MEXICO: Biography of Power: A History of Modern Mexico
By Enrique Krauze
Translated by Hank Heifetz
HarperCollins. 872 pp. $35

Go to the first chapter of "Mexico: Biography of Power"

Go to Chapter One

Patriots, Politics and Progress

Midterm elections held July 6 throughout Mexico appeared free of large-scale fraud, thus confirming a shift of historic importance reinforcing the trend toward electoral credibility begun with the 1994 presidential elections. Electoral credibility is the essential first step toward the goal of a functioning democracy, a goal that has eluded Mexico for the 176 years of its independent life. Important questions remain, however.

Why has Mexico's transition away from "soft authoritarianism" crept at such glacial pace since minor reforms were first introduced in 1958, some 30 years into the 68 year reign of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)?

Is the transition leading to some orthodox form of modern democracy? Or is the intermediate or long-term outcome likely to be something else, something perhaps like a Russian-type strong presidentialism in which constitutional arrangements operate poorly and real power is wielded by big business, big media, military and police forces, and criminal gangs?

Can a Mexico governed by laws and transparency manage the country's truly grotesque income inequalities? The authoritarian system defied precise definition and its methods were often repulsive, but corruption and an almost complete capacity for arbitrariness and ad hoc negotiation provided some of the agility that helped hold the country together.

Enrique Krauze, an accomplished historian and one of Mexico's preeminent intellectuals, has vigorously engaged the major debates of his nation's political and social life. He has tenaciously advocated a critical position "for unqualified democracy," the title of one of his best known books (Por una democracia sin adjetivos). And, in a country obsessed with its history, he has brought his craft and ideas to broad audiences in Mexico through popular television series and easily accessible biographies of Mexican leaders.

"Mexico: Biography of Power" is a vast interpretive synthesis of two centuries of Mexican political history viewed through the lens of what Krauze calls the "institution of personal power," a peculiar form of governance that builds on theocratic notions of rule in both Indigenous and Spanish colonial culture. The wary reader will immediately suspect cultural determinism in the cards, but Krauze's touch is much more restrained. Nor is this a "great-man" interpretation of history but rather a more sensible notion that where formal institutions are weak the biography of the leader tells us much about the historical moment. Krauze's book definitely helps us understand the staying power of the PRI regime. He has less to say about where the system is going or about its capacity to manage inequality.

One of the keys to continuity is the way in which the synthesis of Spanish and Indigenous cultures reproduces itself in the modern Mexican political and social systems. The centralism, corporatism and personalism of the PRI regime have historical roots centuries deep. But stability has proven tenuous, and another key is the cyclical nature of Mexican history, with long periods of authoritarian stability followed by anarchy. Until the most recent elections, the PRI was able to play on many Mexicans' fear of change. Also important are ideas, especially the success of the victors of the revolution of 1910 in imposing their own "patriotic version" of Mexican history to supplant the Catholic and conservative interpretation. Finally, the luck of history put capable leaders in power, from the 1930s up to 1970, when a string of catastrophes demonstrated the fragility of institutionalized personal power.

The book succeeds in several respects. As a skilled historian, Krauze marshals his scholarly sources well and achieves a comfortable degree of fairness and objectivity. In analytic fashion he reconstructs the architecture of power of the Indigenous and colonial eras. He deciphers the mythology of the liberal and revolutionary versions of Mexican history with detachment and sympathetic irony. "Heroes" such as Benito Juarez, Mexico's Lincoln, and Lazaro Cardenas, its FDR, are subjected to the same dispassionate balance as are "villains" such as Emperor Maximilian, imposed by the French in the 1860s, and Porfirio Diaz, the wily modernizing dictator who endured from 1876 to 1910.

Beginning with the insurgent priests of the early 19th century, Hidalgo and Morelos, and ending with brief notes on current president Ernesto Zedillo, Krauze's method is to paint the leader's portrait and then connect the man with his historical moment. The book is well suited to a general audience. Krauze is masterful in bringing his characters to life, and the translation is so fluid that ideas and images are vividly drawn. One sees the stern Porfirio Diaz stepping nimbly off the train as it passes by his mistress's house, one chuckles at the cynical commentaries of the triumphant revolutionary Alvaro Obregon, one watches over the shoulder of the rigid, compulsive Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, the president responsible for the horrific massacre of university students in 1968, as he laboriously cuts out yet another jigsaw puzzle late at night in his workshop.

In keeping with their semi-theocratic status, it was taboo until recently to comment publicly on a president's private life. Thus Krauze's interviews and access to unpublished memoirs shed important new light on his subjects. The biographies up to Luis Echeverria (1970-76) are convincingly drawn. The most recent presidents, however, are only hastily, and generally harshly, sketched.

Though all are important, three of the biographies might be especially useful to a U.S. audience trying to understand Mexico's collective memory. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, in and out of power from 1833 to 1855, presided over truly impressive disasters, including the loss of nearly half of the national territory in a war with the United States. Krauze suggests that there was a hint of Santa Anna's gambler's instinct in Jose Lopez Portillo's willingness to squander away Mexico's oil wealth in the early 1980s. Porfirio Diaz's story tells us much about how formal democracy was sacrificed to the goals of order and progress, much in the same way that Miguel de la Madrid (1982-88) and Carlos Salinas (1988-94) postponed democratic reforms to promote economic modernization. And though the idea irritates the PRI-government leadership, they adopted important techniques of Diaz's authoritarian statecraft, especially the hefty doses of "patriotic fraud" that ensured government control over elections. Finally, the presidency of Miguel Aleman (1946-52) laid foundations to the system that functioned so capably for nearly 30 years. Krauze paints a particularly lucid picture of how that system worked.

What about the future? Will electoral credibility lead to a new democratic culture and functioning institutions? Or will democracy again slip away, as it did during Francisco I. Madero's brief and tragic presidency (1911-13)? Krauze as liberal works to help build democracy; as historian he is candidly agnostic. "To continue the theater of history is to be condemned and condemn the country, dramatically or grotesquely, to endless repetition. There has been and there is a different possibility." But democracy, he recognizes, is a possibility, not a certainty.

John Bailey directs the Mexico Project at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. His most recent book is "Strategy and Security in U.S.-Mexican Relations: Beyond the Cold War."