FOR BETTER OR WORSE, the July 6 general elections in
Mexico will mark a turning point for the country. The candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)
is calling for a sharp right turn to "free enterprise" and liquidating the remaining gains of the Mexican revolution. The elections are also coming in the midst of a severe and growing economic and political crisis, with the ruling party split for the first time.
In this context, the Revolutionary Workers' Party (PRT, the
Mexican section of the Fourth International), is running an extensive campaign with some mass support. In the following interview, Sergio Rodríquez, a leader of the PRT, describes the crossroads that Mexico has reached and the Fourth
Internationalists' campaign.
HAT IS new in the Mexican elections that will be held on July 6 is that, in the context of an economic crisis, a political crisis has opened up in the
PRI. How does the PRT analyze the
Some people want to reduce the crisis the country is experiencing to just an economic one. But we think that it is something deeper, that there is a crisis of the whole system of domination set up in 1934. This system of domination has come into conflict with the economic projects that the bourgeoisie and the imperialists have for Mexico, especially the role of the trade-union bureaucracy and the forms of organizing the
The state that arose after the Mexican revolution was seen by a good part of the
Mexican people as coming out of the revolution. In fact, the revolution combined different aspects. While it guaranteed the growth of the bourgeoisie, it also institutionalized many gains of the mass movement, in particular the revolutionary peasant movement.
For example, Article 123 of the constitution establishes an element of workers' control over production, the right to strike, an eight-hour day, a sort of sliding scale of wages and so on. In agriculture, the peasants have been allowed to possess the land collectively for generations in the ejidos.
Today, both the bourgeoisie and the state think that these elements no longer serve
12 any purpose, that it is necessary to change
International Viewpoint #142 • May 30, 1988 all the labor laws and transform the ejidos into agri-businesses. This change means that the ranks of the three million landless peasants that we have today would be swelled by the four or five million more that would be affected by this measure.
The bourgeoisie's starting point is that Mexican productivity has always been one of the lowest in the world. So, Mexico needs deepgoing changes. Newsweek has published an article on the project of the PRI candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, in which he explains that it is a sort of Mexican perestroika, which is going to mean changing a political system as old as the
"It is the beginning of the end of the Mexican social consensus"
This is the bourgeoisie's long-term plan. But the problem for them is it is not quite the same thing to advance a plan of this sort under a military dictatorship, without a social consensus, and to do it in a system whose basis is precisely social consensus. This policy is breaking the social consensus and thereby engendering a series of
A new generation of PRI leaders has emerged, one that wants to institute this policy. It is no accident that the PRI candidate is 37 years old, and that he is displacing a whole older generation of PRI
In the last analysis, as I said, this phenomenon reflects a crisis of political domination in Mexico, the beginning of the end of the Mexican social consensus. This is why it is very important. What has given this regime the stability that it has enjoyed for so many years is that it presented itself to the people as the heir of the revolution. In putting this heritage in question, the regime is also putting in question the image that it has presented to the masses.
In fact, some political commentators in Mexico suggest that in the same way as Miguel Aleman changed the party's name to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (under Cárdenas, it was called the Party of the Mexican Revolution), Salinas de Gortari should make another change and call it the Institutional Modernizing Party or something in that style. • It is in this context that the "democratic current" of the PRI has emerged. It includes a personality of great symbolic importance, Cuauthemoc, the son of Lázaro Cárdenas. There is even talk in Mexico about the appearance of a new "Cardenism." Could you explain what Cardenism means in Mexico?'
"Cardenism" refers to the last government that had a clear identification with the masses, not only because it represented them but because it was continuing the Mexican revolution. Lázaro Cárdenas became president in 1934 and remained until 1940. He was really the great modernizer of Mexican politics. He modified all the mechanisms for controlling the masses.
Before him, there was the Revolutionary National Party founded by Plutarco Elías Calles. It had managed to institutionalize the revolution, but had not yet succeeded in conducting a mass policy, a policy of the state controlling the masses. This is why people say that there is a "Cárdenas" mass policy. Cárdenas got the bulk of the workers' and peasants' organizations and the middle layers to come into the Party of the
Trotsky said that Cárdenas' party was a "popular frontist party," because within this party there were workers, peasants, sections of the bourgeoisie and so forth, and because it simultaneously conducted a very 1. On Cardenism, see Notebooks for Study and Research 6, "Populism in Latin America," £2.50, $4. [Available from NSR, 2, rue Richard-Lenoir, 93108 Montreuil, France.]
radical anti-imperialist policy and advanced a project of consolidating a social
"Cardenism" marked the consciousness of the workers in Mexico, because it carried through a series of important measures, which made gains possible for the Mexican proletariat and peasantry. The most important were those carried out in 1936, with the expropriation of the cotton-growing land in the northern part of the country, at a time when cotton was of great importance on the international market.
The landowners were American. This was the most important expropriation that we have seen in Mexico. It benefitted about 60,000 families. It took on a great significance because the landlords, latifundistas and White Guards opposed it, even using arms. Cárdenas armed the peasants to de-
Moreover, in 1938, when oil workers went on strike to form a national union and get a contract signed, Cárdenas proposed nationalizing the oil industry. This had a fundamental historical significance for Mexico. It was a confrontation of the entire nation with imperialism, to such an extent that there started to be talk about the imperialist countries invading Mexico again, and that provoked an impressive mobilization. People brought their humble belong ings to the government palace - chickens, turkeys and so on — to give to the government in order to help it pay the oil debt.
In general, Cárdenas gave a lot of land to the peasants, supported the workers' movement organizing to form the Mexican Workers' Confederation (CTM) and so on.
Internationally, he also played a very important role. His was the government that most openly backed the Spanish republic in 1936, much more so than the ÜSSR or
Specifically, in the case of Mexico, the international brigades could count on the support of the government. It even called for the formation of such brigades. At the end of the Spanish civil war in 1939, the Cárdenas government offered many ships to transport refugees. In this way, it made it possible for many Spanish children to get to Mexico. It also offered asylum to Trot-
There is even a letter by Cárdenas in which he explains some very important things. It says that in a period when there was fascism in Germany and Stalinism in the USSR, when the entire world was experiencing defeat of the workers' movement, in Mexico the mass movement was making progress. It was a time when there were even possibilities for a social transformation, given the level of radicalization of the mass movement.
Thus, Cárdenas advanced quite a progressive and anti-imperialist policy. However, there was another facet of Cárdenas' policy, which Trotsky explained very well when he talked about the two aspects of Cardenism. At the same time as he nationalized the oil industry, he assured a totally anti-democratic state control over the masses by forcibly integrating the unions into the party. Later this had spectacular consequences, because if people wanted to work in a factory, not only did they have to sign on but they had to join the party and their dues were automatically deducted from their wages.
### "Cárdenas advanced quite a progressive, anti-imperialist policy"
Cárdenas also instituted Paragraph B of Article 123 of the Constitution (on the right to strike), which deprived about 4 million Mexicans working for the state of the right to strike. Cárdenas' argument was that the state was revolutionary and "if the state is revolutionary, if workers are serving this state, we cannot give them the right to strike because that would destabilize the revolutionary state." And so, to this day, public workers do not have the right to strike.
In accordance with the same logic, he prevented the CTM from uniting the workers and peasants. Most of all he created the whole idea of arbitration, of a state arbitrating among classes, a state that every time there is a conflict considers itself above the contending parties and hands down unchallengeable verdicts - an idea that strongly influences the minds of workers. It lays down the law in trade-union and agrarian conflicts, and this projects the image of a state above classes.
MEXICO
To comprehend the power of this image, we have to look back at the oil conflict. In reality, the workers never proposed nationalizing the oil industry. They only called for a contract. So, when Cárdenas decided on nationalization, it was not seen by the masses as something won as a result of their struggle, of their mobilization, but as a great gift from the state.
Subsequent governments modified the system. But what Salinas de Gortari wants to do today is not to modify it but to wipe out every vestige of Cardenism from the Mexican state - specifically, the trade-union bureaucracy, the land settlement, Article 123, collective bargaining and so on.
That is why a current is re-emerging that calls itself "Cardenist." It is a current that feels totally shoved aside within the PRI, and which, from its point of view, thinks that this change is only going to bring on a process of radicalization and a higher level of confrontation with the state. In many respects, the neo-Cardenist project is an attempt to re-establish the social consensus, a mass policy of the Mexican state, in order to try redirect the masses into the state's channels. • There is a curious contradiction about the democratic current in the PRI. On the one hand, it wants to look modernist, and it is seen in that way by sections of society. It has a power of a attraction for some intellectual strata "disillusioned" with the left, which is similar to the "new realism" represented in Europe by some social-democratic 13 parties. May 30, 1988 • #142 International Viewpoint
MEXICO
On the other hand, Cuauthemoc Cárdenas supports maintaining traditional political methods considered out of date by the Mexican bourgeoisie. And the official candidate of the PRI is presenting himself as the herald of bourgeois economic "modernization." How is Cárdenas evolving under the effect of this contradiction?
The contradiction is a twofold one. Salinas de Gortari wants to apply capitalist modernization without going through the process of democratization, that is, with the old political structures, because he has no others. Cárdenas, who never uses the word "modernization," knows that some changes have to be made to assure the continuity of the traditional political structures.
There are broad sections of the masses and even sections of the bourgeoisie to whom Cárdenas' proposals seem socialist. The Mexican bourgeoisie is very divided on this question. The elder Cárdenas also formed an employers' association, the CANASINTRA, which organizes sections of small- and medium-sized industry. These sectors are totally opposed to Salinas de Gortari's modernization proposal, because this project involves joining GATT [General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade], opening up to foreign capital, exporting goods produced in the maquiladoras (assembly plants) and so on. It will benefit that section of capital most integrated into imperialist financial capitalism. But it means bankruptcy pure and simple for small- and medium-sized industry.
The problem that arises from this contradiction is very complex, because Cárdenas has not said clearly what his economic program might be. For the moment, the only thing he is doing is claiming all the authority of the Cardenist tradition. It is a return to the old nationalism. That is where the problem lies, because everyone understands that from the standpoint of the bourgeoisie, modernization and change are necessary.
We think that Cárdenas has not yet revealed all of his vision for the country. For the moment, he is devoting himself exclusively to organizing his forces on the basis of the Cardenist ideology. But it is still not clear what his longer-term program is go• In this process of of organizing forces, it seems that Cárdenas has had some success - not only in the party, which is natural, but also in the left, including the most radical part of the left. That has a certain effect on the PRT. What is the real impact of this phenomenon?
Cuauthemoc Cárdenas is repeating his father's experience. On the one hand, he is winning over a section of the PRI that has had enough of this modernization policy and this process of losing popularity and erosion of the social consensus that the PRI had guaranteed. It sees neo-Cardenism as a 14 the oiher rand, he is wisening over sectors means for expressing itself politically. On International Viewpoint #142 • May 30, 1988 outside the PRI, including within the radical left. In fact, he has even won over some members of our party, about 50, who have seen neo-Cardenism as offering a great opportunity to change the relationship of
This is a hard thing to argue with, because there is a real basis for this idea. There are indeed large sections of the Mexican people who are sick of the PRI, and this mood cannot yet be channelled by the socialist left. Although we have made a lot of progress — because it is unquestionable that the socialist left has made progress in comparison with the position we were in from 1968-1975 — it is also true that it is not seen as an alternative to the PRI regime. Moreover, it is evident that Cuauthemoc's Cardenism involves an element of illusion for major sections of the masses who think that he can inflict a defeat on the
"All the opposition campaigns are winning some mass support"
The comrades who have just formed the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), the regroupment of all the sectors coming from Cuauthemoc Cárdenas, want a bridge between the Cardenist national consciousness, the masses and the socialist project. But in reality, the position these comrades have taken can be summed up in the following formula - 99 per cent support for Cárdenas and one per cent criticism. They make no distinction between the dynamic of the movement supporting Cárdenas and its leadership and the political project of the Cardenist leadership.
However, what the masses seeing and listening to Cárdenas feel is totally different from what Cárdenas wants from the mass movement. This is where things get complicated. The political forces leading the Cardenist current know that Cuauthemoc is not going to win the elections, because today in Mexico it is impossible to beat the PRI in the electoral arena. The elections are rigged. Cárdenas is trying to build a mass movement big enough to constitute a political force capable of preventing an overall change in the existing state.
He wants to use this movement to hold back the modernizers, to keep them from having a free hand to change the trade-union and peasant structures. Then, he wants to undertake negotiations with them on the basis of a favorable relationship of forces, which the Cardenists did not have when they were in the PRI, because in that party no one moves a muscle without the consent of the president of the republic.
Cardenism therefore represents a mass movement that is going to be useful for Cuauthemoc in negotiating with the state. The result of such negotiation can only be re-establishment of the social pact based on channelling the mass radicalization into serving simply as a means of pressure to block the bourgeois transformation of the • The emergence of Cardenism and its power of attraction for the masses are creating problems for the PRT but also for the Mexican Socialist Party (PMS)?, which is running its own candidate in the elections. You might seem to be "splitters" with regard to a "useful" challenge to the PRI represented by Cárdenas' candidacy. In these conditions, how is the PRT's campaign for your candidate, Rosario Ibarra, going? How are you being seen by the
The PRT comrades who decided to support Cárdenas' candidacy and who formed the MAS — along with comrades from other organizations coming, for example, from the Revolutionary Left Organization-Mass Line (OIR-LM, of Maoist origin) - say that in deciding not to support Cárdenas the PRT and the PMS are isolating the socialist left from the masses.
In reality, almost everyone in Mexico recognizes — and I think that even those comrades do — that all the opposition campaigns are winning some mass support.
To take one example, at a rally in La Laguna, about 60,000 peasants greeted Cárdenas like a revolutionary hero. The day before, the same people were forced to attend a rally for Salinas de Gortari, and they greeted him by throwing boiling water at him, even getting involved in fights with the PRI activists. And then they went quite happily to a Cárdenas rally. We say that this rally was a step forward, and that we should not have a sectarian attitude to that rally, because the people who attended it were breaking politically with the PRI.
Of course, we think that the leadership of this movement is bourgeois, nationalist and reformist. But the dynamic is totally positive. To give an idea, some women told Cuauthemoc Cárdenas that if the government once again failed to respect the real results of the election, the people should take up arms again. Of course, Cárdenas appealed for calm, and said that people
In the recent past, there have been movements such as the "Democratic Tendency" in the electrical workers' union in the 1970s, which evolved toward the left and even reached socialist conceptions, but then went over to nationalist positions and ended up in the PRI. We are seeing an evolution of the same sort now — an independent movement that broke with the state, which already had a socialist outlook and today is being channelled into Cardenism. In reality, instead of being bridge to bring the masses toward socialism, groups like the MAS are a bridge to bring socialists to 2. The PMS is the product of a fusion in 1987 of the PSUM (the Mexican CP and some other groups) and a nationalist party, the Mexican Workers' Party.
For all these reasons, even though there really are big risks of isolation, we are convinced that we have to go ahead in building an independent revolutionary force, not independent from the Cardenist masses, but from the state. We think that we have to take initiatives toward the popular layers that are turning toward Cárdenas, that we have to make concrete proposals for struggle to these Cardenist sectors, on such issues as wages, contracts, the foreign debt and so forth, understanding that it is necessary to address ourselves not only to the Cardenist masses but also their leaders. But it is only if we can create an independent organized mass force that we can really establish a dialogue with those masses.
This is why we are trying to create an independent force. We have already made base ourselves on the mass struggles that are going on. In many places, we have occupied government offices, offices of the water company, the electricity company and the roads department in order to raise the problems faced by poor neighborhoods. We have occupied offices of distribution firms to protest against the poor supply of Mexico City. The police and the state have said that these occupations are illegal, that they have nothing to do with an election campaign as such, because we don't limit
MEXICO and 90,000 people — and we still have three months to go. We plan to hold a big national rally at the end to demonstrate that there is a broad independent movement that is a major force in the country. We think that we may be able to attract more than 50,000 people to this rally in Mexico City.
At the same time, in the context of this crisis of the Mexican state, we want to advance the consciousness of the population on the meaning of the elections. We think that electoral fraud is going to be enormous
Por un AUMENTO SALARIA progress. For example, after the earthquake in 1985, a United Coordinated Committee of Earthquake Victims (CUD) was formed. de EMERGENCIA Many of those involved had never done anything political, and a lot of them had even been members of the PRI. Recently, the majority of the organizations in the CUD decided to support Rosario Ibarra and the PRT and are participating actively in our campaign.
We are talking about an organization that involves between 80,000 and 90,000 people in Mexico City alone. For us, this is a palpable demonstration of the incorrectness of the analysis that the masses as a whole have to go through a stage of nationalist consciousness before they come to a
We are aware that the situation is complicated, but we also think that it is better than ever. Because we think that this crisis in the PRI is going to be so extensive that it will create problems even for Cárdenas. Because, for example, if he accepts a rigged election, if he agrees to enter negotiations in those conditions, it is possible that major sections of the Cardenist masses will break
The difference between the elder Cárdenas and his son is that the father offered the masses concrete things. But the son can no longer do this. We are in a period of economic crisis. • Can you describe some of the features of the campaign of Rosario Ibarra and the PRT?
This campaign is a bit special. We think that it is impossible to run a routine campaign, with rallies and so on. The radicalization is very strong in Mexico and popular discontent as well. In line with that, we decided to run a campaign that would take up the basic questions. We think that it is insufficient to make appeals for defeating the PRI at the polls, but that this is a good time to explain to people what is involved in a process of independent mass organization going beyond the period of the elections.
Therefore, we decided to conduct a campaign in which we could take advantage of the level of radicalization and militancy to ourselves to appealing tor votes
In fact, that is not the key thing for us. The key thing is to base ourselves on the level of organization of the population, on the struggles that they are waging, and use the campaign to make progress on these questions. If a popular neighborhood is fighting to get electricity, we go into that neighborhood, and together with the people we occupy the offices of the electrical company and demand that electricity really be installed. And we have achieved successes. The same thing goes for land occupations, strikes and so on.
Our idea is to wage a radical campaign, one that boosts the process of organization and one that will also be useful for the struggles people are waging. We think that the campaign is producing very good results. We have held meetings, even in small towns, where we have attracted 2,000 to 3,000 people.
In the state of Sonora alone, on the US border, between 15,000 and 18,000 people have attended our rallies. In the state of Tlaxcala, the smallest in the country, we succeeded in attracting 5,000 people. In Puebla, 12,000 people have attended our rallies. In Mexico City, we have held rallies, such as the one for registering our candidates, that have attracted 20,000 people, and in which the CUD has played a major role.
So, as regards mobilization, we have had more success than in all our previous election campaigns. We have calculated that in a month and a half of our campaign, we have managed to mobilize between 80,000 this year, even bigger than in the past; it is going to involve millions of votes. And we think that this will clarify things among the country's various political forces.
We are preparing for this development, because we think that it will be the time for action, for a great civic movement to keep the right from taking over the issue of defending the basic democratic right to vote for who you want. If the right can capture this issue and manage to identify itself with the democratic feelings of the masses, we could lose everything that has been gained in the specific struggles.
We think that the PRT has to be the driving force in the fight against vote rigging. For example, in every rally, in every meeting, we explain the meaning of election fraud, and we are preparing people for the big struggle that will take place in Mexico
This is regardless of whether the PRT itself is a victim of this fraud. This is where Rosario Ibarra's candidacy has a great sig nificance, because of what she represents in terms of democratic liberties and the fight
At the same time, it is the weak point of Cárdenas' campaign, because he was governor of the state of Michoacan for the PRI, and was up to his neck there in electoral
His right-hand man, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo was the chair of the PRI in that state; in other words, he was responsible for carrying out this fraud for years. He recognizes that himself. They have no moral credibility for 15 fighting fraud. * May 30, 1988 • #142 International Viewpoint