1. The Presidency

• Powerful president, almost a presidential dictatorship
• appoints cabinet
• controls nominees for congress, state governors
• appoints heads of state corporations
• President nominates his successor
• President limited to one 6 year term, changes every 6 years

• PRI, Party of the Institutionalized Revolution
• PRI always wins, since 1929
• elections can be very corrupt.  (esp. 1988)  Confirmation that election was rigged
• PRI finally lost election in 2000 (PAN won)   Will PRI rebound?
• corporatism:
• people are organized and represented by occupation
• farmers, workers, government workers, military
• these "interest groups" are controlled by PRI, funded by it
• Other parties:
• Party of National Action (PAN) on the right
• its candidate Vicente Fox won presidency in 2000
• various communist /Trotskyite parties
• socialist party
• new personalized center-left party (Cardenas, National Reconstruction)
• 2006 Presidential election dominated by non-PRI, 2 parties, emerging 2-party system?
• Felipe Calderón's National Action Party PAN
• Andrés Manuel López Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution PRD
• 2006 Election results show a major change is happening:
• PRI got only 22% of presidential vote, 24% of seats in the Chamber of Deputies
• Mexican politics is in a major transition.

    Senate: represents states
    Chamber of Deputies: represents people
 

                                          Before 1977          1977           1988

Single Member Districts            300                   300              300
Proportional Representation        20                   100              200
Total                                       320                   400              500
 

4. Mexico as a NIC (Newly Industrialized Country)

• Reasonably stable, institutionalized government
• Reasonably successful industrialization and economic growth
• especially in cities, esp. near US border, wealth business elite
• manufacture for export, using foreign capital
• creation of many jobs, but wages low, living conditions poor
• vast countryside still very poor
• Note rebellion in Chiapas (indigenous peoples, with broad public support)
• Sub Commandante Marcos reappears, 2006
• US is the escape valve for legal and illegal migration

• Large scale corruption, now linked to drug business, clearing way for investments
• check this recent example
• Raul Salinas, brother of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, ultimately jailed for big-league corruption (roughly $200 - $500  million)
• one article | another
• Enrique Salinas de Gortari, another brother, killed 2004
•  extortion plot?
• Drug money penetrates police, military, judiciary
• complex history of assassinations with narco/political intrigue
• drug connections at president's office
• Time International
• Violence and assassination
• Historically and recently a PRI candidate for president was assassinated
• Short article on drug violence
• With North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA), these problems "spill-over" into the United States
• US law enforcement agencies are very active in Mexico