Ethnic Entrepreneurs, Crony Capitalism, and the Making of the Franco-Mexican Elite

Abstract

While most people are aware that Mexico was ruled by the same political party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional and its previous iterations, from 1929 to 2000, few may connect this institutionalized dictatorship to a more complicated history of economic and political cronyism. José Galindo's recent book, Ethnic Entrepreneurs, Crony Capitalism, and the Making of the Franco-Mexican Elite, explains precisely that history, using as a case study a group of French immigrants and, within this group, the Jean family, most famously connected to the Banamex banks and the Televisa media network. Galindo expands on previous efforts to look at corruption by combining political, economic, and cultural analyses with the use of UCINET software, which allows him to map the players of political and economic networks and to calculate their relative influence within each organization. Galindo's key argument is that Mexico's success in achieving greater economic and political stability during the Porfiriato (the administration of Mexican president Porfirio Díaz from 1876 to 1911) was due in large part to social networking, which contributed to today's ongoing patterns of crony capitalism or what Galindo calls “collusive corruption,” in which networked relationships between government officials and economic actors allow for the appropriation of what is public for personal benefit.Galindo is well positioned to take on this interdisciplinary approach to his topic: since 2015, he has coordinated no fewer than four interdisciplinary anthologies dealing with corruption in Mexico and published nine chapters of his own writing. Alongside publishing articles for academic journals and magazines such as Forbes, Galindo worked for Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights. The book under review here reflects Galindo's mastery of scholarship on the Mexican economy, covering the Porfiriato, the 1911 revolution, 1930s Cardenismo, 1970s efforts at implementing an import substitution industrialization model, and more recent patterns of resource privatization. Though Galindo does little to push against traditional takes on the Porfiriato as ending the “chaos” of previous eras through President Díaz's efforts to encourage foreign investment, ally with rival state governors, and follow the lead of the científicos (such as the Franco-Mexican finance minister José Yves Limantour), his discussion of the postrevolutionary era is more nuanced, especially through his analysis of Mexican economics by individual sectors (p. 77).One drawback of the book is that a key argument—pointed to by the inclusion of “ethnic entrepreneurs” and “Franco-Mexican elite” in the title—is not given sufficient attention by the author himself. As Galindo describes the rise of this Franco-Mexican elite, we note the many privileges that they enjoy simply for being French. Beginning as early as the 1830s, foreign immigrants were encouraged to colonize purportedly undeveloped agricultural areas of Mexico. Such efforts were also geared toward “improv[ing] the Mexican race” by bringing European culture, connections, know-how, and whiteness into Mexico (pp. 24, 53). Succeeding administrations continued this pattern, providing concrete incentives like the 1886 Naturalization and Aliens Act granting Mexican citizenship to purchasers of real estate or the 1884 commercial code providing tax exemptions on imported machinery. “Frenchification” of Mexican values and tastes grew under Napoleon III's supervision during the French occupation of Mexico from 1863 to 1867, followed by another resurgence of Francophilia during the Porfiriato, influenced by French positivist understandings of the role of industry in providing social welfare. Though in a few cases Galindo asserts that these proclivities for French immigration and the laws that supported them could themselves be motors of crony capitalism, even delving briefly into the role of “cultural capital” in keeping sociopolitical networks relevant, Galindo nonetheless does not make the clear connection between a history of cronyism and corruption and one of racism and imperialism, sticking instead to his insistence on the continued pervasiveness of “weak institutions” as fueling corruption's persistence (pp. 38, 142).Galindo's book is unique in its range of perspectives (cultural, political, economic) and historical scope, stretching from Mexican independence to today. Within this framework, he has nestled the history of a group of “ethnic entrepreneurs.” While an interesting case study in itself, the story of the French immigrants may actually detract from his discussion of crony capitalism in Mexico more generally, since “ethnic entrepreneurship” brings with it a variety of distinct variables of its own that Galindo does not adequately analyze. The marriage of these two topics—corruption and immigration policy—would be an absorbing contribution to a variety of fields, testing the thesis that racism and imperialism are themselves forms of corruption. Galindo chooses a different direction, contributing to Mexican economic history and the study of cronyism by tracing the roots of Mexico's multicultural elite. In doing so, he provides a text useful for graduate seminars on Latin American development, society, and economy, as well as on the methodology of prosopography.