Paul Gillingham: evaluation

Transcript context

…My account of that, first of all, that’s a major paradox which really lay behind the subject of my doctorate and my last book. How do you account for the fact that Mexico has a revolution, first of all, one of the great revolutions, which lays down radical prescriptions for equality, which are then produced by one of the most unequal economies in the Americas? You’ve got talking about revolution, you’ve got massive, enduring inequality, and yet you have this, as you point out, abnormal peace going back to 1929 with regular elections like clockwork every six years. Every six years, there’s a peaceful transfer of power. There is never any even imagination of a January, the 6th moment there. To make another comparison, there’s, after 1929, no assassination. Whereas obviously here, JFK, RFK, MLK, there’s almost alphabet soup of assassination of progressive leaders. If you look at this and try and make it add up, it’s extremely difficult. I think it’s in part because the inequality misses some of the benefits for the rapidly growing urban populations, which range from superb dirt-cheap subsidized cinema to low housing rates to healthcare. Mexican healthcare, given its income band, it’s very, very good. Just looking at Gini coefficients for either income or wealth doesn’t tell the entire story of what Mexicans get out of the revolution. The final thing is precisely those elections, because this is a one-party state and the elections are rigged. No question. All the way until the last decade, really, the national elections are rigged, but the local ones are not. Yes, they are, actually, but any group of people who feel strong enough, like say Oaxaqueños, about their local autonomy, about ruling themselves, can make enough of a fuss about it that through the mechanism of election, backed up by riot, they can actually get their people in. There is this unconventional but effective route to popular representation, which at time outpunches the British because in the British system, candidates just get imposed from the party. The party says, “Local candidate X will run for election in Surrey,” and that’s it. Democracy is finished. Mexico is not like that. I think that’s something that helps temper this radical inequality in qualitative terms, this apparent national, what the people call, soft dictatorship. Then the final piece, and I’m sorry this answer goes on, but this is just a central paradox which political scientists and historians have struggled to understand for decades. I think we’re finally getting a handle on it. The final piece is the immense war weariness caused by a revolution that kills one in 10 Mexicans and the education that gives leaders all the way to the ’50s in the absolute pragmatic imperative: Whatever you do, keep the lid on, whatever needs doing. If it’s repression, then generally, conciliation works better. that gives leaders all the way to the ’50s in the absolute pragmatic imperative: Whatever you do, keep the lid on, whatever needs doing. If it’s repression, then generally, conciliation works better. This extremely complex equation, I think, is what keeps the army out of politics, what keeps relative peace and relative buy-in to this unequal single-party state. There’s nothing like it. Mexico really is idiosyncratic in this, and it’s extraordinary, as you can see, complicated recipe. Right before World War II, the Cárdenas regime redistributes a lot of the cultivatable land. How does that fit into your story?…

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