JEREMY BELL – History 3072, History of Modern Latin America

Populism in Mexico, AMLO and Cardenas

Mexico’s economic inequality and corruption have always provided fertile ground for the growth of populist movements throughout history. The current president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, better known as AMLO, is but the latest iteration of populist sentiment in the country. The Mexican people, fed up with corruption and insecurity, gave their overwhelming vote to AMLO. The president has promised to lift the poor, end corruption, and fight the neoliberal economic policies his predecessors have instituted, which he says, have been disastrous for the country. This rhetoric is not new in Mexico, it has been used by other populist presidents in Mexico such as Benito Juarez and Lazaro Cardenas, two of AMLO’s heroes. In this essay, we will examine the article Mexico needs statecraft, yet its president offers theatre by the Economist. We will examine AMLO’s policies and will contrast them with President Lazaro Cardenas, one of the most well-known historical figures in Mexico. Both men come from humble beginnings, both fought hard to become the leader of the country, and both were staunch populists.

The article Mexico needs statecraft, yet its president offers theatre, by the Economist, gives a harsh analysis of AMLO’s presidency so far. The president came to power with several problems at hand, income inequality, rampant crime, and a slowing economy. While he promised to solve all these problems, there has been little to show for it so far. Insecurity is still high, and he has shied away from using government spending to stimulate the economy. His rhetoric against business interests has spooked foreign investors, which in turn hurts a country so dependent on foreign capital. According to the Economist, AMLO “has stalled private energy investment, on nationalist grounds. The government will pay for AMLO’s pet $7.4bn railway in the south-east, after it failed to interest investors.” Some of his success comes from expanding economic government programs to alleviate the plight of the poor and to support students so they can go to college. His performance, by most metrics, has been lacking. By continuing to give fiery speeches against corruption and neoliberals, the president continues to be popular in Mexico. AMLO is renowned for being able to capture a crowd and being able to use mass media to portray himself in a more flattering view.

Lazaro Cardenas was the president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940. Much like AMLO, he had a penchant for doing highly symbolic acts that helped him gain the endearment of the people. According to Alexander Dawson, once Cardenas was president, “The highly symbolic actions continued. Cárdenas refused to move into the presidential palace, preferring to convert Chapultepec Castle into the National Museum of History. He immediately cut his salary in half. Legendary is the story that he would cancel cabinet meetings in favor of visiting poor peasants who had lost their cattle to disease.” (213). The bold actions Cardenas took on behalf of the Mexican people is what cemented his legacy. Cardenas oversaw a massive land redistribution program where land belonging to the wealthy was broken up and redistributed to farmers. According to Dawson, Cardenas “distributed forty-five million acres of land to peasants, so that by 1940 nearly one-third of Mexicans had received land via reform.” (214). In 1938, President Cardenas took a decision that would impact Mexicans for generations to come. For decades powerful foreign interests dominated the Mexican oil market; this was highly controversial in Mexico. The people viewed foreign oil companies as foreigners stealing Mexico’s natural resources. President Cardenas announced that foreign companies would be kicked out; and that the oil industry would be nationalized. These acts viewed as helping the poor and fighting the rich won him the lasting endearment of the Mexican people. Much like AMLO, Cardenas was very skilled in portraying himself as a man of the people and using the media to get his message heard across the country.

Cardenas and AMLO are populists from different periods in time, but they both enjoyed broad support from the poor and working class. AMLO has a similar mandate to Cardenas, help the poor and fight the corruption of the elites. AMLO has instituted government programs to help the poor, but it seems that while it has helped him maintain support with the poor, it has done little to fix the income inequality problem. AMLO has also taken an interest in PEMEX, the state-owned oil giant that came to be after Cardenas nationalized the oil industry. PEMEX has historically been used as a cash cow to fund government programs, but in the last few decades, it has begun to falter due to massive corruption within and a lack of modernization. Mexico passed an energetic reform in 2012 to attract foreign investment to Mexico’s oil industry. AMLO has since attacked the reform and has vowed to support PEMEX as a matter of national pride. Much like Cardenas, AMLO wants to be a man of the people, willing to stand up to corrupt business interests. Like many populists, AMLO attacks the media when they offer less than flattering views of him but masterfully uses this to prove that he is a fighter standing up for the people. According to the Economist, “poor policy performance is bad for Mexico, but not necessarily for the president. Polls put his approval rating at between 55% and 72%. Many poorer Mexicans see him as honest and on their side. His potential Achilles heel is crime and insecurity. His remedy is likely to be more political theatre, at which he is a master.” It would remain to be seen if AMLO can turn the tide and transform Mexico the way Lazaro Cardenas was able to.

Works Cited

Dawson, Alexander. Latin America since Independence : A History with Primary Sources, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/baruch/detail.action?docID=1779185.

Reed, Michael. “Mexico Needs Statecraft, Yet Its President Offers Theatre.” The Economist, The Economist Newspaper, 2020, www.economist.com/the-americas/2020/02/27/mexico-needs-statecraft-yet-its-president-offers-theatre.

Cuban missile crisis

Sleepwalking Towards War

Castro’s coming to power in 1959 worried the United States. Castro had embraced the communist ideology and had developed close ties to the Soviet Union, our mortal enemy at the time. The U.S. pursued aggressive tactics to get rid of Castro. In April of 1961, the CIA in conjunction with Cuban exiles launched a daring amphibious assault in Cuba to overthrow Castro’s regime. The CIA believed that with the help of civilian sympathizers and US airpower the overthrow would be successful. The operation became a disaster when support failed to materialize, and Kennedy pulled the plug on US air cover. After the disastrous CIA backed amphibious assault in the Bay of Pigs in which all the paramilitaries were either killed or captured, Castro further cemented his power as an astute military commander and a hero who stood up to the advances of a superpower. According to Alexander Dawson “after the failed invasion at the Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs) on April 17, 1961, he could rightly claim to have repelled an American invasion. In the face of such a compelling heroic narrative, moderates who called for elections could be dismissed as bourgeois dupes, traitors to the Revolution who would allow an intractable enemy to weaken the nation by fomenting electoral discord.” (249).

After the humiliating failure of the operation, the United States doubled down on trying to get rid of Castro. Castro grew closer to the Soviet Union and in 1962 the world became terrified when it was discovered that Castro had allowed the Soviets to place nuclear missiles in the island, this incident came to be known as the Cuban missile crisis. President Kennedy was presented with several options one of which called for the invasion of Cuba by the U.S. military. According to documents declassified in 2017 “The U.S. military drew up plans to occupy Cuba and establish a temporary government headed by a U.S. “commander and military governor”. President Kennedy wrestled with the idea of whether to strike and risk further escalation towards nuclear war or establish a blockade while engaging in diplomacy to defuse the crisis. During the crisis, Castro was so convinced a U.S. invasion would occur that he implored Nikita Khrushchev to initiate a nuclear attack against the United States which he quickly dismissed. This episode further reinforces the dangerous thinking by both sides which precipitated the crisis. Castro became so paranoid by past U.S government actions against him that he was willing to call for the use of nuclear weapons. After Castro came to power the U.S was so staunchly against him that by pursuing his overthrow at all costs they cemented Castro’s belief that the only way to keep the US at bay was to place nuclear weapons on the Island as a deterrence from further meddling. This insane scalation had to do with the fact that both sides vilified the other and chose to believe that for preservation sake we had to take the most drastic measures. Both countries convinced each other the other was beyond the effort of diplomacy which was not true. Thankfully, President Kennedy’s and soviet leader Khrushev’s pursuit of diplomacy brought us back from the brink, and a full-out war was avoided.

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuba/2017-10-16/cuban-missile-crisis-us-planned-military-occupation-1962

Modernization under el Porfiriato

Children walking on a railroad track Ajusco, Mexico 1850

The picture depicts a tale of two worlds colliding, the modern and the old. Two poor children walking along a railroad track, one of the engineering marvels that would help Mexico modernize its economy and lift people out of poverty. The modernization of Mexico and its cost happened all over Latin America as governments instituted policies that would benefit some at the expense of a few. Order, then progress was the ideology Latin American elites subscribed to in the 19^th century. There was a feeling that Latin America once a land with riches was starting to lag the industrialized nations of the world. According to Dawson “Latin American elites believed that their societies would never prosper, would never become modern if order was not first established. Democracy a messy process everywhere, brought only chaos to regions like Latin America, because the people there were not civilized enough to exercise their democratic rights responsibly.” (115). This belief gave rise to strong governments that would dictate how countries would modernize. Central to modernization were education programs and economic expansion. Economic expansion in the region exploded when nations started exporting the raw materials more industrialized nations depended upon. Slowly but surely a sizable middle class started emerging and society itself started changing too. People flocked into cities that were experiencing growth, new jobs, and whole industries were created to absorb the influx. This economic boom started luring foreign investment which was followed by massive construction projects to further develop the economy. The economic expansion created a middle class which was vital for democracy, but the wealth was disproportionally held by the elites, not everyone benefited from this new system.

Mexico under the control of General Porfirio Diaz is likely the embodiment of the ideology of the elites. His stay in power from 1884 to 1911 was known as el Porfiriato. During el Porfiriato, Mexico underwent rapid modernization and economic growth while at the same curving civil liberties and a free press. General Diaz believed that the people of Mexico were not ready to exercise democracy and that his government needed to have a paternalistic policy. Diaz greatly expanded access to education by building more schools and making it free to attend. Diaz also launched massive civil engineering works to build railroad tracks, dams, and buildings around the country. His regime cracked down on crime by instituting cruel punishments as deterrence. Mexico gained a small but sizable middle class which according to Diaz would be the pillar of democracy. Mexico under Diaz saw great progress but also great misery. People who worked in the commodity crop industry were exploited while the owners kept all the riches of the labor. Also, Diaz instituted a policy of land distribution where the result would be that 1% of the population owned over half the available land in Mexico. While general Diaz instituted several policies that did help the country modernize it also proved to be his undoing. The repression of civil liberties and land distribution proved too unpopular it ignited a violent armed struggle to topple his government.

Works Cited

La Virgen de Guadalupe

Virgen de Guadalupe

This image titled Alabado en Lengua Mexican by Jose Agustin de Aldama y Guevara was created in 1775, in the Spanish vice-royalty of New Spain. The image depicts the alleged apparition of the Virgen de Guadalupe to Juan Diego, a native Indian in Tepayac hill, Mexico City, in 1531ac. The body is composed of a praise dedicated to the Virgen of Guadalupe written in the native language of Nahuatl. The Virgen of Guadalupe is depicted with a mild-mannered face which conveys compassion. She is standing above the moon and blocking the sun, both of which were Aztec deities, signifying her status above them. She appears wearing a crown and a cloak made of stars., this signifying high status and universality All of this signifies her holy status and the words being in Nahuatl we know the native people where the intended audience.

Since the founding of the vice-royalty of New Spain, the Catholic church took a leading role in its construction and governing. During this time, the church was a powerful institution that permeated all of life throughout the colonies. According to Alexander Dawson, “The Catholic Church acted as the social glue, operating schools, hospitals, orphanages, charities, and cemeteries, and dominating social and ecclesiastical life through its calendar.” (Dawson 17). The church played such a pivotal role in colonial life that having a population that was catholic would ensure its continuation as a powerful and pivotal institution. To bring the native people into Catholicism, the church constructed grand churches, launched educational campaigns to educate people into the new religion, and distributed Christian texts and iconography. Without a doubt the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe was the most important image for bringing people and church together. The image of the Virgen de Guadalupe and the story of Juan Diego came to be used heavily for propaganda by the catholic church in New Spain for the purpose of converting the local population to Catholicism. The image would surely appeal strongly to the masses. The Virgin was depicted with the same physical characteristics as the population and because the virgin appeared to one of their own this would signify the special interest the deity took in the people of Mexico.

The Catholic church during colonial times was successful into using the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe and telling the story of Juan Diego for bring people into Catholicism. By having large segments of the population convert to Catholicism the church could more easily operate within the colonies and segment its role as a pillar of the colonial government. The Virgin was finally adopted by the population and became such a big symbol for the local population that it was carried as a war banner during the start of the Mexican independence movement by the priest Miguel Hidalgo. What started as an effort to control the population ended up being adopted and becoming the post powerful and enduring symbol of Mexico.

WORKS CITED