Mexican Democracy

Since we are celebrating our American democracy today and in view of the recent Mexican presidential election, I found the following article very interesting as I am one not familiar with Mexican history. The outgoing Presidente Fox seems to be part of an ongoing disappointing struggle to bring true democracy to the land of our forebears. I found this article in an old magazine that was part of my husband's stepfather's effects left in an old trunk. Maybe someone in the group can tell us briefly what has occurred since this article was written.

Emilie - Port Orchard, WA --

>From Newsweek, July 8, 1940

Mexican Tension - Officials Seize Guns in Move to Balk Election-Day Fights

On July 7, 1911, Francisco Madero, Mexico's first "democratic" President after the 35-year dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, entered Mexico City while the capital resounded with the cries: "Viva Madero! Viva la democracia!" In the midst of the tumult, two white-garbed peons were discussing the new order of things:
"And what, amigo," one asked, "is this democracia that we are all cheering for?"
"Why," answered the other, pointing to Madero's wife, "it must be that Senora who accompanies him."

Land and Water

In the period following Madero's taking office Mexico learned about democracy at a hard school. Madero himself was shot two years later. His successor, the dictator Victoriano Huerta, was ousted after a bloody revolt. Then followed Venustiano Carranza, the vacillating "constitutionalist," who in the end was put to flight by Gen. Alvaro Obregon and treacherously killed by an aide. The north was plundered by Pancho Villa. In the south Emiliano Zapata and his agrarian army, under the slogan "Land and Water," burned the manor houses, hanged the landlords, and redistributed the land among the peons.
By 1920, when Obregon emerged from the fracas and began to restore peace, it had become proverbial in Mexico that Presidents were only changed by revolutions or miracles. He and his political henchman, Plutarco E. Calles, went a small way to change this. They set up a government party machine which would feed out "official" candidates at the proper intervals for the people to elect. Thus Obregon was succeeded by Calles and Calles by a series of puppets. The last of them, Lazaro Cardenas, was elected in 1934. This time the supposed puppet proved the machine could run in reverse, and Calles suddenly found himself exiled to the United States.
Cardenas then went to work to restore and further the promised reforms of the revolution which had grown moldy under Calles. Remembering Zapata's plea for "land and water," he split the big haciendas into irrigated communal farm projects. Labor gained enormous new power and with agrariansim was permitted representation in the expanded government party---now called the PRM (Party of the Mexican Revolution). In March 1938, the oil properties controlled by British and American interests were taken over by the government. And this year, as July 7, election day, approached, Cardenas made repeated promises that the election would be free and democratic. In preparation for that innovation, police for almost the first time in Mexican history have taken arms away from those not authorized to have them.
Cardenas is barred by tradition from running for a second six-year term. His close personal friend, Rafael Sanchez Tapia, is running for the office but has few followers. Cardenas' chosen candidate is former War Minister Manuel Avila Camacho, a genial, sporty cavalryman. Generally regarded as more conservative than Cardenas, Avila Camacho nevertheless has publicly backed all his President's policies and if elected would probably be closely tied down by Cardenas and his advisers.

Candidates

Far more spectacular is the conservative opponent Juan Andreu Almazan, a former soldier and military governor and a wealthy businessman. Almazan outspokenly citicizes the Cardenas administration as wasteful, impractical, and bureaucratic. In particular he deplores what he calls its "anti-United States" attitude. (This latter charge has been offset lately by pro-American declaration of the present government.) He plans, if elected, to stimulate "private initiative" by turning the communal farms into small private holdings.
Almazan draws most of his support from the Catholic upper and middle classes, although he has some backing in the army and in the official party and also from dissident labor and agrarian groups. In the aggregate he has garnered enough votes to worry the government lest he win---or possible worse, lose by a narrow margin which might open the way for a real or staged revolution.