Rural Protest and the Making of Democracy in Mexico, 1968–2000

Dolores Trevizo

Publish Date: 4/27/2011
Dimensions: 6 x 9
Page Count: 264 pages

Illustrations:

Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-271-03787-5

Hardcover Edition: $64.95Add to Cart

“Traditional accounts of democratization tend to credit elites with most of the ‘heavy lifting’ via the fashioning of democratic ‘pacts.’ More recently, a newer generation of scholars has focused attention on the role of grassroots movements in democratizing episodes. In her exemplary account of the fall of the PRI from power in Mexico, Trevizo does both, arguing that it was the complex interaction between grassroots and elite groups that ultimately undermined the party’s hold on power. In doing so, she also extends her analysis over a much longer period of time than most studies of democratization. The result is one of the richest, most detailed accounts of democratization produced to date.” —Doug McAdam, Stanford University

“Rural Protest and the Making of Democracy in Mexico, 1968–2000 provides a unique, in-depth exploration of the underlying causes of Mexico’s democratic electoral transition. Dolores Trevizo, relying on years of field research, analyzes the importance of the 1968 student massacre for distributing student leaders among nonviolent peasant movements in the 1970s and 1980s. The author pursues an original strategy, providing case studies of the prodemocratic agrarian movements and the businessmen who strengthened the PRD and the PAN, respectively, in their opposition to the PRI. She enhances our understanding of how the PRI combined a complex, repressive, and pluralistic approach to different groups in its ultimately failed attempt to put a lid on the legitimacy crisis created in 1968.” —Roderic Ai Camp, Claremont McKenna College

“[Rural Protest and the Making of Modern Democracy in Mexico, 1968–2000] powerfully reveals how developments in rural Mexico fostered electoral democratization, manifested in the victory of the opposition (the PAN) in the 2000 and 2006 presidential elections . . . it adds a very important dimension to our understanding of the emergence of Mexico's still-young and incomplete democracy by showing how events in the rural parts of the country invigorated both the left and the right. The author provides a wealth of data to support her conclusions, derived in part from extensive field work and the equally extensive use of primary documents. Moreover, she utilizes a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches to analyze these data in sophisticated ways. . . . [This] is a very interesting, comprehensive, and original addition to the literature on Mexican democratization.” —Juan D. Lindau, Political Science Quarterly

When the PRI fell from power in the elections of 2000, scholars looked for an explanation. Some focused on international pressures, while others pointed to recent electoral reforms. In contrast, Dolores Trevizo argues that a more complete explanation takes much earlier democratizing changes in civil society into account. Her book explores how largely rural protest movements laid the groundwork for liberalization of the electoral arena and the consolidation of support for two opposition parties, the PAN on the right and the PRD on the left, that eventually mounted a serious challenge to the PRI. She shows how youth radicalized by the 1968 showdown between the state and students in Mexico City joined forces with peasant militants in nonviolent rural protest to help bring about needed reform in the political system. In response to this political effervescence in the countryside, agribusinessmen organized in peak associations that functioned like a radical social movement. Their countermovement formulated the ideology of neoliberalism, and they were ultimately successful in mobilizing support for the PAN. Together, social movements and the opposition parties nurtured by them contributed to Mexico’s transformation from a one-party state into a real electoral democracy nearly a hundred years after the Revolution.

Dolores Trevizo is Professor of Sociology at Occidental College.

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Preface and Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Introduction The Rural Roots of Mexico’s Nascent Democracy: The Role of Peasants and Agrarian Capitalists in Opposition Politics

1. Social Movements and Democratization

2. The “Banner of 1968”: The Student Movement’s Democratizing Effects

3. State Repression and the Dispersal of Radicals into Mexico’s Countryside, 1970–1975

4. Capitalists on the Road to Political Power in Mexico: Class Struggle, Neopanismo, and the Birth of Democracy

5. The Rural Sources of the PRD’s Electoral Resiliency

Conclusion The Post-1968 Struggle for Democracy in Rural Mexico