Politics in Mexico
Roderic Al Camp
ISBN 019512412X
May 1999
Oxford University Press
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Chapter 2
Political-Historical roots: The impact of time and place.

The political life of all those states which during the early years of the last century arose upon the ruins of the Spanish Empire on the American mainland present two common features. In all those states, constitutions of the most liberal and democratic character have been promulgated; in all, there have from time to time arisen dictators whose absolute power has been either frankly proclaimed or thinly veiled under constitutional forms. So frequently has such personal rule been established in many of the states that in them there has appeared to be an almost perpetual and complete contradiction between theory and practice, between nominal and the actual systems of government.

CECIL JANE, Liberty and Despotism in Spanish America

Understanding politics is not just knowing who gets what, where, when, and how, as Harold D. Lasswell declared in a classic statements years ago, but also understanding the origins of why people behave the way they do. Each culture is a product of its own heritage, traditions emerging from historical experiences. Many aspects of the U.S. political system can be traced to our English colonial experiences, our independence movement, our western frontier expansion, and our immigrant origins. Mexico has had a somewhat similar set of experiences, but the sources of the experiences and their specific characteristics were quite different.

THE SPANISH HERITAGE

Mexico's political heritage, unlike that of the United States, draws on two important cultural foundations: European and indigenous. Although large numbers of Indians were never absorbed into the conquering culture in New Spain, a vast integration process took place in most of central Mexico. Conversely, British settlers encountered numerous Native Americans in their colonization of North America, but they rarely intermarried with them and thus the two cultures never blended. Racially, African blacks played an important role in some regions; politically, this was a limited role because of the small numbers brought to New Spain, the colonial Spanish viceroyalty that extended from Central America to what is now the United States Midwest and Pacific Northwest.

Mexico's racial heritage, unlike that of the United States, has a mixed or mestizo quality. In the initial absence of Spanish women, the original Spanish conquerors sought native mistresses or wives. In fact, cohabiting with female royalty from the various indigenous cultures was seen as an effective means of joining the two sets of leaders, firmly establishing Spanish ascendancy throughout the colony. The Indian-Spanish offspring of these unions at first were considered socially inferior to Spaniards fresh from Spain and the Spanish born in the New World. Frank Tannenbaum describes the complex social ladder:

With the mixture of races in Mexico added to by the bringing in of Negroes in sufficient numbers to leave their mark upon the population in certain parts of the country, we have the basis of the social structure that characterized Mexico throughout the colonial period and in some degree continues to this
day. The Spaniard-that is, the born European-was at the top in politics, in the Church, and in prestige. The criollo, his American-born child, stood at a lower level. He inherited most of the wealth, but was denied any important role in political administration. The mestizo and the dozen different castas that resulted from the mixtures of European, Indian, and Negro in their various degrees and kinds were still lower.

In the late nineteenth century, mestizos reached a new level of social ascendancy through their numbers and control over the political system.

Early Mexican political history involved social conflicts based on racial heritage. Moreover, large indigenous groups were suppressed, exploited, and politically ignored. The prejudice with which Indians were treated by the Spanish and mestizo populations, and the mistreatment of the mestizo by the Spanish contributed further to the sharp class distinctions that have plagued Mexico. Social prejudice was transferred to economic status as well, with those lowest on the racial scale ending up at the bottom of the economic scale. The degree of social inequality ultimately contributed to the independence movement, as the New World-born Spanish (criollos) came to resent their second-class status relative to the Old World-born Spanish (peninsulares). It contributed even more significantly to the Mexican Revolution of 1910, in which thousands of downtrodden mestizo peasants and workers and some Indians joined a broad social movement for greater social justice.

All societies have some type of local structure. Most large societies develop hierarchical social groups, but from one society to another the level of deference exacted or given varies. In the United States, where political rhetoric, beginning with independence, focused on greater social equality, class distinctions were fewer and less distinct. In Mexico, in spite of its revolution, the distinctions remain much sharper, affecting various aspects of cultural and political behavior. For example, a major study of U.S. intellectuals found that 40 percent of the younger generation was from working-class backgrounds. By contrast, in Mexico, fewer than 5 percent fell into this social category. In the political realm, lower income groups, who are formally well represented in the official government party, the PRI, are little represented in policy or leadership roles. In addition, lower-income groups have limited protection from abuses by governmental authorities and do not always receive equal treatment under the law. In the United States some differences exist in the legal treatment of rich and poor, but they are fewer, and the gap between them is much smaller than in Mexico.

The Spanish also left Mexico with a significant religious heritage: Catholicism. Religion played a critical role in the pro-Conquest Mexican indigenous culture and was very much integrated into the native political processes. In both the Aztec and Maya empires, for example, religion was integral to political leadership. The Spanish were no less religious. Beginning with the Conquest itself, the pope reached some agreements with the Spanish crown. In these agreements, known collectively as the patronato real (royal patronate), the Catholic Church gave up certain rights it exercised in Europe for a privileged role in the Conquest generally and in New Spain specifically. In return for being allowed to send two priests or friars with every land or sea expedition, and being given the sole opportunity to proselytize millions of Indians, the church gave up its control over the building of facilities in the New World, the appointing of higher clergy, the collecting of tithes, and other activities. In other words, Catholicism obtained a monopoly in the Spanish New World.

The contractual relationship between the Catholic Church and the Spanish authorities in the colonial period established two fundamental principles: the concept of an official religion, that is, only one religion recognized and permitted by civil authorities; and the integration of Church and state. In the United States, of course, a fundamental principle of our political evolution is the separation of church and state. Moreover, many of the settlers who came to the English colonies came in search of religious freedom, not religious monopoly. As Samuel Ramos suggested,

It was our [Mexico's] fate to be conquered by a Catholic theocracy, which was struggling to isolate its people from the current of modern ideas that emanated from the Renaissance. Scarcely had the American colonies been organized when they were isolated against all possible heresy. Ports were closed and trade with all countries except Spain was disapproved. The only civilizing agent of the New World was the Catholic Church, which by virtue of its pedagogical monopoly shaped the American societies in a medieva1 pattern of life. Education, and the direction of social life as well, was placed in the hands of the Church, whose power was similar to that of a state within a state.

The consequences of Mexico's religious heritage have been numerous. It is important to remember that Catholicism was not just a religion in the spiritual sense of the word but extended deeply into the political culture, given the influence of the church over education and social organizations, such as hospitals and charitable foundations, and its lack of religious competition.

One of the consequences is structural. In the first chapter, the Mexican political system is referred to as corporatist. Corporatism extends back to the colonial period, when certain groups obtained special privileges from civil authorities, giving them preferred relationships with the state. Among these groups were clergy, military officers, and merchants. The most notable privileges received by the clergy were special legal fueros, or rights allowing them to try their members in separate courts. The Spanish established the precedent for favored treatment of specific groups. Once groups are thus singled out, they will fight very hard to retain their advantages. Much of nineteenth-century politics in Mexico became a battle between the church and its conservative allies on just this issue.

The monopoly of the church in New Spain was very jealously protected. No immigrants professing other beliefs were allowed in before Mexican independence. The church also took on another task for the state: ferreting out religious and political dissenters by establishing the Inquisition in the New World. The primary function of this institution was to identify and punish religious heretics, those persons who threatened religious beliefs as taught by church authorities, but in practice the Inquisition controlled publishing, assembled a book index that censored intellectual ideas from abroad, and fielded special customs inspectors. Although these activities were not entirely successful, in general the church and the civil authorities were intolerant of any other religious and secular thought. The Inquisition has been described in this fashion:

The belief that heretics were traitors and traitors were heretics led to the conviction that dissenters were social revolutionaries trying to subvert the political and religious stability of the community. These tenets were not later developments in the history of the Spanish Inquisition; they were inherent in the rationale of the institution from the fifteenth century onward and were apparent in the Holy Office's dealings with Jews, Protestants, and other heretics during the sixteenth century. The use of the Inquisition by the later eighteenth-century Bourbon kings of Spain as an instrument of regalism was not a departure from tradition. Particularly in the viceroyalty of New Spain during the late eighteenth century the Inquisition trials show how the Crown sought to promote political and religious orthodoxy.

The heritage of intolerance plagued Mexico during much of its post-independence political history. It has been argued that because culturally there had been little experience with other points of view and in promoting respect for them, accommodation was not perceived as desirable. Some analysts suggest that the Catholic religion's continuation as a dominant presence in spite of religious freedom and the existence of other faiths encourages persistence of intolerance.

To carry out the conquest of New Spain, the Spanish relied on armed expeditions and missionaries. Typically, once an area was made "safe" by an exploratory expedition, a permanent settlement around a mission and a presidio, or fort, was established. Some of the settlements were sited along a route known as the camino real (king's highway), which today is the old California Highway 1. The original mission towns are now among the most important cities in the Southwest: San Francisco (Saint Francis), San Diego (Saint James), Santa Barbara (Saint Barbara), Albuquerque, Tucson, and Santa Fe.

Originally, the authorities used Spanish armed forces, in the colonial period; American-born Spaniards began filling officer ranks as the government came to rely more heavily on the colonial militia. Although the armed forces were called on from time to time to protect the coast from French and British attacks, the army was used primarily to suppress Indian rebellions and to keep internal order. It patrolled the highways to keep them free of bandits. Basically, then, it functioned as police, not as defenders against external enemies.

The military, like the clergy, received special fueros in New Spain It too had its own courts for civil and criminal cases, but unlike the clergy military officers were immune to civil prosecution. Their favored status inevitably led to legal conflicts. Some historians have argued that one of the reasons for the disintegration of civil authority at the time of independence was declining respect caused by its inability to control military cases.

As in the case of the church, granting the military special privileges- which were passed on to the colonial militia before independence-created another powerful interest group. Their professional heirs in the nineteenth century wanted to retain the privileges. Furthermore, the close ties between military and civil authorities, and the unclear lines of subordination led to the blurring of distinctions in civil-military relations.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these patterns in civil-military relations and civil-church relations had a great impact on Mexico's political development. They complemented the corporatist heritage by establishing groups that saw their own interests, not those of society, as primary. Those groups competed for political ascendancy, reinforcing the already-present social inequality by creating a hierarchy of interests and prestige.

To the legacies of corporatism, social inequality, special interests, arid intolerance can be added the Spanish bureaucratic tradition. Critics tend to focus on the in-efficiencies of the Spanish bureaucracy and the differences between legal theory and the application of administrative criteria. In part, problems can be attributed to the distance between the mother country and the colonies, as well as to the distance between Mexico City, the seat of the viceroyalty of New Spain, established in 1535, and its far-flung settlements in Yucatán, Chiapas, and what is today the southwestern United States. A more important feature of Spanish religious and civil structures was their strongly hierarchical nature and centralization. Low-level bureaucrats lacked authority. Decisions were made only at the top of the hierarchy, with delay, inefficiency, and corruption as the outcome.

The hierarchical structure of the Spanish state in the New World is no better illustrated than through the viceroy himself. The viceroy (virrey) was in effect the vice-king, a personal appointee of and substitute for the king of Spain. He had two sources of power: He was the supreme civil authority and also the commander in chief. In addition, he was the vice-patron of the Catholic Church, responsible for the mission policies in the colonization process. Remember, this man, along with a second viceroy in Lima, Peru, governed all of Spanish-speaking Latin America and the southwestern United States.

Upon its independence, the viceregal structure left Mexico with two political carryovers. First, the individual viceroys became extremely important, some serving for many years, completely at the whim of the crown. This shifted considerable political legitimacy away from Spanish institutions to a single person. The personalization of power tended to devalue the institutionalization of political structures, thereby enhancing the importance of political personalities. It also left Mexico with an integrated civil and religious/cultural tradition, complemented by an equally blended, hierarchical indigenous tradition of executive authority Justo Sierra, a Mexican historian, described the viceroy's power and the church-state relationship:

The Viceroy was the King. His business was to hold the land-that is to conserve the King dominion, New Spain, at all costs. The way to conserve it is to pacify it; hence the close collaboration with the Church. In view of the privileges granted by the Pope to the Spanish king in America, it could be said that the Church in America was under the Spanish king: this was called the Royal Patronate. But the ascendancy that the Church had acquired in Spanish America, because it consolidated, through conversions, the work of the Conquest, made it actually a partner in the government.

Spanish political authority was top-heavy, placing most of the power in the hands of an executive institution. The viceroy's decision-making authority had few restrictions. In many respects the viceroy's self-developed political aura was equivalent to the presidencialismo described earlier. The Spanish did create an audiencia, a sort of quasi-legislative-judicial body that acted as aboard of appeals for grievances against the viceroy and could channel complaints directly to the Crown, bypassing the viceroy. Also, the Crown appointed its own inspectors, often secret, who traveled to New Spain to hear charges of the viceroy's abuse of authority. These visitadores were empowered to conduct thorough investigations and report to the Crown.

The minor restrictions on viceregal powers did not mean there was separation of powers, an independent judiciary, a legislative body, or decentralization. Some participation at the local level existed, but Mexico had no legislative heritage comparable to that found in the colonial assemblies of the British colonies. Thus it is not surprising that although Mexico quickly established a legislative body after independence, it functioned effectively for only brief periods in the 1860s and 1870s and again in the 1920s, remaining ineffectual and subordinate throughout most of the twentieth century.

Finally, another important Spanish political heritage is the role of the state in society. The strong authoritarian institutions in New Spain and the size of the Spanish colonial bureaucracy established the state as the preeminent institution. The only other institution whose influence came close was the Catholic Church. Educated male Spaniards born in the New World essentially had three career choices: the colonial bureaucracy, the clergy (which appealed to only a minority), and the military. New Spain's private sector was weak, underdeveloped, and closed. The crown permitted little commercial activity among the colonies or with other countries. The monopolistic relationship between Spain and the colonies kept the latter from developing their full economic potential. Michael Meyer and William Sherman characterized Spain's policies as

…protectionist in the extreme, which meant that the economy in New Spain was very much restricted by limitations imposed by the Imperial system. Thus the natural growth of industry and commerce was significantly impeded, because manufacturers and merchants in Spain were protected from the competition of those in the colony. In accord with the classic pattern, the Spanish Indies were to supply Spain with raw products, which could be made into finished goods in the mother country and sold back to the colonists at a profit. As a consequence, the character of the colonial economy m Mexico was essentially extractive.

A long-term political consequence was a strong state and a weak private sector was the overarching prestige of the state, to the disadvantage of the private sector. Economically, then, the state was in the driver's seat, not because it controlled most economic resources, but because it provided the most important positions available in the colonial world. The same mentality developed in the twentieth century in other colonial settings. For example, Indians came to believe that the British civil service was the preeminent institution in India and that government employment would grant them great prestige. In the same way, positions in the Mexican state bureaucracy were seen by many educated Mexicans as the ultimate employment, and so the competition for places was keen. One cultural theorist, Glen Dealy, argues that "public power like economic wealth is rooted in rational accumulation. Capitalism measures excellence in terms of accumulated wealth; caudillaje [Latin American culture] measures one's virtue in terms of accumulated public power." This way of life did not end with the decline of the Spanish empire and Spain's departure from Mexico. Figures from the last third of the nineteenth century demonstrate that the government employed a large percentage of educated, professional men suggesting again the limited opportunities in the private sector.

The Mexican state's importance can be explained by not only economic underdevelopment but also the status of the state in the New World. In other words, it was natural for Mexicans to expect the state to play an influential role. Not liking state intervention in their lives, similar to the feeling of most people in the United States, Mexicans nevertheless came to depend on the state as a problem solver, in part because there was no institutional infrastructure at the local level or the same self-reliant thinking.

Spain bequeathed to Mexico an individualistic cultural mind-set. North Americans, although characterized by self-initiative and independence, exhibited a strong sense of community. That is, throughout the western expansion, U.S. settlers saw surviving together as in the interest of the group as well as in the interest of its members. Mexicans, on the other hand, exhibited a strong sense of self. This, combined with the sharper social-class divisions and social inequality, led to a preeminence of individual or familial preservation, unassociated with the protection of larger groups. The lack of communal ties reinforced the primacy of personal ties. It was a familiar phenomenon elsewhere in Latin America as well. In the political realm, it generally translates into whom you know rather than what you know. Although an almost universal truism, whom you know gains in importance where access to authority is limited.

Finally, the structural arrangements of the Spanish colonial empire and the distances between the colonies and the mother country and between the colonies themselves made for considerable dissatisfaction with the roles imposed. The Spanish settlers, and later their mestizo descendants increasingly disobeyed orders from overseas. Sometimes they could justifiably assert that a law no longer applied to the situation at hand. At other times they would flout a law they found inconvenient. The inefficiencies inherent in the transatlantic management of possessions in two continents, built-in social inequalities, and the gap between Old World theory and New World reality meant the marginalization of Spain's laws in the Western Hemisphere. A lack of respect for the law and the primacy of personal and familial interests were fundamental factors in Mexico's political evolution from the 1830s through the end of the twentieth century.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY POLITICAL HERITAGE

Shortly after its independence Mexico experimented briefly with a monarchical system but the rapid demise of the three-hundred-year-old colonial structure left a political void. The only legitimate authority the crown and its colonial representative the viceroy disappeared. Intense political conflict ensued as various groups sought to legitimize their political philosophies. The battle for political supremacy affected the goals of the antagonists and influenced the process by which Mexicans settled political disputes. By the 1840s Mexico had fluctuated between a political model advocating federalism the decentralization of power similar to that practiced in the United States and centralism the allocation of more decision-making authority to the national government.

As was true of many Latin American countries Mexico was caught between the idea of rejecting its centralized authoritarian Spanish heritage and the idea of adopting the reformist U.S. model. The obstinacy of their proponents kept political affairs in constant flux. Violence was a frequent means for settling political disagreements, which enhanced the presence and importance of the army as an arbiter of political conflicts and consumed much of the government budget that might otherwise have been spent more productively.

By the mid-nineteenth century two mainstreams of political thought confronted Mexicans: conservatism and liberalism. Mexican liberalism was a mixture of borrowed and native ideas that largely rejected Spanish authoritarianism and tradition and instead drew on Enlightenment ideas from France, England and the United States. Some of its elements included such basic U.S. tenets as guarantees of political liberty and the sovereignty of the general will. Among its principles were greater citizen participation in government free-speech guarantees and a strong legislative branch. Liberals complemented these principles with a concept known as Jeffersonian agrarian democracy. Jefferson had advocated encouraging large numbers of small landholders in the United States. His rationale was that people with property constitute a stable citizenry; having something to lose they would vigorously defend the democratic political process. The liberals also believed in classic economic liberalism the philosophy pervading England and the United States during the same period. Economic liberalism of this period referred to the encouragement of individual initiative and the protection of individual property rights.

Mexican conservatives held to an alternative set of political principles. Whereas an examination of Liberal ideas reveals that most of them were borrowed from leading thinkers and political systems foreign to Mexico's experience the Conservatives praised the reform-minded Bourbon administration of the Spanish colonies prior to independence and emphasized a strong central executive. They argued for a strong executive because it would follow naturally after centuries of authoritarian colonial rule and because the post-independence violence in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s seemed to be part of a larger struggle between anarchy and civilization in Latin America. Without forceful leadership, Mexico would succumb to disorder and remain underdeveloped economically.

The conservatives favored policies promoting industrialization, stressing light manufacturing rather than expansion of the small-landholder class. Mexico desperately needed capital, much of which had fled after independence and during the chaotic political period that followed. Both conservatives and liberals looked approvingly on foreign investment and encouraged policies that would attract outside capital, particularly to mining and struggling industries such as textiles.

Neither the conservatives nor the liberals gave much attention to the plight of the Indians. Because the thinkers in both camps generally were criollos of middle- and upper-middle-class background, their primary concerns were the maintenance of social order and the interests of their classes. Although the conservatives essentially ignored the Indians the liberals sought to apply their philosophy of economic individualism to the Indian system of communal property holding believing it to be an obstacle to development.

Liberals and conservatives clashed most violently on the role of the Catholic Church. The liberals believed and correctly so, that the church as an integral ally of the Spanish state conveyed support for the hierarchical authoritarian political structure. Essentially it was the church's control of education and nearly all aspects of cultural life that permitted its influence. The conservatives on the other hand saw the church as an important force and worked toward an alliance with it

Because the liberals viewed the church as a staunch opponent and as the conservatives, political and economic supporter they wanted to reduce or eliminate altogether its influence. They introduced the Ley Lerdo (Lerdo law) on June 1 1856 essentially forcing the church to sell off its large landholdings, which at that time accounted for a sizable portion of all Mexican real estate. But the law did not have its intended consequences: The church traded land for capital, thereby preserving a source of economic influence and at the same time enlarging the already substantial estates of the buyers. The liberals also attacked the church's special privileges, which had been left inviolate by the 1824 constitution immediately after independence. They eliminated its legal fueros and placed cemeteries under the jurisdiction of public authorities.

From this brief overview, we can see that each side had something useful to offer. Yet their unwillingness to compromise and the intensity with which they held their opinions led to a polity in constant disarray. The battles between conservatives and liberals culminated in the War of the Reform (1858-1861), in which the victorious liberals imposed, by force, their political views on the defeated conservatives. These views are well represented in the constitution of 1857, a landmark political document that influenced its revolutionary successor, the constitution of 1917.

The issue of church versus state, or the supremacy of state over church, was a crucial element of the conservative-liberal battles and a focus of nineteenth-century politics. The leading liberals of the day saw the classroom as the chief means of social transformation and the church's control in that arena as undesirable and so decided to establish secular institutions. To implement this concept, President Benito Juárez appointed in 1867 a committee under Gabino Barreda, an educator who set down some basic principles for public education in the last third of the nineteenth century. Although the liberals hoped to replace church-controlled schools with free, mandatory public education, their program was never fully implemented. Most important, they introduced a preparatory educational program, a sort of advanced high school to train future leaders in secular and liberal ideas.

Although by 1869 the liberals succeeded in defeating the conservatives' forces, their unwillingness to compromise and their introduction of even more radical reforms-particularly those associated with suppressing the Catholic Church, and incorporated into the 1857 constitution- impelled the conservatives and their church allies to take the unusual step of seeking help from abroad. This ultimately led to the French intervention of 1862-1867, and an attempt to enthrone a foreign monarch, Austrian archduke Ferdinand Maximilian. Although the liberals were nearly defeated during this interlude, under Benito Juárez's leadership they ultimately won and executed the archduke.

The liberals reigned from 1867 to 1876. This brief period is important because it gave Mexicans a taste of a functioning liberal political model.

The legislative branch of government exercised some actual power. The successors to Benito Juárez lacked the political skills and authority to sustain the government, and their experiment came to an end with the successful revolt of Porfirio Díaz, a leading military figure in the liberal battles against the French.

Diaz's ambition and his overthrow of Juárez's collaborators introduced a new generation of liberals to leadership positions These men, most of whom were combat veterans of the liberal-conservative conflicts and the French intervention, were moderate liberals, distinct from the radical orthodox liberals of the Juárez generation. Díaz and the moderate liberals paved the way for the introduction of a new political philosophy into Mexico: positivism. As described by historian Charles Hale,

Scientific or positive politics involved the argument that the country's problems should be approached and its policies formed scientifically. Its principal characteristics were an attack on doctrinaire [radical] liberalism, or "metaphysical politics," an apology for strong government to counter endemic revolutions and anarchy, and a call for constitutional reform. It drew upon a current of European, particularly French, theories dating back to Henri de Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte in the 1820s, theories that under the name of positivism had become quite generalized in European thought by 1878. Apart from the theoretical origins of their doctrine, the exponents of scientific politics in Mexico found inspiration in the concrete experience of the contemporary conservative republics of France and Spain and in their leaders.

The motto for many positivists in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin América was liberty and progress through peace and order. The key to Mexican positivism, as it was implemented by successive administrations under Porfirio Díaz, who ruled Mexico from 1877 to 1880 and 1884 to
1911, was order. After years of political instability, violence, and civil war, these men saw peace as a critical necessity for progress. Their explanation for the disruptive preceding decades centered on the notion that too much of Mexico´s political thinking had been based on irrational or "unscientific" ideas influenced by the spiritual teachings of the church and that alternative political ideas were counterproductive.
Building on the philosophy of their orthodox liberal predecessors, the Díaz administrations came to believe that the most effective means for conveying rational positivist thought, or this new form of moderate liberalism was public education. Education therefore became the essential instrument for homogenizing Mexican political values. It would turn out a new generation of political, intellectual, and economic leaders who would guide Mexico along the path of material progress and political development. Preeminent among the public institutions was the National Preparatory School in Mexico City, which enrolled children of regional and national notables. Its matriculation lists read like a roll of future national leaders.

The acceptance of positivist ideas by the moderate liberals ultimately led to the dominance of order over liberty and progress. Indeed, it can be argued that after decades of civil conflict, positivism became a vehicle for reintroducing conservative ideas among Mexico's liberal leadership. Díaz increasingly used the state's power to maintain political order, allowing economic development to occur without government interference. His government encouraged the expansion of mining and made generous concessions to foreigners to obtain investment.

The Porfiriato, as the period of Díaz's rule is known in Mexico, had significant consequences that led to the country's major social upheaval of the twentieth century, the Mexico Revolution of 1910, and numerous political and social legacies. Díaz attacked two important social issues: the relationship between church and state and the role of Indians in the society.

Ironically, the Catholic Church regained considerable influence during the liberal era. Even Benito Juárez realized after Maximilian's defeat that pursuit of radical antichurch policies would only generate further resistance and disorder. Diaz pursued a pragmatic policy of reconciliation in the 1870s, separating church and state, but permitting the church to strengthen its religious role as long as it remained aloof from secular and political affairs. Thus, the two parties achieved a modus vivendi, al though the state remained in the stronger position, and the 1857 constitution retained repressive, antichurch provisions.

Díaz's attitude toward the Indians was also significant because it reflected a broader attitude toward social inequality. He and his collaborators, as did the original liberals, saw the Indians as obstacles to Mexican development. They applied the provisions of the law forcing the sale of church property to the communal property held by Indian villages, accelerating the pace of sales begun by the orthodox liberals in the 1860s. But the positivists were not satisfied with this economic measure. Many of them accepted the notion, popular throughout Latin America at the time, that Indians were a cultural and social burden and were racially inferior. To overcome this racial barrier, they proposed introducing European immigration, in the hope of wiping out the indigenous culture and providing a superior economic example for the mestizo farmer.

To ensure that immigration would take place, the Mexican government passed a series of colonization laws in the 1880s that granted generous concessions to foreigners who would survey public lands. By 1889 foreigners had surveyed almost eighty million acres and had acquired large portions of the surveyed acreage at bargain-basement prices. For the most part, however, these people were not typical settlers; rather, they, like the Mexicans who purchased church and Indian lands, were large landholders. Two million acres of communal Indian lands went to them and to corporations. Hence, the colonization laws not only increased the concentration of land in the hands of wealthy Mexicans and foreigners but antagonized small mestizo and Indian farmers, who became a force during the Mexican Revolution.

Although Díaz implemented policies that improved the country economically, the primary beneficiaries were the wealthy at home and abroad. The laboring classes, primarily mestizo in origin, benefited little from the politics of peace. Díaz focused on a small group of supporters and ignored the plight of most of his compatriots. Even middle-class mestizos, who rose to the top of the ladder politically by 1900, were limited in their abilities to share in the economic goods of the Díaz era. As two recent historians of Mexico suggested,

The structure of Mexican society during the Porfiriato consisted of a number of levels that must be noted in order to understand the social dynamics of the era. Large holders of commercialized agriculture land constituted the top of the pyramid. Land provided the economic core as well as status. From this base large landholders diversified into manufacturing, mining, or other profitable activities. An elite, allied with national and regional political groups with business and personal connections to foreign capitalists and investors formed an interlocking socioeconomic and political directorate. They used their political, economic, and social influence to reinforce their position. Economic concessions, contracts, and other forms of political patronage fell to this group. They negotiated among themselves for a share of the political power and economic fruits of modernization.

To understand Mexican politics in the twentieth century, in the postrevolutionary era, it is even more important to explore the political heritage left by Díaz and his cronies. In the first place, although church and state were separate and the lines were more firmly drawn between secular and religious activities, Díaz maintained fuzzier relationships between the state and two other important elements, the army and the private sector.

In effect, Díaz established the pattern for civil-military relations that characterized Mexico until the 1940s. Because he himself was a veteran of so many civil conflicts, it was only natural that he recruited many of his important collaborators, on both the national and state level, from among fellow off'icers. Military men occupied many prominent positions. Although the presence of career officers in the top echelon declined across Diaz's tenure as they were replaced by younger civilian lawyers, no clear relationship of subordination between civil and military authorities was established. Díaz left a legacy of shared power and interlocking leadership
The unclear lines between military and civilian political power were duplicated between politicians and the business elite. Although it is the nature of a capitalist system to have an exchange of leaders between the economic and political spheres, as in the United States, such linkages in an authoritarian political structure, where access to power and decision making is closed, can produce potentially significant consequences. Díaz, who had control over most of the important national political offices, used appointments to reward supporters or as a means to co-opt opponents. At no time since 1884 has any administration had stronger elite economic representation in political office than under Díaz. Approximately a fifth of all national politicians from 1884 to 1911, with the peak in 1897, were businessmen. For most of the twentieth century they made up fewer than 10 percent of Mexico's public figures. Giving these positions, especially at the provincial level, to members of prominent families further closed paths of upward social mobility to less-favored groups, especially the mestizo middle class.

By the time Díaz began his third term as president in 1888, he had succeeded in controlling national elections, although he had not created a national electoral machine similar to that of the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR) and its successors. He continued to hold elections to renew the loyalty of the people to his leadership and to allow him to reward his faithful supporters with sinecures as federal deputies (congressmen) and senators. His control was so extensive that occasionally he chose the same person for more than one elective office.

Building on the original conservative philosophy and the colonial heritage, Díaz reversed the tenuous decentralization trend begun under President Juárez. He accomplished this structurally by decreasing the powers of the legislative and judicial branches, making them subordinate to the executive branch and to the presidency specifically. He also strengthened the presidency as distinct from the executive branch.

Díaz went beyond aggrandization of political authority in the executive branch and the presidency by strengthening the federal government or state generally. He did this by expanding the federal bureaucracy. Between 1876 and 1910 the government payroll grew some 900 percent. In 1876 Only 16 percent of the middle class worked for the government; by 1910 the figure was 70 percent. As in the colonial period, the private sector was not incorporating new generations of educated Mexicans; rather, their careers were being pursued within the public sector, notably the federal executive. Díaz provided the twentieth century with a dominant state, an apparatus that most successful Mexicans would want to control because it was essential to their economic future.

Because Díaz held the presidency for some thirty years, a personality cult developed around his leadership. His collaborators conveyed the message that progress, as they defined it, was guaranteed by his presence. His indispensability enhanced his political maneuverability. On the other hand Díaz put in place a political system that was underdeveloped institutionally. In concentrating on his personality, political institutions failed to acquire legitimacy. Even the stability of the political system itself was at stake because continuity was not guaranteed by the acceptability of its institutions but by an individual person, Díaz.

The Porfiriato also reinforced the paternalism handed down from the political and social culture of the precolonial and colonial periods. Díaz's concessions to favored people, providing them with substantial economic rewards, encouraged dependence on his personal largesse and the government generally. This technique, which he used generously to pacify opponents and reward friends, produced corruption at all levels of political life. It encouraged the belief that political office was a reward to be taken advantage of by the officeholder rather than a public responsibility. The political cultures of many other countries are similarly characterized to a greater or lesser degree.

Against his most recalcitrant foes, Díaz was willing to use less ingratiating techniques Toward the end of his regime, press censorship became widespread. As a whole, he favored a controlled, complimentary press to counter criticism from independent sources. If threats or imprisonment were not sufficient to deter his opponents, he resorted to more severe measures. Typically, lower social groups were the victims of violent suppression. A notorious example of this policy was the treatment of the Yaqui Indians in northwestern Mexico, who rebelled after influential members of the Díaz administration began seizing their lands. The Yaquis were subjected to brutalities and were forced into what were in effect concentration camps, and many were deported to Yucatán, where most perished in forced labor on the henequen plantations in the hot tropical climate.

As Mexico emerged from the first decade of the twentieth century, it acquired a political model that drew on Spanish authoritarian and paternal heritages. Like the viceroys before him but without reporting to any other authority, Díaz exercised extraordinary power. He built up a larger state apparatus as a means of retaining power, and although he strengthened the role of the state in society, he did not legitimize its institutions. While he did succeed in building some economic infrastructure in Mexico, he failed to meet social needs and maltreated certain groups, thereby continuing and intensifying the social inequalities existing under his colonial predecessors. His favoritism toward foreigners caused resentment and contributed to the rise of nationalism after 1911. The lack of separation between civilian and military leadership left Mexicans unclear about the principle of civilian supremacy and autonomy, an issue that would confront his successors. Finally, although the moderate liberals/converted positivists replaced orthodox liberals and, in many cases, substituted conservative principles for their original political ideas, the excluded liberal followers who remained faithful to the cause rose up once again after 1910.

THE REVOLUTIONARY HERITAGE:
SOCIAL VIOLENCE AND REFORM

It can never be forgotten that contemporary Mexico is the product of a violent revolution that lasted, on and off, from 1910 through 1920. The decimation of its population-more than a million people during the decade-alone would have left an indelible stamp on Mexican life. The revolution touched all social classes, and although it did not affect all locales with the same intensity, it brought together the residents of villages and cities to a degree never achieved before or since. In the same way that World War II altered life in the United States, the revolution brought profound changes to Mexican society.

The causes of the revolution have been thoroughly examined by historians. The causes are numerous, and their roots can be found in the failures of the Porfiriato. Among the most important to have been singled out are foreign economic penetration, class struggle, landownership, economic depression, local autonomy, the clash between modernity and tradition, the breakdown of the Porfirian system, the weakness of the transition process, the lack of opportunity for upward political and social mobility, and the aging of the leadership. Historians do not agree on the primary causes nor on whether the 1910 revolution was a "real" revolution, that is, whether it radically changed the social structure.

In my own view, the revolution introduced significant changes, although it did not alter social structures to the degree one expects of a major social revolution on a par with the Soviet or Chinese revolutions. Nevertheless. to understand Mexican political developments in the twentieth century, it is necessary to explore the ideology of the revolution and the political structures that emerged in the immediate postrevolutionary era.

Idealogically, one of the best ways to understand the diverse social forces for change is to trace the constitutional provisions of 1917 to the precursors and revolutionary figures. Among the most important precursors, Ricardo Flores Magón and his brothers offered ideas leading up to the revolution and revived the legitimacy of orthodox liberalism by establishing liberal clubs throughout Mexico. This provided a basis for middleclass participation in and support for revolutionary principles. Flores Magón and his adherents published a newspaper in exile in the United States, La Regeneración, banned in Mexico. Many prominent political figures in the revolution, including General Alvaro Obregón, cited its influence on their values. Perhaps more than in any other area, Flores Magón offered arguments in support of workers' rights, establishing such principles as minimum wage and maximum hours in strike documents and Liberal Party platforms. He also advocated the distribution of land, the return of communal (ejido) properties to the Indians, and the requirement that agricultural land be productive.

Politically, the most prominent figure in the pre- and revolutionary eras was Francisco I. Madero, son of wealthy Coahuilan landowners in northern Mexico, who believed in mild social reforms and the basic principles of political liberty. He founded the Anti-Reelectionist Party to oppose Porfirio Díaz. A product of his class, he did not believe in structural change but did believe in equal opportunity for all. His Presidential Succession of 1910, the Anti-Reelectionist Party platform, and his revolutionary 1910 Plan of San Luis Potosí advocated three important political items: no reelection, electoral reform (effective suffrage), and revision of the constitution of 1857. The most important of Madero's social and economic ideas concerned public education; he believed, as did the orthodox liberals, that education was the key to a modern Mexico.

More radical social ideas were offered by such revolutionaries as Pascual Orozco, who later turned against Madero; Francisco Villa; and Emiliano Zapata. Orozco, who expressed many popular social and economic views, some complementary to those of Flores Magón, also called for municipal autonomy from federal control in response to Díaz's centralization of political authority. Villa, from the northern state of Chihuahua, did not offer a true ideology or program, but the policies he implemented in the regions under his control reflected his radical social philosophy. In Chihuahua, for example, he nationalized large landholders' properties outright and, because of his own illiteracy (he learned to read only late in life), instituted a widespread primary school program. Zapata, who came from the rugged state of Morelos just south of Mexico City, fought largely over the issue of land. His ideology, expressed by his collaborators, appeared in his famous Plan de Ayala.

With the exception of Madero, these men offered few specific political principles. Consequently, the political ideology of the revolution, with the possible exception of effective suffrage and no reelection, emerged piecemeal, either in the constitutional debates at Querétaro, before the writing of the 1917 constitution, or from actual experience.

One of the most important of these themes was Mexicanization, a broad form of nationalism. Simply stated, Mexico comes first, outsiders second. In the economic realm, it can be seen in placing Mexicans instead of foreigners in management positions, even if the investment is foreign in origin. An even more important expression of economic nationalism occurred in regard to resources: the formalization of Mexican control. With few exceptions, at least 51 percent of any enterprise had to be in the hands of Mexicans. But in 1988, desperate for foreign investment, the government loosened up some restrictions in certain economic sectors.

Mexicanization spread to cultural and psychological realms. On a cultural level, the revolution gave birth to extraordinary productivity in art, music, and literature, in which methodology was often as important as the content. In the visual fields, the Mexicans revived the mural, an art forrn that could be viewed by large numbers of Mexicans rather than remain on the walls of private residences or inaccessible museums. Political cartoons during and after the revolution blossomed. In literature, the social protest novel-the novel of the revolution-came to the fore. Often cynical or highly critical, these works castigated not only the failures of the Porfiriato but the apparent failures of the revolutionaries too. Musicians paid attention to the indigenous heritage, even composing the classical Indian Symphony, whose roots lie in the native culture. Ballads and popular songs flourished throughout Mexico as each region made its contributions.

Mexicanization also affected a line of intellectual thought known as lo mexicano. which was concerned with national or cultural identity, and pride in Mexican heritage. Henry Schmidt, one of the most insightful students of the Mexican cultural rebirth, assessed its impact:

The 1910 Revolution generated an unprecedented expansion of knowledge in Mexico. At the same time as it lessened the tensions of an unresponsive political system, it ushered in a new age of creation. If the post-Revolutionary political development cannot always be viewed favorably the efforts to reorient thought toward a greater awareness of national conditions at least merit commendation. Thus the 1920's is known as the period of "reconstruction" and "renaissance", when the country, having undergone its most profound dislocation since the Conquest, attempted to consolidate the gains its people had struggled for since the waning of the Porfiratio.

Another important theme of the revolution was social justice. Economically, although not expressed specifically in the constitution, this included a fairer distribution of national income.
Socially, and called for by nearly all revolutionary and intellectual thinkers, it involved expanded public education. Madero wanted to improve access. Many others promoted education as an indirect means to enhance economic opportunity particularly for the Indians, whose integration into the mainstream mestizo culture could thereby be accomplished. A leading intellectual, José Vasconcelos, who made significant contributions to Mexican education, praised a coming "Cosmic race," suggesting that a racial mix would produce a superior, not inferior, culture.

The revolution did not react adversely to a strong state. Instead, building on the administrative infrastructure created under the Porfiriato, postrevolutionary regimes contributed to its continued expansion. Yet unlike Díaz the revolution heralded a larger state role giving the state responsibilities not expected of a government before 1910. According to Hector Aguilar Camím and Lorenzo Meyer, the construction of a new state incorporated "the first bold attempts at developing the state as an instrument of economic, educational, and cultural action and regulation. For example, as a consequence of Mexicanization, the state gained control over subsoil resources and eventually became the administrator of extractive enterprises. The phenomenal growth in the value of the nation's oil in the 1970s cast the state in an even more important role. When the state nationalized foreign petroleum companies in 1938, it established national and international precedents elsewhere. In later periods, the state came to control such industries as fertilizers, telephones, electricity, airlines, steel, and copper In the mid-1980s the trend gradually began to be reversed.

The revolution stimulated the political liberalism that had lain dormant under the ideology of positivism during the last twenty years of the Porfiriato. Freedom of the press was revived during the revolution. The media underwent a regression in the 1920s, and although censorship continued to raise its head, the conditions under which the media operated were much improved. The most important principle of political liberalism-increased participation in governance expressed through effective suffrage-was given substance in Madero's election in 1911, probably Mexico's freest, but has never returned to that level.

The political mythology of the revolution, "Effective Suffrage, No Reelection," was stamped on official government documents until the 1970s. Effective suffrage is still only an ideal, however, not yet achieved in practice. On the other hand, no reelection, with but a few exceptions in the 1920s and 1930s, has become the role. When General Alvaro Obregón tried to circumvent it in 1928 by forcing the congress to amend the constitution to allow him to run again after a four-year hiatus, he was elected but then assassinated before taking office. No president since has tried the maneuver. No elected executive, including mayors and governors, repeats officeholding, consecutively or otherwise. Legislators may repeat terms, but not consecutively, a concept introduced in the 1930s.

The revolution also had an extraordinary influence on Mexico's political leadership after 1920. Half the national political leaders born between 1870 and 1900 had participated in this violent event. Among those who held national office for the first time, 47 percent had fought on the side of the revolutionaries, 9 percent in opposition to these forces, and 2 percent on both sides. Presidents Alvaro Obregón (1920- 1924) and Plutarco Elías Calles (1924-1928), as well as Díaz, recruited many of their wartime cronies. Through 1940, the presidents who succeeded them were, with one exception, generals who had fought in these battles, often under these two predecessors. As the data in Table 2-2 illustrate, veterans continued to dominate Mexican administrations from 1914 through 1934. As might be expected, the 1910 revolution introduced a different type of politician as well, one whose social origins were quite distinct from those of his noncombatant contemporary. In effect, the revolution reintroduced the importance of working-class origins among Mexico's leadership, since 72 percent of the public figures who were combat veterans were from working-class families, compared with only 34 percent who had middle- and upper-class backgrounds.

Another revolutionary outcome was the changed relationship between church and state. Once again, the seeds of orthodox liberalism appeared in the constitutional debates. Many of the revolutionaries eyed the church with severe distrust and reinstituted many of the most restrictive provisions advocated by the early liberals. Until 1992 these provisions could be found, unchanged, in the constitution. They include removing religion from primary education, taking away the church's right to own real property, and secularizing certain religious activities and restricting the clergy´s potential political actions. No clergy of any faith were permitted in their capacity as ministers to criticize Mexican laws or even to vote.

The breakup of large landholdings is also a primary economic and social product of revolutionary ideology. As part of the redistribution of land in Mexico after 1915, the government made the Indian ejido concept (village-owned lands) its own, distributing land to thousands of rural villages to be held in common for legal residents, who obtained use rights, not legal title, to it. In effect, the government institutionalized the indigenous land system that the liberals and positivists had attempted to destroy. This structure remained unchanged until 1992.

The revolution also introduced a change in attitude toward labor. For the first time, strikes were legalized, and the right to collective bargaining was sanctioned. Provisions regarding hours and wages, at least for organized labor, were introduced. The 1917 constitution was the first to mention the concept of social security, although it was not implemented until 1943. Organized labor helped General Obregón defeat president Venustiano Carranza in the last armed confrontation of the revolutionary decade.

Finally, although this list is incomplete, the revolution gave greater emphasis to a sense of constitutionalism. In a political sense, constitutionalism provides legitimacy for a set of ideas expressed formally in the national document. It is not only a reference point for the goals of Mexican society after 1920, as a consequence of the revolution, but it also identifies the basic outline of political concepts and processes. The constitution of 1917 itself took on a certain level of prestige. Although many of its more radical social, economic, and political provisions are observed more in abeyance than reality, its contents and its prestige together influenced the values of successive generations.

THE POLITICS OF PLACE:
INTERFACE WITH THE UNITED STATES

The proximity of the United states has exercised an enormous influence on Mexico. As I argue, "The United States constitutes a crucial variable in the very definition of Mexico's modern political culture." Beginning with independence, the political leader who sought solutions emphasizing federalism, and later the decentralizing principles of liberalism, borrowed many of their concepts from U.S. political thinkers and documents. In fact, the intellectual ideas provoked by U.S. independence form England provided a fertile literature from which independence precursors could also borrow.

The destiny of the two countries became intertwined politically in more direct ways as a consequence of the annexation of Texas, a northern province of New Spain. Immediately after Mexico won independence, large numbers of Americans began to settle in Texas, quickly outnumbering the Mexicans there. The differences within Texas between Mexicans and Americans and between Texas and Mexican government led to armed conflict. The Mexican army under General Antonio López de Santa Anna lay siege to the Alamo in February 1836 but was routed from Texas later that year. Texas remained independent of Mexico until 1845, when the United State, by a joint congressional resolution, annexed it. This provoked another conflict, one with even more serious repercussions.

Desirous of more territory, President James Polk used several incidents as a pretext for war. In 1846 U.S. troops drove deep into Mexico's
heartland and, in addition to occupying outlying regions of the former
Spanish empire in New Mexico and California, seized the port of Veracruz and Mexico City. In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on February 2, 1848, Mexico ceded more than half its territory to the United States. Seven years later, the Mexican government, again under Santa Anna sold the United States a strip of land (in what' is now southern Arizona and southern New Mexico), known as the Gadsen Purchase, although this time it was not done under duress.

The war left a justifiably bitter taste in the mouths of many Mexicans. As has been suggested, "The terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo are among the harshest imposed by a winner upon a loser in the history of the world". More than any single issue, the terms established a relationship of distrust between the two nations. Physical incursion from the north took place twice more. Voices in the United States always seemed to call for annexations. Even as late as the first decade of the twentieth century, California legislators publicly advocated acquiring Baja California.

During the Mexican Revolution the United States repeatedly and directly or indirectly intervened in Mexican affairs. The intense personal prejudices or interests of its emissaries often determined U.S. foreign policy decisions. Henry Lane Wilson, ambassador during the Madero administration (1911-1913), played a role in its overthrow and in the failure to ensure the safety of Madero and his vice-president, who were murdered by counterrevolutionaries led by Felix Díaz and Victoriano Huerta. Huerta established himself in power, and the violent phase of the revolution began in earnest. President Woodrow Wilson removed the U.S. ambassador and sent personal emissaries to evaluate Huerta. He decided to channel funds to the Constitutionalists. revolutionaries who had remained loyal to Madero and to constitutional government. But after a minor incident involving U.S. sailors in the port of Tampico, Wilson used it as a pretext to order the occupation of the port of Veracruz, resulting in the deaths of numerous Mexicans.

Wilson's high-handedness produced a widespread nationalistic response in Mexico that nearly brought Wilson's intention- to oust Huerta from the presidency-to naught Mexicans alive at the time of the occupation recall discontinuing classes in English, switching back to Mexican cigarettes, and throwing away their Texas-style hats in symbolic protest. Young men as far away as Guadalajara, in western Mexico, readily joined voluntary companies to go fight the Americans. But Huerta fell, and the North Americans did not invade and, indeed, soon left Veracruz.
After the Constitutionalists' victory under Carranza, rebel chieftains began to bicker among themselves. They divided into two major camps: one led by Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata and the other by Álvaro Obregón and Carranza. After several major battles, Obregón defeated Villa's forces. In March 1916, after remnants of Villa's forces moved north and attacked Columbus, New Mexico, Wilson ordered a punitive expedition under General John "Black Jack" Pershing against Villa. The U.S. forces battled the Constitutionalists, never caught Villa, and remained in Mexico until 1917.

From this necessarily brief selection of historical examples, it is clear that Mexicans have reason to distrust the United States and to have created an extremely strong sense of nationalism, especially directed toward its northern neighbor. The economic, political, and cultural exchanges between the two countries, especially since the 1920s, have given rise to issues common to Mexico's relations in all parts of the world, as well as others peculiar to relations between Mexico and the United States. The geographic proximity of two such culturally and economically different societies has had numerous consequences for domestic politics and their respective national security agendas. These issues will be examined in a broader perspective in a later chapter. For now, I just want to emphasize that Mexico's nearness to the United States has noticeably affected its political and economic history and development.

CONCLUSION

Throughout its recent history, Mexico, as both a colony and an independent nation, established patterns that have contributed heavily to the development of its political model. Some of the more important remnants from the Spanish colonial period are the conflicts of social class, exacerbated by sharp social divisions. Catholicism, introduced as the official religion of the Spanish conquerors, has been equally significant. Its monopoly encouraged a cultural intolerance of other ideas or values and enabled a symbiotic, profitable relationship between the state and the church. The Spanish also fostered a strong sense of special interests, granting privileges to other selected groups, including the military, and ultimately contributing to a particularized civil-military relationship. These elements led to corporatism, a sort of quasi-official relationship between important occupational groups or institutions and the state. The Spanish, through their own political structure, especially the viceroy, imposed three hundred years of authoritarian, centralized administration. Great powers accrued to the executive, to the neglect of other government branches. Restrictive economic policies discouraged the growth of a strong colonial economy, thus shoring up the role of the state versus that of an incipient private sector. The state's power and prestige attracted New Spain's most ambitious citizens.

Many features of the colonial period were further enhanced after independence. The conflicts between the liberals and conservatives, driven by an intolerance of counterviews, produced ongoing civil war and anarchy. Although Mexico experimented briefly with a more decentralized form of government, authoritarian qualities were back in the saddle by the end of the nineteenth century. The presidency replaced the viceroyship in wielding power, and President Díaz expanded the size and importance of the executive branch, thereby continuing to enhance the state's image. Although Díaz introduced political stability and some economic development, he perpetuated the social inequalities inherited from the Spanish period. He also made sure that the military would have a large voice in the political system, leaving unresolved the matter of military subordination to civilian authority. And the Spanish paternal traditions remained.

The revolution reactively introduced changes but in many respects retained some of the basic features from the previous two periods. One important innovation was Mexicanization, an outgrowth largely of Mexico's exploitation by foreigners and especially its proximity to the United States. Mexicanization strengthened Mexican values and culture as well as political nationalism. The revolution altered Mexicans' political rhetoric and social goals of legitimizing the needs and interests of lower-income groups and Indians. Yet instead of reducing the role of the state, it made the state into an even more comprehensive institution. The revolution also revived important principles of orthodox liberalism, including political liberties, suppression of the church's secular role, and decentralization of authority, but a decade of civil violence and the need for effective leadership in the face of successive rebellions in the 1920s discouraged implementation of a federal, democratic system. Instead, the revolution left Mexico with a heritage of strong, authoritarian leadership, of military supremacy. Even so, it established the importance of constitutionalism, even if many of the constitution's liberal provisions were never enforced. The legitimacy of its concepts provided the basis for political liberalization under Presidents Salinas and Zedillo.

Finally, Mexico's long, troublesome relationship with the United States has implications for its political evolution and the functioning of its model. The level of the United States's economic influence in Mexico and the United States seizure of more than half of Mexico's national territory, prompted Mexican nationalism and anti-Americanism. Mexico has had to labor under the shadow of its internationally powerful neighbor, a psychological as well as a practical political burden. Historical experience and geographic proximity influenced many domestic policy decisions and perhaps subtly encouraged a strong, even authoritarian regime that could prevent the kind of instability and political squabbling that had left Mexico open to territorial depredation.

Personalism
Political authority and loyalty are given to an individual person rather than to an institutionalized office held by a leader.

Mexican Liberalism
An amalgam of basic concepts of political liberty and nineteenth-century laissez-faire economic principles.