Opening Mexico: The Making of a Democracy by Julia Preston, Samuel Dillon

From the Publisher

The Story of Mexico's political rebirth, by two pulitzer prize-winning reporters

Opening Mexico is a narrative history of the citizens' movement which dismantled the kleptocratic one-party state that dominated Mexico in the twentieth century, and replaced it with a lively democracy. Told through the stories of Mexicans who helped make the transformation, the book gives new and gripping behind-the-scenes accounts of major episodes in Mexico's recent politics.

Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, led by presidents who ruled like Mesoamerican monarchs, came to be called "the perfect dictatorship." But a 1968 massacre of student protesters by government snipers ignited the desire for democratic change in a generation of Mexicans. Opening Mexico recounts the democratic revolution that unfolded over the following three decades. It portrays clean-vote crusaders, labor organizers, human rights monitors, investigative journalists, Indian guerrillas, and dissident political leaders, such as President Ernesto Zedillo-Mexico's Gorbachev. It traces the rise of Vicente Fox, who toppled the authoritarian system in a peaceful election in July 2000.

Opening Mexico dramatizes how Mexican politics works in smoke-filled rooms, and profiles many leaders of the country's elite. It is the best book to date about the modern history of the United States' southern neighbor-and is a tale rich in implications for the spread of democracy worldwide.

The New York Times

The story of how the perfect dictatorship came unglued is one of the most fascinating stories of our time, and the authors tell their story well. The voices of intellectuals, Indians, political dissidents, businessmen and ordinary Mexican citizens fill this densely researched and clearly written book. The fall of the PRI was a little bit like spring: here an early crocus pushed through the snow, there buds began to appear on bare branches and then the first robins reappeared. Ms. Preston and Mr. Dillon are magnificent guides to this rebirth of Mexican freedom and paint a compelling picture of the cascading and accelerating change. — Walter Russell Mead

The Washington Post

In the book's best segments, however, the authors do capture this dynamic, showing how the interplay between individual initiative and grand historic forces drove events. — Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

Publishers Weekly

Preston and Dillon, former Mexico bureau chiefs for the New York Times, combine personal experience and journalistic accounts in this thoughtful report on the trials of Mexico's turbulent first taste of democracy after decades of authoritarian rule. With grace and candor, the authors capture this transitional period, which has been characterized by a slow and tense crumbling of Mexico's main political party, the PRI (a victim of its own incompetence and hubris), and a rapid increase in civic fervor. This is a portrait of historical change of seismic proportion, told from individual perspectives, depicting an intriguing web of heroic Mexicans struggling to bring about cultural change while others tend toward corruption. As a result, this book is as bleak as it is insightful. Hopeful victories in this "imperfect democracy" are few and far between. The authors detail government negligence and deception during the devastating earthquake of 1985, cunning reporters and renowned intellectuals attempting to pierce the regime's stronghold on the media, and the ongoing low-intensity warfare against deeply divided indigenous communities in the southern state of Chiapas. Also featured here is the controversial investigation of Mexico's narcotics underworld that implicates two high-level PRI officials as "associates" of Mexico's most notorious drug trafficker, Carillo Fuentes. This type of coverage earned the authors strong criticism from the authorities in Mexico and a Pulitzer Prize-the latter well deserved. B&w photos. (Mar.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

As is so often true of U.S. perceptions of Latin America, the really big story of the past decade — the end of seven decades of rule by Mexico's aptly named Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) — passed virtually unnoticed. Preston and Dillon, star "New York Times" reporters and long-time Mexico-watchers, set out to remedy this deficiency, and they succeed brilliantly. The July 2000 election of Vicente Fox brought 71 years of dictatorial rule to a peaceful end, a singular democratic transition that this remarkable book describes in painteresque style. The brisk narrative, full of shrewd analysis and masterly old-fashioned reporting, takes the reader inside the black box of PRI politics, penetrating the circle of powerbrokers as few outside observers ever have to reveal the unspoken rules that kept the party in power and the entrails of the regime as it unraveled. It covers the bitter quarrels between President Carlos Salinas and his successor, Ernesto Zedillo, and the 1994 peso crisis, but Preston and Dillon do not attribute Mexico's democratic transition only to the actions of powerful politicians. There was no single charismatic leader such as Nelson Mandela, no defining dramatic moment such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, no victory by the left or the right, no profound economic transformation. Mexico's democratization was a gradual process, explained by the emergence of a diverse civil society, strong leadership on the left and the right, and the resolve of all parties to avoid fanaticism and violence — a remarkable achievement given Mexico's bloody political history.

Library Journal

New York Times reporters Preston and Dillon present an overview of the decline and fall of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) during the last three decades of the 20th century. Rising out of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, the PRI dominated all aspects of government, economics, and society. By the 1960s the party had grown corrupt, with members enriching themselves at the country's expense and using fraud and intimidation to retain power. At the end of the 1990s, President Ernesto Zedillo instituted major changes in Mexico's political and electoral systems, which led to the election of the National Action Party's Vicente Fox as president in 2000 and thus the removal of the PRI from power. Preston and Dillon tell the stories of the numerous reformers and activists who worked for 30 years to change Mexican politics. They also highlight the PRI's efforts to retain power, with a detailed study of the governments of the disgraced presidents Carlos Salina and Zedillo. Richly detailed and excellently written, this work complements such recent works as Patricia Huesca-Dorantes's The Emergence of Multiparty Competition in Mexican Politics. Recommended for all libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/03.]-Stephen L. Hupp, West Virginia Univ., Parkersburg Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Superb from-the-barricades portrait of Mexico's second revolution, which is still unfolding. New York Times reporters Preston and Dillon offer a vivid account of matters that would have been common knowledge to American readers had newspapers or newsmagazines showed interest in our southern neighbor's affairs: the complex transformation of a one-party system, the longest-ruling in the world, into a pluralistic democracy. In fairness to American readers, Preston and Dillon observe, the momentous process, known to Mexicans as el cambio-the change-caught many Mexicans unaware, too: "Mexico's second revolution was accomplished so efficiently and peacefully that not many Mexicans, and even fewer outsiders, really grasped the historic dimensions of the event." Whatever the case, the Mexican electorate ended more than 70 years of one-party rule in July 2000, turning out the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in favor of newcomer Vicente Fox's National Action Party (PAN). The change had many agents: labor activists, the disaffected urban poor, supporters of the Zapatista rebel movement, middle-class intellectuals, ordinary citizens shocked by corruption and the brutality of the police and military. It also had an unlikely ally in PRI president and party leader Ernesto Zedillo, who, like Mikhail Gorbachev (to whom he has been likened), bowed to the inevitable and accepted the will of the people-even if many party stalwarts, and their American hireling James Carville, did not. Though Fox, who won 43 percent of the vote in a three-way race, has been a disappointment-so Preston and Dillon conclude-the awakening has made all the difference: "It soon became obvious that [Fox's] victorywould not bring prosperity, equality, and justice overnight. . . . But nobody seriously questioned the essential vigor of the democracy Mexicans had constructed, and the country's peaceful transition remained a source of pride." As good a look at Mexico as has been written by outsiders since Alan Riding's Distant Neighbors (1984), and essential for students of Latin American affairs. Author tour. Agent: Esther Newberg/ICM

Product Details

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Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

Excerpt from Opening Mexico The Making of a Democracy by Julia Preston and Samuel Dillon. Copyright © 2004 by Julia Preston and Samuel Dillon. To be published in March, 2004 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.


Preface: Making Mexican Democracy


It took three decades of pressure, protest, finagling, and occasionally violence for Mexicans to pry open the authoritarian system that had held their country in thrall since the 1920s. We witnessed the culminating years of this campaign as correspondents for The New York Times based in Mexico.

We both had worked for two decades as reporters in Latin America. We knew that Mexico, although it shared the Spanish language and an Iberian colonial past with the rest of the region, was a country apart. The revolution of 1910 had set it on a different course in the twentieth century from its Latin neighbors. After that upheaval Mexico had never been tempted to adopt a Communist regime like the one Fidel Castro brought to power in Cuba in 1959. Nor had it succumbed to right-wing military dictators, such as those who seized control at mid-century in Central and South America. Mexico had also guarded its independence from Washington's polarizing policies during the Cold War more zealously than most Latin nations.
Yet Mexico had lived under its own form of closed single-party government. By the time we settled in Mexico City in September 1995, the oppressive hold of the Institutional Revolutionary Party on every aspect of Mexican life had made it the world's longest-ruling political organization.

But as it turned out, we had arrived in the midst of a prolonged,slow-motion, largely peaceful democratic revolution. Mexicans were remaking their society, institution by institution.

We saw them undertake extraordinary reforms. They transferred control of the elections machinery away from the ruling party, which had abused it to perpetrate countless frauds, and put it in the hands of an independent agency that devised one of the most modern balloting systems in the world. They created an array of new political parties to challenge the monopoly of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI.

They worked to create a legislature with real clout, replacing a theatrical Congress whose role for seven decades had been to provide ceremonious applause for the President's latest impulse. They were imposing limits on the power of the presidency, which had been so absolute and unrestrained by any legislative, judicial, or popular oversight as to make the Mexican chief executive a kind of Mesoamerican monarch.

We met people from all levels of life who were participating in this grand endeavor. Citizen activists were battling vote fraud. Human rights observers were curbing the abuses of the security forces. Grassroots communities were blocking the devastation of forests and beaches by corporations. Journalists were investigating malfeasance. Neighborhood groups were mobilizing to demand prosecution of criminal gangs and corrupt police. Even the PRI President, Ernesto Zedillo, had opted for a liberalizing role.

In July 2000, nearly five years into our tenure as correspondents for the Times, Mexicans took the decisive step toward completing their democratic transition. In the cleanest and most open vote in Mexican history, the nation elected an opposition candidate, Vicente Fox of the National Action Party, to be President, toppling the PRI regime after seventy-one years. Zedillo and his cohorts accepted the result and stepped aside. Mexico's second revolution was accomplished so efficiently and peacefully that not many Mexicans, and even fewer outsiders, really grasped the historic dimension of the event.

The making of Mexico's democracy was distinctive in many ways. There was no Nelson Mandela, no single leader to personify and guide the struggle. Nor was there a single democratic movement, but rather a multitude of initiatives from individuals and groups across the society and the country, which gradually converged as more and more Mexicans became convinced of the need to end the PRI's despotic rule.

Mexico was spared a change of economic system, since it had remained capitalist even after the 1910 revolution. Yet the clash between social classes was not the primary impetus of change. To be sure, along the way rebellions by workers, rural farming people, and Indians—notably the indigenous uprising in the southern state of Chiapas in 1994—served to weaken the authoritarian system. But these protests were part of a broad mix of reform efforts, in which the elite also at times participated. For decades the PRI system served the interests of business, making crony capitalists wealthy. They resisted change. But eventually the corporate class also supported an orderly transition, accepting that an open system could better serve its interests in a globalized economy.

Mexico's passage to democracy did not come about as a victory of the ideas of either the Left or the Right, either liberals or conservatives. At critical moments the Mexican Left, with its bold rejection of the status quo, its nationalism, and its defense of the dispossessed, took the lead in the struggle for greater freedom. But Mexican conservatives, committed to individual rights and a free-market economy and often inspired by Catholic faith, were also tenacious in their pursuit of reform. Over the years the competition among ideologies and factions was channeled into a system of political parties. These parties, when their resolve was tested, shunned violence, agreeing to take their disputes to the halls of local and federal legislatures. Religious fanaticism, which has torn apart many countries in times of transition, never arose to embitter the search for democracy in Mexico.

Mexico's was a negotiated pluralistic transition, with pressure coming from below, from myriad individuals and groups at the grass roots of society, and from above, as the PRI and its successive Presidents responded to dissidence by mandating change. The stalwarts of the system who gave up bits of their control, however, were most often motivated by self-interest, seeking not to reduce their domination but to perpetuate it.

Americans have a large stake in the outcome of Mexico's efforts to create an open society. No country affects the United States' well-being and national security more directly. The border we share is two thousand miles long. Mexico is our second-largest trading partner, after Canada-and ahead of Japan and China. It is a base for thousands of U.S. businesses, which are transforming the country's northern states into an important manufacturing region. It is the place of origin of some 10 million Mexican workers, the United States' largest single immigrant group. It is a destination for American travelers of all kinds. It is a luxuriant but deteriorating biosphere that is vital for the survival of thousands of North American migratory birds, butterflies, and other species.

Both of us have been watching Mexico for many years. Julia Preston first traveled to the country as a wayfaring college student in 1972, when the PRI system was passing from an epoch of growth and stability into cyclical crisis and decline. Sam Dillon began going to Mexico in the early 1980s, when he was a journalist based in El Salvador filing stories to editors at the Associated press who were based in Mexico City. Julia was living in downtown Mexico City when an earthquake struck in 1985; her apartment rocked, and its windows shattered, raining glass on the street. We both covered the aftermath of that quake, as well as tumultuous gubernatorial elections later in the 1980s in several northern states, where the PRI stoked citizen anger by falsifying the results.

Our account is a journalists' draft of the history of Mexico's opening-its apertura, as it is called in Spanish. We have chosen to tell the events through the lives of a number of Mexicans whose activism we witnessed in the course of our reporting. In some places, where we were eyewitnesses to telling events, we recount them in the first person. The individuals we portray in detail were not necessarily the most important figures in the democracy movement; rather, their experiences were representative of the participation of countless other Mexicans in a collective national effort. We made some purposeful omissions. We haven't attempted a systematic study of the country's hermetic armed forces, which remained at the margins of the transition. Nor did we focus our attention on the role of the United States, which has sought stability in its southern neighbor even when that meant overlooking authoritarian abuses. We contend that Mexico's opening to democracy is one of the few major developments in the country's modern history that was not shaped by invasion or intervention by the United States.

In the last three decades of the twentieth century, new generations of Mexicans wanted to open their country to democracy. This is the story of how they did it.