Crisis and Social Change in Mexico's Political Economy

Abstract

Cordera and Tello's Mexico: la disputa por la nacion (1983) is one of the most influential analyses of the crisis in Mexico. Rolando Cordera, a leader of the Partido Socialista Unificado de Mexico (PSUM), and Carlos Tello, a leader of the leftwing of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), argue that the crisis is a consequence of state policies that created dependence upon the United States by departing from the national revolutionary of development that emerged from the 19 1 0 Revolution. They urge the Mexican people and state to revive the project, which reached its zenith during the Cardenas administration (19341940), by pursuing antimonopoly and income-distribution policies and strengthening the state and ejido sectors of the economy. Failure to revive the project, they warn, will permit monopoly and international firms to force the state to eliminate its controls on private property and the market; this would strengthen monopoly and international firms and lower the living standards of Mexican people while creating further dependence upon the United States. This article uses political economy and a long-wave perspective to develop an alternative understanding of Mexico's crisis. It argues that the crisis is a consequence of the model of capital accumulation that the Mexican Revolution engendered rather than an abandonment of the revolutionary project, and that an alliance of workers, peasants, and the state to revive the project is not viable because the state is forging a new model of capital accumulation on behalf of the capitalist class.