Blog #6: Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up

Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up

Polities have always struggled with the question of how to rule themselves, sliding back and forth along the continuum of the centralization or spreading of power.  In Mexico, this drama has played out rather dramatically.  It was not uncommon in pre-Colombian societies for the executive to be deified, or at least thought of as the intermediary between Heaven and Earth - one man was both pope and king, as described in Scroeder’s “The Mexico that Spain Encountered,”  The Spanish colonial government was also very centralized and hierarchal, as shown in Chasteen’s “Colonial Crucible” article, for the primary goal of the government was to maintain a balance of trade that profited Iberia - a blunt form of the mercantile, or Imperial Preference systems the British Empire would later financially rule the waves with.  The Catholic Church maintained an additional strong position in Latin America, which has outlived the Iberian empires that brought Rome's authority across the Atlantic.  Once an independent Mexico got its act together (after a rough early/mid 19th'century), that act took the form of 34 years of one-man rule.  The Profiriato, depicted in Mark’s “The Legible City,” and “Portraits of a Lady” articles, was the sour peace settled upon after the chaotic scramble for independence from a beleagured, legitimacy-defficient Spain, as descried in Guardino’s “In the Time of Liberty” article, which was followed by an era of uncommonly-blunt US intevention and invasion, as related in the “Polk’s War Message,” and “US interventions in Mexico” articles, and then after that, there was a period of Reform Wars, and occupation by France, which is recapitulated in McNamara’s “Sons of the Sierra” article.

The Profiriato fell to revolution, but centralized authority proved to be a phoenix, reincarnate as the 70-year rule of the PRI: one-party dominance, carried out by a rotating dictatorship of presidency, as described in Raat and Breezely’s article, “20t-Century Mxico.”  Mexico's government, in the broadest historical sense, has been centralized and authoritarian ...Except for a litany of spectacular interludes, most notably the independence [“In the Time of Liberty”]& reform [“Sons of the Sierra”] periods, the Mexican Revolution [Oxford History of Mexico chapter on the Mexican Revolution] and the era after PRI-dominance (2000 - present) [“The Opening of Mexico”].  The Mexican people have repeatedly gotten fed-up with the centralization of power.  As has been the lesson of the PRI era, when one party has all the power, no one is powerful enough to prod the rulership to adapt to the changing needs of the people - benevolent dictatorship fattens into callous despotism – the Profiiato all over again.  That yoke is thrown off only with revolution, which, if the government is smart, and the people, lucky, may be non-violent, as in the case of the fall of the USSR under Gorbachev and the PRI under Ernesto Zedillo, (who actually comes off as a pretty good guy, in Raat and Breezley’s “The Opening of Mexico” article).  But the very rise to PRI preponderance of power (out of the revolution to overthrow centralized authoritarianism), demonstrates an affinity for concentrated power.  Plato, living in the Athenian democratic state, favored the benevolent dictatorship of a philosopher-king, for, in the words of Neitzche, "only individuals have a sense of responsibility;" in the view of Woodrow Wilson, a strong presidency is necessary because congresses get bogged down in debating, when, often, quick & decisive action is needed.  Out of the revolution to throw off Profirian dictatorship, PRI dictatorship emerged. Mexico chose to return to centralized government, agreeingwith the absolutist sentiments of Plato, Neitzche, and Woodrow Wilson.  Or, at least that’s the legible way to put it.  Drawing from Alex Riding’s “Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans,” and from the film, “El Ley de Herodes,” it might be more accurate to say that the centralization observed in the Mexican government might be, moreover, an expression of Machissmo onto the state structure.  In his portrait of the Mexicans, Riding says, “Even legal rights must often be filtered through the discretionary power of individuals to become personal favors.  And while a Mexican’s influence may be derived from his political position, he exercises it as a projection of his personality.”  The political culture of Mexico is not so much a fascist love of centralization, as an expression of machismo in the state system.

I am personally a bit surprised that, observing the fall of the Profiriato, US president Woodrow Wilson, chose to side with reformist Madero, rather than the stable Profirian Ancien Régime.  Wilson himself avowedly favored a powerful presidency; he felt the tendency for Congress and the Supreme Court to act slowly was a prime shortcoming of the US government system.  Wilson thought he knew what the American people wanted without even asking, and thought he knew what was good for the world.  Wilson and Profirio strike me as very similar characters.  I am surprised that Wilson's democratic instincts won out, and he didn't try to prop up the Profiriato.  The Mexican Revolution proved to be well outside US control,as related in Meyer & Breezley’s chapter on the Mexican Revolution, the US intervened in Mexico twice – first occupying the port of VeraCruz to protect debt payments and international oil interests, and then later, sending troops over the border into Mexico in a punative expedition against Pancho Villa, who had raided US territory. But had Wilson lived to see it through, he would have smiled.  The system of PRI dictatorship-presidency was something like the overpowering executive Wilson thought the US needed.  The man who looked down on Mexicans as little brown brothers, who needed to be "Taught how to elect good men" would have,when the dust settled, envied the state structure that emerged. 

In the Wilsonian / Profirian mindset, checks & balances appear to be more a shackle than a shield.  Of course, their absence allows a specific executive to run amok and become a dynastic dictatorship, like the PRI, or the Profiriato, or Hitler's molding the Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany.  In contemporary Mexico, we have a rare example of a place that is not used to checks and balances getting them back.  As described in the “20^th Century Mexico” article, for most of the 20th-century, the PRI was the majority party in Mexico, the majority in congress, and the party of the president.  Ergo, congress, and the party apparatus down to the town level, did what the president/party-head said.  According to Mark, today, the PRI presidents tended to appoint (behind the veil of ostensible elections) about 13,000 positions (...which sounds like it must have been the whole government, right down to the janitors!)  Whatever its excesses, under this system, the president could get stuff done  - quickly, and easily - the president was omnipotent within the state.  

With the Fox presidency, however, this was not the case, as shown in the “Opening Mexico” article.  After 70 years of mounting disaffection with the PRI, the dissatisfaction finally became such that in the 2000 elections: the PRI lost the presidency (but not all of the supporting cast).  Vincente Fox, running on the PAN ticket, became president, but he lacked the political infrastructure of his PRI predecessors.  Fox and his PAN backers did not dominate congress, nor own the party machinery of the nation - there were powers in Mexico that could check Fox; suddenly, the president was not God.  As a US citizen, coming from a political system that prides itself on its vigorous system of checks and balances, Fox's predicament sounds like a liberation for Mexico.  However, the Mexican view has been less saccharine.  Because he was the first Mexican president in living memory to have to deal with checks and balances, Fox seemed powerless compared to his predecessors.  It has been said that Fox's greatest achievement was getting himself elected - breaking the PRI's monopoly on government.  However, that statement also implies that Fox, relatively at least, got little done as president.  Checks and balances protect against tyranny and the quick-draw heroics it entails.  

I wonder if the Mexicans will decide that the slowness of checks and balances is a price worth paying, or if they will tend back towards electing a dictator.  If they do, I am confident that eventually, there will be another revolution - or at least another spectacular electoral upset.  The canonization of demagogic revolutionaries such as Zapata and Villa demonstrates that the Mexicans have a taste for the devolution of power; this is not China, where history's fundamental political lesson is that "1 tyrant 1000 miles away is preferable to 1000 tyrants 1 mile away; as long as the trains are on time, who cares who runs the government," social, gregarious Mexicans do place a serious value on civic participation (however prominent a trend electoral absenteeism had become in the dreary twilight of the PRI monopoly).  Of all nations, Mexico exhibits the dynamic tension between the brutal efficiency of centralized power and the inclusive fairness - at the expense of potency & agility - of representative government.

-Justin-