizations one from the other succeeded because each organization signed its own agreement, and thus the state was able to pit movements against each other in the competition for scarce resources. Some critics designed and advocated strategies that would have encouraged movements to form a solid bargaining bloc, at least at the sectoral level (urban poor, peasants, and so forth), as a way of building cohesiveness between movements and pressuring Salinas to make more funds available. Such blocs, however, failed to materialize.
PRONASOL funds were targeted on areas and groups that caused problems in the July 1988 elections. "PRONASOL claimed in early 1991 to be operating in 171 out of 173 municipalities controlled by the opposition" (Dresser 1991: 9). It emphasized urban areas over rural areas because that was where the PRI experienced its worst electoral losses in 1988. Although PRONASOL was not officially a PRI program-and in principle PRI organizations had to compete with non-PRIísta organizations for PRONASOL funds-it was obvious that one of the program's principal goals was to restore the PRI's electoral competitiveness, particularly in the most troublesome urban areas.
The fact that PRONASOL was presented as a state program that was explicitly tied to the Office of the Presidency and had no official ties to the PRI was fundamental to its success in luring popular movements away from the Cárdenas camp. Despite the fact that many popular movements participating in PRONASOL were criticized, it was possible for these participants to develop persuasive rationales for accepting public funds in the name of the poor they represented. The participating movements' main argument was that granting PRONASOL funds was a concessionary act on the part of the government which recognized the power and influence of those popular movements that truly represented the interests of the poor. One, perhaps the only, key measure of "representation" among urban popular movements was the demonstrated ability to secure funding and successfully implement community development projects. The state was obligated to disburse funds to the poor, and popular movements should be sophisticated enough to carry out the complexities of economic development. Developing such a defense would have been difficult, if not impossible, had the program borne a closer relationship with the PRI.
While caudillismo no doubt persisted in the de la Madrid administration, efforts were made to increase the degree of bureaucratic rationality in the disbursement of public funds and the implementation of high-profile programs, even when this approach carried with it certain political liabilities, such as the estrangement of local political elites. The culture surrounding PRONASOL was evidence that this tendency was at least somewhat reversed during the Salinas administration. Disbursement of PRONASOL funds under the leadership of Carlos Rojas, with noticeable involvement by Salinas, was characterized by a very personalistic leadership style. Leaders of popular movements that enjoyed long personal relationships with Rojas- such as the CDP in Durango and Land and Liberty (Tierra y Libertad) in Monterrey-fared particularly well under PRONASOL. The PRD maintained that municipalities under its political control were plagued by delays and other "red tape strategies" and marshalled evidence that they claimed substantiated the charge that the disbursement of PRONASOL funds was highly politicized (PRD 1990). Independent analysts documented a number of cases that suggested the politicized nature of PRONASOL funding, which involved helping allies and attempting to undermine the credibility and effectiveness of political enemies (see, for example, Dresser 1991; Moguel 1990a, 1990b).
Although there is ample room to dispute who within the original FDN coalition was to blame for the political success of PRONASOL, or whether or not a different PRD position on PRONASOL would have preserved better relations between the PRD and social movements, the program's success (measured in terms of how many popular movements participated in it or wished to do so) is not in question. For relatively little money, Salinas designed and implemented a program that was decisive in splitting off movements from the Cárdenas camp and in encouraging them to relegate national considerations to a lower priority in favor of concentrating on their own organizational development. In this way the state, through Salinas's concertación programs decisively diminished the national coalition of opposition forces assembled behind Cárdenas in 1988. Protest in Mexico reached its zenith in 1988 as local organizations became increasingly willing to combine their own regional concerns and actions in support of a national opposition movement agenda. It declined in the post-1988 period as this tendency toward combined action was reversed, thanks in great measure to PRONASOL.
Popular movements can act in ways that encourage elite conflict, or that can act in ways that diminish the importance of such conflict. One way to deflate conflict is for protest movements to split among themselves and/or decrease their support for leaders attempting to form a national front. This is what happened in Mexico after 1988. Social movements, once virtually united in their support for Cárdenas and the National Democratic Front, split apart. Some continued to support Cárdenas and the PRD. Others adopted a neutral stance. And still others became active critics of the PRD. For Cárdenas to survive as a national force in Mexico he had to maintain his ability to disrupt "normal procedures." This is because Mexico's political norms, laws, and procedures are authoritarian and biased against power contenders operating outside the party/state system. His ability after 1988 to effectively challenge most official election results was at least partially undermined by his waning support among popular movements capable of mobilizing their members behind this agenda.
CONTRASTING EXPERENCES OF TWO URBAN POPULAR MOVEMENTS
The experiences of the Popular Defense Committee in Durango and the Assembly of Neighborhoods in Mexico City provide an interesting contrast of how popular movements fared under the Salinas presidency. The CDP was a leading organization in concertación, while the Assembly maintained close ties with the PRD and became a leading critic of concertación.
The CDP grew directly out of the Mexican student movement of the late 1960s-early 1970s and the failure of the 1970s armed insurgency. Beginning in the 1970s, what is now called the CDP worked to establish colonias populares, mostly in the area surrounding the capital city of Durango, Durango, with a population of about half a million. During the 1970s and into the early 1980s, the CDP maintained a militant stance that was highly critical of the Mexican political economy of authoritarian capitalism and advocated its revolutionary overthrow and a new socialist order. Relations with the government at the local, state, and federal levels were often highly conflictual and occasionally violent. Between 1980 and 1986, the CDP increased its efforts at territorial expansion through the creation of ten new colonias. In the 1980s, the CDP combined its militant mobilizations and land invasions with an increasing ability to negotiate with federal and state government authorities. This not only decreased violence against the movement during land invasions, but it also very often brought housing credits and services to movement supporters. By 1990, twenty CDP colonias existed in and around the state capital, with a population of approximately sixty thousand, and CDP committees were established in twenty-seven other colonias, with over one thousand active members. Although the CDPs core of strength had always been in the capital, it branched out to include several other municipalities in the state.
In 1986 the CDP changed its long-held position against electoral participation and began to field candidates, first under the banner of the PRT, then changing to the PMS and to Cárdenas in 1988. In 1989 it formed its own state-level party, had a serious conflict with the PMS/ PRD over its involvement in concertación, and in late 1990 began the effort to construct a new Labor Party (PT). The percentage of the vote and total votes received increased with every election after 1986. In 1989, the first year that the CDP ran on its own party ticket, it received 7 percent of the vote. In the 1991 elections for federal deputies, it received 35,779 votes, or 11 percent of the total in the state of Durango. In the August 1992 elections, the CDP candidate for municipal president in the capital city won the election with 43,000 votes, against 35,000 for the PRI and 33,000 for the PAN.
In February 1989 the CDP became the first popular movement to sign a convenio de concertación, the initial step for participating in PRONASOL. After that time, the CDP continued to grow closer to the Salinas administration, receiving large amounts of both official and unofficial support. The economic support was used to build up the CDP´s organizational capacity to implement public works projects and garner votes. The CDP also benefited from political interventions by the president himself in the CDP´s disputes with the governor (Haber 1992: chap. 6).
The 1992 election was illustrative of the type of political risks and benefits associated with an urban movement strategy that embraced PRONASOL. The CDP/PT was clearly in the process of transforming its place in Durango's politics. During the 1992 Durango campaign there was a dramatic increase in the CDP´s material resources. A major topic among virtually all political observers in Durango was the amount of money that Alejandro González Yáñez ("Gonzalo", as he was referred to throughout Durango), candidate for the municipal presidency of Durango, had at his disposal. Although the CDP denied that it received any unofficial campaign support, the amounts spent were impossible to explain without allowing for federal donations.
The campaign was reminiscent of images of Lázaro Cárdenas and the "official" party in the 1930s. It was classic populism, responding to (or appearing to respond to) citizen demands for basic necessities. Gone were references to socialist transformation. In their place were promises of more, and more efficient delivery of, state services (roads, medical clinics, potable water, and so forth). Candidates running on the CDP ticket sought to differentiate themselves and their party from the PRI by pointing to the CDP´s demonstrated ability to respond to citizen demands and the PRI's loss of that ability. For the most part, the CDP used the same terms to contrast itself to other parties: in the area of public works, neither the PAN nor the PRD nor any of the other smaller parties was any match for the CDP.
Gonzalo moved from campaign stop to campaign stop, handing out millions of pesos to initiate specific public projects. Given the history of conflictual relations between Durango's conservative middle class and the radical socialist CDP, his ability to draw large crowds in middle-class neighborhoods was particularly impressive. One noticed a slight change in rhetoric and style, but the message remained essentially the same: elect me and you will receive more effective responses to your demands for public services. The CDP moved aggressively into colonias previously controlled by the PRI or sympathetic to the PAN, launching new public works projects in an effort to erode the PRl's or the PAN's control and gain new support for itself Gonzalo left the impression that the campaign money was only a beginning; if the colonia stuck with the CDP, win or lose, it was sure to get public works it would not receive from any other party-including the PRI. There was reason to believe this. The CDP/PT campaign for municipal president clearly rivaled that of the PRI in terms of money spent, and Gonzalo was an excellent candidate, much more politically skilled than the PRI's candidate.
REAL AND POTENTIAL COSTS OF THE CDPS STRATEGY
The benefits of running a populist campaign in the style of the old PRI are clear. More power to the CDP meant more public works more effectively carried out than was the case under the PRI. But there were both real and potential costs as well.
· Efforts to form an alliance among the PAN, PRD, and CDP failed. The CDP claimed that negotiations for a PAN/PRD/PT electoral alliance broke down because the PAN was unwilling to give the PT the government positions it wanted. Obviously, the most important position was the municipal presidency in Durango for Gonzalo. CDP leaders argued that the PAN was unwilling to support Gonzalo's candidacy in exchange for CDP support for the PAN's candidate for the governorship.
Many observers found this hard to believe. What seemed much more likely was that entering into such an alliance would have endangered the CDP´s ties with Salinas and the official and "unofficial" funds provided by PRONASOL. If this was indeed the case, there was a real cost involved-the potential victory of the opposition over the PRI for key offices, including the governorship. A PAN/PRD/PT alliance held the real possibility of gaining state power in Durango. Without such an alliance, electoral victory was very unlikely. The case of Durango thus raises an important question: in how many other instances did PRONASOL undermine potential electoral alliances capable of winning key offices?
· The CDP claimed that the strategy of close collaboration with the Salinas administration promoted democracy in Durango, for it put in power an organization that was much more responsive to popular demands than either the PRI or the PAN. Although this was true, the strategy also appeared to help Salinas strengthen Mexican authoritarianism by establishing new and reformed corporatist mechanisms.
The damage here was to electoral democracy. The democracy promoted by the CDP is the kind of democracy envisioned by Lázaro Cárdenas, a certain degree of pluralism within an authoritarian regime
This approach does not guarantee the right to gain state power through running clean elections in which all parties compete on a level playing field, with none more advantaged than the others in terms of state resources. The CDP elected to pursue a strategy of accepting state funding for its campaign rather than continue the struggle to force the government to run clean elections. The PRD strategy continued to concentrate on breaking the existing relationship between the PRI and the state, thereby forcing the PRI to function as "just another party" in the Mexican party system, without the "unfair" advantages it currently receives from the state. The CDP continued to refer to the need for further democratic reforms, but this was clearly not the major thrust of its strategy.
The CDP responded to such charges of "aiding and abetting" Mexican authoritarianism by arguing that the struggle for electoral democracy is naive and wrongheaded, for two reasons. First, they argued that it was not feasible at that historical moment. Thus, pursuing electoral democracy was an ineffective strategy not worth the costs and lost privileges of pursuing a more "cooperative" relationship with the Salinas administration, especially given the likelihood that Rojas would continue to play a key role in the next administration. Second, they asserted that electoral democracy was overrated anyway. It was promoted by bourgeois intellectuals and others relatively uninvolved in the more important work of improving material conditions.
· Durango very clearly is a state rich in natural resources (primarily minerals and timber). Nevertheless, it remains poor because it cannot efficiently exploit these resources. The main impediment to a development boom in Durango has long been its lack of ground transportation. Its only access to the Pacific Coast is the road to Mazatlán, which is unpassable for large trucks. Studies by the federal government regarding potential improvements to this road suggested that it would be much more efficient to construct a new road from Durango to Culiacán. This option has several additional advantages. It would fit well into the national effort to improve the highway system by establishing a quicker route from Mexico City to Tijuana. It would also cut down on traffic between Mazatlán and Culiacán, which is already a problem. Because many national interests would benefit from such a road, including Monterrey business interests, it was a high priority for the Salinas administration and would in all likelihood continue to be so for the next administration as well.
The construction of a new highway would not end Durango's transportation problems, but it would certainly stimulate secondary road construction and new investments in timber and mining from both domestic and foreign sources. It seems reasonable to expect that in ten years Durango will be in a very different economic position than it is today. The generation of new wealth, particularly in the extractive industries, will create a new politics of distribution in Durango. A potential cost of the CDP's strategy of cooperation with the state is that it might compromise its medium- and long-term ability to act as a powerful voice in defense of a more generous distribution of new riches. The CDP leadership has dismissed this concern by saying that the CDP always practices situational politics and will adjust its strategy to this new reality if necessary. That is, today's politics do not require large doses of autonomy from the state. If it is needed tomorrow, it will be "taken back".
It may be, however, that autonomy may prove to be something that movements such as the CDP cannot buy and sell at will. An argument can certainly be made that the strategy of building up the CDP was undertaken by Salinas and supported by other powers with an eye toward the longer term. It is possible, of course, that the CDP's organizational and political power gains in the next few years will actually enhance its ability to lobby on behalf of workers, small land owners, and other interests involved in any significant surge in Durango's extractive industries. If this is the case, concern over this potential cost is unfounded. If, on the other hand, today's politics of cooperation work to compromise tomorrow's ability to act with militant independence, then the decision to pursue short-term advantage may prove to be very costly over the long run.
The history and practices of the Assembly of Neighborhoods in Mexico City stand in sharp contrast to those of the CDP. Established in 1987, the Assembly grew out of the mobilizations and reconstruction that followed the 1985 earthquakes. The Assembly's base is made up largely of renters, and it is of a somewhat higher income level and more class diverse than is the CDP's membership. At its membership peak in 1987, the Assembly could claim over fifty thousand members. That number dropped to about ten thousand by 1993, although, like the CDP, Assembly candidates for office receive support that transcends movement membership.
In stark contrast to the CDP, the Assembly of Neighborhoods developed a harsh public critique of PRONASOL. Unlike the CDP, it refused offers from government representatives (in the Assembly of Neighborhoods' case, it was Manuel Camacho, then mayor of Mexico City) to develop their own party separate from the PRD. They remained loyal PRD supporters. In fact, all four members of the Assembly's top leadership council have held top offices within the party.
The Assembly consistently argued that the kind of public support for Salinas that CDP-style participation in PRONASOL entails undermines efforts to promote democratization, efforts that are best pursued by continuing to build a unified opposition under the PRD umbrella. Although far from happy with all of Cárdenas's policy positions and long aggravated by the continued dominance of neo-PRIístas in the party hierarchy, Assembly members have continued to insist that the CDP and other movements that followed the traditional strategy of under-the-table bargaining served to strengthen Mexican authoritarianism.
The short-term advantages of the Assembly's position are difficult to identify. Interviews with the leadership in summer 1992 revealed a movement that had lost active membership and experienced the onset of anomie. Although the movement continued to struggle for housing rights-always its main material concern-it encountered mounting institutional obstacles, in sharp contrast to the CDP, which gained increased access to elites and state programs. The Assembly gained access to political offices. However, according to movement founder and PRD federal deputy Francisco Saucedo, the route to reform via legislation was stymied repeatedly by the PRI majority (author interview, summer 1992).
Although the Assembly's analysis may prove to be correct-that participation in PRONASOL helped undermine the electoral movement for democracy-the CDP demonstrated the considerable short-term benefits of pursuing concertación. The fact that the survival-let alone prosperity-of most urban popular movements (as well as peasant movements) is highly dependent upon their continued ability to extract state concessions helps to explain why so many were forced into PRONASOL, despite its costs.
CONCLUSION
Evaluations of the consequences of PRONASOL for the popular-movement sector are perhaps inevitably biased by the theoretical and political predispositions of the analyst. If the political potential of movements is equated with their ability to disrupt and produce crisis (Piven and Cloward 1977), then participation in PRONASOL should be perceived largely in terms of its eroding effects on movement potential. If, on the other hand, the analyst allows for the possibility of favorable outcomes resulting from alliances (same of which are very uneasy and temporary) between popular movements and state reformers, then the concertación potential for change appears in a brighter light (Fox 1993).
There are several important considerations to be kept in mind when thinking about PRONASOL. First, formal outlays for the program did not represent a major increase in antipoverty funding. More than new money, PRONASOL represented a reorganization of previously existing programs. One important caveat here is that there were significant amounts of under-the-table monies targeted to important actors as further compensation for participating in Salinas's program. A key example is money funneled to the PT, formally called the Labor Party but composed mostly of social movements active in PRONASOL. Second, the informal economy of PRONASOL extended beyond economic development funds to political resources as well, including interventions by the president on the side of PRONASOL-supporting popular movements in local disputes, including those with governors. Movements that did not participate in PRONASOL, particularly those that made a point of engaging in public critiques of the program and the president, often encountered severe costs in terms of access to state resources. Third, whatever its costs, participating in PRONASOL strengthened the capacity of many individual social movements to act as agents of economic development. And in same cases, PRONASOL expanded these movements' horizons as political actors. The case of the CDP illustrates the empowerment potential of PRONASOL. It is hard to imagine the CDP´s electoral victory in the state capital without PRONASOL funds. Many Mexican popular movements have long been clamoring for the state to reform its antipoverty approach so as to give a more active role to popular movements in the design, implementation, and evaluation processes. Movement activists who celebrate PRONASOL argue that it is the type of program they have been calling on the federal government to initiate for years.
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