Mexican Public Opinion Research Articles

The Last Emperor of Mexico: The Dramatic Story of the Habsburg Archduke Who Created a Kingdom in the New World

The Last Emperor of Mexico: The Dramatic Story of the Habsburg Archduke Who Created a Kingdom in the New World

Risking Immeasurable Harm: Immigration Restriction and US-Mexican Diplomatic Relations, 1924–1932

In Risking Immeasurable Harm, Benjamin Montoya examines the factors behind, and the response to, a campaign in the United States during the late 1920s and early 1930s to impose tough restrictions on Mexican immigration. Though measures enacted between 1917 and 1924 had significantly curtailed the flow of migrants to the United States from Europe and Asia, the national quotas introduced by this legislation did not apply to the countries of the Western Hemisphere. A concern over Mexican immigration in particular—fueled largely, as Montoya shows, by the view that Mexican migrants were racially inferior and unassimilable—prompted restrictionists to seek to remedy this omission. Calls by some legislators for an extension of the quota were opposed by the State Department, which argued that such a move would damage an improving relationship with Mexico's postrevolutionary government. In a bid to defuse congressional efforts to write new limits on Mexican immigration into law, consular officials resorted to “administrative restriction”—the much stricter application of existing rules and regulations—to bring about a substantial reduction in the legal cross-border movement of Mexican workers. With the successful application of this strategy, followed by a reversal in the flow of migrants with the massive repatriation of Mexicans during the early years of the Great Depression, the push for additional legal curbs on Mexican immigration dissipated, and a potential crisis in bilateral relations was averted.Montoya's study captures a moment at which immigration was at once becoming increasingly prominent as a domestic political issue and emerging as a phenomenon that could affect relationships between states. He provides a valuable account of the way in which the United States resisted acknowledging that immigration could be a legitimate foreign policy issue, insisting to other governments that bilateral or multilateral approaches to managing migration would impinge on US sovereignty to an unacceptable extent. Nonetheless, top officials such as Secretary of State Frank Kellogg were mindful of the potential consequences for US foreign relations of a less welcoming immigration regime for citizens of Mexico and other American nations. Indeed, Kellogg told a Senate committee in 1928 that the introduction of a quota would “adversely affect the present good relations” enjoyed by the United States across the Western Hemisphere and that it would be especially unfortunate to imperil an improved relationship with Mexico that was “a source of considerable satisfaction to [the US] government” (pp. 75–76).A central contention of Risking Immeasurable Harm is that it was largely “diplomatic pressure”—rather than economic considerations—that “prevented congressional efforts to curb Mexican immigration” (p. 1). There is little evidence, however, that Mexican diplomatic representations or activism by Mexican officials had a significant bearing on the course or outcome of the debate over immigration restriction. Though Foreign Minister Genaro Estrada is said to have warned US ambassador Dwight Morrow that the imposition of a quota would give rise to “considerable feeling” on the part of the Mexican people, Mexican leaders generally accepted the right of the US government to regulate immigration as it saw fit and were ambivalent about the phenomenon of migration to the United States in any case (p. 89). US officials recognized, however, that Mexican public opinion would deeply resent the insult of an immigration quota that was justified on the grounds of the supposed inferiority and undesirability of the Mexican people. (It is noteworthy that Montoya's citations of Mexican press comment on proposals for immigration restriction show that he encountered the relevant clippings in US diplomatic files, giving an indication of the way in which US officials monitored and assessed Mexican views on the issue.) Administrative restriction was therefore seen as a preferable way to assuage congressional concerns. Though the effect—a massive reduction in Mexican immigration—was the same, the rigid application of literacy, health, and passport requirements did not carry with it the same relationship-damaging sting of legislation founded on an assertion of racial superiority.Risking Immeasurable Harm draws on significant research in both US and Mexican archives to provide original analysis of an early and little-known episode in the history of immigration as an issue in the relationship between the two countries. (Perhaps unsurprisingly given the focus on a policy debate centered in Washington, there is a greater reliance on US sources than Mexican ones, and engagement with relevant secondary literature in Spanish is limited.) For historians of US foreign policy, this book also provides a fascinating early case study of an executive branch effort to avoid having constraints placed by Congress on its ability to conduct foreign relations.

Política, gramática y enseñanza del español en los últimos años de la Nueva España y principios del México independiente: una aproximación desde la prensa periódica

After Mexican Independence, the new social order also required discussing the drift that the language of its new citizens would take, one of the few inheritances that was not willing to give up. For this, the legislative powers should talk about how they would designate their communication instrument and about how it should be taught in schools. The discussions around the language and its political drift was the subject of controversy in the first years of Independence, which was fully reflected in the Mexican newspapers. This study aims to account for the main discussions around the language and its teaching in the main Mexican public opinion media in the first decades of the 19th century, as well as to offer an overview of the antecedents of this situation since the beginning of the press of the Nueva Espana in the 18th century

¿Narcoinfierno O Narcolandia? Una Epistemología Intempestiva Sobre El Relato Oficial De La Violencia En México

The approach to narcotraffic violence is open to endless explanations, depending on the viewer's perspective. This article introduces a set of ecological metaphors, whose main advantage is to catch sight of the complexities inherent in the link between the narco-world and the legal culture. In clear opposition to the official story and media about this illicit activity, this paper presents arguments that call into question the presentation style that is common in political discourse and massive journalism. By appealing to notions like "narco-habitat", "relational ecosystem", and "narcoecology", the possibility of understanding the phenomenon of drug trafficking without adopting a position will be explored. On the other hand, it is intended to show that the typical way of conceptualizing this phenomenon (narco-violence) suffers from epistemological biases that close creative interpretations and refreshed meanings. For that reason, the kind of linear, individual, essentialist, condemnatory and criminalist points of view (instituted and naturalized in Mexican public opinion) will berejected.

LA VECINDAD CON ESTADOS UNIDOS: INTERÉS NACIONAL Y OPINIÓN PÚBLICA

Se analizan los determinantes individuales que afectan las percepciones costo-beneficio de la vecindad con Estados Unidos en la opinión pública mexicana. Se construye a su vez un modelo estadístico multivariado de regresión lineal. Los mexicanos tienen opiniones fundadas, diferenciadas y racionales que manifiestan patrones de coherencia conceptual. Las evaluaciones costo-beneficio asociadas a la vecindad con Estados Unidos dependen menos de las características demográficas de los mexicanos y más de los valores fundamentales y predisposiciones asociadas con la identidad nacional, los principios de internacionalismo, liberalismo económico, soberanía y percepciones sobre la vulnerabilidad relativa de México frente a Estados Unidos

La insatisfacción con la democracia en el México actual.

A finales del sexenio del presidente Calderón, varias encuestas de opinión dieron cuenta de un bajo grado de satisfacción con la democracia en México. El propósito de este artículo es explicar ese “estado de ánimo” que prevalecía en la opinión pública mexicana a doce años de la primera alternancia democrática. El argumento principal se refiere primero a la debilidad del Estado democrático mexicano, medida en términos de gestión macroeconómica y de control de la violencia. Se toma también en consideración la eficacia del sistema político, la naturaleza del pluralismo, la desigualdad social y la cultura política. En las conclusiones se aboga a favor del fortalecimiento de un Estado democrático tanto en su dimensión formal como informal.

La Guerra de Malvinas: solidaridad desde México

During the Latin American dictatorships in the seventies and early eighties, Mexico was home to a set of solidarity networks. The Malvinas War constituted a critical moment that shed light on some of these networks woven by Mexican and South American exiles. This article examines the role of these solidarity networks through documentation created by the different political trends of the Argentinean exile, as well as from articles, chronicles and editorials published in Mexican newspapers and magazines. The Malvinas War unleashed strong controversies on various issues of leftist thought and action: the character of the antidictatorial fight, the legitimacy of territorial sovereignty claims, imperialism, nationalism, and popular democracy. This article portrays these discussions; highlights the reach and scope of condemnations made against the State terrorism enforced by the Argentinean Armed Forces; and displays the impact of the Malvinas War in the Mexican public opinion.

Opinión pública y política exterior: percepciones y preferencias de los mexicanos

<p>El propósito de este artículo es explorar la relación entre opinión pública y política exterior para el caso de México. El trabajo trata de identificar el grado de influencia que tiene la opinión pública en el proceso de toma de decisiones de la política exterior mexicana.</p><p>El ensayo examina las percepciones y preferencias que tienen la sociedad y los líderes mexicanos sobre los principales temas de la agenda de la política exterior.</p><p><span style="font-size: 10px;">El argumento central es que, anteriormente, la opinión pública había tenido poca influencia en el diseño de la política exterior de México, debido a que la población en general contaba con poca información e interés sobre los asuntos internacionales. </span><span style="font-size: 10px;">Sin embargo en los últimos años se han abierto los espacios para que la opinión pública tenga una mayor incidencia en temas de política exterior debido a los cambios internos del país.</span></p>

El exilio incómodo: México y los refugiados judíos, 1933-1945

El exilio incómodo: México y los refugiados judíos, 1933-1945

A Lost Decade? Laszlo Radvanyi and the Origins of Public Opinion Research in Mexico, 1941-1952

This article documents public opinion research activities in Mexico in the 1940s and the role played by Hungarian professor Laszlo Radvanyi, who immigrated to that country at the height of World War II. Our research relies on several of Radvanyi's publications archived in different countries, as well as on interviews with family, acquaintances, and experts on the work of his wife, the German poet Anna Seghers. During his years in Mexico, Radvanyi founded the Scientific Institute of Mexican Public Opinion, in 1941, and the International Journal of Opinion and Attitude Research, in 1947 - a forefather of today's IJPOR. He was also a founding member of WAPOR. His early “sample surveys” raised important methodological issues and recorded opinion results that reflect the vibrant times of war and policy making in a modernizing country. However, Radvanyi's contribution to the profession has been virtually forgotten. Until now, accounts about how public opinion research began in Mexico either ignored Radvanyi's works or reduced his ten years of survey research to a single footnote. This article is an attempt to fill this enormous omission and highlight some of Radvanyi's contributions to these early stages of survey research.

The United States-Iraq War and Mexican Public Opinion

This article analyzes a relationship that has not been carefully studied in literature on US-Mexico relations: link between Mexican public opinion and Mexico's foreign policy.The article has three sections. In first, I discuss antithetic theoretical visions of institutional liberalism and realism in terms of linkage between public opinion and foreign policy. After a brief review of debate, I propose a hypothesis, based on Gabriel Almond's and Walter Lippmann's studies about relationship between foreign policy and public opinion.1 The second section is a study of evolution of perceptions in Mexican public opinion about war on Iraq, based on six national opinion polls. The first of these was carried out on 20 January 2003, before war began, and other five took place between 20 March and 11 April 2003. In final section, I draw some conclusions about hypothesis and role of Mexican public opinion in foreign policy.INSTITUTIONAL LIBERALISM AND REALISMThe liberal institutionalist tradition can be traced back to Kant, who argues in Perpetual Peace that in a republican constitutionthe assent of every citizen is necessary to decide question, Whether war shall be declared or not. But to decree war, would be to citizen to decree against themselves all calamities of war, such as fighting in person, furnishing from their own means towards expense of war; painfully to repair devastations it occasions; and, to fill up measure of evils, load upon themselves weight of a national debt, that would embitter even peace itself, and which on account of constant new wars, can never be liquidated. They will certainly beware of plunging into an enterprise so hazardous. Whereas, in a constitution wherein subjects are not citizens of state, that is to say, a constitution not republican, a declaration of war is a most easy matter to resolve upon, as it does not require of chief, proprietor and not member of state, least sacrifice of his pleasures, either of table, chase, country.... He may therefore resolve on war as on a party of pleasure, for reasons most frivolous, and with perfect indifference leave justification of same, which decency requires, to diplomatic corps, who are ever ready to undertake it.2From argument, several contemporary authors have established a thesis about peace between democracies. According to Jack Levy, the absence of war between democracies is closest thing that we have in international relations to a law.3 Along these same lines, Bruce Russett argues that this is one of most powerful generalizations, not trivial or tautological, that can be made about international relations.4 The idea that theory is one of most significant in international relations is not accepted by everyone. By contrast, for example, Christopher Layne and David E. Spiro have written critical articles against democratic peace thesis.5Without entering that controversy, a central part of argument is that democracies have a tendency to be more peaceful with other democracies due to, inter alia, force of public opinion in formation of foreign policy. The assumption is that democratic nature of a regime limits bellicosity of its leaders. However, proposed peaceful nature of democracies has very clear limits in situations where they face a nondemocratic regime and is reason Woodrow Wilson and other liberals emphasize process of democratization in international relations as a pathway to international peace.The link between public opinion and foreign policy is clear in liberal institutionalism. In words of Elihu Root,When foreign offices were ruled by autocracies or oligarchies danger of war was in sinister purpose. When foreign affairs are ruled by democracies danger of war will be in mistaken beliefs. …

The United States-Iraq War and Mexican Public Opinion

The United States-Iraq War and Mexican Public Opinion

Global Views 2004: Mexican Public Opinion and Foreign Policy

Global Views 2004: Mexican Public Opinion and Foreign Policy

Local Context and Democratization in Mexico

While democratization is often seen as a national-level process, we argue that there is important scope for local effects. Through analysis of Mexican public opinion data collected on the eve of that country's historic 2000 elections, we demonstrate that local context greatly affects evaluations of the legitimacy of the system, and these evaluations, in turn, help to shape the willingness of citizens to engage with the system. Citizens are more willing to participate in politics if they think the process is fair, and direct evidence of the fairness of the system is provided by the local political context. This local connection, then, becomes critical in the process of individuals becoming, in Almond and Verba's classic term, “participatory” citizens (1963).

Local Context and Democratization in Mexico

While democratization is often seen as a national‐level process, we argue that there is important scope for local effects. Through analysis of Mexican public opinion data collected on the eve of that country's historic 2000 elections, we demonstrate that local context greatly affects evaluations of the legitimacy of the system, and these evaluations, in turn, help to shape the willingness of citizens to engage with the system. Citizens are more willing to participate in politics if they think the process is fair, and direct evidence of the fairness of the system is provided by the local political context. This local connection, then, becomes critical in the process of individuals becoming, in Almond and Verba's classic term, “participatory” citizens (1963).

Mexico, the United States and the War in Iraq

Until the early 1980s, Mexico was a closed economy and a one party state. Mexican foreign policy was intensely nationalistic. Anti-American sentiment prevailed. Subsequently, and especially after the opening of the negotiations in 1991 that led to the inclusion of Mexico in NAFTA, both countries became close commercial allies. But over Iraq, at the UN, Mexico voted against the United States. Mexican public opinion, always suspicious of the American government, was galvanized by the invasion of Iraq. The rise in the level of anti-American sentiment reflects a deep-seated lack of trust in and fear of the superpower.

Mexican Intellectuals’ Perceptions of Mexican Americans and Chicanos, 1920-present

A historical analysis of academic and popular ideas about Mexican immigrants and their children by members of the Mexican intelligentsia reveals a changing understanding of the meaning of immigration and ethnicity. Starting with a widespread view of Mexican immigrants to the United States as “cultural traitors”, Mexican public opinion about this group gradually changed due to both the political evolution of Mexican intellectuals and the growing economic and political power of Latinos in the United States. The Mexican government has increasingly come to see Chicano political leaders as important to Mexico's relationship with the United States, while Mexican intellectuals increasingly regard Chicano academics as their allies in a struggle against North American hegemony.

Mexican Public Opinion and Perceptions of Instability: Revisiting "Relative Deprivation"

This article draws on two survey snapshots of Mexico taken at a most interesting time--starting with the historic 1997 mid-term elections and heading toward the all-important 2000 presidential elections. It advances the notion that Mexico is experiencing a social expectation-regime capability dilemma, which threatens the country's longstanding stability and invokes the theory of relative deprivation. Empirical evidence is combined with theoretical work on stability to offer an interpretation of contemporary Mexico, and an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression model predicting perceptions of stability is presented. The model demonstrates that the perceived inequity of income distribution has a powerful effect on perceptions of instability. / El presente artículo se basa en dos encuestas snapshot que se llevaron a cabo en México durante un momento de gran interés--el período mientras que las históricas elecciones de medio plazo de 1997 llegaban a su fin y se dirigían hacia las sumamente importantes elecciones presidenciales del año 2000. El artículo postula la noción que México vive un dilema social que yace en la expectativa y capacidad del presente régimen. Dicho dilema amenaza la estabilidad que México ha gozado por tanto tiempo e invoca la teoría de la privación relativa. La evidencia empírica de las encuestas se mezcla ante un marco teórico sobre la estabilidad que tiene como objetivo el ofrecer una interpretación del México contemporáneo y presentar un modelo de estadística (OLS regresión) para predecir lo que las opiniones sobre la estabilidad del país indican. Este modelo ejemplifica que los encuestados correlacionan la injusticia imperante en la distribución de ingresos y la inestabilidad social que actualmente reina en el país.

Democratizing Mexico: public opinion and electoral choices

In this study of Mexican public opinion and elections, the authors examine the attitudes and behaviours of Mexican voters from the 1950s to the 1990s and find evidence of both support for and increasing independence from the nation's ruling party. They make extensive use of polls conducted during the 1988, 1991 and 1994 national elections and draw from in-depth interviews with leading political figures, including presidential candidates. Although the 1994 presidential election showed that Mexican citizens are making their opinions known and felt at the polls, Dominguez and McCann argue that Mexico cannot be considered a democracy as long as party elites fail to ensure truly free and fair elections.