Contemporary Mexico Research Articles

Popular Mobilization in Mexico: The Teachers' Movement, 1977-87.

This book explores the process of popular mobilisation in contemporary Mexico through the experience of the country's most important popular organisation - the teachers' movement. It creates a distinctive perspective on Mexican politics and makes an interesting contribution to the study of popular or 'social' movements. This in-depth study of a popular movement in Latin America provides a richly detailed account of its organisation, leadership, strategic choices, and factional divisions. Through its innovative methods, which produce an unusual and compelling blend of fact and theory, the book uncovers the motivations and mechanisms of popular mobilization, as well as explaining its interactions with national politics in Mexico and beyond.

¿Qué es un administrador?

I intend to help define, develop and update the concepts of manager and professional manager, in response to existing problems and the fact that these concepts constitute important elements for applicants, students, teachers, counselors and employers. For the same purpose I propose the profile of "competent professional manager" in which I include the appropriate social role. There is disagreement among experts as to what is the administration, and this directly affects the concept of administrator. The authors consider administration minor thing; however the concept of manager is the starting point for a wide existing problems affecting the training of scholars, reduce employment opportunities and proper positioning. A professional managers really they are prepared as well as technical and non-professional; the best are trained "to manage", but not to renew, expand and deepen their management knowledge or to generate innovations in your field of study and work. All this calls into question the role of educational institutions in this regard. Hence the need to devote part of this writing the demarcation of vocational training on the technical level. This article mainly deals with the business manager, and only tangentially public administrator; It is located in contemporary Mexico, in international and historical context, in the economic system based on private property.

Failed Democratic Reform in Contemporary Mexico: from Social Movements to the State and Back Again

Over the last decade or so, North American and European scholars have popularised a research focus on new social movements, or so-called autonomous and democratic struggles generated from within civil society against the state. The underlying theoretical premise of this approach is that challenges to the state from social movements are a principal driving force of political change in modern society. Despite its grounding in the advanced capitalist context, many Latin American scholars have found elective affinity with the argument, as evidenced in the recent tidal wave of studies on social movements by Latin Americanists. Basing their work primarily on analyses of Brazil, Argentina and Chile, scholars have argued that social movements help challenge the legitimacy and political power of strong and centralised governments in Latin America, at the same time creating from the grassroots a political culture suggestive of democratic transformation. In sort, there is growing consensus that social movements play a central role in bringing democracy to Latin America.

The Religious Challenge to the State

Preface Part I: Introduction 1. Challenge and Accommodation in Religion and Politics Lowell S. Gustafson and Matthew C. Moen Part II: South America and the Caribbean 2. Church and State in Argentina Lowell S. Gustafson 3. Revolution and Political Religion in Cuba Damian J. Fernandez Part III: North America 4. The Christian Right in the United States Matthew C. Moen 5. Church-State Relations in Contemporary Mexico, 1968-1988 Allan Metz Part IV: Europe 6. Miter Against Missiles: The Papal Challenge to Soviet Regimes in Eastern Europe Donald E. Bain 7. The Church, the Peace Movement, and the Social Democratic Party of German Mark Bartholomew Part V: The Middle East and Islamic Africa 8. Challenge and Conciliation: Religion and State in Israel Allan Metz 9. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: Reform or Revolution? Ann M. Lesch 10. Religion and Politics in Islamic Africa John O. Voll Part VI: Asia 11. Islam and the State: The Case of Pakistan Mumtaz Ahmad 12. Religion and Modernization in Gorbachev's Soviet Union: An Indirect Challenge to Secular Authority James W. Warhola Contributors

Hope and Frustration: Interviews with Leaders of Mexico’s Political Opposition

This volume aims to spotlight six of contemporary Mexico's most important opposition figures. In-depth interviews conducted by Carlos B. Gil introduce the reader to such increasingly influential leaders as Jesus Gonzalez Schmal, of the conservative PAN; Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the most successful opposition candidate in Mexico's history; and Jorge Alcocer Villanueva, who has long helped direct various offshoots of the Communist Party in Mexico. Dr. Gil has supplemented the interviews with biographical sketches of the leaders and chapters on the development of the Mexican party system, the recent rise of opposition parties, and the growing influence of Mexican-Americans on opposition candidates.

Agenda for Mobilization: The Agrarian Question and Popular Mobilization in Contemporary Mexico

Mexican politics has long been regarded as a closed system, with policy-making dominated by the reigning president and his circle and presidential succession (with all its possibilities for change of course) managed by an only slightly larger “Revolutionary Family” of top figures in the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). So intertwined are the Mexican state and the dominant party that scholars and opposition leaders alike have begun to speak of the “PRI state.” E. E. Schattschneider observed that in the U.S. system, 90 percent of the population never has access to the “pressure system” that directs policy choice. The percentage of the excluded is undoubtedly even larger in Mexico because the system is more decidedly “closed.” Yet in both countries, policy innovation is not uncommon. Marked changes of course have occurred at times, and opposition forces external to the system have occasionally managed to block presidential decisions and force reevaluation and sometimes painful adjustments. This article will examine the “agrarian question” in Mexico and will argue that its persistence and the ways in which it has been framed have constrained policymakers while encouraging and sustaining the development of an independent peasant movement during the 1970s and 1980s.

Divided over Democracy: The Embeddedness of State and Class Conflicts in Contemporary Mexico

Divided over Democracy: The Embeddedness of State and Class Conflicts in Contemporary Mexico

The Role of University Education in Contemporary Mexico

The Role of University Education in Contemporary Mexico

Unions and Politics in Mexico: The Case of the Automobile Industry.

The orthodox view of Mexican history asserts that the political stability and rapid economic growth of the post-war period were due inter alia to state control over the labour movement. On the evidence of his extensive research in Mexico between 1977 and 1982, Ian Roxborough challenges this conventional wisdom, arguing that control over Mexican unions has been more fragile and problematic than appears at first sight. Taking the car industry as a case study, he discusses the upsurge of industrial militancy in the 1970s and explores its possible implications for continued political stability. Focusing on variations in the factory-level organisations of the working class, the account in this book de-emphasises theories which stress class consciousness or which focus on the aristocracy of labour, in favour of a theory that places political and organisational power at the centre of analysis. This study of the grass roots of industrial militancy will have relevance not only for the study of contemporary Mexico but also for general explanations of the politics of labour in the Third World.

La intervención del Estado en la economía y en la sociedad en México: Sus orígenes y desarrollo. Una propuesta de interpretación

The article examines the nature of the "active state" by exploring its historical evolution. The role of the state in contemporary Mexico cannot be understood without taking into account the nature and role of the crown during the colonial era. Indeed, after the failure of liberalism in the nineteenth century, post Revolutionary Mexican political leaders resorted to traditional institutions, but gave them modern appearances, to resolve the socio-economic inequalities of the country.

Ideały moralne edukacji azteckiej

The article is a continuation of a paper published in “Etyka”, vol. 21, Concepts of Man in the Náhuatlan Culture and contains an overview of the fundamental types of education provided by the Aztecs, with special emphasis on moral ideals. The investigation of Indian education not only furthers historical knowledge but also plays a role in the search of the origins of the specific religious, moral and behavioural expression of contemporary Mexico, due to the fact that some elements of the education preceding the Spanish conquest became an integral part of the culture of that country. The analysis to which this article bears a testimony permits the author to say that before the conquest, the Aztecs had an integral educational system, an ideal to be put into practice, adequate institutions, competent teachers, didactic material elaborated by specialists. Skill formation practised at all levels of education, was complemented by moral instruction and intellectual, religious and aesthetic guidance. The norms inculcated through training had been worked out through the ages in the náhuatl tribes and served to protect the principal values of the family and social life. They had the function of elementary moral rules and emerged from the conditions of the perennial culture of Mexican Indians. Aside from setting models of behaviour and values, the norms that the author finds in all forms of education display some differentiation which is a reflection of the multi-layered, complex structure of that culture. It embraced two different lifestyles and two ideals. Beneath the dominant religious and military habits of the Aztecs survived the old morality of the Toltecs, preserved most conspicuously in the traditional norms of family life. It has also been expressed in the poetry of the 16th and early 17th centuries.

Government and Private Sector in Contemporary Mexico. Edited by Sylvia Maxfield and Ricardo Anzaldua Montoya (San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Relations, University of California, 1987. iv, 146p. $3.00 paper).

Government and Private Sector in Contemporary Mexico. Edited by Sylvia Maxfield and Ricardo Anzaldua Montoya (San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Relations, University of California, 1987. iv, 146p. $3.00 paper). - Volume 82 Issue 1

Introduction: Agrarian Social Movements in Contemporary Mexico

Introduction: Agrarian Social Movements in Contemporary Mexico

Some Contours of Social Class in a Southern Mexican Town

The contours of social class in the Hispanic and Mestizo communities of contemporary Mexico have been little studied by anthropologists compared to the relatively large corpus of anthropological work on social stratification in Spain. Many anthropologists have published books that describe certain aspects of social stratification in Spanish communities (e.g., Aceves 1971; Aguilera 1978; Barrett 1974; Brandes 1975; Christian 1972; Douglas 1969; Freeman 1970, 1979; Greenwood 1976; Gregory 1978; Hansen 1977; Kenney 1966; Lison-Tolosana 1966; Martinez Alier 1971; Perez-Diaz 1966; Pitt-Rivers 1954) and Gilmore's (1980) study is focused upon social class. By contrast, anthropologists working in Mexico have, for the most part, concentrated on Indian cultures and communities, or towns with Hispanicized Indian populations such as Foster's (1967) study of Tzintzuntzan or Nutini's (1968) study of San Bernardino Contla, and have paid less attention to Hispanic culture. The only full scale anthropological study of the social stratification of a Hispanic Mexican town is that of Whiteford (1964) utilizing the Warnerian six-class system on Queretaro, a city of some 50,000 (when it was studied in the 1950s) on the Meseta Central. A handful of other anthropological scholars (e.g., Belshaw 1967; Diaz 1966; Hotchkiss 1968; Lomnitz 1977; Margolies 1975; Miller 1973; Miller 1984; Nelson 1971; Wolf 1959) have described selected aspects of social stratification in Mexican mestizo settings. In our research on social stratification in a southern Mexican town, we were guided by studying the contours of social class in Spain, especially as described in Gilmore's publications on Fuenmayor, and by asking two fundamental questions: How has the Mexican class system evolved differently from that of Spain over the centuries in a setting in which the Spaniards conquered the Indians in the early 16th century? Since Mexico has had a successful revolution while Spain has not, how have the effects of the Mexican Revolution altered the contours of the Mexican class system as currently observed in a southern Mexican town?

Barry Carr and Ricardo Anzaldua Montoya (eds.). The Mexican Left, the Popular Movements, and the Politics of Austerity. Lajolla, CA: University of California at San Diego (UCSD), Center for US-Mexican Studies, 1986. Monograph Series, No. 18. 96 pp., paperback. - Sylvia Maxfield and Ricardo Anzaldua Montoya (eds.). Government and Private Sector in Contemporary Mexico. La Jolla, CA: University of California

Barry Carr and Ricardo Anzaldua Montoya (eds.). The Mexican Left, the Popular Movements, and the Politics of Austerity. Lajolla, CA: University of California at San Diego (UCSD), Center for US-Mexican Studies, 1986. Monograph Series, No. 18. 96 pp., paperback. - Sylvia Maxfield and Ricardo Anzaldua Montoya (eds.). Government and Private Sector in Contemporary Mexico. La Jolla, CA: University of California at San Diego, Center for US-Mexican Studies, 1987. Monograph Series, No. 20. 146 pp., paperback. - Arturo Alvarado (ed.). Electoral Patterns and Perspectives in Mexico. La jolla, CA: UCSD, Center for US-Mexican Studies, 1987. Monograph Series, No. 22. 287 pp., paperback. - Volume 29 Issue 4

Peasant Struggles in Contemporary Mexico

Peasant Struggles in Contemporary Mexico

The State and the National Bourgeoisie in Postrevolutionary Mexico: 1920-1940

Studies of the private sector of contemporary Mexico generally go back no further than the 1940s when the promotion of industrialization began to take precedence in the policy of the Mexican government. Presumably because the national bourgeoisie-economically weak and politically on the defensive-had only a marginal role in the historic struggles of the immediate postrevolutionary period, there have been very few systematic studies of the Mexican bourgeoisie during the 1920s and 1930s. Despite this neglect, an understanding of the development of the national bourgeoisie and the role of the state in its formation in the two decades following the revolution is of critical importance. It was during this period that many of the major institutions of contemporary Mexican capitalism-banks and industrial firms, chambers of commerce and industry as well as other business institutions-were established, and important patterns of collaboration were developed between private capitalists and between them and the state (or certain factions within the state). Thus an examination of the process of capital accumulation in this early postrevolutionary period helps to explain the model of development which has emerged in Mexico today. Among the components of this model are a prominent role for the state in what is essentially a capitalist economy; a strong injection of foreign capital and technology, primarily in the form of multinational corporate investments but also through loans, machinery imports, and other technology transfers; and a tendency toward concentration of control in all sectors of the economy (and toward monopolization in some sectors) by the state, foreign capital, and dominant groups among the national private sector. In Mexico, as in other third world countries, the state1 has had a

The Political Economy of Mexico in the Eighties†

This issue seeks to provide an understanding of some of the more important social, economic, and political conditions prevailing in contemporary Mexican society and of the way in which the Mexican left perceives and analyzes these conditions. Because there is no one acceptable leftist analysis of contemporary Mexican society, leftists in Mexico are continually confronting one another with analyses that emphasize different problems and conditions and represent different political positions. The essays in this issue provide a sampling of these perspectives and reveal some of the important ideological and political questions which confront the Mexican left today. This introductory essay presents some background information on the political economy of contemporary Mexico and on the general context within which the articles that follow were written. It also offers some insight into the different perspectives presented and attempts to connect the various problems under analysis to the larger totality of which they are a part.

Contemporary Mexico: Papers of The IV International Congress of Mexican History. Edited by James W. Wilkie, Michael C. Meyer, and Edna Monzdn de Wilkie. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. Pp. xv + 858. $27.50, cloth; $12.00, paper.)

Contemporary Mexico: Papers of The IV International Congress of Mexican History. Edited by James W. Wilkie, Michael C. Meyer, and Edna Monzdn de Wilkie. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. Pp. xv + 858. 12.00, paper.) - Volume 72 Issue 3

Contemporary Mexico: Papers of the IV International Congress of Mexican History.

Contemporary Mexico: Papers of the IV International Congress of Mexican History.