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Sergio Aguayo, Adolfo Aguilar Zínser, Jorge Bustamante, Jorge Carpizo, Emilio Carrillo Gamboa, Rita Eder, Alonso García Chávez, Guadalupe González, Rosario Green, Andrés Henestrosa, Julio Labastida, Adrián Lajous, Miguel León-Portilla, Jorge Alberto Lozoya, Antonio Luna Arroyo, Mario Melgar, Silvia Núñez García, Olga Pellicer, Elena Poniatowska, Federico Reyes Heroles, José Sarukhán, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Mónica Verea, Luis Vibro.

Address letters, advertising, and subscription correspondence to: Voices of Mexico, Miguel Angel de Quevedo 610, Col. Coyoacán, 04000 México, D.F. Tel: 659-23-49 and 659-38-21. Fax: 554-65-73. Electronic mail: paz@servidor.unam.mx. Voices Page: http:/www.unam.mx/voices . Annual subscription rates: Mexico Mex.$90, the Americas U.S.$17, Europe and other countries U.S.$35, prepaid in US currency to Voices of Mexico. Opinions expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the views of Voices of Mexico. All contents are fully protected by (1) copyright and may not be reproduced without the written consent of Voices of Mexico. The magazine is not responsible for the return of unsolicited manuscripts. Publicación trimestral, año diez, número 38, enero-marzo de 1997. ISSN 0186-9418. Certificado de Contenido No. 2930 y Certificado de Título No. 3340, expedidos por la Comisión Calificadora de Publicaciones y Revistas Ilustradas. Reserva al uso exclusivo del título No. 569-88, expedida por la Dirección General del Derecho de Autor. Corresponde ncia nacional de segunda clase. Registro 0851292. Características 220261212.

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VOICES of Mexico Number 38 January • March 1997

EDITORIAL

Our Voi ce Paz Consuelo Márquez Padilla POLITICS

Mexico's Presidentialism Everyone Else's Weakness Fernando Escalante Gonzalho

The Powers of Presidentialism Juan Molinar Horcasitas

The Municipality and lis Transition to Autonomy Carlos Martínez Assad

Is Stable Democracy in Latin America a Utopia?

A Historical Review José Luis Valdés-Ugalde VI Iberoamerican Summit. Twenty-Three Heads of State and Government Against Helms-Burton

Diego I. Bugeda Bernal SCIENCE, ART AND CULTURE

Lorenzo Boturini's Historical Museum of the Indies José Luis Martínez

Mexico's Contribution to the Mediterranean Diet Janet Long

María Izquierdo Melancholic Nostalgia Teresa del Conde THE SPLENDOR OF MEXICO

Domesticated Birds of Pre-Hispanic Mexico Raúl Valadez Azúa

On Nahuatl Wisdom Living the Image Pedro Tezontémoc

The Wood of Apaseo El Alto Maricela González Cruz Manjarrez

The Amate Tradition Innovation and Dissent in Mexican Art Jonathan D. Amith SOC1ETY

Human Rights Education in Mexico And Latin America Lilian Alvarez de Testa

4

Drug Trafficking Mexican Negotiation Strategies María Celia Toro

87

ECONOMY

SIMAI M O D

Mexico's New Petrochemicals Strategy Jesús Reyes Heroles, Minister of Energy

93

Private Participation in Mexico's Natural Gas Industry Víctor Rodríguez Padilla and Rosío Vargas

97

Maquiladoras and Free Trade Monica Gambrill

101

CANADIAN ISSUES

A New Era in Mexican-Canadian Relations Sandra Fuentes

104

LITERATURE

Fragments of a Story Never Filmed Jorge Volpi

110

The Hand Alberto Ruy Sánchez

115

UNITED STATES AFFAIRS

The U.S. Elections Interpretations and Implications for Mexico Rafael Fernández de Castro

117

ECOLOGY

Xcaret A Sacred Paradise Elde Montiel

121

Cacti Wonder of the Americas Salvador Arias Montes

127

MUSEUMS

The Palace of the School of Medicine And the Museum of Mexican Medicine Virginia Classing Carlos Viesca

133

REVIEWS

Only the Good Times Mike Estrella

137

Luz y luna, las lunitas Eva Cruz Yañez

138 Cover: María Izquierdo, Cupboard with Candied Fruit, 1946 (oil on canvas).

México en los informes presidenciales de los Estados Unidos de América María Fernanda Riveroll

142

Photo by Jesús Sánchez Uribe

VOICES

of MEXICO • 38

OUR VOICE

p

resident Clinton was reelected Last November 5, and

tives, in their analyses of presidentialism in Mexico and its recent changes.

the Democratic Party recovered its ability to occupy the Oval Office for two straight terms. On the other hand the Republicans were able to retain control of both houses of Congress. Obviously, the next four years will bring

Carlos Martínez Assad explains that in today's Mexico the fiercest electoral competition takes place at the municipal level In his opinion, the National Action Party strategy has yielded

either the U.S. founding fathers' dream or their worst nightmare:

important results since they now govern 13 of the 20 most pop-

If President Clinton is able to negotiate properly with Congress, and Congress, in turn, acts responsibly, the checks and balances of the system may finction in all their splendor with both branches of government monitoring each other's activities. If President Clinton is notan able negotiator, if Congress is dominated by the most conservative wing of the Republican Party or if Clinton can-

ulated municipalities in the country. He also emphasizes that municipal governments must have sufficient resources iffederalism is to be consolidated.

José Luis Valdés-Ugalde warns us that democracy is fingile in Latin America, stressing the role that the military has played and underlining the fact that civilian governments have to deal

not unifi Democratic congressional votes, then there may be a gridlock like the one in late 1995. Nevertheless, experience has shown that the supposedly great conservative rontract With

with this voy strong political actor who interferes with democratic processes.

America» revolution lost its momentum precisely when it took such

Heads ofState and Government in November 1996 This is the sixth consecutive year that this kind of high level meeting has been helcZ a demonstration both of the good relltions among countries in the

Viña del Mar, Chile, hosted the w Iberoamerican Summit of

a hard line on the budget negotiations, paralyzing decision making. For the American people, the Republican-dominated Congress carne out the toser, not President Clinton.

The best thing, then, for both the president and the Congress will be to develop jective bipartisan policies to jointly build a

region and of the democratic advances which allowfizr a more fruitfid dialogue. The vi Summit, reviewed in this issue, touched on such important topics as governabilior and democracy drug trafficking

bridge toward the United States of the twenty-first centwy.

corruption, the fight against poverty and the Helms-Burton Act, which was unanimously condemned

**

The section '<Science, Art and Culture" continues to bring our readers the work of important Mexican painters, both men and

This issue of Voices of Mexico covers several topics in its Tolitics" section that we think will be of interest to our readers.

Today in Mexico, voices clamor for the executive to balance its

women. Masks, clolls, cardboard horses and little girls are some of the images that María Izquierdo gives us with beautifid brush strokes. Teresa del Condes article gives special significante to the work of this great Mexican painter.

prerogatives vis-á-vis the other branches of government; at the same time, the disappearance of the exaggerated presidentialism

Janet Long article explains Mexico contribution to Mediter-

that intervenes and imposes its position in everything is feared.

ranean cuisine, delving in great detall into how corra and tomatoes,

Fernando Escalante and Juan Molinar discuss the changes and

among other products, aided in making their diet more nutritious.

possibilities of the executive branch from two different perspec-

José Luis Martínez describes the Boturini Collection which includ4

In our "Canadian Issues" section, Mexico Ambassador to Ca-

Mocito befire the arrival of the Spanish.

"The Splendor of Mexico" section is centered on the art and

nada Sandra Fuentes uses a historic analysis to go into current relations between Mexico and Canada. She considers that the sign-

culture of indi genous Mexico.

Amates are part of the spectacular, rich and varied artisan tradition in Mexico. Color, image and texture mix in Mexican indi genous artists' work. Jonathan Amith argues that amate painting is a demonstration of Nahua culture which should no longer be considered mere crafis, but great works of art.

Pedro Tezontémoc fillowed in Antonin Artaud's footsteps 60

ing ofthe trilateralfiee trade agreement introduced great dynamism into the trade, political and social reiations between both nations.

In the "Literature" section, we present two examples of Mexican novel writing.

Sensuality, secrecy and psychology interact strangely in an ephemeral relationship described by Jorge Volpi, one of our young Mexican novelists who has ventured to break with traditional narrativa. In this issue, we share with our readers a chapter of his novel Temperamento melancólico (Melancholic

years afier the French intellectual walked the Tarahumara Mountains. Like his predecessor, Tezontémoc captures the enigmatic beauty of the Tarahumara indians in fantastic photographs which we

Temperament).

One cannot but take the time to delight in the intermin-

present here together with bis article reflecting on art and life.

Maricela González Cruz details the mastery of woodworking from Apaseo el Alto. Raúl Valadez Azúa's description of the cultural and ritual importance of some of the birds in pre-Hispanic

gling of words that describe Fatma, the fascinating character created by the talented Mexican author Alberto Ruy Sánchez in "The Hand," a chapter of his novel Mogador. Los nombres del aire (Mogador. The Names of the Air).

Rafael Fernández de Castro takes up the recent U.S. elections in our "United States Affairs" section. He argues that President

Mexico allows us to better imagine that world.

Wars and regional conflicts bring about violations of human rights, threatening the spirit of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Lilian Alvarez de Testa describes the results ofmeetings which aim to give new vigor, definition and specific tactics in Latín America to the protection of human rights. This article

Clinton's main challenge is giving "both the militias and the ethnic and religious fiendamentalists their place" in the political life of the nation. He also states that the one-hundred-and-fifih

begins our "Socieol" section, which deals with contemporary issues.

The social fabric of many countries is prey to the problem of narcotics. A voy complex system of power, corruption and money permeates many countries. María Celia Toro analyzes the innerworkings of just such an intricate structure to go deeply into the strategies Mexico has developed to face this problem, which taints

Congress will intervene more in the bilateral relations between Mexico and the United States because of mechanisms like the certification of the anti-drug trafficking efforts, the report on human rights and the evaluation of NAFTA implementation.

Our "Ecology" section continues to present the richness of Mexico's flora and fauna: Salvador Arias Montes writes about

its relations with the United States.

In the economy, the energy sector has dominated national debate. We have included a key speech by Energy Minister Jesús Reyes Heroles, in which he lays out the new strategy for develop-

the great varia), of cacti in Mexico and the economic and cultural benefits accruedfrom these surprising plants.

Xcaret, an ecological park in the state of Quintana Roo, is a wonderfid comer of Mexico where visitors can enjoy ruin, sea, flora and fauna. With this article, Voices of Mexico gives our

ing petrochemicals. Víctor Rodríguez and Rosío Vargas center their contribution on the modernization of the gas industry.

In her article "Maquikdoras and Free Trade," Monica Gambrill explains how U.S. protectionist tariffi have limited man-

readers a glimpse of our country's great natural beauty.

This time in "Museums," we invite you to visit the Museum of Mexican Medicine, located in a spectacular colonial building in

ating its corollaries, an unskilled work force and low wages.

downtown Mexico City. Its different rooms, with its especially important exhibit of traditional herbal treatments, take us

Gambrill suggests that for both Mexico and the United States to

through the history of Mexican medicine.

ufacture in maquiladoras almost exclusively to assembly work, cre-

really benefit from the free trade agreement, wages must rise and Mexican domestically produced intermediary goods be integrated

Paz Consuelo Márquez Padilla Editorial Director

into manufacturing in the maquiladoras.

5

I V III 0JA UR

ed several pre-Columbian codices fundamental to understanding

OFUNAM orquesta filarmónica de la unam ronald zoliman dir ector artístico

temporada 1996-1997 Invierno Enero/marzo

SALA NEZAHLIALCÓYOTL

MEXICO'S PRESIDENTIALISM

Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo*

T

hroughout 1996, Mexico buzzed with the sup-

posed weakness of the president. The most singular examples were brought up and repeated with boring insistente, as though precisely to weaken the presidency through repetition. However, it seems that the obsessive recurrente of the topic actually shows the weakness not of the president, but of all the rest of the political players, revealing their inability to survive in Mexico's new circumstances.

The president's not meddling in every little thing that happens in each state of the union is often taken as weakness. So is his trying to convince his fellow party members instead of bringing them to heel, his not being a partisan of unanimity, his not rushing to negotiate everything and his not being an applause seeker. Other "examples" are his attempts at consistency and his not being swayed â&#x20AC;&#x201D;insofar as possibleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; by every new turn of events and accommodating himself to every new circumstance.

In plain language, the simple fact is that people do not like the president working within the confines of the law; none of the political parties, the press or businessmen like it because they do not want to have to do it themselves.

And, without the president's support, without his willing-

* Researcher at the Mexico College.

Originally published in Enfoque, a supplement of the nacional daily Reforma, July 18, 1996.

Zedillo's strength has been questioned.

7

SDII VI Od

Everyone Else's Weakness i

VOICES

of MEXICO

â&#x20AC;˘ 38

The National Palace, seat of government.

ness to negotiate incompliance, no one feels free to seek other arrangements: the president is weak then, in sum, because he will not impose his will in favor of this or that interest group.

Naturally, to a great degree the situation can be attributed to the personal style and convictions of President Zedillo.

But it is also partly the result of the changes in Mexico's

umons

political system over the past decade. Most probably, even if he wanted to, the president could not do many things that his predecessors used to do: demand rigorous party discipline, appoint candidates to public office, impose pacts.

But this also means that the other political players cannot act as they used to either; they cannot use the strength of the presidency for their own personal benefit as freely as they could in the past. Everyone has to play by new rules.

We should examine the issue Everyone, from members with due calm because it is urgent. The traditional power of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary of the presidency requires as a matter of routine agreements Party to the opposition, businessmen, and decisions that twist the letter and the spirit of the law, or and the press, depended on the president's which in any case exceed the authority vested in the office of power to make their own moves. head of state. This means that the president not only had the 8

POLITICS

applause of the business sector or the goodwill of the media all We are seeing the modernization of imply a price —particularly a political price— for the presidency. the presidency as an institution, If the president no longer seeks these sorts of arrangements, he is a good start for facing the modernization not obliged to pay that price. The presidency, in sum, gains autonomy. of the state, beneficial and plausible None of this should come as a great surprise: in the last analyas long as we think modernity also is. sis, we are seeing the modernization of the presidency as an institution, a good start for facing the modernization of the state, beneficial and plausiability to act in this fashion, but he was obliged to do so ble as long as we think modernity also is. In any case, because the normal functioning of the political system there seems to be little choice in the manen Even given depended on it. its complications of administrative cruelty, depersonalThe informal or irregular prerogatives of presidential ization and bureaucratic inercia, state autonomy is the authority, then, not only served the aggrandizement of the only political solution compatible with the excessive president: they were not an indication of his personal machinery of modern societies and, in that, for us, there power, but of the needs of the political system itself. Ir was is no turning back. an efficient form of authority, useful because it served as What causes problems —sometimes very taxing onesa mainstay of a complex system of alliances and offered is the transition, because all the mechanisms operating —not a solid guarantee for the agreements of the political class as a so badly— for decades have to be dismantled along the way. whole. Everyone, from members of the [ruling] InstituThe only institution today that seems capable of survival tional Revolutionary Party to the opposition, businessmen, in the modern context is the presidency. All the rest of us, unions and the press, depended on the president's power to confronted with the urgent need to operate within the law, make their own moves, and they all suffer equally with are lost because, to start with, the motley, irresponsible its transformation. complex of legislation was designed for a system like the The common denominator of the president's new one we had, in which everyone could be right and negoattitudes and decisions —seen as indications of weaktiate incompliance wherever necessary. ness— is the increase in the autonomy of his office. And Nonetheless, that is not the most serious question. What that means that the other players' ability to influence deis truly significant is the increased autonomy of the prescisions is undermined: politically, then, they are debiliidency which, since it debilitates the other political players, tated. may induce them to commit more that one folly. The presFor the president's office to settle questions that arise in ident's authority in these cases could be lethal for many if the different states of the union, solutions must always be the inercia of our ancient traditions did not moderate it. negotiated with the local political class and notables. If the That authority could be exercised with a force and rigor intention is to no longer do this, then neither is it neceswe are unused to. sary to negotiate. To achieve the unanimous agreement Many are already aware of this; they feel it in their dayof all members of the party, something must be given in to-day doings. That is the reason they lament the presiexchange. If unanimity is no longer necessary, the party dent's weakness, because they are really concerned —and cannot continue to make excessive demands either. Simiquite correctly so— with everyone else's.

larly, disciplining Congress or the unions, winning the 9

VOICES

of MEXICO • 38

THE POWERS OF PRESIDENTIALISM 1 Juan Molinar Horcasitas*

O

rthodox interpretations of Mexican politics contrast considerably with the dayto-day perception of the president of the republic. The canonical interpretation holds that the axis of Mexican politics is presidentialism, that is, excessive, uncontrollable power of the executive. However, the surveys talk about a rebuked and beleaguered president,2 while debate in the press speculates about the possibility that he be forced to step down and even children tell jokes about his debility. What has happened to turn the criticisms of a couple of years ago about excessive presidentialism into complaints about the weakness of the office?

Naturally, someone is always ready to attribute this change to Ernesto Zedillo's personality, pointing to the marked difference between his character and that of Carlos Salinas, his predecessor. This difference does exist, of course, but personality is not sufficient * Researcher at the Mexico College. Member of the General Council of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE).

I This anide was originally published in Enfoque, a supplement of the national daily Reforma, July 18, 1996.

2 Surveys carried out mainly between April and July 1996. [Editor's Note.]

Clearly, the vigor of Mexico's presidentialism does not depend on the personality of the occupant of Los Pinos. to explain so much: there were greater differences of character between Lázaro Cárdenas and Miguel de la Madrid, Aldolfo Ruiz Cortines and José López Portillo, or Manuel Avila Camacho and Miguel Alemán Valdés,3 and they all enjoyed the splendor of presidentialism. Clearly, the vigor of Mexico's presidentialism does not depend on the personality of the occupant of Los Pinos. 4 Others have attributed the phenomenon to Mexico's political culture, saying that the root of authoritarianism in the government is the authoritarianism in society. The problem with this interpretation is that to

explain the sudden weakness of presidentialism, we would have to accept that a very brief period has produced profound changes in Mexicans' political culture, the same Mexicans who previously supported presidentialism and now undermine it.

The neo-institutionalist perspective, on the other hand, has sought the basis for presidentialism in the institutions themselves and in political and partisan equilibria. The best analysis to date from this perspective is Jeffrey Weldon's, which will soon come out in a book on presidentialism and democracy in Latin America. 5 The argument that I will summarize here may be consulted extensively in that work.

3 lázaro Cárdenas was president from 1934 to

1940; Miguel de la Madrid, from 1982 to 1988; Adolfo Ruiz Gorrines from 1952 to 1958; José López Portillo, from 1976 to 1982; Manuel Avila Camacho, from 1940 to 1946; and Miguel Alemán Valdés, from 1946 to 1952. [Editor's Note.]

4 Los Pinos is Mexico's executive mansion. [Translator's Note.]

10

5

Jeffrey A. Weldon, `The Logic of Presidencialismo in Mexico," in Scott Mainwaring and Matthew Sobert Shugart, presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Mass., currently at the printer's.

THE FORMULA OF PRESIDENTIALISM

lmag e nlatina -HĂŠcto r Ga rc Ă­a

POLITICS

From the institutional point of view, presidentialism is the fruit of the convergence of four necessary conditions, all institutional and partisan. The formula of presidentialism is quite simple: Presidentialism = 1) constitutional prerogatives + 2) a unipartisan government + 3) party discipline + 4) presidential leadership of his own party.

1. Constitutional prerogatives are the basis for presidentialism. Without them, Zedillo with members of his cabinet and state governors. power would only occaidency, although no one doubts that sionally be concentrated in the presMexican presidentialism is unparalident's hands, when, in an exceptionleled in practice. Our history also shows al crisis, it can be wielded by an extrathat some presidents have been weak ordinary, charismatic, overwhelming despite having had at their disposal personality. A strong personality, howthe same prerogatives as the protoever, is not even necessary, as the prestypes of presidentialism. That is why identialist term of Miguel de la Madrid other conditions must be fulfilled shows. The basis, then, is that the Consand examined. titution deposits in the office itself a 2. The second condition, albeit great many executive, legislative and insufficient in and of itself, for presijudicial prerogatives. dentialism to exist, is a uni-partisan However, while a necessary condigovernment. This means that a single tion, this is not sufficient for presidenparty controls both the presidency and tialism. A comparative study 6 of forthe legislative branch. The case of mal presidential privileges in several France, with its semi-presidential system countries has shown that the Mexican (as Duverger calls it) or its premier-presiConstitution is not the one which dential system (as Shugart and Carey bestows the greatest power in its prescall it), is illustrative on this point. The 6 See Matthew Sobert Shugart and John Carey, president is all-powerful and makes Presidents and Assemblies. Constitutional Design all executive decisions when his party and Electoral Dynamics, Cambridge University dominares the Legislative Assembly, Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1992, pp. 131-147.

11

but he loses almost all his strength to the prime minister when the assembly is controlled by the opposition. 7 The situation of state governors in Mexico also exemplifies this point: in their states, they are what the president is in the country as a whole. And what happens when a governor loses the majority control over his legislature shows that the partisan unity of the executive and the legislative branches is an indispensable component of"governorism." 8 When the governor's party has the necessary legislative majority, Maurice Duverger, "A New Political System Model: Semi-Presidential Government," in European Journal of Political Science, Vol. 8, 1980, pp. 165-187.

8 Two significant recent cases in Mexico are those of Chihuahua and Guanajuato, where the governors belong to one party and the majority of the local legislature is in the hands of another. In both cases, the governor is a member of the

7

of

MEXICO

• 38

Imagen latina- Héctor Garc ía

VOICES

Traditionally, all development plans come from the first executive and are never changed by the other branches.

bilis presented by the state executive pass without a hitch, whether the governors are members of the PAN or the PIU. But, when their party loses that majority, governors see their bills amended or voted down, or are forced into intense negotiations with the opposition, again, whether they are members of the PAN or the PRI. 3. The convergence of the two factors, the indispensable constitutional prerogatives and a uni-partisan government, are still not enough to produce presidentialism. The United States is the perfect example: since its founding it has had a uni-partisan National Action Party (PAN) (Francisco Barrio in Chihuahua and Vicente Fox in Guanajuato) and the Institucional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has the congressional majority in both legislatures. The opposite is the case in Aguascalientes, a state where the opposition as a whole has had a legislative majority since the 1995 elections and Governor Orto Granados Roldán is a member of the PRI. Also, in the northern state of Baja California Sur, PRI Governor Guillermo Romero is faced with a legislative majority of the opposition. [Editor's Note.]

government half the time, but it has almost never had a presidentialist system. The most recent example is clear: President Clinton was not able to obtain passage of one of his most important bilis, the health bill, despite the fact that the Democratic Party had the majority in both the House and the Senate. The reason was simple: his party's vote, as almost aiways, was divided. In the U.S. Congress, all party members voting the same is the exception and not the role. The logic behind U.S. parties being undisciplined would be a matter for another article but it is generally accepted to be the case, and this stops a presidential system from becoming presidentialist. This is why, Woodrow Wilson carne to the conclusion that the U.S. system was not even presidential, but congressional.

4. Not even the convergence of the first three conditions, however, is enough to transform a presidential system into presidentialism. Also needed is a president who is the leader of the ,

12

majority party of congress. Let us look once again at cases in our own history: the three presidents of the Maximato Periodo [Emilio Portes Gil, Pascual Ortiz Rubio and Abelardo Rodríguez] ofren failed when they sent bilis to Congress, despite the fact that they belonged to the National Revolutionary Party, which controlled the legislature. In fact, these three presidents are considered examples of weakness in the postrevolutionary period, although they enjoyed basically the same constitutional prerogatives as later presidents, had no important opposition parties in Congress to contend with and belonged to the same political party as their successors. What was missing was the fourth condition: being the leaders of their own party. The leader was someone else, the "boss," the Maximum Commander, Plutarco Elías Calles. To abolish the Maximato —the total negation of presidentialism: "The president lives here, but the man who governs lives across the way"— [President Lázaro] Cárdenas [1934-1940] had to win leadership of his party and —at that time— also of the army, from which the party had emerged.

What does Ernesto Zedillo lack to be able to exercise the presidentialism of the past? Today's president has three of the four necessary con9

The period immediately after the presidency of Plutarco Elías Calles (1924-1928) is called the Maximato, characterized by the weakness of its presidents, who ceded real power to Calles himself, the true leader of the government party.

Emilio Portes Gil was president from 1928 to 1930; Pascual Ortiz Rubio, from 1930 to 1932 and Abelardo Rodríguez, from 1932 to 1934.

[Editor's Note.]

POLITICS

ditions to turn his presidential office into the presidentialist monster of his predecessors: he has more or less the same constitutional prerogatives; the federal government is uni-partisan, since the PRI controls both houses of Congress and the PIU is inconceivably disciplined. However, President Zedillo is not the effective leader of his party, and he therefore seems weak.

It should not be thought, however, that this question can be solved just by the president and his party drawing doser together. The "heakhy distance" 1° that

10

One of the planks of Zedillo's platform for the 1994 presidencial elections laid great emphasis on what he called a "healthy distance" between

The fact that there is a distance between President Zedillo and his party is the cause of the apparent weakness of Mexican presidentialism.

Zedillo has said he wants to maintain may be the inevitable product of circumstance and not a voluntary decision. party and government, by which he meant the disengagement of the two on several levels: for the first time, the party would make its decisions autonomously and the government would stop using public funds to support the party and finance its electoral campaigns. [Editor's Note.]

There are several reasons why he is not the leader of the PRI, and it would be worthwhile examining them in another article. But, the fact that there is a distance between him and his party —be it healthy or unhealthy— is the cause of the apparent weakness of presidentialism and the basis for founding a limited presidential system. MI

arqueología MEXICANA

First English Special Edition Sales in bookstores and Editorial Raíces.

Rodolfo Gaona No. 86 Col. Lomas de Sotelo Delegación Miguel Hidalgo México, D.F. C.P. 11200

VOICES of MExico • 38

THE MUNICIPALITY And Its Transition to Autonomy Carlos Martínez Assad*

T

he map of Mexico's municipalities has changed drastically in the last 10 years. As the third level of government, for many years, the municipality was scorned, taken into account by society only as the most direct body of political organization. The 1983 amendment to Anide 115 of the Constitution, however, pushed it forward at a time when the political scene was changing due to incipient electoral competition. 1 For political parties, contending for posts in city governments was not important because they had always set their sights on the central power structures and winning seats in the Chamber of Deputies or the Senate, governorships and even the presidency, the maximum expression of executive power in Mexico.

For the first time in 1985 the National Action Party (PAN) put the accent on municipalities, although only in those which were important because of their economies and the place they occupied within the PAN's internal network itself. However —and as part of the new, more competitive political situation— the PAN runs in practically all Mexico's municipalities, while 10 years ago it only covered about 70. The parties of the left, of which the Party of the

Democratic Revolution (PRD) is the offspring, were not particularly interested in participating in municipal elections in the past either, despite their traditional interest in municipal autonomy.

In the 1994 presidential elections, the PAN received 9.2 million votes, 26 percent of the ballots cast, a clear example of the changes which have taken place. In only 10 years, it tripled its vote and 13 million Mexicans are now governed by the PAN. Some of the outstanding municipalities it has won have been the state capitals Morelia, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Oaxaca, Aguascalientes, Mérida, Culiacán, Monterrey, Mexicali, Guadalajara and Puebla, and the strategic cities of León, Tijuana, Zapopan and Ciudad Juárez.

Today, the PAN governs 13 of the 20 most populated municipalities in the country; 2 and it has 2,252 city council seats as opposed to the 669 it had in 1987. It changed its strategy before the other opposition parties did and thus acquired a profile as one of the most audacious promoters of the new federalism.

This political stance is interesting because it has meant that the PAN has coincided on important questions with the federal executive branch, held by the Institutional 2

* Researcher at the

UNAM

Institute for Social Research.

' Over the last several years, electoral results in Mexico have revealed a tendency toward a more competitive party system, leaving behind the era of the virtually single-party system that previously existed. [Editor's Note.]

14

In the November 10, 1996 local elections in Coahuila, the State of Mexico and Hidalgo, it added another state capital to chis list (Saltillo, Coahuila) and three more cities among Mexico's most populated (Torreón in Coahuila, and Naucalpan and Tlanepantla in the State of Mexico).

[Editor's Note.]

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Monterrey, one of Mexico's largest municipalities, is currently governed by the PAN.

Revolutionary Party (P â&#x2013;şu). The latter found in federalism one of its programmatic planks and the political discourse it needed to contain the weakness of the state amidst one of the sharpest economic crises the country has ever seen.

Strengthening the municipality has been a permanent concern both of the state and the political parties. For the state, it meant implementing an economic model that would put an end to the welfare state to make way for efficiency; with regard to the municipality, this would mean the possibility of generating more resources. The parties emphasized other sides of the question. The PRI wanted to preserve the positions it had gained and retain its reserves of votes by changing its well worn strategies to form new, more modern relationships. The PAN, for its part, put itself at the head of a proposal very akin to the vision of the business sector, which sought the highest yield on its investment by insisting on efficiency in city management. The PRD found in the municipality the possibility of extending

its political clientele and moving toward winning over the regions hardest hit by social ills.

The scenario defined by recent political parties' interest in influencing and participating in municipalities increases their presence in the national political system. That interest is shared by local inhabitants, who have often felt excluded from decision making and relegated with regard to important cities (important for economic reasons or because they were politically strategic) and state capitals.

However, the challenge of finding a way to establish norms for generating and distributing municipal monjes is a constant concern of recent administrations, politicians and political scholars. Despite their different objectives, it is in their common interest to promote autonomy and stop the municipalities from being strangled.

The situation is actually quite grave if you take into account the fact that 300 of Mexico's 2,412 municipalities receive 85 percent of gross municipal income [distributed by the federal government] while the other 15 percent is 15

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of

MExico â&#x20AC;˘

38

They also disagree with the population figures given by the National Statistics Institute (INEGI): they has been a permanent concern think the figures are lower than they should be because the federal govboth of the state and the political parties. ernment is attempting to justify apportioning less money to the municipalities.

The fact is that the 3 percent of the divided among the more than 2,000 remaining towns. This national gross domestic product the federal government is possible because of the discretionary powers in resource distributed to the municipalities in 1990 was less than the management regardless of what the Law of Fiscal Coordi3.3 percent it gave out in 1950. Therefore, despite the offination stipulates. Although it has been amended and cial discourse and everything being said about complying adjusted, this legislation has not established the most with federalist norms, the municipalities receive the same important criterion of all: that representatives of the proportion of the GDP that they did 40 years ago and submunicipalities participate in distributing the budget. stantially less than the 8.9 percent they received in 1932. 3 This is a complicated job, and it is sometimes almost What is successful about the 1983 amendments to impossible for municipal governments: one of its virtues is Anide 115 of the Constitution, then? Of what use are all that individual members of the public participate more. the adjustments if the municipalities continue to be penWhile professionalism suffers, this is not a defect; rather, it niless? It is true that there is evidence to the effect that is a guarantee of public participation. Therefore, it is very some attempts have been made to establish more equilibdifficult to comply with the law, which stipulates that the rium among the resources of the federal executive, goverstate governments receive all federal taxes and other income nors and mayors. However, the figures are contradictory according to the General Fund of Apportionments, the and difficult to bear out when the data added by the instiFund for Municipal Promotion and the Fund for Distutions which manage the funds and those in charge of tribution Among the States and the Capital. social spending is examined.

A fundamental variable for the geographic distribution Although it was officially decided that 65 percent of of income is that it will be in direct proportion to the social spending was to be managed at the municipal level number of inhabitants. However, states with high populain the fight against poverty, political analysts allege that the tions are not apportioned higher incomes. For example, in funds take a long time to arrive and the tax backlog in1990, the State of Mexico had the highest gross municipal creases the need for additional support. These conditions income (1.202702 trillion pesos), understandable since it are even worse in the approximately 800 indigenous municis the state with the largest number of inhabitants ipalities nationwide, and the recognition of their rights is (9,815,795 people). But, the second state in terms of linked to their having more and more equitably distribnumber of inhabitants, Veracruz (with 6,228,239 inhabiuted resources to put an end to marginalization, increase tants), received only 301.292 billion pesos, putting it in communications, better education and set up programs seventh place. for preserving the environment.

Everything seems to indicate that this situation has been Therefore, special demands for financial outlay arise, corrected somewhat because the percentage [of federal like paying for the electricity from the Federal Electricity funds] earmarked for municipalities has recently changed Commission (cFE), which services 70,265 rural and 2,751 from 20 percent to 27.5 percent. However, mayors conurban areas. Although more than 4 million Mexicans are tinue to complain that they take no part in deciding how 3 El Municipal, Year II, No. 52, June 24, 1996, Mexico City. income is distributed as the law stipulates they should.

Strengthening the municipality

16

POLITICS

still without electricity, particularly in rural areas, municipal and state governments have accrued considerable debts under this item.

Estimates indicate that more than half of Mexico's municipalities have debts they cannot pay, making it indispensable that they increase their bargaining power and demand the federal government comply with its obligation to distribute public funds.

This dynamic shows a new culture of the municipality in the federalist framework because despite the poverty of the poorest town halls, the richest are also in debt. This is a culture strengthened greatly by the PAN governments, Small municipalities, almost all governed by the PRI, have serious budget problems because they receive less than their share of municipal funds. who foster the demand that the federal government increase apporSome municipalities' strategic economic position, partionments and that it continue to take responsibility for the ticularly that of capital cities, will undoubtedly allow them municipalities' commitments (counter, paradoxically, to to meet their debts. Paradoxically, however, their strong the business sector attitude that characterizes the PAN on position leads them to take a harder line vis-รก-vis the fedother questions). eral government. They even pressure for a political negotiSome debts are understandable when, for example, they ation that would allow them to reorient spending. involve rural indigenous municipal payments for water and This dynamic pits the southern part of the country, not electricity. They are rather more difficult to understand very developed despite its wealth of natural resources, when debts are incurred by rich municipalities, like against the developed and industrious north. Northern Monterrey or Guadalajara, generally for building urban Mexico has achieved a more coherent redistribution of its infrastructure of benefit first and foremost to private comresources. The majority of the country's 300 most reprepanies, like building urban trains to transpon the work sentative municipalities, according to the INEGI, are in that force. part of Mexico. The north also includes the states that could be classified as selfLegislation has not established sufficient: for example, Nuevo Leรณn, Chihuahua, the most important criterion of all: Baja California and Baja California Sur, Durango, that representatives of the municipalities Sinaloa, Sonora, Zacatecas and Jalisco. Naturally, the participate in distributing the budget.

State of Mexico would also

17

VOICES Of MEXICO • 38

The "Let's All Pull Together" Mayors continue to complain that they program implemented by Barrio when he became governor has take no part in deciding how income been denounced by the 52 mayors who are PRI members in is distributed as the law stipulates they should. the state of Chihuahua as exclusively benefiting town halls headed up by PAN mayors. This example throws another probcome under this classification. In the south, only Tabasco lem into relief the new needs of political coexistence in sevand Veracruz come lose, even though they include very eral states due to real electoral competition and the existence important local growth centers like Cancún in Quintana of new parties which are political actors of the first water.

Roo and Huatulco in Oaxaca.

This has made the municipality the scene for acting out the The PAN'S critique of the official version of federalism question of governability and/or ungovernability. has sometimes been effective. Ernesto Ruffo Appel, exThe politics of the time have put the country in this governor of Baja California and current secretary for municdilemma. The municipality has come to occupy an imporipal affairs of the PAN National Executive Committee, stattant place among the new, emerging actors, filling the void ed that neofederalism "is simply a make-up job of the fedto which it had practically been relegated. Its recovery is eral government begun during the Salinas administration, linked to the new political events and the discovery of its used to ensure continued centralism and maintain [federrole in fostering public participation. It is also key for al] control over the states." 4 restructuring Mexican federalism because of the broad specThere are, however, encouraging experiences in some trum of municipalities: from capital cities and more develmunicipalities that have been efficiently run or which have oped urban arcas to the poorest rural, indigenous commuintroduced innovations, with interesting results in probnities, each with its own specific demands and needs. 8 lem solving, like in the state of Guanajuato. 5 Putting real federalism into practice means emphasizing Efficiency in municipal management, however, is not the demand for fiscal federalism, based on broad decentralthe monopoly of opposition governments, although the ization programs which would allow for an equitable and balPAN has emphasized it and has, in effect, been the party anced distribution of resources by region, taking into considbest trained to go into this third level of government. 6 An eration the abilities and needs of each of the municipalities. interesting example was the city government headed up by True democracy, understood not only politically but Rosendo Villarreal in Saltillo, Coahuila, from 1991 to also economically, can only be brought about if regional 1993, which was able to increase its tax intake 150 perdiversity is accepted in order to favor those groups hardest cent. In Ciudad Juárez, when then-Mayor Francisco hit by the structural crisis affecting all of Mexico.

Barrio involved social organizations in seeking efficient This is why it is absolutely necessary to implement less city management, he committed himself to finding a balcomplex distribution programs than the sophisticated proance between state and federal resources. 7 cedures sanctioned by the Law for Fiscal Coordination which not even the most highly trained municipal employees can follow. The system should be changed because it

El MunicipaL Year II, No. 61, Mexico City, August 19, 1996.

See Enrique Cabrero Mendoza, La nueva gestión municipal en México.

Análisis de experiencias inovadaras en gobiernos locales, CIDE, manuscript, Mexico City.

6 Alicia Ziccardi (coord.), La tarea de gobernar: gobiernos locales y demandas dvdaddrtas, UNAM/Miguel Porrúa Editores, Mexico City, 1995.

7 1bid.

4 5

8

18

Regarding indigenous municipalities, see Héctor Díaz Polanco, "Autonomía y cuestión territorial," in Estudios Sociológicos, Vol. X, No. 28, Jan.-April 1992, pp. 77-101. Here, the author malees it dear that as long as territorial divisions do not recognize the bases for regional autonomy, ethnic communities will never be able to become dynamic social actors.

POLITICS

has been of little help in achieving an equitablé distribution of resources.

On the other hand, large companies like the national oil company (PEmEx) and the Federal Electricity Company (cFE) which utilize natural resources should ensure timely payment of their property taxes to the municipalities where they operate. This would help alleviate, even if only partially, the debt that these same municipalities owe these companies. 9 For the time being, the Finance Ministry says it has registered the restructuring of 6 billion pesos in state and municipal debt under the Investment Units (uDis) program, which represents a 35 percent advance in the Credit Support Program created to benefit these governments.

It is important, however, that state governments participare in the design of economic policy, particularly in the areas of taxation and public spending, and especially in the Coordination System. For this to be possible, all three kinds of government must be able to levy taxes autonomously, beginning with an equitable and proportional regional redistribution of federal public spending. It is very important to recognize self-government at the local leve) and decentralization of functions. This would be definitive for training qualified public servants in direct relation to the society they belong to, because, in the spirit of the nineteenth century liberals, the two institutions which anchor freedom in the hearts of the citizenry are municipal government and the educational system.

In conclusion, it is worthwhile emphasizing the new role that the municipality should play in Mexico's political transition since it has become a determining factor in the country's political processes. In the context of real electoral competition, the organizational framework of city government must be renewed, as should its eventual role in overcoming the economic crisis that has hit the country hardest in the most vulnerable municipalities. To do this, it is essential to recognize that the state must foster municipal development to guarantee a kind of federalism which will contribute to democratization with economic equilibrium and allow for a more appropriate redistribution of resources and optimism for our future as a nation.

Siglo Veintiuno Editores )0

MÉXICO: PASADO, PRESENTE Y FUTURO La presente obra no se limita al estudio del surgimiento y evolución de la crisis económica que se inicia a finales de 1994, sino que profundiza en el comportamiento tendencial de las leyes que han caracterizado al sistema económico mexicano en las últimas cinco décadas, con el ánimo de encontrar las causas estructurales que permitan hacer un diagnóstico científico de la compleja situación actual, lo cual crea las condiciones óptimas para elaborar propuestas viables en materia de política económica que permitan lograr el tan ansiado desarrollo económico. Ésta es una aportación más a la intensa discusión y al debate que existen en la sociedad mexicana.

By Mexican law, property taxes are among the most important kinds of tax revenues which municipal governments keep outright. [Editor's Note.]

tomos)

MÉXICO: PASADO, ,0 PRESENTE Y PUlURO IRÓ

De venta en As,. Cerro del Agua 248 col. Romero de Terreros, tel. 658 75 55 y en librerías de prestigio. email: siglmod@inetcoriLnet.mx

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VOICES of MEXICO • 38

IS STABLE DEMOCRACY IN LATIN AMERICA A UTOPIA? A Historical Review

1

José Luis Valdés-Ugalde*

A

chieving democracy in Latin America is not simple: it involves a set of very complex problems. There are many reasons to be pessimistic about the perspectives for democracy in the current context of permanent unsolved disputes and political and social struggle. Likewise, the historic and deep economic and political constraints which operate in Latin America draw a generally negative picture of what democracy could look like and how it could be brought about in both the short and long run.

However, in analyzing the present and future of democracy in Latin America one must observe the specific context and trends in those countries where it already exists or where it is beginning to develop new features.

* Sociologist. Researcher at cLSnri and coordinator of CISAN'S radio program on Radio UNAM. 1

This essay, parí of a major research project, Iooks at the governments of two very representative countries of the Southern Cone that have undergone historic changes.

Thus, democratic evolution —if we can talk in these terms in reference to societies with an enormous lack of democratic experience— has very different characteristics depending on the country and the specific conditions under which its main political and social features have developed.

The purpose of this article is not to analyze the case of each country separately, but mainly to point to some general historic trends in current perspectives for democracy as well as the central remaining constraints for its attainment in those critical cases in which only recently has there been a return to relative democratic stability in the Southern Cone. Although countries like Brazil or Argentina are two of the most critical cases in the region, this in no way means that they are the only places where democracy has periodically been seriously threatened.

The other Latin American countries have, more or less, very similar political, social and economic vacuums which in one way or another determine severe 20

restrictions in their social and political development.

THE OVERVIEWS Many analysts (Gamma& 1985, 1986; Rouquié 1986; Stepan 1986; Przeworkski 1986) have tackled the problem of democracy in Latin America and to some extent have tried to define (whether successfully or unsuccessfully) its meaning in the past and present.

Although their notion of democracy reflects their own "Western" experience and they look at the problem from a Western liberal perspective which defines democratization as a move toward a political system of competitive elections, civil liberties and the toleration of significant "loyal oppositions" (I(aufman 1986: 100), all of them agree that the future of democracy is of necessity linked with the economic (HermanPetras 1985), military (Rouquié 1986, Stepan 1986) and social constraints still present within Latin American societies.

POLITICS

Nevertheless, their theories, whether pessimistic or optimistic, even when attempting a general explanation of what is involved in achieving democracy in Latin America, are not accurate at all in explaining why it has not been attained in the past and, more importantly, in the present. Thus, some analysts, for example Cammack (1985), stress, mostly based on wishful thinking, that democracy has "better long-term prospects" than it did in the past. However, the same analyst, in trying to explain the difficult processes that some Latin American countries have undergone, emphasizes that its immediate result is the emergence of a new "civilian elite" which would eventually substitute the old "political incapacity of the bourgeoisies" (Chile, Argentina and Brazil) in achieving a stable political system. At this point, it would be important to define who this new "civilian elite" is and whose interests it represents when in power.

Moreover, what would the risk be of letting power rest in the hands of civilian elites who would eventually be responsible for going back to antidemocratic political and social relationships?

We should stress that even when Chis kind of new civilian elites could represen an immediate formal opportunity for democracy, mainly in those countries where it has just been achieved, they are not necessarily a direct outcome of a radical transformation of society. They are the result of the agreement from aboye among the few members of the political and economic elite. What perspectives for democracy exist in such a critical frame-

U.S. interventionism has been a constant constraint for democracy in Latin America.

work? What kind of democratic features, if any, are possible when the economic and political establishment, the core of the problem, remains the same, and in some cases the military still takes part in political decisions?

The cases of Brazil, Chile (with Pinochet as head of an army reluctant to stop trying to influence the political arena even today with President Frei in power) and to some extent Argentina (even under President Menem) are of central importance.

Herman and Petras (1985) are right when they refer to the potencial international and economic constraints for democracy in Latin America.

Highlighting the international aspect of democratization, these analysts review the historic behavior of Washington vis-รก-vis the military overthrow of civilian governments and the return of civilians to government. They argue 21

that Washington's recognition and support for the democratic processes in the Southern Cone in the 1980s were used to justify U.S. anti-Sandinista policy in Nicaragua Thus, at the same time that it encouraged alleged demilitarization of countries like Brazil, Argentina or Peru, Washington supported the "Contra's" so-called fight for democracy in Nicaragua. Meanwhile, Washington guided and watched over the political processes of countries such as El Salvador and Honduras without any criticism at all.

On the other hand, they stress the economic aspect by arguing that the rapid growth of 1968-1974 was fueled by massive foreign credits, and when the "miracle" petered out in default and increased dependence, none of the countries' basic problems had been addressed. In the early 1980s the direct result was a system of economic growth

of MEXICO • 38

2

These authors give 1983 figures. Recent financial reports indicate that the outflows represent about 40 percent or even more than the total debt, of the major debtor countries. According to FED financial reports, in 1995 Latin America exported to the American banking system U.S.$89.303 billion of which 27.52 percent (U.S.$24.582 billion) came from Mexico.

Capital exports that year were as follows: Mexico: U.S.$24.582 billion; Brazil: U.S.$23.816 billion; Argentina: U.S. $17.203 billion; Venezuela: U.S.$11.812 billion; Colombia: U.S.$3.666 billion; Chile: U.S.$2.825 billion; Uruguay: U.S.$1.835 billion; Ecuador: U.S.$1.325 billion; Guatemala: U.S.$1.275 billion; Peru: U.S.$974 million. See the Mexican daily La Jornada, November 12, 1995, pp. 1 and 57 and June 19, 1996, pp. 1 and 43-44.

In effect, there seems to be a vicious cycle in which democracy is almost impossible. On the one hand, we find the aforementioned economic constraints, which mean a real inability to control the economy. On the other hand, there is a clear historic inability to control the polity. In light of Chis, it seems that the main threat to democracy comes from with-u, Rich in the system itselfi democracy Get Richer and the seems to have been undergoing a Poor have Chíldren series of irregular cycles for several decades. Furthermore, we must stress that there is no structural stability3 to make democ"It's part of the primitiva art that still exists!" racy possible in the short run.

The Latin American experience from the 1970s on has been much ernment but where nevertheless the more a reorganization of national states poliry has been taken over by the carrried out by civilian rather than extraordinary autonomy of the milidemocratic governments. tary from the executive branch and Even though some countries have the impressive strength achieved by achieved some degree of democratic the Mafia in the last two decades. Mexchange (whether a transition from miliico has begun to undergo a similar tarism or just as a result of the develprocess in the last five years. opment of democratic institutions), At this point militarism appears as there are no solid reasons to guarana major and recurrent constraint for tee that democracy is safe from some any democratic effort as well as for of the potential structural convulmanaging the social crisis. The hissions inherent to Latin American polittoric role of the military has made ical life. Hence, democracy is a fragdemilitarization of the society and ile item in most of the countries of the the state impossible to the extent that continent, but particularly in those there are still many signs of its strong countries which have undergone a critinvolvement in countries such as Chile, ica' return to democratic rule, such as Brazil and to some extent Argentina.

Argentina or Brazil, or to those like As Rouquié and Stepan have stressed Colombia, which has a civilian gov(1986), "demilitarization" has not been translated into a "civilization of the [formen] military State," and thus 3 I understand structural stability as the basic there is not yet a real "demilitarization balanced conditions needed for coherent political development. of power." Therefore, along with the 22

‘.0

ission of the Albany Times- Union. e 1

which involved borrowing to pay interest on previous loans. Thus, real GDP in Latin America increased from U.S.$257 billion to U.S.$336 billion between 1975 and 1984, a growdi of 31 percent.

But, in the same period the gross foreign debt rose from U.S.$89.4 billion to U.S.$360.2 billion, while net interest and profit payments rocketed from U.S.$5.6 billion to U.S.$37.3 billion (Herman-Petras 1985: 85). To this critical picture we must add the impressive net capital outflow which totalled more than U.S.$23.3 billion for Latin America as a whole (Herman-Petras 1985: 86).2 At this point it seems necessary to emphasize that the continual failure of democratic experiences, apart from other major constraints such as the militarization of political life, must be explained taking into consideration the economic limitations in the Latin American countries. Needless to say, then, there is a strong connection between this economic constraint and the ineffective and incomplete democratic development in those societies.

Rep rintedby pe

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POLITICS

great concentration of power in few hands, the institutional militarization of society remains the major obstacle for a real democratic transformation of political and social life. At this point we should ask along with Rouquié whether the military is in reality the alternative for power in Latin America.

BRAZIL

The indirect election of Tancredo Neves in 1985, the original Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (Pulpa) candidate, and after his death, that of José Sarney, occurred within a context of massive grassroots mobilizations, economic crisis and a deep need to legitimize the new democratic process.

Despite the Sarney government's difficult beginnings, the president seemed able to maintain social equilibrium and withstand some of the most critical pressures that existed in 1984.

However, questions regarding the

Events during his administration seemed to turn the democratic omens into negative ones for the future of the so-called "New Republic": at the same time Sarney's government was facing a critical moment; the administration appeared to be under seige by public opinion due to allegations of corruption against governmental officials; cohesion of the oficial party underwent severe setbacks; civil society seemed to disapprove of Sarney's continuation in power; and the military remained deeply involved in nacional politics.

The government was criticized by some important political figures as unable to control nacional affairs. Two senators, José Richa and former-General Jarbas Passarinho (who had taken part in the military coup of 1964 and was still linked to the military), used the expression "ungovernable" to describe the political turmoil and said that the crisis could lead to solutions involving the use of force.

Likewise, in the last stage of Sarney's term the government's image sharply

It seems necessary to emphasize that the continual failure of democratic experiences inust be explained taking into consideration the economic limitations in the Latin American countries. return to democracy remain today.

Was Sarney "legitimate" enough as an indirectly elected president to call his government democratic and to rule the country in peace?

declined due to the spectacular case of corruption involving Anibal Texeira, his former planning minister. Furthermore, Texeira made a public statement to the effect that government 23

funds were distributed on the orders of Sarney's advisers and relatives, among them, his wife. These accusations undermined the government's popularity a great deal, to the extent that some journalists, such as Carlos Castelo Branco, compared the political crisis to that prevalent before the coup of 1964 (Latin American Weekly Review [LAwR], February 18, 1988).

Sarney lobbied successfully to convince congressmen (some say using clientelist tricks and military pressures) to ensure the vote of the Constituent Assembly was in his favor and extended his mandare for five years: so, Brazil retained a presidential system rather than the parlamentary one which was the PMDB aim. Nevertheless, the gap between the government and society and, of great importance, the critical split within the PMDB (the históricos wanted to break with the party and the government) notably increased the risk of more extensive unrest. For instance, before the vote, 85 percent of the population had rejected a fiveyear term for Sarney; 85 percent of business managers and workers favoured only four years; and in strategic Rio de Janeiro, 60 percent of businessmen wanted a four-year term. Moreover, a survey showed 77 percent of the population expected elections in 1988, and 55 percent would reject any candidate backed by Sarney.

Although the approval of a fiveyear term turned into a constitucional mandate, it is interesting to note that the military backed the president for the five-year term arguing that elections in 1988 would "exacerbare" the prevailing economic and political

VOICES of MExico • 38

turmoil (LAWR, March 24, 1988).

However, the idea of a military coup remained in the minds of many Brazilians and was reflected in a 1988 report, based on a survey by a public relations communications firm called RH. The report stated that the public percieved a small but active and well-defined military group able to intervene in the political process at any moment. It reflected to some extent the heterogeneity of the armed forces, dividing them into three tendencies: 1)one, cited as the majority, interested in professionalization of the army; 2) another, which had political concerns and identified itself with the political transition, backed by Minister of the Army General Leonidas Pires Gongalves; and 3) the "hardliners," mainly from the intelligence services.

It also established three conditions under which military intervention would be possible at the time democracy was restored: a) a "radicalization" of either the left or the right, which would endanger the political transition; b) a power vacuum (one example given was Sarney's resignation) which would lead to "chaos" or situations leading to anarchy; and c) further development of the conspiracies which always abound in intelligence services. The report concluded that the first hypothesis was the most likely.

The aboye seemed to coincide with Alfred Stepan's postulate that Brazil was on the verge of no longer being a democracy and that its National Assembly would fail "out of fear" to limit the autonomy of the military which exercises "growing functions" within the government. To emphasize

his argument, Stepan remarks that no other contemporary democracy in the world had six military men in the cabinet, all generals in active service; the military involvement in political issues was "always with the argument that it is necessary to guarantee the stability of the regime;" in its first three years in office, the Sarney government never proposed —or even suggestednew ways for civilians to increase their power over the military (LAwR, April 7, 1988).

There are indeed some critical aspects of the Brazilian process which make it likely that military intervention could have occured at any moment if the political instability had continued. First, the Sarney government seemed to have lost both the public trust and political initiative over domestic affairs. Moreover, faced with a split within the official party, the government was playing a dangerous game by making profound alliances with and picking the military as its best bet. For instante, Sarney appeared to have taken a further step by seeking out civilian businessmen as intermediaries to negotiate military support for his five-year governmental term. In return, Sarney would give them amazing economic concessions such as the elimination of "right-tostrike" legislation and the suppression of the 44-hour work week, six-hour shifts and additional holiday pay (LAWR, April 21, 1988).

One may ask how long such a measure would have lasted until it became clear that the government was no longer able to rule, or until these civilians agreed to knock at the military's door.

24

Today, we can say that the weakness of the government could have turned into a weakness of the state that could have been used by the military to intervene again.

It is pertinent to conclude the discussion of the democratic features in Brazil by quoting Stepan. "Because direct presidential elections [had] not yet been held in Brazil, because the military retain[ed] so many prerogatives and powers and because the civilian, President J. Sarney, use[d] the military as a critica! part of his power base, the Brazilian transition [from authoritarianism to democracy] is in fact far from complete. Indeed some people question whether the <New Republic' that began in 1985 yet warrants classification as a democracy." He adds that the return to democracy in the region "has not been accompanied by a full Ve-militarization' of society" [because] "since a monopoly of the use of force is required for a modem democracy, failure to develop capacities to control the military represents an abdication of democracy» (Latín American Regional Reports [LARR],

Brazil, April

28, 1988).

ARGENTINA

In Argentina the strong legitimation achieved by Alfonsín at the beginning of his term (December 1983) became a son of "new weakness" of the government alongside with that of the official party, the Radical Civic Union (ucR).

On the one hand, the extreme polarization ofArgentinian society has been a major factor in the continous imbal-

POLITICS

The historic role of Latin America's armies must change if democracy is to consolidate.

ance in the social and political process

on the part of Alfonsín at a moment

(the Peronist victory September 6, 1989

considered decisive for democracy by

Carlos Menem, former governor of the province of Rioja, seen as surrounded

is one example). On the other hand, the energetic demand that the government ny the officers responsible for the

many civilian sectors.

by certain leaders blamed for their asso-

The political process in Argentina showed signs of vitality in the 1989

deaths of thousands of Argentinians

elections, in which the Peronists demon-

ciation with Isabel Peron's unsuccessful government. Cafiero supporters favored measures such as the moratorium on

during the dirty war (1976-1983) placed the regime in a difficult position both vis-á-vis the military and civil society.

Alfonsín was subject to conservative pressure from within the state and the

strated that they could be the first electoral force from then on (as shown by Menem's recent re-election for a second term). However, the number of disputes among the members of justicialismo over who the candidate would be

the foreign debt, while Menem and his group backed Argentinás economic compromises. Cafiero seemed at a disadvantage when the pre-electoral polis showed he had 14 percent of the voters behind him and Menem had 27.7 per-

considerably weakened it. The Peronists had two strong candidates who repre-

cent. In the last stage of his campaign, Menem had to face the embarrassing support from National Alert, the ultra-

military to decree the so-called Appropriate Obedience Act and the End-ofthe-Question Act which exonerated a considerable number of officers direct-

sented two political outlooks: Antonio

ly involved in the torture and murder

Cafiero, governor of the province of

of civilian members of the opposition during the dictatorship. This political

Buenos Aires, supported by the peronista renovators, represented in C,ongress

decision looked like a sign of weakness

by the Justicialista (Peronist) block; and

25

right paramilitary group which is a selfstyled Peronist faction. Several surveys showed that the Justicialistas held an

important advantage (64 percent) over

VOICES

of MEXICO • 38

the UCR (19.6 percent) and the Democratic Civic Union (ucD) (with only 6.5 percent) (LAWR, May 12, 1988). How would the military respond to any of the Peronist factions in power? Though it remained a mystery for some time, this question has been answered by the relative political stability achieved by Menem in the last six years.

Huntington asserts that most of the coups in Argentina —which he calls "veto" coups— have been the result of the military's discontent with electoral results (Huntington 1968: 222-226). This happened in 1962 when the military removed President Frondizi, canceling the results of the election in which the Peronists had won 35 percent and elected ten out of 14 provincial governors and almost one-fourth of the Chamber of Deputies. Thus the turning point for Argentina was indeed very likely to be the election of 1989.

Since then, the survival of civilismo (civilian rule) —especially now that social unrest is increasing because of Menem's austerity measures— will be the determining factor in whether Argentines are on their way to consolidating a strong democratic system.

However, whether the Peronist victory jeopardized the democratic procins or not is less relevant than the strong support the new government actually received at the beginning from society, substantially modifying the balance of forces. Moreover, this was not regarded as a great threat [by the military] because it was an indication of the strength of ultrarightist groups such as National Alert, the paramilitary Iron Guard and the

secret army Movement for Patriotic Restoration (mRP) or the National Opposition Army (Erro). Even when these groups' actions were generally rejected by society and caused a violent response from the government, they remained a major threat to the democratic process.

Alfonsín appeared to control the various crises he had to face, and unlike Sarney, was able to contain the military's demands after Rico's two uprisings. Apart from the government's success in defeating Rico's uprisings in Holy Week 1987 and later, press reports pointed to some signs that Colonel Mohamed Ali Seineldin —later sent on a military mission to Panama— and Rico himself were working to replace Alfonsín with Vice President Víctor Martínez, considered more likely to open the doors wide to the military. In this context it was not by chance that Armed Forces General Commander Dante Caridi visited his counterparts at the Pentagon in Washington in 1988.

This encounter was to set up an exchange of officers and some other cooperation accords between the two armies, which had been suspended

after the Malvinas War. Did it also ensure Washington's support to the military and/or to the Alfonsín government? Did Caridi impose his position on the conspirators?

According to Enrique Gorriarán, former chief of the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), who is in exile in Venezuela, both factions of the army wanted to carry out a military coup.

The difference between the two, however, was when it should take place.

Rico and Seineldin, he believes, wanted it right away, during Alfonsín's term, whereas Caridi thought that conditions were not yet sufficiently mature (Proceso No. 600, May 2, 1988).

Without going so far as to assert that the military coup was or is likely to happen, it is relevant to note that some of the historical conditions which have provoked former coups continue to exist in Argentina. Likewise, and despite great efforts for the demilitarization of the society, particularly by Alfonsín (Menem has been discrete and even tolerant with some of the positions of the military regarding the political process), this still remains the great task to be carried out. Moreover, the

Along with the great concentration of power in few hands, the institucional militarization of society remains the major obstacle for a real democratic transformation of political and social life.

26

POLITICS

firces, which provided the military with some extraordinary and critical advantages, and the general characteristics of the social struggle â&#x20AC;&#x201D;heightened due to the economic crisisâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; give the observer the impression that general unrest is liable to break out at any moment.

Needless to say, this kind of situation bodes ill for democratic transformations.

However, in the meantime it is preferible to critically agree with AlfonsĂ­n.

After Rico's second military uprising in 1988 he was quoted as saying, "This is not Easter. When this gentleman mutinied last Easter, we had no loyal troops. Now we do, and they are the overwhelming majority. Caridi will suppress this rebellion, and a new phase will begin. For four years we have always had to do a delicate balancing act. Now, for the first time, we are in a position of strength with a high command committed to constitutional order" (LAWR, Jan uary 28, 1988) .

CONCLUSION

Militarism has always been an obstacle for democracy in Latin America.

major factors that enabled the military to intervene in the past remain the central issues in Argentina and in people's daily lives today (which to some extent reflects the degree of fear and rejection of civil society of military intervention). Now that Menem is in his second term in a reasonably, though

only relatively, stable political process, the consequences of the critical confrontation between the economic "shock" program and the political process are still in doubt.

In short, the inability and to some extent the unwillingness of the civilian government to moclifi the balance of 27

Whether stable democracy is a utopia in Latin America today or not is mostly a matter of defining what kind of democracy civilians are able to make possible and thus what utopia they aspire to. Moreover, the future of democracy depends a great deal on the extent to which civil society and political circles are able to press for radical changes, and the extent to which the "cooperation" (Stepan 1986: 74) between the new civilian governments and the opposition might bring about new opportunities to improve current democratic achievements.

VOICES

of MEXICO â&#x20AC;˘ 38

Nevertheless it is rather compli-

the interests of the ruling classes seems

cated to bet on the success of democ-

unthinkable. Therefore, we condude

racy if some basic conditions to make it

with Lamartine that since "utopias are

possible are not created: independence

but premature truths," it is too soon to

from U.S. interventionism; develop-

speak of democracy in a continent in

Reality," New Lefi Review, No. 154, Nov./Dec. 1985.

Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies, Yale University Press, Virginia, 1968.

ment and economic growth; social

which any single truth is relative.

Kaufman, Robert, "Liberalization and

justice and/or economic democracy;

Democratization in South America," in

political opportunities for all representative sectors of society; and, most

Guillermo O'Donnell et al. (eds.) TranriBIBLIOGRAPHY

difficult, civilized ruling classes who agree to sharing wealth and power and

rative Perspective, Johns Hopkins Univer-

decreased military involvement in na-

Cammack, Paul, "Democratization: A Review of the Issues" in Bulletin of Ltd-

tional politics. These two last precondi-

in American Research, Vol 4, No. 2,

tions alone are utopian: a ruling class

1968, pp. 39-46.

Idem "Resurgent Democracy: Threat and Promise" in New Left Review, No. 157,

disposed to "sharing" considerable wealth and power and a military disposed to renouncing its "historic" task of defending the armed forces, social order and stability and to a great extent

tions from Authoritarian Rule. Compa-

May/June 1986.

Herman, Edward S. and James Petras, "Resurgent Democracy: Rhetoric and

sity Press, Baltimore and London, 1986.

Przeworski, Adam, "Problems in the Study of Transition to Democracy," in O'Donnell, op cit.

RouquiĂŠ, Alain, "Demilitarization and Military-Dominated Polities in Latin America," in O'Donnell, op cit.

Stepan, Alfred, "Paths Toward Redemocratization," in O'Donnell, op cit.

We present you with the best

m The lending English-Ianguage quarterlv published by the Center for Research on North America, UNAM For more inlormalion Phone (011 525) 659 2349, 659 3821 Fax (OH 525) 554 6573

28

VI IBEROAMERICAN SUMMIT TWENTY-THREE HEADS OF STATE AND GOVERNMENT AGAINST HELMS -BURTO

N

Twenty Latin American countries, Spain and Portugal attended the VI lberoame rican Summit of Heads of State and Government November 10 and 11 in the Chilean city of Viña del Mar. The summit called for deepening the process of democratization in Latin America and debated different positions on regional económic integration.

The official topic, "Governability and democracy," sparked polemics, particularly due to the always controversial presence of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who was forced to sign a declaration explicitly defining democracy as a pluralist system in which elections and competition among political parties are prerequisites.

"The Declaration of Viña del Mar" signed by all the participants includes three documents : one about democratic governability; another about multilateral cooperation on cultural, educational, indigenous policy, science and other matters which had been discussed in the five previous summits; and a third dealing with political issues, including topics of particular interest to the region, like the fights against poverty, drug trafficking and terrorism.

With regard to democratic governability, the declaration emphasizes a critique of the Cuban regime, particularly the points raised by the presidenta of Argentina, Carlos Menem, and Spain, José María Aznar, who urged Castro to take steps toward establishing a multipartisan system in his country. However, another current of opinion, headed up by, among others, President Ernesto Zedillo, sought to broaden the concept of democratic governability to include social, economic and cultural changes that would diminish inequality and marginalization. To consolidate Latin America's emerging democracies, then, "poverty, corruption, terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and all forms of organized crime" would have to be overcome. President Zedillo's speech criticized resorting to violence as the alternative to political action and called for fighting the illicit arms market.

Another topic which dominated the scene and around which a consensus was reached was the controversial HelmsBurton Act, rejected unanimously by the participants. The heads of governme nt made a statement defending free trade agreements and condemning "unilateral corrective measures adverse to the growth and stability of Iberoamerica." They also expressed their demand for unrestricted respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and seif-determination and independence for all countries, and urged the United States to rescind Helms-Burton since it "violates the principies and norms of international law and the U.N. Charter and contravenes the norms of the World Trade Organization."

Other agreements were reached which demonstrate regional unity and aim to propose joint policies vis-á-vis the United States, particularly the call for establishing policies to aid coca leaf growers to substitute these crops, especially in Colombia. The participants decided to support Colombia's proposal of making the fight against drug trafficking multilateral and calling for a special session of the United Nations to discuss the topic in 1998.

For the first time, the Iberoamerican governments discussed the issue of corruption , the scourge of many participating nations. Their final statement emphasizes that "integrity, responsibility and transparen cy must be consolidated as an essential characteristic of public service, and [governments] must work toward equity, social spending and equal opportunities."

Amidst demonstrations by the Chilean people both in favor and against the presence of Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader took the opportunity of his first visit to the country in 25 years to visit the grave of his friend, Socialist ex-President Salvador Allende, assassinated in 1973 in a coup d'état headed by General Augusto Pinochet. The visit was significant because, among other things, it led Pinochet, still commander-in-chief of the Chilean army, to abandon the capital. Twentythree years later, 23 heads of government and state from 22 countries —Fidel Castro being the only participant who had been in power at the time— gathered to discuss

democracy and governability. \M Diego I. Bugeda Bernal Managing Editor

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Historical Museum of the Indies 1 José Luis Martínez*

o

5o

T

he collection that Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci gathered during his stay in New Spain was, together with the library formed by Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, the richest of the colonial period. Boturini, bom in Sondrio in the Milanesado in die early eighteenth century, arrived in Mexico City in March 1736. The previous year in Zaragoza, Spain, he had met Canon Joaquín CodaLorenzo Boturini Benaduci. los, who had informed him of the miraculous powers of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He also met the Countess of Santibáñez, who commissioned him to collect the rents from her encomienda in New Spain. These two events decided Boturini, a devout and cultured man, to make his voyage to the "Indies."

FOUNDING THE HISTORICAL o.

MUSEUM OF THE INDIES

o

The collection's story, full of vicissitudes, started when, in 1737, one year alter Boturini's arrival in New Spain, he began to gather codices and manuscripts in indigenous languages (both originals and copies), maps, chronicles and E 2 histories of pre-Hispanic Mexico, the Conquest, the colonial period and the tradition of Our Lady of Guadalupe. AB these documents, compiled during his inquiries into the archives and travels through the towns of the viceroyalty, eventually became the Historical Museum of the Indies. Boturini had access to what remained of the collections of Don Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, stored in the Library of the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Maximum College. He copied —or simply took— many of these documents.

Boturini's vehement desire to crown Our Lady of Guadalupe and his soliciting funds to finance the project, plus his not having acquired a permit to travel to the Indies (which he needed because he was considered a foreigner), were sufficient cause for the new viceroy, the Count of Fuenclara, to order him investigated. He was jailed in February E

£.9

* Economist. Former Consul General in Berlin and Head of Protocol; currently executive secretary of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FoNcA). The author wishes to thank Dr. Miguel León-Portilla, whose comments and work inspired this article.

' This article and its pictures were first published in Arqueología Mexicana, Vol. III, No. 15, September-October 1995, pp. 64-68. Reprinted by permission of Arqueología Mexicana O Raíces/iNAN. A first version of this anide was published under the title "Jean Charlot y la colección Boturini-Aubin-Goupil," in the catalogue México en la obra de Jean Charlot, CNCA/DDF/INBA/UNAM, Mexico City, 1994, pp. 37-43.

31

Allf1I IIID U MVI IIV`HD N RI D S

LORENZO BOTURINI'S

VOICES of MExico

•

38

111

2

~Jun Toltec-Chichimec lords. Toltec-Chichimec History, detail, f. 20r., MS 54/58.

Paris National Library.

Mexicas in Chapultepec. Boturini Codex or Pilgrimage Strip. National Museum of Anthropology.

1743 and later deported to Spain, and his Historical Museum of the Indies was confiscated.

Once in Spain, he spent a great deal of his time attempting to revindicate himself, recover his archives and writing. In 1746, he published his Idea de una nueva historia general de la América Septentrional (Idea for a New General History of North America) and included his Catálogo del Museo Histórico Indiano (Catalogue of the Historical Museum of the Indies) as an appendix, writing in part from memory.

Researchers of the period, some of them friends of Boturini, also contributed to the dispersal of the wealth of documents in the Historical Museum of the Indies. Among them were the Archbishop Lorenzana, who borrowed codices and papers to write his Historia de Nueva España (History of New Spain) (1770), which were later returned on the urging of Viceroy Bucareli, although, as LeónPortilla points out, "without the assurance that all the documents that had been lent were returned." Boturini's friend and benefactor, Mariano Fernández de Echeverría y Veytia, consulted the archives and took those papers and codices he needed for his Historia antigua de México (History of Old Mexico), apparently without returning them. Don Antonio de León y Gama, the illustrious author of the Descripción histórica y cronológica de las Dos Piedras (Historical Description and Chronology of the Two Stones) and a friend of Veytia, managed to get the latter to loan him part of the documents he had taken out of the University Library. He never returned them.

In 1778, most of the collection was moved to the Viceroyalty Chamber Secretariat; some papers, however, remained at the university. In 1784, by royal decree, Mexico's viceroy took charge of the papers and sent copies to Spain.

Six years later, Viceroy Revillagigedo asked Friar Francisco García Figueroa to comply with another royal decree ordering that copies again be sent and deposited in the archives of the Royal Academy of History of Madrid. Apparently, García Figueroa delegated the task to Friar Manuel de Vega,

THE VICISSITUDES OF THE COLLECTION

For different reasons, the Boturini Collection was inventoried seven different times between 1743 and 1918. The first time was when it was confiscated by royal fiscal order.

At that time, the collection was deposited in the Royal Treasury, where it remained until 1745, when it was again inventoried and transferred to the government scribe's office. In 1771, thanks to efforts by the Royal Academy of History of Madrid and Mexico's archbishop, Francisco Antonio de Lorenzana, Viceroy Bucareli ordered the collection transferred to the library of the Royal Papal University of Mexico. The inventory carried out at that point showed that the collection was already beginning to be depleted, although, according to Glass, the most important losses occurred between 1771 and 1788.

32

SCIENCE, ART AND CULTURE

The Quauhtinchan region. Toltec-Chichimec History, f. 33r., MS 46/50. Paris National Library.

who in less than three years turned over 32 volumes of documents under the name Colección de memorias de Nueva España (Collection of Memoirs of New Spain).

León-Portilla points out that Vega, for unknown reasons and despite having reviewed the inventories and the collection as a whole, paid no attention to the most important material and only sent to Spain copies of chronicles and histories of the colonial period. The Boturini Collection, then, remained at the San Francisco Convent where it had been moved so Vega could make his selection.

After Vicente de la Rosa Saldívar made a slovenly inventory in 1791-1792, the collection was returned around 1795 to the Viceroyalty Chamber Secretariat.

He acquired 16 pieces (codices or codex fragments) either by donation from the Franciscans or viceroyalty officials or through purchase from León y Gamás heirs. He donated these pieces to the Royal Library of Berlin in 1806. In the twentieth century, while Germany was divided into two countries, these manuscripts were kept in both the German Government Library of Berlin in the ex-GDR and the Government Library/Prussian Cultural Patrimony of West Berlin. Among the important pieces involved were the Humboldt Codex (MS Americana 2, fragment of the List of Tributes of Tlapa and Its Lordship to the Mexican Empire) and fragments of the Huamantla Codex (Ms Americana 1).

In February 1821, immediately after Independence, Agustín de Iturbide ordered that the historical archives of the ex-Viceroyalty Chamber Secretariat, including both historical documents about the government and the Boturini Collection, be moved to the Ministry of Internal and Foreign Relations, under the care of Ignacio de Cubas.

The following year, Iturbide established a Conservatory of

THE COLLECTION SCATTERS

Between 1803 and 1804, Baron Alexander von Humboldt had access to the Boturini archives in the viceroy's palace.

33

of

MExico

• 38

Ta ken fro m the Mexico en la obra de Jean Charlot ca ta log ue, Mu seo Estu dio D ieg o Riv

VOICES

Chalchiuh totolin. Figure 17, Tonalámatl-Aubin-Goupil Codex. National Museum of Anthropology.

Antiquities and a Bureau of Natural History at the university. León-Portilla says that some of the Boturini documents were then moved to the new conservatory.

In 1823, under the First Federal Republic, by order of Lucas Alamán, then head of the Ministry of Internal and Foreign Relations, the Boturini Collection was again inventoried by Ignacio de Cubas. Alamán mentions this decision in his Memoria (Memoir) in which he details his time in the ministry in 1823:

tained precious examples of Mexican antiquities and relics from the first years of Spanish domination. Most of them can be traced to the illustrious traveler Boturini. Many have disappeared and others are incomplete and in tatters. What remains —which is considerable— has been gathered together and indexed precisely. Both these and the drawings and relics of the traveler Dupeé [sic It should say Dupaix], which [we will] attempt to have published, as well as any others which can be recovered, will be placed in a department in the library [specially] established to hold manuscripts and curious works

The aforementioned disarray created other damage difficult to repair: the archives of the [viceroyalty's] Secretariat con-

[now] scattered in different archives and libraries of this capital. Their current dispersa] makes it impossible to use them 34

Taken fro m t he Mexico en la obra de Jean Charlot cata log ue, Museo Estu dio D iego Riv

SCIENCE, ART AND CULTURE

o

z

o O

Gl

o rco en la obra de Jean Cha

O

E

Agustine Elie-Goupil.

Eugéne Goupil.

porting some of them and selling others to the French physicist and antiquarian Joseph-Marius-Alexis Aubin, who had arrived in Mexico in 1830. Aubin himself acquired the León y Gama and the Father José Antonio Pichardo collections.

He had also been able to extricate other treasures of the Boturini Collection from the archives of the Ministry of Interna' and Foreign Relations. In 1840, Monsieur Aubin was able to secret them out of the country by tearing them apart and distributing them among his belongings to circumvent both the Veracruz customs officials and the Mexican legislation which protected the patrimony of the nation, passed November 16, 1827, prohibiting the export of antiquities.

In 1825, under the Guadalupe Victoria government, thanks to a proposal by Lucas Atamán, the National Mexican Museum was established to hold the antiquities housed previously in the university as well as some of the codices and documents in the Boturini Collection that were still at the Ministry of Interna' and Foreign Relations, "despite the continua' plundering [of the collection] to spirit pieces out of the country." During the Porfiriato (the 30-year regime of Porfirio Diaz, which ended with the 1910 Revolution), another pan of the Boturini Collection was sent to the National Library, then directed by José María Vigil.

In 1917, the new director of the library, Ciro B. Ceballos,

to the profit of scholars, who would then be able to read and examine them without obstacle or difficulty. This same procedure could be carried out in the other cities of the provinces to the great benefit of the nation.

"LOANS " NEVER RETURNED Alter the English traveler William Bullock visited Mexico in 1823, he wrote Six Months' Residence and Travels in Mexico...

(1824) and organized the first great exhibit of Mexican antiq-

uities in London. He obtained the loan of important preHispanic archeological objects, among them the Boturini Codex (or Tira de la Peregrinación [Pilgrimage Strip]) and the Tlaxcala Codex. He also had full-sized reproductions made of the Aztec calendar and the [carving of the goddess] Coatlicue.

The exhibition was held in 1824 in the London's Egyptian Hall in Picadilly. The catalogue boasted 52 objects, among them 17 codices, severa' from the Boturini Collection.

Two years later, in 1825, the Bohemian-French artist JeanFrédéric Waldeck (1766-1875) began his 12-year sojourn in Mexico. Waldeck made drawings of Mexican ruins, became involved in theater and wrote about everything he saw. He also began to compile documents from the Boturini Collection, ex35

of Mexico • 38

Ta ken fro m the Mexico en la obra de Jean Charlot cata log ue, Museo Estu dio D iego Rivera,

INB A

VOICES

it to say that one of every five known codices belonged to it. Of the collection's nearly 160 codices and pictographic manuscripts, more than 100 survive and the location of 91 is known. Twenty-five are in the Paris National Library and 40 more are in Mexico City's National Museum of Anthropology.

León-Portilla considers Boturini's Historical Museum of the Indies one of the basic sources of knowledge about pre-Hispanic Mexico. It contained such important documents as the Aubin Codee today housed by the British Museum; the Huamantla Codex, part of which is now in the National Museum of Anthropology Library and the rest in the Berlin Library; the Cruz Codex, the Xólotl Codex, the Tlotzin Codex the natzin Codex and the Tepechpan Codex all in the Paris National Library; the Boturini Coda- or Pilrimage Strip and the Matrix of Tributes, both in the National Museum of Anthropology Library. Other documents included in the collection were copies of chronicles by indigenous authors, among them Hernando de Alvarado Tezozómoc, Gabriel de Castañeda, Francisco de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin, Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxódiid and Diego Muñoz Camargo; Tkhialoyan Codice.s testerian codices; and documents about the history of the Conquest, the Catholic Church in New Spain and the tradition of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

THE BOTURINI-AUBIN COLLECTION

When J. M. A. Aubin lost part of his fortune with the plummeting price of Panama Canal stock and at the same time realized that some of the manuscripts he had secreted out of Mexico had begun to disappear, he decided to sell his collection. As Eugéne Boban points out, most of Aubin's collection originated in Boturini's Historical Museum of the Indies. In 1889, the Mexican historian Antonio Peñafiel visited Aubin to see his collection and offered to buy it to return it to Mexico. His offer was refused, however, when Boban told his friend Eugéne Goupil about it. Goupil thought "the documents should remain in France," and he also made Aubin an offer, which was accepted April 11, 1889.

Alexander von Humboldt.

instructed Ramón Mena to do another inventory of the collection prior to sending it to the National Museum (by that time called the Museum of Archeology, History and Ethnography). Mena published the catalogue of his inventory in 1918-1919. Today, the part of the Boturini Collection which remained in Mexico is housed in the Dr. Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado Nacional Library' of Anthropology and History, in the National Museum of Anthropology.

As Glass says, the Boturini Collection has been of major significante for Mexican anthropology and history. Suffice 36

SCIENCE, ART AND CULTURE

A DIPLOMATIC INCIDENT

Goupil commissioned Boban to do a study of his recently acquired collection, the result of which was published in 1891 as Documents pour servir l'histoire du Mexique.

This collection remains in the Paris National Library, with the exception of the Tonaklmatl-Aubin Codex which was taken June 19, 1982, by the Mexican journalist José Castañeda del Valle who attempted to evade prosecutien by saying he had "recovered" it as national patrimony.

The police took possession of the codex and gave it to the National Institute of Anthropology and History. Castañeda's "feat" provoked a diplomatic incident between Mexico and France, cooling cultural relations and generating enormous problems for Mexican researchers who dared (and continue to dare) to attempt to work at the Paris National Library. Ten years later, a diplomatic solution was found whereby the codex is provisionally deposited in the National Anthropology Museum Library in Mexico City. Mk

Catalogue raisonné de la Collection de M.E. Eugéne Goupil

(Documents Contributing to Mexican History. Annotated Catalogue of the Eugéne Goupil Collection). In his introduction to the catalogue, Goupil explains that it was his love of Mexico that led him to buy the Boturini-Aubin Collection and that he intended —as "[bis] little brick in the edifice of the history of that country [Mexico]" — to will it to the Paris National Library and the Trocadero Ethnographic Museum so scientists could study it. He also said that he had gathered the collection in order to "honor with great piety the memory of my mother, ...a descendent of the Aztecs." He finalizes by confessing: I originally intended to leave my collections to the National Museum of Mexico. Only one consideration stopped me: Mexico is very far away. Since my objective is to serve Mexico contributing to the reconstruction of its ancient

FURTHER READING

history, anything that may aid Mexicanists in their research should be as close at hand as possible. For that reason, I decided that my collections should remain in Paris, the

Boban, Eugéne, Documents pour servir a l'histoire de Mexique.

center of the intelligent world, an obligatory stop of all those who travel the road of science.

In this way, I believe I am doing Mexico a greater ser-

2 vols. Paris, 1891.

Boturini Benaduci, Lorenzo, Idea de una nueva historia general de la América Septentrional, preliminary study by Miguel

vice than leaving it my collections, since few people in

León-Portilla, Pornía ("Sepan cuántos..." Collection, No. 278),

Mexico could consult them fruitfully, despite the estimable and numerous Mexican men of wisdom. As compensation, I offer them the texts and copies which I have had pub-

Mexico City, 1974 (First edition, Madrid, 1746).

Boturini Benaduci, Lorenzo, Historia general de la América Septentrional Manuel Ballesteros Gaibrois (editor, prelim-

Catalogue raisonné de la Collection de M. E. -Eugéne Goupil (Ancienne Collection J.-M. A. Aubin), Ernest Leroux (ed.),

lished at my own expense in devout concert with Monsieur Boban.

inary study, notes and documentary appendix), Institute for Historical Research ("Historiadores y Cronistas de Indias," Collection, No. 8), UNAM, Mexico City, 1990.

After the death of Eugéne Goupil in 1895, his widow, Augustine Elie-Goupil, complied with his wishes. She donated to the Paris National Library on April 23, 1989 "the documents and works related to antiquities and the ancient history of Mexico originally possessed by M. Aubin (462 items enumerated in two appendices to this document). The objects donated are part of a collection which should always remain intact in the [Paris] National Library, where they will be catalogued under the narre Aubin-Goupil Collection'."

Glass, John B., "The Boturini Collection," in Robert Wauchope (ed.), Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 15, Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources, Part Four, Howard F. Cline (ed. of vol.), University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, 1975, pp. 473-486.

Matute, Alvaro, Lorenzo Boturini y el pensamiento histórico de Vico, Institute for Historical Research ("Historia Novohispana" Series, No. 26), UNAM, Mexico City, 1976.

Torre Revello, José, "Documentos relativos a D. Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci," Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación, Vol. VII, No. 1, Mexico City, 1936, pp. 5-45.

37

of

VOICES

MEXICO • 38

CURRENT LOCATION OF THE BOTURINI COLLECTION CODICES AND PICTOGRAPHIC MANUSCRIPTS TITLE

CURRENT LOCATION

Americano, MS (no. 10, part 8) Aperreamiento, MS of Aubin Codex Aubin, MS 20

German Government Library of Berlin (ex-GDR) (lost)

Aubin, Tonalámatl Codex

National Museum of Anthropologyl

Axotlán Codex Azcatitlán Codex Baranda Codex

National Museum of Anthropology

Boturini Codex

National Museum of Anthropology Paris National Library

Paris National Library British Museum Paris National Library

Paris National Library National Museum of Anthropology

Calpan, Confirmation of the Elections of Caltecpaneca Fragment Cave Codex Chavero Codex Cholula Codex Cholula Codex (copy no. 1) Cholula Codex (copy no. 2) Conquest, Codex of the Cotitzin and Zozahuic, Genealogy of Cozcatzin Codex Cross, Codex on a Cuauhtinchán, Map of (no. 4) Cuauhtli, Genealogy of Cuetlaxcohuapan Codex Etla, Genealogies of the Lords of Forest Region, Map of a García, Annals of Diego Huamantla Codex (nos. 1-6) Huamantla Codex (nos. 7-8) (Humboldt Codex, nos. 3 4) Huexotzingo, Matrix of Humboldt Codex (no. 1) Humboldt Codex (no. 2) Humboldt Codex (nos. 5 15) Ixtlilxóchitl Codex (Part 1) Ixtlilxóchitl Codex (Part 2) Ixtlilxóchitl, Genealogy of Felipe Maguey, Draft on Paper of a MeIztépetl, Genealogy of Mexican Annals (no. 4) Mexican Nation, Historical Annals of Mexican Nation (copy) Mexicans, History of the Ancient (fragment) Mexico, Fragment of a History of Mexico and Tlatelolco, Annals of

National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology Paris National Library Paris National Library National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology Unknown National Museum of Anthropology German Government Library of Berlin (ex-GDR) Paris National Library Berlin Government Library (ex-FRG)/Prussian Cultural Patrimony German Government Library of Berlin (ex-GDR) German Government Library of Berlin (ex-GDR) Paris National Library Paris National Library National Library of Mexico National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology (A) Unknown Paris National Library Paris National Library Paris National Library (B) Paris National Library Unknown

Mizquiahuala, Tributes of Nexmoyotla, Canvas of Saint John Nezahuakóyotl, Circular Genealogy of

1

Unknown National Museum of Anthropology Latin American Collection, University of Texas Library

Since 1982, the complete name of the library is the Dr. Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado National Library of Anthropology and History.

38

SCIENCE, ART AND CULTURE

Nine Lords, Wheel of the (copy) Nopalxóchitl, Genealogy of Otumba, Map of Pitzahua, Genealogy of Poinsett (fragment no. 1) Poinsett (fragment no. 2) Possessions, Codex of (fragment 1) Possessions, Codex of (fragment 2) Possessions, Codex of (fragment 3) Process, Fragment of a Process, Piece of a Quinatzin, Map Rechnung (Bill of Sale from Mizquiahuala) San Juan Teotihuacan Codex San Pablo Teocaltitlán,Book of Tributes of Santa Cruz Tlamapa Codex (no.1) Santa Cruz Tlamapa Codex (no. 2) Santa Cruz Tlamapa Codex (no. 3) Sema: Calendar Wheel no. 2 Serna: Drawings (copy) Sigüenza, Map of Tecpan de Santiago Tlatelolco Codex Tecpatepec, Painting of the Town of Tepechpan, Strip of Tepechpan, Strip of (copy) Tepecuacuilco, Map of Tepoztlán, Property Map of Tetlamaca, Genealogy of Tianquiztli, Map of Tlatelolco Codex Tlatengo, Tributes of Tlaxcala, Annals of (no. 2) Tlaxcala, Canvas of Tlaxcala Codex Tlotzin, Map Tlotzin, Map (copy) Toltec-Chichimec History Tributes, Fragment of Tributes, Matrix of Tributes, Matrix of (copy) Tributes, Strip of Tzintzuntzan, Tributes of Vergara Codex Veytia, Calendar Wheels (nos. 1, 2, 5, 6 and 7 [copy]) Women, Fragment of the Xalapa Codex Xolotl Codex Zapotitlán, Codex of the Tequitlato of

Unknown National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology Latín American Collection, University of Texas Library Paris National Library Paris National Library Paris National Library German Government Library of Berlin (ex-GDR) (lost) National Museum of Anthropology Paris National Library Museum of the Army, Madrid Unknown National Museum of Anthropology Royal Academy of History of Madrid Royal Academy of History of Madrid National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology Latín American Collection, University of Texas Library Paris National Library Unknown National Museum of Anthropology and German Government Library of Berlin (ex-DRG) (lost) Austrian National Library, Vienna National Museum of Anthropology Unknown National Museum of Anthropology Paris National Library Unknown Unknown National Museum of Anthropology Paris National Library Paris National Library Paris National Library Gilcrease Institute, Tulsa, Oklahoma National Museum of Anthropology National Museum of Anthropology Institute of Mesoamerican Research, Tulane University Princeton University Library Paris National Library Unknown Brooklyn Museum National Museum of Anthropology Paris National Library National Museum of Anthropology

Source: John B. Glass, "The Boturini Collection," in Robert Wauchope (ed.), Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 15, Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources, Part Four, Howard F. Cline (ed. of vol.), University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, 1975, pp. 479-482.

39

Universidades REVISTA DE LA UNION DE UNIVERSIDADES DE AMERICA LATINA

CONTENIDO

El Sistema Centroamericano de evaluación y acreditación de fa educación superior.

SICEVAES • Evaluación, acreditación y calidad de fa educación en México. Carlos PALLÁN FIGUEROA • Centro regional para fa educación superior en América Latina y el Caribe. Jorge BROVETTO Y La Cooperación Internacional en materia de educación en América Latina. Abelarbo VILLEGAS M. y Maliatena SOSA y La integración en América Latina: Una reflexión. María Cristina ROSAS Y Federico Ferro Gay y la sabiduría de tos romanos.

Roberto HEREDIA CORREA • Postgrado y desarrollo: La experiencia cubana. Aurora FERNÁNDEZ GONZÁLEZ y Jorge NÚÑEZ JONES • Reseñas

ESPECIAL

Reunión entre (a Asociación para íct Unibb be América Latina (RUNA) y (a Unión be universibabes be América Latina (UDUAL)

Contenido del número

12

Julio-Diciembre 1996

SUSCRIPCIONES: Circuito Norponiente de C.U. México, D.F., 04510 (A un costado de la Tienda Estadio de C.U.) De venta en Librerías Universitarias, Fondo de Cultura Económica y Gandhi DrairIo Bronca Pérez

SCIENCE, ART AND CULTURE

TVIEXICO'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE MEDITI-11,11RANEAN DIET' Janet Long*

exican plants were not well received when they first arrived in Europe in the sixteenth century.

Europeans were skeptical of the new plants and reticent about accepting them in their diets. Some were rejected because of their similariry with certain hallucinogenic plants such as mandrake, henbane and belladonna, known and used by witches and sorcerers of the time. For Chis reason, plants such as the tomato and the chili pepper had to overcome the famous "curse of the nightshade" before being accepted in European diets. Other plants, such as the Andean potato, had to undergo a genetic transformation before they were able to produce in European latitudes.

Although many New World plants arrived in the sixteenth century, it was searcher at the UNAM Institute fo,

A longer version of chis mide was published in the book Conquista y comida: consecuencias del encuentro de dos mundos (The Conquest and Food. Consequences of the Meeting of Two Worlds), UNAM, 1996.

not until the eighteenth century when they became fully accepted in Old World diets.

The first people to bring back information about the food and plants of the Americas were early explorers and conquistadors, some ofwhom showed a special interest in the vegetation of the New World. There were actually few of the latter since most of those who ventured to America were more interested in acquiring gold and silver or in introducing Christianity to the local population. Christopher Columbus himself initiated an important exchange of plants between the two worlds when he brought back plants and seeds on his return to Spain from his first voyage to the Western Hemisphere.

Spain was the first stop for Mexican plants on their route to dissemination throughout Europe. After their arrival, they spread along two different paths: some plants prospered in northern Europe, while others adapted better in the warm climate and loose soil of the Mediterranean basin.

The latter group arrived first in Italy, which is not surprising since the Spanish crown dominated large parts of the Italian Peninsula in the sixteenth century, facilitating contact between the two arcas. Corn or maize, for many centuries a staple food in Mesoamerican Indian cultures, along with beans, the traditional accompaniment for tortillas, prospered in the Mediterranean. Chili peppers and tomatoes, a flavor combination characteristic of Aztec cuisine, also adapted to the new environment. Other Mexican plants that prospered in the new habitat were squash, the sweet potato, the agave or century plant and the prickly pear cactus, which now forms an integral part of the local landscape. Some of the plants were taken to Europe on purpose; others arrived unannounced and uninvited, traveling in the ballast that ships carried on their return trips from the New World.

The well-established trade routes set up by Spaniards many years before were important factors in the spread

VOICES

of MEXICO â&#x20AC;˘ 38

of American products. Aragonese merchants controlled commerce between Spain, Italy and the Far East and no doubt played an important role in the distribution of plants along these routes. The Turks also took them to the whole eastern half of the Mediterranean basin, dominated in the sixteenth century by the Ottoman Empire. The early nomenclature given the newly arrived plants reflects the Turkish role in their dissemination.

Corn first appeared in European herbals under the names "Turkish grain," "blĂŠ de Turquie" or "Turkish korn"; the chili pepper was known as "Turkish red pepper"; the squash was called "Turkish cucumber" and even the wild turkey, which arrived in England in 1511 still goes by the narre of "turkey" in contemporary English.

The new plants first aroused the interest of the scientific community because of their possible medicinal uses. Devastating plagues were still ravaging parts of Europe in the sixteenth century and doctors were constantly searching for new remedies to treat them. They soon realized, however, that the new plants did not provide an effective cure for European diseases. Plant enthusiasts of the time established botanical gardens where some of them cultivated American plants and set up an exchange system with specialists in other parts of Europe with whom they traded seeds, plants and cuttings. The new plants were also used as ornaments in the well kept gardens of the nobility and on university campuses.

During the early Middle Ages, a distinct diet was formed in the Medi-

Chili pepper plant, Turin Botanical Garden, 1752.

42

SCIENCE, ART AND CULTURE

terranean basin, based on bread, olive oil and red wine. There were certain regional variations in the diet such as the thick soups of southern France, Italian pastas and Turkish yogurt, but a certain uniformity in the diet became evident from early times and has continued until today. Mexican plants did not arrive in the area as competitors of the traditional crops that had developed over the centuries. Rather, their role was complementary. While wheat and other grains were planted in autumn and winter, maize, beans and squash were planted in the spring and did not encroach upon the space needed for the traditional plants. Nor were their harvests incompatible, since wheat was generally cut in June and grapes and olives were picked in the fall, whereas the American crops were harvested at the end of summer.

Initially, the new plants could only be grown in small family plots or gardens as most American plants developed as semitropical crops that require moisture during the growing cycle and the formation of the fruit. In the hot, dry Mediterranean summers, the new plants needed artificial irrigation in order to produce fruit, and this was only possible on small plots of land.

This was never a problem for the traditional plants of the area because they had evolved in semi-arid zones of the Middle Fnqt and needed humidity after being sown in the winter, but did not need water during the final months of their agricultura! cycle which were in the summer.

Mexican plants offered severa) advantages over European crops. They were considered a novelty and only grown

oma amoris fru&u rubro.

Tomato plant, Hortus Eystetterus, Eichstatt, 1613.

on small family plots and thus were not subject to tithes which the Catholic Church applied to traditional agricultura) production. Corn and potatoes were exempt from this tax until the eighteenth century. Some of the new plants offered other advantages as well. Beans are well known for their 43

ability to enrich the soil since they have the capacity to fix nitrogen in the earth through the small nodes on their roots.

The overworked and exhausted soils of the Mediterranean were badly in need of enrichment and improvement.

Mexican plants also played a role in crop rotation, another method of soil

VOICES of MEXICO â&#x20AC;˘ 38

improvement, since the same grain climates, soils and altitudes and can land same the could not be sown on be used as animal fodder as well as for for more than two consecutive years human consumption. because of the depletion of the land's The chili pepper and the tomato humus level. arrived as strange new plants and wemore be to proved plants Some re regarded with deep suspicion. They easily accepted due to their similarity acquired the reputation of being halwith those already known in the crea. lucinogenic and poisonous since they bean This was the case of the Mexican belonged to the same plant family as that looked like the European faya bean, known since Romans distributed it throughout the Mediterranean basin during the expansion of their empire.

Spaniards knew them as fesoles and gave them the same name when they carne upon them in the Caribbean. Some years later, the name was changed to Pijo/ and they are still known by that name in Mexico today.

The corn plant has little similarity with other grain plants, but its preparation in the form ofground flour in breads and gruels gave it an air of similarity with other cereals. Corn meal was mixed with other bread flours to make coarse, Three varieties of corn, Royal Botanical Garden, Madrid, 1836. rustic breads for the poor.

It also became a substitute for millet the mandrake, henbane and belladonin Italian polenta, an ancient Roman na. They also soon became well known dish that had sustained poor Italians as effective aphrodisiacs, although I doubt that this contributed to their for centuries. Corn offers several inicial rejection. One must take into advantages over other grains: it proaccount the fact that both these plants duces more calories in less space, in were completely new to the Europeans; less time and is less labor-intensive they had never seen any fruits that than any other grain except for rice. of variety even looked like them. They did not It adapts easily to a wide 44

know how to grow them, prepare them for the table or even how to go about eating them. Chili peppers were so spicy and pungent that they were difficult to eat. Italians were afraid to eat tomatoes raw, fearing they might be poisonous, but when cooked, they were unappetizing and appeared to be spoiled. They were also raid to have a `Tour smell. It was not easy to adopt these plants and incorporare them into the Italian diet. Furthermore, the large, red, smooth, juicy tomatoes we know today have little similarity with the small, ridged, pale, acid and strong-smelling tomato that arrived in Europe in the sixteenth century. It was the caring hands of Italian gardeners that transformed the tomato into the edible and attractive fruir we know today.

They also modified the chili pepper, converting it into a large, sweet-tasting vegetable without the pungency characteristic of the Mexican chili pepper. Transformed into "green peppers," they could be consumed as vegetables and were used for stuffed peppers, a popular dish in the eastern Mediterranean. The chili pepper was intro duced into Hungary by the invading Turks in 1526 and was given the local name of paprikĂĄs or paprika and is a dominant flavor in Balkan cuisine.

During the eighteenth century, Mexican fruits and vegetables became

SCIENCE, ART AND CULTURE

sauce. The flavor combination of incorporated into European diets. Many tomatoes and green peppers has been changes occurred in European cuisine documented in salads typical of every during this century that reflect the country surrounding the Meditersocial changes of the time. A new social class developed due to the prosranean basin. perity attained from commercial Southern Spain's gazpacho, an ancient soup known from the time of activities of the time. The new bourArab occupation in the region, sudgeoisie favored a simple cuisine, based on regional dishes, as taste was no denly acquired a new presentation longer dictated by the nobility and a life centered around the royal court.

New World flavors combined well with the local dishes and cooks began incorporating the new ingredients into established local fare. They did not invent new or exotic dishes with them, rather they learned to use them as useful elements in traditional dishes.

Corn and potatoes were added to local soups, stews and other typical dishes.

The frijol or Mexican bean became a substitute for the roman faya bean in such dishes as fabada asturiana of northwestern Spain and in the cassoulets of France's Provence. Italians living Flowers and fruit of the cactus plant, eighteenth century. around Florence adopted with the addition of tomatoes and the bean with such relish that Italians green peppers. Valencian paella inin the rest of the country began to corporated several Mexican ingredirefer to them as mangiafagoli or bean ente into its preparation, as did the eaters. Neapolitans discovered that tomato sauce blended well with pascodfish dish, bacalao. By the end of the eighteenth century, Mexican tas, previously served with sauces plants were fully incorporated into made with olive oil or butter. Italian the diet in several Mediterranean pizzas also benefited from the new flacountries. vor and bright red color of tomato 45

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these plants, modified and improved by Europeans, were reintroduced into the New World as part of the cultural baggage brought

by European immigrants who wanted to recreate their native diets in their new countries. Italian immigrants in the United States, Canada and Argentina brought new uses for the tomato as canned tomato sauce to accompany pasta dishes. They also brought green peppers and a new method of eating squash as a young, immature vegetable, which they called "zucchini."

Mexican plants provided many benefits for the European diet, but they were also the cause of grave misfortunes when not properly used. No plant is capable of providing all the nutrients needed by the human body. This became evident when people in some areas of the Mediterranean basin began to depend too heavily upon a diet based almost exclusively upon corn. Corn contains no tryptophane, the amino acid needed to synthesize vitamins in the body. Without its presence, the body cannot absorb vitamins and a nutritional deficiency can manifest itself in the form of pellagra. This illness affects the digestive system, the nervous system and the skin and frequently terminates in mental illness and sometimes even in death. This

VOICES

of MEXICO â&#x20AC;˘ 38

Botanical garden of King Phillip II of Spain, sixteenth century.

Fruit of the cacao tree, Roya! Botanical Garden, Madrid, 1814.

did not prove to be a problem in Latin American diets because beans, that usually accompanied corn tortillas, supplied the amino acid lacking in corn.

Also, the process of nixtamalizaciĂłn, or soaking corn in lime for several hours before grinding, improves the protein content of the grain. This method of preparing corn did not spread to other countries, where grinding machines were powerffil enough to pulverize the grain without previously soaking it.

The countries most affected by pellagra were poor areas of Italy and Rumania, faithful consumers of polenta and its Rumanian counterpart mamaliga, that served as substitutes 46

for bread in the diet of the massâ&#x20AC;˘s. This disease was not erradicated in northern Italy until alter World War II, when the diet and living conditions in the crea generally improved. It has also proved to be a problem in African countries that have relied too heavily upon corn and less upon other foods.

After an uncertain beginning upon their arrival in Europe, Mexican plants were finally incorporated into the Mediterranean diet. Unobtrusively, they began substituting local products and soon became common ingrediente in dishes popular with the general population. They contributed toward a more nutritious diet, made food more abundant and thus helped reduce the effects of hunger that had plagued Europe for centuries. Some historians consider them to have played an important role in the population increase that became evident in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Their ability to complement the ancient Mediterranean crops during the agricultural cycle as well as in the diet contributed toward their final acceptance. Today, they are as identified with the Mediterranean diet as the area's older plants, such as wheat, the olive tree and the grapevine.

SCIENCE, ART AND CULTURE

MARĂ?A IZQUIERDO Melancholic Nostalgia Teresa del Conde*

The Indifferent Girl, 1947 (oil. on canas).

* Director of Mexico City's Museum of Modern Art

47

VOICES

of MEXICO • 38

M

any of us, women and men both, are

trapped gazing rapturously at the paintings of María Izquierdo, whether we are looking at the more ambitious canvases like the portrait of her three nieces, or her delicious gouaches peopled with circus characters similar to those of film makers Bergman and Woody Allen. María's works leave me with a sensation of infinite nostalgia. Despite her colors (and how very courageous are some of her orchestrations!), they often give me a feeling somewhere between melancholy and smiles. After a few moments of contemplation, I try to imagine the painter in all her different stages. A small town girl who, from the time she was born, could hear the bells of the sanctuary; the little girl who, during Lent, made her offerings on Good Friday as though they were tableau vivants, a precocious adolescent who met up with sexuality and perhaps violence before she became acquainted with painting; a young girl who wanted to experience other worlds defying the conventions of her time and homeland; a woman who enjoyed food, lace, the paintings of Cranach and Dürer, friends and solitude. Her splendid black eyes, liquid, shining, must have sometimes had that lost look that can be seen in her Self Portrait with Speckled Muslin Dress from 1947. Was she already aware of her physical —though not moral— fragility?

It is never a good idea to over-interpret. And yet... How can you not stop to wonder what went through her head when she painted the ominous Dream and Presentiment, one of her masterpieces? It is a double self-portrait. María peers through a window brandishing her own severed head like a trophy, holding it by the hair, like a triumphant Perseus bragging of his triumph over Medusa. María's severed head weeps tears that change into leaves. Swept away by the wind, they fall into an earthen jar-coffin that could also be a boat; the mast is a cross.

Heads separate from bodies are frequent iconographic motifs in her work, whether she presents them as such, as in the extremely curious Allego)), to Freedom done in 1937, or whether they appear as strangely alive mannequins.

This is the impression given by the plaster Pierrot that weeps black tears in the still life Grown Wheat (1940). In The Wise Cat (1943) , the dark clay head is of a young man with painted lips and false eyelashes. The cat is attentively

The Noose, 1947(oil on canvas).

-

48

SCIENCE, ART AND CULTURE

VOICES

of

MExico •

38

bles Tamayo). The word "identity" is so overused that perhaps it can be better understood negatively: so, when I say "identity" I do not mean her work is unifluenced by other painters, nor that, as Antonin Artaud thought, it has its roots in some archetypical Mexican primitivism. Her selection of motifs, the synthesis she proposed and the crafting she gave them, in my view, did not consist of completing her universe through fantasy nor reproducing "things from real life." When did María have time to paint? She loved parties; she was preoccupied with international fashion which seemed to have entertained her considerably, although for different periods she herself gave free rein to her own very personal concept of regional Mexican dress. A friend to intellectuals and artists, she frequented the legendary Leda Salon, imposing a life-style that left its mark on many.

Octavio Paz met her when he was very young, when he returned from Spain in 1938. He used to see her in the Café de París, a center of Mexico City's artistic and literary cirdes. As he tells it, around six in the afternoon a group would arrive headed up by a thin, nervous young man, the enfant terrible Juan Soriano, accompanied by Lola Alvarez Bravo, Lupe Marín and María Izquierdo, among others.

Paz says, "Lupe Marín and María Izquierdo were the centers of attention because of their manner and dress. They were two very different women, physically, spiritually and in terms of their goals. María was like a pre-Hispanic goddess. A mud face dried in the sun, smoked with copal incense. Very made up, not with modern make-up, but in an ancient, ritualistic style: lips like red-hot coals, cannibal teeth; a nose made to breathe in the delicious smoke of prayers and sacrifices; violently ochre cheeks; the eyebrows of a crow and enormous circles surrounding deep eyes... but that woman with the terrible air of a pre-Hispanic goddess was sweetness itself. Timid, intimate..." 1 Such is the intimac-y of her paintings that they need neither apology nor superlatives. I think this is why they seduce so many collectors, both past and present. This is why, in their time, they have received the attention of Mexico's best writers.

This is why they became an obsession of Antonin Artaud.

Cupboard with Candied Fruit, 1946 (oil on canvas).

examining the prayer book open to what can be seen is —once again— an etching of the Cross, accompanied by symbols of the Passion. Is it the Passion of Jesus or of María, María Izquierdo, who learned to draw and write with her left hand afrer suffering a stroke?

Some people seem to be predetermined by their names.

It is not the same being named María or being named Frida. If we observe closely, we will note that the painter from San Juan de los Lagos [María Izquierdo] did several self-portraits dressed as the eternal madonna with a child in her arms, in the Renaissance tradition.

She used many different sources of inspiration, but in contrast with painters from other latitudes, each of her paintings has an identity of its own (except where it resem-

1

50

Octavio Paz, interview with Miguel Cervantes. "María Izquierdo sitiada y situada," in Octavio Paz, Los privilegios de la vista II, Obras completas, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico City, 1993, pp. 297-298.

SCIENCE, ART AND CULTURE

The Granary, 1943 (oil on masonite).

were never executed and for which we have the drawings)

the air of a shack decked out in its Sunday best that can be perceived in a good many of her canvases. But we must

was not ideological, but they certainly had meaning. A figurative painter, like almost all the artists of her generation, she unlearned the training of a venerable teacher who liked

always keep in mind that not only Mexico has shacks decked out in their Sunday best, great pink fishes covered with scales, blue seas, bare trees, dry ochre pieces of land, big-eyed little

to put his models out of their time: Germán Gedovius.

girls with shortened limbs á la Picasso who pose very seri-

She was able to apprehend what harmonized with her spirit through Rufino Tamayo, with whom she had a tempestuous relationship. 2 She assimilated the pictorial tradition

ously, chairs made of palm leaves, popular photographers, tennis rackets, masks and mannequins, always incomplete walls,

María's painting (except the projects for murals, which

small-town hand-ball courts, topped off with classical kettledrums, rows of trees which converge in a single vanishing point, whitewashed walls. All these are Mexican, yes, but they are also typical of provinces in many other parts of the world.

of the Western historical avant-gardes without eliminating

2

Personal interview with Fernando Gamboa, Chimalistac, March 1987.

51

VOICES of MExico • 38

She is not the only artist who has used the microcosm of the circus as a symbol for human life. She presented herself in a kind of a disguise before her well-dressed, fashionably be-hatted, chic friends. She dressed in traditional clothing and did her hair as Yalaltec women did; at the same time her canvases and drawings sported representations of "the great theater of the world," reduced to a microcosm in which everything dear to her can be found, be it circus tent characters or a tryst of two modest lovers protecting themselves from a possible storm, interna! and externa!, with an umbrella, watched over by a curious glossy reproduction of Botticelli's Venus (I am referring to the 1946 painting, The Idyll). She painted clay corn barns, bread baked for the Day of the Dead, which were really "natural surrealism," funnels or the telephones that Tamayo liked so much as formal and symbolic motifs, the gloves that retain the shape of the hands no longer inside them, fishes with pop-eyes, taken out of their usual culinary context and turned into enormous characters en repoussoir.

Put like that, it all seems senseless. Her particular ability for combining elements is what makes her paintings small dramas in which the characters are often inanimate objects. The things are there, or rather, we know that they are there; they shoot out at whoever looks at them, as though they had no other transcendental mode of existence but the one they acquire when speaking to each other.

Earlier in this anide, I mentioned the fact that some of her works seem to be prescient. They are like mirages compulsively emerging from the memory. When Freud discusses daydreams, he says that the visualization of mirages superimposes psychic realities on images which materialiw. 3 This must have something to do with telepathy. While I have never analyzed telepathy, I do know that in what we call the collective unconscious, premonitions are related to the possibility of death. The painting The Noose (1947), whose sinister hanging rope, dangling from a no less threatening leafless and branch-less tree, seems to warn of the danger to the little white cok, the only living thing wandering in the locale where blood is clearly suzested. Blood as a metaphor.

María seems to have painted blood as a metaphor: the men3

strual flow, the blood of childbirth. For Artaud, her soul was red and "the red soul is concrete and speaks." 4 María spoke of a dark and unjust past in which she makes the entire feminine sex a co-participant. However, she struggled unceasingly against the subjugation that her condition as a woman imposed. In her painting, she left constant evidence that she took full responsibility for her femininity, at the same time that she put it to the test in her professional life; that is why her madonnas always weep. In her own words, "It is a crime to be born a woman. It is an even greater crime to be a woman and have talent." This opinion is taken from her memoirs and quoted by Olivier Debroise in his excellent 1988 essay on María. However, Debroise also says quite correctly that there is no cause/ effect relation between her life and her work. "The biographical elements do not explain everything, of course [my emphasis], but do allow us to situate the character and dear up some unconfessed influences and motives [otherwise kept] in the dark." 5 When María Izquierdo wrote those words, she had just received a definitive show of support: that of none other than Diego Rivera. Was it the case that María could not completely tolerare her status as a woman painter because she was not born a painter, but made?

The same thing happened to Frida Kahlo, the inevitable reference point, although we know full well that her posthumous universal enthronement is due to the combination of her autobiography, her painting and her being a womanpainter-of-note. María Izquierdo's case is not so spectacular, although she may well have sought the same thing unconsciously.

She was made of earth and water: that you could see in the very color of her skin and in the colors she favored in the early part of her career. "Throughout her pictorial career, María Izquierdo changed her palette from dark earth colors to an Antonin Artaud, "El alma roja," Paris, 1937. Quoted in Carlos Monsiváis' introductory essay to María Izquierdo "La idolatría de lo visible," Casa de Bolsa Cremi, Mexico City, 1986, p. 21. Bibliographical research by Luis Mario Schneider.

5 Olivier Debroise, "María Izquierdo," in María Izquierdo, Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporáneo, A.C., Mexico City, 1988, p. 27. Olivier Debroise on p. 49 of this book says that it is a good idea to emphasize "the strange tension that comes out of the uneasiness caused by the unwanted loss of innocence and its automatic complement, nostalgia, a desperate effort to find the ideal form..."

4

Sigmund Freud, "Sueño y telepatía," Obras completas, José Luis Etcheverri (trans.), Vol. XVII, Amorrortu, Buenos Aires, 1979, p. 209.

52

SCIENCE, ART AND CULTURE

Apples, 1947 (oil on canvas).

53

VOICES

of

MEXICO • 38

The Wise Cat, 1943 (oil

on masonite).

explosion of contrasts very similar to those on textiles, ceramics or multicolored tin work," says Raquel Tibol. 6 And it is true that she sometimes returned to natural tones, like when she painted a kneeling, imploring, resigned, potent woman (all there things at once), in the 1945 canvas where she personifies the Earth. She is the Earth, but she is also the forever turbulent sky, this time with no horizon.

I think we should not forget that imagination is our means of interpreting the world, but it is also our means of forming images in the mind. The images we form are not separate from our interpretations of the world, but as Mary Warnok has quite correctly seen, "They are our way of thinking about the objects of the world."7 However, the imagination is also educated, particularly in the case of an artist. The painter builds an analogy of his or her own mental vision and, even in representational painting like María's,

the object painted no longer works as an analogy for the scene. I am thinking of the painting of the indifferent, bored little girl dressed in pink with an enormous squash in front of her and a multicolored balloon rising in the sky behind the veranda, glimpsed through open French doors.

Here, there is an unreal collection of completely familiar objects, even though their combination may be unusual.

María's work holds the sensations, the memories of a childhood that she never overcame, but it also undeniably contains what is going on in her artistic surroundings: metaphysical architecture, sped-up perspectives, rudimentary sketches of day nativity scenes common to the festivities before Christmas (in Spanish, the posadas, also the last name of her first husband, a soldier-cum-journalist). They also contain the reminiscences of what other painters were doing, not only Tamayo, but also Rodríguez Lozano, Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Juan Soriano...

Is María dassically Mexican as Diego Rivera thought?

What is "dassically Mexican" exactly? It is what people want to understand as such. It is not what filters down through

Raquel Tibol, "María Izquierdo y su dispuesta realidad" (catalogue of a María Izquierdo exhibit), Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City, 1971.

7 Mary Warnok, La imaginación, Juan José Utrilla (trans.), Fondo de Cultura Económica, Col. Breviarios no. 311, Mexico City, p. 340.

6

54

SCIENCE, ART AND CULTURE

nationalist polemics; there has not been one "national reality," but many. For example, Juan O'Gorman is one of the great exponents of iconographic nationalism, but pictorially he is completely alien to that non-existent Mexican essence that so many critics, museum directora and exhibit curators try to see in our country's art between 1921 and 1955 (just to pick chronological limas). For María, "Mexican-ness" consisted in finding something to hold on to that allowed her to channel her both regional and contemporary sensibility.

"Women who want to be painters (in María Izquierdo's time) will be greeted by macho wrath," said Carlos Monsiváis.8 Patronizing apologies of women's qualities abound in every era. But, though feminine to the bone, as a painter, María was an artist first. Not a few women artists do adopt a feminine or feminist stance even in their work, but I do not believe that this was María Izquierdo's case, even if she did paint groups of women or emphasize the paraphemalia of femininity. We are dealing here with iconography, nota stance vis-á-vis painting. I do not think that it had to have been afirtiori a woman who painted the jewelry box with the pinktrimmed open black umbrella, the pearl necklace and the high heeled shoe. Also, her cupboards are similar in composition to those of Arrieta. Her aforementioned difficulty with drawing, not to be equated with clumsiness, is a deliberate way of placing figures in a space. It is a constant in her style, and if the word style is appropriate for anyone, it is for María.

With multiple variations, her style fitted in wonderfully with the broad mosaic of the so-called Mexican School.

Neither do I see in María Izquierdo the naive painter that Artaud wanted to preserve at all costs. I see rather more of that in Abraham Angel, for example, but since he did not live very long, we cannot know how he might have evolved.

Mards immanent world transcended her moment by far.

We can look at her conch shells —as we would, to pick an example, with those of Alfonso Michel— and see something different, something beyond what they represent. Marías gaze, her ideas, her pulse, the externality of her internal world come from a spirit which is neither simplistic nor easy. Perhaps it could be said that she was affected by things absent as though they were present. That is what the poet thought.

Self-Portra,

1947 (oil

on canvas).

MARÍA IZQUIERDO IN THE MODERN ART MUSEUM n exhibit of the best work of María Izquierdo opened in Mexico City's Modern Art Museum October 31, and will run until January 27, 1997. It had preyiously been presented in Chicago's Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum from May until September 1996. Luis-Martín Lozano, curator for both the Chicago and Mexico City shows, made a careful selection of her work using both thematic and chronological cri-teria. The exhibition presents 74 pieces, including oils, watercolors, photographs, personal belongings and

8

Carlos Monsiváis, "María Izquierdo. La idolatría de lo visible," Casa de Bolsa Cremi, Mexico City, 1986.

55

VOICES

of

MEXICO •

38

MARÍA IZQUIERDO (1902-1955) Born in San Juan de los Lagos, Jalisco, in 1902, María Izquierdo moved to Mexico City in 1923. In January 1928 she began her studies at the National School of Fine Arts and continued at the Academy of San Carlos until June 1929. At the time a debate was raging about what aesthetic and pedagogical values were valid for teaching the arts, particularly painting. María's teachers included Germán Gedovius and Manuel Toussaint, although she was most profoundly influenced by Rufino Tamayo who, among other things, introduced her to the world of watercolors and gouache.

She had her first individual show in 1929. In his introduction to the small catalogue, Diego Rivera, at the time director of the School of Fine Arts, described her as one of the most attractive personalities of Mexico's artistic milieu and one of the academy's outstandíng students. The following year she exhibited portraits, Iandscapes and studies in the New York Ad Center, the first Mexican woman to have a show in the United States.

María Izquierdo transformed and channeled the influences from modern and avant-garde currents into a style of her own. Her paintings, inspired in folklore and Mexican motifs, sometimes become surrealistic.

They are concerned with ordinary things and have a primitive style based on simple, vigorous lines and vibrant colors.

Izquierdo's vast work includes oils, watercolors, drawings, wood prints and etchings. She is known for her notably expressive use of color, her handling of volumes and space and the recurrence of certain themes, like the circus, horses, cupboards, portraits of women, and the street scenes, houses and gardens of a vague and poetic town, a town much like many throughout Mexico.

She exhibited in the most important museums and galleries of New York, Buffalo, Hollywood, Santiago de Chile, Guatemala and Panama, as well as in Rio de Janeiro, Lima, La Paz, Bombay, Paris and Tokyo. Several of her paintings are hung in important museums and private collections in Mexico and abroad.

She was a teacher at the School of Plastic Arts of the Public Education Ministry and a founder of the House of Artists of America. She was also a member of the League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists.

Her work was interrupted in 1948 when she was struck with a hemiplegia that paralyzed the right side of her body. Although this did not completely stop her from working (she continued painting with her left hand) the disease eventually killed her in 1955 when she was preparíng her paintings for a retrospective showing and planning a tríp to Europe.

Critics of the 1940s called her work "ingenuous," "spontaneous," "primitive," "naíve," and "classically Mexican." However, contemporary critics agree that these adjectíves do not adequately describe her work, and this has led to its reexamination. In 1964, the Year of Plastic Arts in the State of Jalisco, she was the only woman whose name was íncluded, together with 17 other artists, ín the wall of Guadajalara's monument to painter José Clemente Orozco.

Note: Information from La Enciclopedia de México, Volume VIII, Enciclopaedia Britannica de Mexico, Mexico City, 1994, p. 4397; Luis Martínez Lozano, María Izquierdo, Sobre la moderna pintura mexicana, catalogue of the María Izquierdo Exhibit (English-Spanish edition), The Mexican Fíne Arts Center Museum, Chicago, 1996, pp. 20-55; and "María Izquierdo, 1902-1955," Modern Art Mus - Press Release, October 1996, Mexico City.

56

DOMESTICATED BIRDS OF PRE-HISPANIC MEXICO RaĂşl Valadez AzĂşa*

was an important source of meat and eggs. It is not surprising, therefore, that all agricultura) communities

omesticating animals and plants has distinguished the human species since ancient times. It is difficult to calculate its benefits

made extensive use of it.

The turkey is the bird most frequently mentioned in archeological records. Archeozoological studies indicate it was an important animal in the Mexico Basin, espe-

and drawbacks, but this achievement undoubtedly demonstrates how humanity has made use of its ability to reason to overcome the limitations imposed by

cially during the Formative Period (6000 to 1700 B.c.).

Specimens are commonly found associated with burials and offerings.

The arrival of the Classic Period (A.D. 200 to 800) brought a change in how this species was used, at least in some areas. Teotihuacan has almost no remains of turkeys associated with religious activities, though they are commonly found linked to providing food. The paintings and zoomorphic figures depicting this bird are natural

the environment.

Domestication was common in most civilizations, although its specific characteristics varied by region.

The pre-Hispanic civilizations of Mexico and the southern United States focused mostly on domesticating birds, both for food and religious purposes.

Research based on remains found in archeological excavations and historical sources from the sixteenth century has made it possible to compose an important list of 14 species of domesticated birds from preHispanic times.

Undoubtedly, the guajolote or turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is the most significant. Some archeozoological

representations, suggesting that in this city the turkey was primar-

studies from the Mexico Basin indicate it was already domesticated 3,500 years ago, suggesting the domestication process may have concluded more than 4,000

ily valued as food.

This does not, however,

years ago in central or western Mexico.

The turkey, called uexolotl by the Nahuas, clamo/ni by the OtomĂ­s and cax, a'cach or ulum by the Mayas, Researcher at the

UNAM

Institute for Anthropological Research.

57

VOICES

of

MExico •

C. C./ 1 a-Ye

38

_

4(„/".,:V1

iÍ

4141okket-u<4

1 .-4

-7,12 JICC .9.1:9/41-71, ¿.

1-

%5

(-cr,

r

/

1

_

5.1

74

JIO

Turkeys. Florentine Codex, Book XI (Friar Bernardino de Sahagún).

diminish its cultural importance. After all, it was one of the main sources of meat for the people of Teotihuacan.

Rather, its use seems to have changed because of the emergence of new norms. For example, it is nearly certain that some individuals spent their time raising turkeys and selling the products derived from this bird.

This implies that they were not accessible to everyone, but their acquisition depended on purchasing power. The proof of this lies in animal remains found in residential areas: turkey bones are commonly found where the elite lived, while few such remains are found in areas inhabited by people from lower socioeconomic levels.

Aztec and Otomí sources mention the turkey as an important part of myths and certain ceremonies. Some legends about the creation of the world mention a previous era in which humanity existed, but a cosmogonic sun caused a torrent of fire that killed everyone except a few who were transformed into turkeys.

In the Otomí calendar this bird symbolizes the sixteenth day of each month. In festivals throughout the year, turkeys were sacrificed: they were beheaded and their blood spilled over a fire. The turkey was also a symbol of rain and of the sun, the counterparts of fire and the eagle.

The peoples of central Mexico had a custom of beheading a turkey in front of a home to inaugurate it, sprinkling its blood in the four corners, on the roof and on both sides of the door. Then, they plucked and cooked the turkey, ate part of it and offered the rest to the god of fire. Another tradition consisted of sacrificing a turkey when a lime-processing oven was finished or when it was lit for the first time.

Another group of birds domesticated were parakeets and macaws. There is sufficient evidence to confirm that at least 1,000 years ago, several of these species were already common members of many households.

First, we have the guacamaya roja or scarlet macaw (Ara macao). The best evidence of its domestication comes from studies conducted in Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, where many bone remains of different ages were found. Also found were periqueras or nests carved out of adobe blocks designed for the macaws to live in and reproduce in captivity. This species was not used for food, but in religious activities, in sacrifices and for feathers to make ceremonial adornments and headdresses.

The scarlet macaw was the symbol of the sun and of fire, comparable to the morning star, and was included in many myths. For the Mexicas, this bird embodied Xiuhtecutli, the sun, fire and the god of turquoise. It was also linked with Arara, the master of fire, the god of wealth, the judge and king.

58

THE SPLENDOR OF MEXICO

In addition, different types of parakeets were also domesticated. Some examples were the toznene or yellow-headed parrot, the cocho or white-fronted parrot and the quiliton or orange-fronted parakeet. These birds were known for eating whatever they were fed, learning words and being good company. It was believed that parakeets were companions of the goddess Citlallinicue and of travelers, as well as rulers of the thirteenth day in the Tonalpohualli.

Songbirds were held in great esteem by pre-Hispanic peoples who said their songs invited the rain, and that they were companions of the sun. They also believed the songbirds personified princes and warriors who had died in combat and were brought back to life in the forro of beautiful colored birds that sang pleasantly.

The different sounds made by these birds were interpreted as omens of good or evil, so they were frequently used in the art of foretelling the future. If the songbirds warbled, it was cause for delight or rejoicing. But if they squawked or screeched, it was a sign that a death, illness or serious problem was about to take place. The cuitlachochin or curve billed thrasher, the centzontlatole, or common mockingbird, the nochtototl, or house finch, and the quatoztli, or song sparrow, were all highly valued for their songs.

It was therefore common for people to raise these birds in cages. They caught them using traps made of rope, blunt-tipped arrows, or nets and then transported them in reed cages to their homes or to sell at 111, the markets. Some species, like the cent\\, zontle or common mockingbird (Minus Polyglotoos) sparked enormous interest, not only because it could imitate human voices, other birds and even dogs, but because it was also said to have the most melodious song.

The colored feathers also played a special role in the domestication of these birds. For example, the xiuhtotot1 known as the lovely cotinga, was

raised in cages and its plumes used for making headdresses and to adorn chaplets or wreaths worn on the head, ceremonial robes and shields. Other domesticated species used in this way were the acolchichi, or redwinged blackbird, the coztototl, or dark-backed goldfinch, and the hoauhtototl, or painted bunting.

What remains of these traditions? Very little. The turkey continues to be an important source of meat, but for today's poultry industry, it is simply one more piece of a technological complex which takes little interest in its history and contribution to human civilization.

The capture and sale of macaws, parakeets and songbirds is a deep-rooted practice in North America. Many people still take a special liking to their sweet, melodious trill or to the mischievousness of a parrot. As children, all of us surely knew and admired at least one older woman who raised birds, knew how to feed them, how to take care of them and what to do so they would reproduce.

But, few of us have carried on the tradition. Though modern life leaves little time for activities like raising birds, people continue to buy them. The difference is that, 50 years ago, the destiny of these little birds was to live as captives, but healthy captives. Now, they face a swift death from hunger or illness.

Mexico and part of the United States once had an interesting tradition of bird raising. Unfortunately, as in many cases of domestication,

59

VOICES of MEXICO •

38

the wild ancestors of these species are now in danger of extinction. This is the case of the turkey, the scarlet macaw, a number of species parakeets. So, if we want to preserve the tradition of raising birds, I think we should, but responsibly, based on all the knowledge and experience available. If, on the contrary, we no longer want to raise birds or do not

have appropriate conditions to do so, we should not buy them and avoid condemning them (because of our limited sense of morality) to certain death.

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60

THE SPLENDOR OF MEXICO

DOMESTICATED BIRDS I N PRE-HISPANIC TIMES Songbirds

Psittaciformes

Songbirds raised for their trills and squawks used

Guacamaya roja

for divining

or scarlet macaw. It was used in sacrifices and for its feathers.

Centzontle or common mockingbird.

Cuitlacoche

Parakeets

or curve billed thrasher.

accompanied travelers and were common in many homes

Gorriรณn mexicano or house finch.

Loro coroniamarillo

Gorriรณn de canto

or yellow-headed parrot.

or song sparrow.

Loro fi-entiblanco Songbirds domesticated to use their feathers

or white-fronted parrot.

for ritual vestments Periquillo

Tordo capitรกn

or orange-fronted parakeet.

or red-winged blackbird.

Dominico or dark-backed goldfinch.

The turkey was the Am value as a-so

aL:Wsk,; .7

Gorriรณn mariposa

dated animal. lis

or painted bunting.

pre-Hispanic cultures

i s unquestionable, d it 'also played a significant role in religion.

61

VOICES

of

MEXICO • 38

DOMESTICATED BIRDS IN MEXICO AND THE SOUTHERN UNITED STATES DURING THE PRE-HISPANIC PERIOD SPECIES

NAME IN NAHUATL

NAME USED IN MEXICO

NAME IN ENGLISH

Meleagris gallopavo *

uexolotl

guajolote

turkey

Ara macao*

alo

guacamaya roja

scarlet macaw

Amazona xantocephala

toznene

loro coroniamarillo

yellow-headed parrot

Amazona albifrons*

cocho

loro frentiblanco

whíte-fronted parrot

Aratinga canicularis*

quiliton

periquillo

orange-fronted parakeet

Cassidix palustris* *

tzanatl

zanate, tordo fino

slender-billed grackle

Cotinga amabilis

xiuhtototl

azulejo real

lovely cotinga

Agelaius phoeniceus

acolchichi

tordo sargento

red-winged blackbird

Carduelis psaltria

coztototl

dominico

dark-backed goldfinch

Passerina ciris

hoauhtototl

gorrión mariposa

painted bunting

Toxostoma curvirostre

cuitlachochin

cuitlacoche

curve billed thrasher

Mimus polyglotoos

centzontl atole

centzontle

common mockingbird

Carpodacos mexicanus

nochtototl

gorrión mexicano

house finch

Melospiza melodia

quatoztli

gorrión de canto

song sparrow

--

* In danger of extinction. ** Classified as extinct.

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THE SPLENDOR OF MEXICO

ON NAHUATL WISDOVI The Huehuetlatolli was the Aztecs' traditional book of rhetoric, moral philosophy and theology. The following is an extract from verse 71 about the relationship in Aztec beliefs between contact with the Creator and the bestowal of power.

This is how to enter the presence of Tloque Nahuaque,' how to penetrate His being, and there, He recognizes Thee, He makes Thee worthy, He gives Thee dignity. There, He may give Thee the valor of the eagle, of the tiger; there He holds His audience, there, He meets His friend, who calls Him, who prays to Him, who cares for the staff of the eagle, the staff of the tiger; in his hands, He puts the cup of the eagle, the straw of the eagle. 2 And thus, he becomes mother, father of the Sun, he gives the sky and the region of the dead nourishment and drink; the eagies and the tigers venerate him, have him as mother, as father, because, in truth, thus spake he, thus did Tloque Nahuaque order it. He was not created; he did not make himself.

He may even give him as his due the gift of the staff, scepter and chair, the charge of government; He may charge him with the green water, the golden water, where the tail and the wing are bathed; 3 He may put him at His left, shod him with sandals of obsidian a the mother of the gods, the father of the gods, in the nave) of the world ... the old god of the nebulous region of the dead, Xiuhtecuhtli.

' Tloque Nahuaque is the Creator. [Editor's Note.]

2 3 4

Symbolic tube or straw so the eagle, figure of the Sun, may drink the blood of the sacrifice.

The tail and the wing of the mythical beasts, the maceguales.

That is, give him a post.

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63

VOICES

of MExico

• 38

Living the Imane

Photos by Pedro Tezontémoc

T

vidualistic appreciation of the world. In short, I do not wish to transform the world with my photography.

Rather, I hope that it will transform me.

The photographic act has been my great teacher. Photography is my sixth sense, and through it my reality becomes coherent, intelligible. The camera is only a tool that, like a prosthesis, sharpens my focus. The eye-visioncamera relation is like the act of contemplation, and the finger-touch-shutter button is like action: they form a point of equilibrium in my perception of the world.

When I take pictures, the act itself takes control and, like a Satanic possession, I become an instrument.

I do not manipulate or construct my work, because I believe that reality offers us much more than the imagination can produce. The magical realism so sought after

o paraphrase Tolstoy, "The secret of happiness

is not to always photograph what you love, but to always love what you photograph."

That is because photography is not an end in and of itself; it is simply the medium that allows me to go from one experience to another, from one encounter with myself to another. That is why my photography is not motived by social commitment or the sale of a product; it does not aspire to be objective or subjective, nor to contain absolute truth or express a visceral or indi-

* Mexican photographer.

Originally published in the book Tiempo Suspendido (Pedro Tezontémoc, fitografia sobre La ruta de Antonin Artaud en la Sierra Tarahumara), Grupo Editorial Casa de las Imágenes, Mexico City, 1995, pp. 141-142.

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THE SPLENDOR OF MEXICO

Tarahumara which had become a pretext for another of my obsessions.

In 1936, Antonin Artaud2 carne to the Sierra Tarahumara on his own search. Aware that each experience modifies our lives, it seemed fascinating to me to study this experience in particular, which radically transformed this man's life, and which is accompanied by a marvellous testimony as a reference: the work of Artaud.

Guided by Artaud, I made four trips to the Tarahumara mountains between 1988 and 1993. On the second (MayJune 1992), I walked almost 150 kilometers on the nearly invisible route traced more than 50 years earlier.

by the electronic, visual media is right around the comer.

One has to be blind to go searching for it in a computer.

However, I must admit this attitude may be the result of my inability to remove isolated elements of reality in order to re-invent them outside their contextâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the here and now. I believe that the photographic vocation consists of capturing "presents," stopping ephemeral time that does not last; inventing a moment allows it to exist.

Without photography the present would be a mere infinite succession of instants on their way from the past to the future: the present only exists in photographs.

Just as a line is an infinite succession of points, life is an infinite succession of impulses. The line of my life has been plotted by the rhythm of my impulses. I think that a human being is the sum of his or her experiences, and, on my constant search for experiencies, I found the Sierra

2

65

Antonin Artaud, the French theater director, was the father of the Theater of Cruelty and an important influence on writers of the stature of Jean Genet and Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus. [Editor's Note.]

VOICES

of MEXICO • 38

The magic of the Tarahumara made Tezontémoc's artistic photos possible.

66

THE SPLENDOR OF MEXICO

Thus, the results of my experience were translated finto visual images, as well as an image of a way of seeing, a way of becoming conscious of reality through the simple act of having gone there to experience it. This changed my way of perceiving the world and my relationship with photography, as have all my experiences in their own way.

My photography is not made to be hung on walls or published, nor even to be developed. These are only complementary processes that allow me to establish referentes in the development of my personal experiences. For this reason, my best photographs are those that I have consciously decided not to take in order to allow for direct experience without filters.

Photography is not an art; the art is life itself.

I do not consider myself an artist, now that artists are more concerned with selling or appearing in the newspapers than with searching for themselves. Contemporary artists, with some honorable exceptions, craft works. I consider myself a mere receptor of experiences, I travel the world exposing myself to them, becoming intensely involved, establishing a passionate, amorous relationship with each in order to consume them, and at the moment of my death I will only regret what I left undone. Photography is a way to achieve this.

"Thg creĂ­ qflhappiness is not to alwaysi

Aitograph what you love, 4*

4

but to always love what you photograph.'

67

Física Lógica Filosofía Ecología Geología Antropología

Matemáticas Biología Medicina Historia de la Ciencia Astronomía Evolución

o

z

CJ

REVISTA DE DIFUSIÓN

Suscripciones y números atrasados: Cubículos 319, 320 y 321, Depto. de Física, Facultad de Ciencias, Covoacán 04510 México. D F Tel 622 4935 Fax: 616 0326/email: revistacCastroW1111112171171X

UNAM

VOICES

of

MEXICO • 38

my, working in clay, had to change so the town could survive given the onslaught of plastic into the market.

Today, Apaseo el Alto is recognized for its excellent woodworking. This craft began by chance: the Sacred Heart Church needed new figures of saints and restored sculptures, and a sculptor was called in to do the work.

Professor Domingo Galván (the initiator of the tradition of woodworking in Apaseo el Alto) was at that time a helper in the church and was in charge of contacting the sculptor. From him, Galván learned to work the wood to

make saints that looked very old, a simulated antiquity more attractive to the buyer.

Little by little the technique spread among the population, which was successful in its sales of the "little wooden saints" to Mexican and foreign tourists. Families of artisans who had worked in clay began to work in wood: today Apaseo el Alto boasts almost 600 organized woodworkers.

When the demand for the figures of saints was exhausted, the craftspeople had to come up with other forms and shapes for working the wood. The first generation were all kinds of heavenly figures: angels, virgins and saints (particularly the image of Saint Francis of Assisi). Later carne little animals: horses in different shapes and sizes and a variety of birds, like eagles and owls. They also made ornamental suns and moons. Finally, they began to carve furniture: trunks, niches, benches, dining room sets, chairs, shelves, etc. Today, each of the almost 80 family workshops specializes in one or another of there items.

A problem that the artisans had to solve was how to get their raw materials. They established an agreement with the municipal governments of Comonfort and Apaseo el Grande. With oficial permission, they also use wood from the trees cut down by construction companies to make room for housing projects. The woods worked are regional varieties (juniper, colorín, walnut wood, pirub willow) and industrial wood like pine, mahogany and cedar. The variety known as "saint's wood" is avidly sought after, although it requires more effort because it is a hardwood.

The inhabitants of Apaseo el Alto live with and from wood; their lives center around obtaining it and creating or reproducing forms and figures out of it. Wood is present in all their activities, in their own furniture and utensils and also in their traditions, like the annual January 2 pilgrimage which includes the blessing of the wood in the virgins and saints which they carry to thank them for their protection.

Every March 24 there is a statewide competition of woodworking with five prizes in different categories: relief, sculpture, animals and miniatures.

Last year the competition was held in the town of San Miguel de Allende and an artisan from Apaseo el Alto won first place, confirming the quality of work in a craft sprung from happenstance that is now part of a solid tradition.

Virgins and saints are among the main subjects of Apaseo el Alto artisans' work.

70

THE SPLENDOR OF MEXICO

THE WOOD OF APASEO EL ALTO Maricela GonzĂĄlez Cruz Manjarrez*

Apaseo el Alto artisans are famous for their wooden horses.

The town was a hamlet previously known as El Paso (The Pass), because it was a pass on the old road called the Camino Real de Zacatecas. It was later renamed San AndrĂŠs, but the persistence of its inhabitants in refusing to accept the narres given the town by the authorities was rewarded with its finally being called Apaseo el Alto.

Not only has the narre changed over the years, but so have the principie forms of making a living and its ways of life. In the mid-1930s, the mainstay of the region's econo-

n the state of Guanajuato there are two towns called

Apaseo: Apaseo el Alto and Apaseo el Grande.

Apaseo el Alto is 30 kilometers down the old road to I Celaya, from the Queretaro highway. The first thing you see as you ride into town are workshops and storefronts full of different shapes, forms, textures and qualities of wood, all unsettling for our pocketbooks.

'

* Researcher at the UNAM Institute for Aesthetic Research.

69

THE SPLENDOR OF MEXICO

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n early 1961, the anthropologist Peggy Golde left Ameyaltepec alter a year of fieldwork. Had she stayed a few more months, she would have witnessed a phenomenon that would have changed the course of her long-term research on aesthetic values: Ameyaltepec artists began to paint on amate.

Since pre-Columbian times amate has been made from the bark ofvarious moraceous trees including the fig (amatl in Nahuatl), which is crushed, pounded into flat sheets and dried.

However, by 1961 amate was only produced in San Pablito Pahuadán, Puebla, an Otomí-speaking village where it is still used in rituals. Amate had also made inroads into Mexico's crafts market. Traditional cut-out figures were sold in Mexico City and Russell Davis, the owner of a handicrafts shop, was using amate to make lampshades.

By the early 1960s, Mexico City had attracted a great number of Ameyaltepec peddlers. One of these was Pedro de Jesús, a skillfid painter who traded in ceramics. Among De Jesús' clients was Max Kerlow, the owner of a folk art shop. One day in mid-1962, instead of simply buying pottery, Kerlow hired De Jesús to decorate small, carved wooden figures in his

* American anthropologist.

' This essay is taken from "The Creation of

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71

Indigeneous Images: From Private Nightmares to Public Protest," in The Amate Tradition: Innovation and Dissent in Mexican Art (bilingual edition. English-Spanish) edited by Jonathan D. Amith, Mexico City, La Casa de las Imágenes, Chicago, Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, 1995, pp. 41-100. Distributed in the U.S. by University of Mexico Press.

VOICES of MEXICO â&#x20AC;¢ 38

Fish on a Blue Background, Pablo Cirenio de la Rosa (Ameyaltepec), 1985-1990. Gomi Stromberg Collection (New York).

72

store. After about a week De Jesús returned to Ameyaltepec. The pay had been good and on subsequent trips to Mexico City he brought his brother Pablo and then a neighbor, Cristino Flores. Over the next few months, Flores and the De Jesús brothers painted in the back of Kerlow's store, often accompanied by Kerlow's assistant, the artist Felipe Ehrenberg.

These months were ones of experimentation and a search for new forms of expression that would be both aesthetically and comercially successful.

The three Nahua artists were given a variety of objects to paint: carved wooden figures from Ixtapan de la Sal, in the State of Mexico, and Taxco, Guerrero; ceramics from Ameyaltepec and Oapan as well as Tonalá, Jalisco; wooden boards; cotton-fibered watercolor papen doth, small pieces of leather and bristol board. Colored gouache was often used on the paper and bristol board, whereas acrylics were used on the other materials. The three-dimensional objects were decorated with flower and animal motifs. Human figures first appeared on leather and paper as simple, free-standing decorative elements. Yet the paintings still did not tell a story.

Two major innovations soon took place: the adoption of amate and the beginning of narrative painting. In the search for new materials on which the Ameyaltepec artists could paint, it is not surprising that Ehrenberg and Kerlow soon tried bark paper. Ehrenberg frequently visited the house where Pahuatlán merchants stayed in Mexico City, and Kerlow's shop was Glose to the Bazar del Sábado, a well known weekly market for folk and popular -

Photo: Ka t hlee n Cu l bert- Ag u ila r

THE SPLENDOR OF MEXICO

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art where Pahuatlán amate cut-out figures were sold. The first public exhibit of painted amates opened on February 28, 1963 in Kerlow's Galería del Centro de Arte y Artesanía.

73

Although it included works on cloth, leather, paper and wood, the show was dominated by amate, which soon eclipsed all other media. Amate captured the public's imagination as no

VOICES of MEXICO • 38

ther material had. It produced an aura of authenticity by spontaneously evoking an association with the pre-Columbian past.

At first, narrative painting depicted daily life in Ameyaltepec. In late 1962, Pedro de Jesús, Pablo de Jesús and Cristino Flores painted together in Kerlow's store. Their works show that amate painting did not develop as often imagined: from the transfer of pottery motifs onto paper followed by the gradual evolution of narrative representation. The opposite is more the case: despite having learned to paint on ceramics, the artists quickly adapted themselves to the new medium's expressive potential. As a result, many

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early stylistic elements and formal designs were innovative. Neither human forms nor landscapes had been regularly employed on pottery. Their presence in the very earliest amates from 1962 suggests that even during this embryonic stage the Nahua artists began, however uncertainly, to introduce new elements into their work.

Amate paintings enjoyed immediate success in galleries, stores and directly with private buyers. The Misrachi Gallery, the José María Velasco Gallery (connected to the National Institute of Fine Arts) and a gallery run by Antonio Souza bought amates and held exhibits in the mid-1960s. Mary Price, sister of the late actor and art collector Vincent

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Family Painting, Pablo de Jesús (Ameyaltepec), 1962. Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA.

74

Price, lived near Kerlow's store in San Angel and was a major buyer during the very first months. By 1963, San Francisco-based Anthro Imports was purchasing a considerable number of amates from Kerlow; Las Palomas, a Mexico City folk art shop, was soon dealing directly with the painters.

An increasing number of Ameyaltepec painters shifted from pottery to amate. Severa' of them participated in the August 1963 exhibit held at the José María Velasco Gallery. That year, painters started buying amate directly from Pahuatlán merchants in Mexico City and making their own professional contacts. Other artists began to sell directly to the public.

THE SPLENDOR OF MEXICO

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Variation on Spring, Pablo Nicolás Parra (Xalitla), 1983. Betty Perkins de Warman Collection (Mexico City).

From 1964 to 1968, Ameyaltepec painters continued to explore new styles, forms and themes, as they had in 1962 and 1963. Moreover, they now shared ideas within a growing Nahua artistic community and received suggestions from an enthusiastic circle of patrons and promoters.

In the mid-1960s some artists used acrylics to imitare natural pigments.

However, bright colors soon dominated amate paintings and continued to do so until fine line drawings in India ink appeared in the mid-1970s. Several artists were unusually innovative.

Francisco García radically changed his style over time, especially between 1965 and 1975, when he frequendy visited

Mexico City and Cuernavaca. By the late 1970s, he started to develop "friezestyle" paintings: horizontal bands of elaborately detailed and somewhat repetitive scenes of village life. Pablo de Jesús painted a personal vision, not only in his playful erotic fantasy, but also in a searching autobiographical account of sin, repentance and suffering. De Jesús had killed a man who repeatedly tried to sneak into his house while he was away and his wife was asleep.

Amate surpassed industrial paper in beauty, strength and resilience. Moreover, amates captured the fancy of a national and international public by endowing the paintings with the aura of an authentic and ancient indigenous

art. Nevertheless, for several years artists continued to use bristol board. Part of the reason was a shortage of amate.

Pahuatlán was unable to increase production fast enough to keep up with the new demand, and a direct distribution network had not yet been set up (Pahuatlán merchants did not take large quantities of amate to the major painting villages until the late 1960s).

Because of this shortage, bristol board paintings continued to be sold in Mexico City, Cuernavaca and Acapulco through the mid-1960s. Artists occasionally reverted to industrial paper alter they had started painting on amate. Not surprisingly, bristol board painting exhibited stylistic develop,

of

MEXICO • 38

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see-through legs and the dominante of floral and animal designs; the use of a ground plane and narrative painting; and increasingly elaborate frames.

Neverdieless, the allure of amatewas overwhelming and once the supply problem was resolved, the distribution of painted amates expanded dramatically. By late 1967, the Ameyaltepec merchant Juan Celedonio was selling amates to stores along the United States border. He often took friends along and soon Nahua merchants were distributing amates throughout Mexico, from Tijuana on the border to Cancún on the Caribbean coast. By the late 1960s FONART, the Mexican govem-

ment agency for promoting handicrafts, had started buying thousands of amates and was exporting them all over the world. Buyers' tastes and expectations had become more stable. Hundreds of new painters met the increased demand and narrower consumer preferences with less imaginative and more standardized amates.

However, this was not always the case. At the same time that trade expanded, important changes were occurring in the formal composition of amates.

Increasingly elaborare floral and geometric frames began to decorate the perimeter of amates The problem of "floating" figures was solved by laying out a blanket of color and floweis upon which 76

human and animal figures were grounded. Still, disconected decorative flowers occasionally intruded into the narration. Perhaps the most challenging problem was spatial: how to integrate different scenes and activities into a single composition.

Other villages soon began to paint amates first Xalitla, then Oapan and finally, in the 1970s, Maxela. It is interesting that amate painting did not develop in the remaining Balsas River Nahua villages. A variety of factors influenced where amate painting spread beyond Ameyaltepec: intercommunity social and cultural contacts; alternatives to painting as an income source; and distance from potential markets.

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... and the apocalyptic end of the world, Eusebio Díaz Alejandro (Ameyaltepec), 1991 (Private Collection).

the background and frame in his still life on a flowered and checkered cloth do little to orient the images spatially.

A unique version of a standard crucifixion scene uses color to resolve problems of texture and perspective in a fascinating way. Lorenzo painted all three works alter he was released from a psychiatric hospital and before he lapsed back into the severe mental disorder that has afflicted him for most of the years since 1982. His anguish is most clearly expressed in the last painting. A shrouded figure carries a remembrance of traditional Nahua society: a Tulimán water jug from which Lorenzo's ubiquitous flowers spring.

Nicolás de Jesús, son of the pioneering painter Pablo de Jesús, learned etching and other graphic techniques from Felipe Ehrenberg. After a sojourn in the United States that took him to San Francisco and Los Angeles, De Jesús settled in Chicago where he joined an artists' collective and print workshop. He frequently travels between the United States and Mexico. Two drawings depict contrasting dimensions of his experience: a Nahua village in Guerrero and a inner-city barrio in Chicago.

Other artists from the Balsas River basin... responded with an equally powerful and political message

[when] their own region [was] threatened by a government development project.' Mi

2

In October 1990, the inhabitants of the Balsas River Basin founded the Nahua Peoples Council of the Upper Balsas to organize opposition to a hydroelectric dam planned for the atea. The project, which would have destroyed two doten communities and displaced 40,000 people, was canceled in 1993 because of insufficient funding. As a way of getting the protest movement's message across, several painters from Oapan, Ameyaltepec and Xalitla created amate paintings illustrating a text about the history of the Nahuas and their opposition to the dam. These paintings were used in an exhibition and the book upon which this anide is based.

VOICES

of

MExico â&#x20AC;˘ 38

HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION IN MĂ&#x2030;XICO AND LATIN AMERICA Lilian Alvarez de Testa*

n 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed a Universal Declaration of Human Rights as "a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, ...shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction." Education was thus established as the means to attaining a culture of respect and promotion of human rights.

The declaration emerged as a reaction to a context of widespread violation of human rights: two world wars and coundess regional conflicts had mangled human dignity and forestalled the development of individuals and communities. Crimes against humanity had to be identified, prevented and punished. To the question, "How can all this be brought about?" the answers were: a new balance of world power, education, development and international agreement on issues of human rights and peaceful resolution of conflicts. * Member of the Human Rights and Higher Education Seminar-uNAm. Note: The posters used to illustrate chis article were shown as part of the "Ten Years of Human Rights" exhibit, organized by the Mexican Academy of Human Rights.

World Conference on Human Rights, Vienna, Austria, 1993.

80

point of view of their theoretical basis, their relevance and their pedagogical treatment.

First, we must explain the specificity of Latin America, the nations that emerged under the domination of Spain, Portugal and France from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Regarding historical conditions, seminar participants pointed out: 1.The region has had a long and rich tradition of human rights defense and promoting proposals from the onset of the dramatic violation of diese rights that accompanied the Conquest and colonialization, both more than 500 years ago and in this century.

2. The history of systematic violation of human rights of indigenous populations has, nevertheless, gone largely unquestioned except at times of indigenous revolt.

k ia ID O S

Carried away by the enthusiasm born of the international support accorded to human rights at least formally and concerned mainly with the reconstruction of war-distorted economies, the members of the international community lost sight of the relevance of identifying sources of potential disagreement concerning human rights, even regarding those that seemed unquestionable or categorical, such as the right to life. In fact, the interpretation and applicability of the universal human rights established in the declaration depended upon the socio-political and cultural context of each nation.

During the decades alter the declaration, several regions of the world suffered the effects of severe curtailment or flagrant violation of human rights. One of these regions was Latin America, despite economic growth and generalized higher enrollment on all educational levels.

Today, with the regional trend toward strengthening democracy and renewed public interest in fostering human rights, the question of promoting them effectively arises again.

41111111^

ARE HUM.AN RIGHTS UNIVERSAL? Culturally, one of the salient characteristics of the late twentieth century is a heightened awareness of cultural relativism, which makes generalizations difficult to sustain.

At the same time, all nations are defending their cultural traits and autonomy as an integral part of their political autonomy. In the face of such relativism and cultural autonomy, developing and defending a "common standard of achievement" such as the Universal Dedaration of Human Rights is both a political and a cultural challenge.

To this end, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (0NEsco) has fostered regional dialogue concerning the worldwide adoption of a human rights culture that responds to local and regional cultural and socio-political concerns. In Mexico, the National Autonomous University of Mexico's Political Science Department and the Mexican Academy of Human Rights, a non-governmental organization, host and sponsor the "UNESCO Human Rights Chair." The first Regional Seminar took place in Mexico, October 9-11, 1996. I will try to briefly give an account of the main concerns voiced by those who addressed the question of human rights in Latin America from the

Forum on Non-Sexist Education, Mexico, 1991.

81

VOICES of MExico • 38

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Second Latin American Conference. Human Rights Training Strategies

China, 1995.

Aguascalientes, Mexico, 1994.

tional systems are slowly responding to this shift of perspective.

Second, with regard to the status of democratic culture and education, regional experts stressed: 1. Despite constant legislative efforts and the mushrooming of human rights defense organizations, there is a sizeable gap between theory and practice.

2. At all levels where power relations are involved, whether between the state and the individual or, for example, teacher and student, the prevailing culture is predominantly authoritarian.

3. The historical processes of strengthening the nation states has given rice to the pressing need to defend the human rights of individuals and constantly growing communities.

4. In recent decades, authoritarian regimes, backed by the military and foreign aid, crushed dissent, an organic component of democracy.

5. In the Latin America, "civil society" has become an option for public political activity, outside political parties and government agencies.

6. Gradually, most countries have come to describe themselves as multicultural and pluriethnic, and educa82

SOCIETY

3. Funding for higher education and other arenas of intellectual production and cultural renovation tends to drop.

4. Education is increasingly geared toward the individual's technical proficiency for productivity, leaving out the critical thinking and the capacity for teamwork (in and for the community) that humanities and social sciences foster.

PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS: A LATIN AMERICAN VIEW OF HUMAN RIGHTS

In the face of the theoretical problems of the foundation or philosophical justification of human rights, groups who work in the field have taken a pragmatic approach. Nevertheless, it is imperative to do the groundwork and construct the field of inquiry of human rights from a Latin American perspective. Neither Latin Americans nor any other group of people can give up our theoretical and utopia-defining capabilities. We must be able to join the concert of nations with our own voices, for ideals are not established once and for all, nor does any one country or group have the capacity or the right to speak for all.

From an educational point of view, Latin Americans, like everyone else, must Tree of Life, Greenpeace, Mexico, 1994. learn to reconcile local, regional and universal values, first among themselves, and then in their dealings with other individuals and communities. awareness of his or her individual rights and work toward fosOnly in this way will we be linked in our concern and aspiratering awareness of the community's feeling. Therefore, it must tions to both past and future generations; only in this way will include topics abolished by neoliberal thinking like identity, marginality and exclusion, and the social sciences must be we work effectively to solve community problems such as understood more as programs for action than as elitist systems water or land pollution and be able to deal with the constant threat of war. Thus, education can start with the individual's of communication among peers.

83

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i xf átigaciones sobre America del Norte. Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Memo. on contact: CISAN: Centro del I. Ci i v ell I ri a04510. Mexico. D.F. Tel. 623 0300; fax 550 0379; e-mail: latapi@servidor.unam.mx 1,Ciudad

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La política exterior norteamericana hacia Centroamérica: reflexiones y perspectivas La Administración Clinton

Bárbara Driscoll, Mónica Verea, (coordinators) 1995, 404 pp.

An analysis of the beginnings of the Clinton administration. A basic sourcebook to explain the transition to a Democratic admínistration an evaluate current political oven

LA ADESTRICIÓN BÁRBARA A. 13=0,11.,,,,,,M(5NICA VEREA

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Mónica Verea Campos y José Luís Barros Horcasitas, FLACSO, CISEUA-UNAM, Editorial Miguel Angel Porrúa, Serie: Las Ciencias Sociales, 1991, 442 pp.

This book contains various articles written

by North American and Central American specialists regarding the role of the United States in Centra

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Rosa Cusminsky Mogilner, Serie: Cuadernos de Trabajo, 1993, 139 Fears relating to the industrial de the United States are associated questions about the ability of to maintain its posi world leadership.

This book summa on whethe

LA POLITICA EXTERIOR

NORTEAMERICANA HACIA CENTROAMERICA REFLEXIONES Y PERSPECTIVAS

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COORDINADORES: MOMEA VERBA CAMPOS BARROS ilOSICASCIAS .....DESENDUSTRIALIZA V.8.1.1.5 1 .1 .

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Me voy pa' Pensilvania por no andar en la vagancia. Los ferrocarrileros mexicanos en Estados Unidos durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial CISAN/CONACULTA México, 1996, 278 pp.

Barbara Driscoll A look at the little known story of nonagricultural Mexican migrant workers in the United States under the Railroad Bracero Program instituted during the Second World War by both the Mexican and U.S. , governments.

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Dilemas estadounidenses en los noventa. Impactos sobre México

CISAN/UAS Facultad de Historia México, 1996, 155 pp.

Silvia Núñez and Ana Luz Ruelas (coordinators) Reflections on our inevitable integration offers the reader a more horizontal look at current U.S. problems and their impact on Mexico: among others, the crisis of the welfare state, antiimmigrant paranoia, the changeover from a war economy t onom

artistic expression to t e e ec s o social and political oppression they experience within "mainstream" Includes photographs of key sculptures and other works

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• MÉXICO • ESTADOS UNIDOS Energía

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Julián Castro Rea (coord.), 1995, 152 po.

Rafael Fernández de Castro, Mónica On November 4, 1993, Liberal Party leader Jean Chrétien took office as Canada's Verea Campos and Sydney Weintraub (eds.), 1993, 368 pp. twentieth prime minister. CISAN asked This book examines possible effects on the seven academic and journalistic specialists labor force of the countries involved in from Canada's key provinces of British NAFTA, particularly in such industrial sectors Columbia, Ontario and Quebec to analyze as autos and textile as well as in agriculture the changes expected from the new Liberal and the maquiladorás. Some of NAFTA's government. This publication is one of the few works in Spanish on Canadian politics legal implications are also reviewed. and repercussiops for Mexico.

Un estudio comparativo sobra: desarrollo de México y Canads después de la Segunda Guer Mundial (1945-1994) ,

Thomas Legier,1995, 80 pp (42 pp. in Spanish and 38 pp A comparison of postwar Me‹ and Canadian economic an-; in the international context

SOCIETY

DRUG TRAFFICKING Mexican Negotiation Strategies i

María Celia Toro*

1

n 1978, Albert Hirschman boasted of being the "founding grandfather" of dependency theory, and at the same time, lamented having made such an analytical error in his youth. His main criticism was that this theory was based on the premise that the dependent country had no "margin for maneuver" and that, in the pessimistic world of the dependant supporters, the possibility of falling back on any other strategy in order to gain a certain "degree of autonomy" was not possible. 2 For Hirschman, the very structure of dependency offered a

* Researcher at the Center for International Studies, Mexico College.

I Futsr OF Two PARTS. Based on a chapter of the book by flan Bizberg (ed.), La Política Exterior de México en el Nuevo Sistema Internacional, Mexico College, Mexico City, forthcoming.

This artide was translated by Marcia Perskie.

2 Albert 0. Hirschman, "Beyond Asymmetry: Critical Notes on Myself as a Young Man and on Some Other Old Friends," in Nacional Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade, Studies in International Political Economy, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1945, expanded edition 1980, pp. vi-xii.

possibility for the dependent country to concentrare all its attention and energy on freeing itself from domination, a strategy which could only work if the more powerful, dominant country, as one could foresee, permitted itself the luxury of ignoring its dependents.

At almost the same time, the supporters of the interdependence theory contended that if growing economic interaction hopelessly affected international policy and states' behavior, the dependent countries could creare rules and institutions (international regimes) to modify the "patterns of interdependence" to their own advantage. 3 This could give weaker countries an opportunity to influence international policy, an influence that would be otherwise wielded by the more powerful countries. In the world of so-called "complex interdependence," the small-

est countries could promote their interesas only if they could take advantage of the growing cost to superpowers of using military force to maintain order.

They could urili7e "the arena of political action," through appropriate strategies, to gain the support of intemational organizations, multinacional alances, etc. 4 Hirschman, as well as Keohane and Nye, all agreed that a country deprived of power could, with an appropriate negotiation strategy, compensare for its weakness, because domination cannot be absolute, and the weak should not accept ir as such. Nevertheless, the call for a research program dedicated to scrutinizing the advantages of adversity, or if you will, explaining such behavior —and that would not automatically condemn the many countries in a situation of unimpeded vulnerabiliry to obedience— has been almost ignored.

The powerful theory of political realism, which continues to dominare

3 Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power

and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition, Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1977, p. 5.

87

4

Ibid., p. 37.

VOICES

of MExico

• 38

The fight against drug trafficking must oppose both consumption and distribution in all countries.

the study of international relations, could have contributed partly to this forgetfulness, to this contempt for the study of foreign policies of countries with little power, 5 especially since we are talking about a theory that does not require the researcher to explain the behavior of countries which are not, at least, medium-size powers.

In this paper, I begin with the premise that, when it comes to dealing with drug trafficking, the Mexican government would benefit greatly if the drug trade were regulated differently and if this control, whatever it may be, could be carried out independently.

5

Mario Ojeda's book on the reaches and limirs of Mexican foreign policy is, without a doubt, a pioneer in its delire to establish margins of maneuvering for a country like Mexico to use in its relationships with others, especially with the United States. Mario Ojeda, Alcances y límites de la política exterior de México, Mexico College, 1976.

I will attempt to analyze four negotiation strategies that the Mexican government has worked out to confront a situation of almost extreme vulnerability that stems from the prohibition or "over penalization" of activities related to drug trade, and from U.S. policies devised to enforce this prohibition. What has the Mexican government done to deal with this problem? What strategies have they fallen back on to diminish their vulnerability vis-á-vis the United States and to promote their own nacional interests?

A PUBLIC HEALTH PROBLEM MEXICO DOES NOT SHARE

Denying that Mexico had a consumption problem was, perhaps, Mexican diplomacy's first response to the 88

petitions of its northern neighbor that it ban the expon of opium and thus contribute to ending the consumption that the "civilized countries," to a great extent pressured by the United States, had decided to prohibit.6 Mexico's intention at the beginning of the century, when the U.S. banned the manufacture and trade of opium, heroin and cocaine in its territory to end consumption, was to exclude itself from the list of countries concerned about drug use because it was the one first called upon to participate in the U.S. international crusade. The discourse of Mexican diplomats revolved around their search for a way to escape U.S. scrutiny and refuse to ban the drug trade, which until then was legal in Mexico.

6

An enormous amount of literature documents the history of U.S. efforts to create what Ethan Nadelmann calls an international regime of drug prohibition. To cite only a few exarnples: Arnold H. Taylor, American Diplommy and the Narcotics Traffic, 1900-1939: A Study in International Humanitarian Reform, Durham, NC,

Duke University Press, 1969. An interesting official version of drug diplomacy is that of the U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, "The Role of the Department of State in International Narcotics Control, 1840-1961," Research Project N. 1256-B, December 1981.

A more recent version and an original interpretation is that of Ethan A. Nadelmann, "Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in International Society," in International Organization, 44:4, Autumn 1990.

SOCIETY

The idea was not a bad one, and it could work without problems as long as the list of countries which had to assume responsibility for reducing the import and export of these drugs did not grow by including countries involved in production and transit, whether they consumed these drugs or not, or if the governments showed concern over this type of consumption.

Even without statistics, which could actually prove that Mexicans did not buy the kind of drugs they wanted to ban, the Mexican government could have refused to participate in the international conventions in favor of prohibition, as did other even weaker countries, such as Peru and Bolivia.?

But the government of Mexico did participate, or at least signed the first international convention against opium, invalidating its strategy of not accepting the problem as its own.

This contradictory behavior can be explained: before the ban, opium entered through California easily, but after the ban it began to come in through Mexico by way of Baja California, where the governor decided to organize its export since it had suddenly become big business after

7

The Peruvian and Bolivian governments argued that, at that time, banning the use of coca leaves would have been impossible because they were used for ancient, sacred ritual ceremonies. In fact, the planting of the coca bush is still legal in some regions of Bolivia today. See the history of U.S. diplomacy concerning drugs in the first decades of the twentieth century written by William O. Walker III, Drug Control in the Americas, revised edition, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1989.

Prohibition. 8 The U.S. police, with or without Mexican authorities' consent,9 frequently crossed the border looking for criminals, including drug traffickers.

That is why the first trade that Mexico banned was the import of opium as stipulated in the first international conventions. It had nothing to do with smoking opium, but with the consequences that the ban on the sale of opium in the United States had for Mexico. Carranza declared the import of opium illegal in an effort to stop the triangulation of the drug trade through Mexico, as well as to prevent the unauthorized entrance of U.S. police into Mexican territory.

From the very beginning, the problem is described as a displacement to Mexican territory of a trade which, at the moment of prohibition in the United States, had to seek new routes and as a problem of national jurisdictions arising from the so-cniled "hot pursuit" strategy which the U.S. police use on occasion. This explains why Mexico was the first country in Latin America to adopt a policy against the drug trade, despite the fact that her leaders declared in international forums throughout the world that the consumption of drugs was practically non-existent in MexJoseph Richard Werne, "Esteban CantĂş y la soberanĂ­a mexicana en Baja California," in Historia Mexicana, 30:1, July-September 1980; William O. Walker III, Drug Control in the Americas, revised edition, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1989, pp. 35-36.

9 Ethan A. Nadelmann, Cops Across Borders: The Internationalization of U.S. Criminal Law Enfircement, The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Pennsylvania, 1993.

ico. The original strategy of denying that Mexico was a drug consuming country, in order to avoid scrutiny, continued for many decades. 1° This argument was frequently made during bilateral negotiations, at least until the 1970s, when the Mexican government agreed to participate in a program of American international aid for the control and investigat'ion of drugs, proposing it be carried out to determine the prevalence of drug use in Mexico, instead of launching a campaign, as the Americans proposed, for eradication of marijuana and amapola crops, which by then had become common throughout most of Mexico.

For many decades, the subtle argument that there was no need to fight against drug addiction in Mexico implied that U. S. drug consumption was the central issue in these debates.

The subtlety was discarded around the middle of the 1970s, to bluntly accuse Mexico's northern neighbors of the responsibility for drug trafficking in Mexico and other countries.

The dilemma of sustaining an argument which explained the master as a public health problem unrelated to Mexico, is not only that it completely ignores that the prohibition policy itself and its consequences for Mexico are at the bottom of the issue. In addition, Mexico had to

8

89

10

Many years after the first antinarcotics program was put into effect in Mexico, the Mexican representative to the Conference on Limiting Narcotics Production, held in Geneva in 1932, solemnly declared that the problem of drug production, export and consumption was non-existent in Mexico. See William O. Walker, III, op.cit., p. 70.

of

MExICO â&#x20AC;˘ 38

Photo: Foreign Affa irs Min istry

VOICES

only the Americana', and that the poligr was designed to influence the behavior of users, real or potential, national or foreign, evading the real problem that illicit drug production and trade represents for Mexico.

A POLICY OF COOPERATION WITH THE UNITED STATES

ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA Cooperation with the United States has been crucial in the war against drugs.

explain its antidrug campaigns in terms which were very difficult to justify to the Mexican public, who believed that Mexico's interest in wanting to contribute to a reduction in U.S. drug consumption had nothing to do with them. As a result, the Mexican policy put forth in 1986-1987 was in "solidarity with other nations" (it actually went as far as to stress that no other country had done as much for American youth as Mexico had). Nevertheless, the argument could no longer be sustained, in light of the fact that the cost of such solidarity heavily outweighed the benefits, if any, in the realm of foreign policy and international prestige.

By refusing to explain its interests, the Mexican government gave credence to the interpretation in the Mexican press, supported by numerous Mexican and U.S. academice, that what

Mexico had done to combat drug trafficking stemmed from government's inabil- ity ro resist U.S. pressure. Mexican diplomacy breathed life into this interpretation by promoting the antidrug policy as an investment which ought to combat the consumption of marijuana, cocaine and heroin. But where? In Mexico or the United States?

The difficulty persisted even alter the president of Mexico [Miguel de la Madrid] declared in 1987 that drug trafficking was also a public health problem (whatever that means) in Mexico, apart from being, obviously, a threat to Mexican interna' and national security.

Therefore, throughout the second half of the 1980s, or even worse, in the 1990s, it became impossible to maintain the argument that drug trafficking was not Mexico's problem, but 90

As of 1988, a very obvious change in the defensive strategy vis-ĂĄ-vis the United States took place. Cooperation and an aggressive policy against participants in the illegal trade was presented to the outside world.

The reasons the Mexican government had for putting greater effort into the fight against drug trafficking in the 1980s were mainly interna'. It had to deal with a sudden increase in drug trafficking in Mexico, but also because of important foreign policy questions, such as the need to maintain autonomy in implementing the Mexican campaigns against drugs. That's why the Salinas government incorporated its drug policy into a general strategy on foreign policy based on the idea of cooperation with the United States.

If excluding the Mexican policy on drug trafficking from the agenda of bilateral negotiations was impossible, the idea of moving it from the list of conflicts to the items under cooperation was not easy either. 11

There was an important precedent, for this: the campaigns against drug trafficking and use in the mid-1970s were interpreted in both countries as a bilateral "example of cooperation."

-

The idea of cooperation was based analytically on the copious literature about relations between Mexico and the United States which appeared around 1985-1986. 12 This was characterized by an almost universal adherence to the theory of interdependence and by a sense of urgency which sought, very much á la Americana, policies to prevent a deterioration of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The interdependence theory was not very different from the U.S. discourse of repeating, over and over, that the United States government could not unilaterally reduce the planting of drug crops in other countries or prevent their export; in addition, it certainly could not stop the illegal importation of drugs into its territory without the help of countries where they were produced and exported.

For interdependence theory adherente, international cooperation was the only way to deal with drug trafficking, a perverse economic phenomenon that no country could deal with on its own, and, it was assumed, everyone was interested in repressing. The interaction of narcotics supply and demand constituted undeniable proof of the interdependence of national markets, a fact that translated into greater coordination of programs in the fight against drugs. Interdependence explained the Mexican policy as a necessary collaboration with its northern neighbor and, by contributing in this way to solving

12

Stephen P Munne, "Policy and Prescription in U.S.-Mexico Relations," Latin American Research Review, XXV:3, 1990.

SOC1ETY

a problem of such interest to the Americans, it could pave the way for other negotiations "of greater importance" between the two countries.

Moreover, underlying the I policy of collaboration with the Americans was not only this theory, but also the negotiations to set up the North American Free Trade Agreement. Drug trafficking —as Reynolds and Wager thought at the time— could have been the greatest stumbling block in the formalization of economic relations between Mexico and the United States: "a more aggressive Mexican antidrug policy was rapidly becoming a sine qua non for any fiiture agreement with Mexico." 13 The Mexican government has made an important investment in In this way, the Mexican the war against drug trafficking. government accepted and promoted the idea of cooperation, exchange, the U.S. government had to although as always it insisted on the make a commitment to a similar effort on its part to diminish the use of drugs need to be more equitable: the Mexican government was willing to invest most in the United States. of its Attorney Generan Office budget Whatever the reasons for a bilateral and enormous military resources in the policy of more cooperation, the supporfight against drug trafficking, but, in ters of this strategy —academics and politicians— were obligated to explain why, despite Mexican cooperation 13 Clark W Reynolds and Stephen J. Wager, "Integración económica de México y Estados efforts, bilateral conflicts were becomUnidos. Implicaciones para la seguridad de ing more intense and frequent, and the ambos países," in Sergio Aguayo Quezada and effects of drug trafficking in Mexico, Bruce Michael Bagley, comps., En busca de la seguridad perdida: aproximaciones a la segurimore and more obvious. Once again they dad nacional mexicana, Siglo XXI, Mexico argued that the use of drugs in the UnitCity, 1990, p. 224. See also Riordan Roett, ed States was the variable which ex"Mexico and the United States: Managing the Relationship," in the book edited by the same plained the increase in drug production author, Mexico and the United States: and export, as well as Mexico's inability Managing the Relationship, Boulder, Westview to do away with the illegal drug market.

Press, 1988, p. 13.

91

voicEs of MExico â&#x20AC;˘ 38

-

The old belief (which the interdependence theory made extremely popular again in the 1980s) that if the Americans could reduce their drug consumption, it would put an end to drug trafficking, has the advantage, as an argument, of appearing to be true, of being sympathetic to the weaker country. Most of all, however, the Americans could accept it easily. But this widespread idea, which definitely accepted the division of labor, carne up against an uncomfortable piece of evidente: in the second half of the 1980s drug consumption in the United States dropped 45 percent, as the number of regular users dropped from approximately 23 million in 1985 to about 13 million in 1990. 14 Marijuana consumption reached its highest level at the end of the 1970s and gradually diminished during the 1980s.' 5 The relatively small number of heroin addicts did not vary significantly in the last 20 years, and, even the use of cocaine, which caused such concern in the United States in the mid-1980s, began to decline toward the end of the decade.' 6 The number of users declined exactly during the years in which both drug trafficking in Mexico and bilateral conflicts intensified.

Peter H. Smith, "The Political Economy of Drugs: Conceptual Issues and Policy Options," in Peter H. Smith (ed.), Drug Control in the Americas, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1992, p. 3.

15 Blanken, "Changing Patterns of Drug Abuse in the United States," in Guadalupe GonzĂĄlez and Marta Tienda (eds.), The Drug Connection in U.S. Mexican Relations, Bilateral Commission on the Future of United States-Mexican Relations, UCSD, San Diego, 1989, p. 23.

16 The real increase in the prevalence of cocaine use ocurred in the 1970s, although "crack" consumption in the 1980s led to an alarming increase in the number of medical emergencias and deaths from cocaine abuse (Blanken, op. cit.).

14

We are confronting an illegal market which no government can eliminate by simply prohibiting it.

Unfortunately, we are not confronting consumption (which undoubtedly, we would like to see eradicated), but an illegal market which no govemment can eliminate by simply prohibiting it.

We are quite aware of the fact that crirninali7ntion of this enormous market, which leads to higher drug prices, also definitely leads to more, not less, drug trafficking. The political consequences of this are already immeasurable.

In addition, we cannot expect the Mexican govemment to contribute to raising drug prices in the United States; its ability to do so is small, when compared with the possibilities that the Americans have of controlling their impon prices and, consequently, the final price to the consumer. Drugs destroyed or confiscated in Mexico do not change the price for the American user, which is really the immediate objective of the U.S. policy and its demands on countries involved in production, expon and transit.

In light of the fact that substantive cooperation is impossible, it could be argued that the benefits, pointed out by interdependence literature, ought to be

More recent figures show the same tendency in Peter Reuter, "The Export Demand for latin American Drugs," a lecture presented at the seminar Development Strategy After Neoliberal Economic Restructuring in latin America, NorthSouth Center, UnWersity of Miami, March 24 and 25, 1995, mimen.

92

measured in terms of the bilateral relationship as a whole. When analyzing the problem from this point of view, the Mexican interest in combating drug trafficking is reduced to a simple matter of not wanting to negatively affect other negotiations with its powerful neighbor. It is difficult to negate this hypothesis, but what we do know is that the Mexican government has succeeded in concluding such negotiations as the NAFTA, at a time when 60 percent of the cocaine entering the U.S. market travels through Mexico.

In the case of drug trafficking, embarking on cooperation ends up by reducing the Mexican margin for maneuver since the government takes on a commitment to fight against illegal drug trade efficiently, and it cannot be done. It is then practically impossible for the Mexican government to refuse any program that the Americans might propose, including the joint persecution of criminals by both countries, which traditionally, and with good reason, has been rejected before.

Finally, the Mexican cooperation policy was launched at precisely the moment when the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) decided to renounce its traditional guidelines within this so-called collaboration effort between the two countries, and work, whenever possible, on its own. Vs:

Jesús Reyes Heroles*

S

will be useful to review the main aspects and orientations of that strategy: 1.The first step is to acknowledge the great potential of Mexican petrochemicals due to the relatively high level of liquid gas linked to Mexican oil and its high ethane levels.

2. Consequently, the cornerstone of the strategy is the following premise: increased investment, mainly from the priPhotos: Petróleo y Electricidadmag az ine

oon after the federal government announced its new strategy for the petrochemical industry on October 23, Congress approved by 277 votes (almost a two-thirds majority) the bill that President Ernesto Zedillo submitted to change the Petrochemical Law. Only the first step in the new strategy, this new legislation is of utmost importance and was passed only 10 days after being announced. We are convinced that the Senate will soon approve the bill, turning it into law.

From then on, the Mexican petrochemical industry will have a fair, clear legal framework, which will not only spur the growth of the 49 percent share of the publically owned petrochemical plants now for sale, but, more importantly, will aid in the development of new projects.

Business in every sector, large and small, especially those linked to petrochemicals, business organizations, particularly the National Association of the Chemical Industry (ANIQ), and potential investors have been encouraging. The support for this strategy in general, and in particular for the modifications of the Petrochemical Law, is very stimulating for us.

Allow me to situate the important step taken October 23 in the perspective of the federal government's general strategy for the petrochemical industry. To do so, it * Minister of Energy of Mexico.

Photos for this article are courtesy of Petróleo y Electricidad magazine.

Remarks during the Inaugurational Session of the xxvw National Chemical Industry Forum, in Mexico City, October 24, 1996.

Government's goal in petrochemicals is to increase total investment for the fastest possible growth.

93

XKOMO DH

Mexico's New Petrochemicals Strategy'

■■■

VOICES

of MExico • 38

vate sector, is required to develop petrochemicals and there-

• A clear and stable regulatory framework.

• Equal conditions for competition between private and

fore, all measures should be directed toward that objective.

The goal is to increase total investment, both public and pri-

public companies. As I will later explain, this requires trans-

vate, foreign and domestic, to expand the sector as rapidly as

parency in commercial and financial relations between public and privare concerns. To achieve this, PEmoc-Petrochemicals must be divided finto different concerns.

possible. It must be remembered that since the 1992 announcement of the privatization of PEMEX-Petrochemicals' assets, unfortunately there has been hardly any investment in

• Guaranteed input supply. This implies: a) guarantees of

key petrochemical activities. The public sector has not made any because it has been promoting divestiture. The private sector has not invested either, because it has been waiting for

sufficient and prompt delivery; and b) competitive prices.

• Possibilities for productive linkages (coordination) among companies in integrated chains.

this process to take place, to first participare in the divestiture, and then develop additional projects.

4. To maximize investment in petrochemicals, the new strategy opens two doors for private investment: • 100 percent private investment in "new" petrochemical

3. The new strategy recognizes that to attract new private investment, it is necessary to have: • Legal certainty, clearly defining those activities restricted

plants, with absolute legal certainty and appropriate conditions for competition. Current legislation puts no

to the public sector and those open to the private sector.

limits on foreign participation in this kind of investment.

• Up to 49 percent private investment in companies with a majority of public capital. Currently, ways to apply NAFTA are being analyzed (NAFTA limits the inicial sale of a 49 percent interest in companies which produce 13 specific products to companies with a majority of Mexican capital).

5. In this framework, the following basic actions of the strategy can be implemented:

• Modification of the Petrochemical Law. The first step was taken October 23. It is clear that PEMEX is not being privatized, that it is not opening the possibility for "risk-contracts" and that Anides 27 and 28 of the Constitution continue in effect.

• Modification of administrative regulations, like: a)rescind the Petrochemical Regulation to eliminare all permit requirements regarding basic petrochemicals; and b) change the Oil Regulation to adapt the supervisory mechanisms for basic petrochemicals.

These actions are obviously presidential prerogatives, once the Petrochemical Law is enacted by Congress.

• Creation of new majority state-owned petrochemical corporations with PEmEx-Petrochemicals' assets, with two main objectives: a) to creare conditions for fair competition between public and private enterprises, as referred to in the third item of the new strategy; and b) use the resources

For petrochemicals to grow, there must be equitable conditions for competition between the private and public sectors.

94

ECONOMY

petrochemical companies by early 1997. This implies the separation of PEmEx-Petrochemicals' present activities, not the placement of 49 percent of the shares.

Two factors will make this possible so quickly: the appraisals are ready, as a result of the previous divestiture process (the book value of Paux-Petrochemicals' net assets was 18.029 billion pesos by July 31, 1996 [approximately 2.24 billion dollars]); additionally, organizational and legal documentation had already been prepared to support the previous process.

• The first placements of 49 percent of the shares of the new public petrochemical companies will be made in the second quarter of 1997 with the goal of conduding the first operation by mid-1997. The resources obtained will be used to finance urgent investments to eliminate bottlenecks.

• The last measures that should be mentioned are those aimed at immediately promoting private investment

Privatization will permit a 100% investment of foreign capital in new plants and 49% in petrochemical companies now owned by the State.

in new non-basic petrochemical plants.

obtained from the privatization of 49 percent of currently state-owned pettochemical Aliares for urgent invest-

6. Having enumerated the main actions, it is worthwhile

ments to eliminate bottlenecks and keep the plants tech-

to review the reasons for changing the Petrochemical Law: • To specify exclusive state activities in the oil industry,

nologically up-to-date.

especially in basic petrochemicals.

• To grant total legal certainty to the social and private sectors that will participate in non-basic petro-

Setting up these affiliates as private companies will have other positive effects: • They will have more autonomous managerial capacity

chemicals.

than PEmEx-Petrochemicals.

• They will be subject to the same tax laws as compet-

• To stress the principies of the Nation's property rights and direct domain, as well as the state's exclusive right to exploit these resources according to Artide 27

ing private enterprises.

• They will pay normal property taxes.

of the Constitution; and to conciliate these principies

• With total respect for workers rights, the collective bargaining agreements of each affiliate, negotiated by the Oil Workers Union (sTPRM), will ensure excellent labor relations. Simultaneously, the legal procedures

with the protection of private economic activity under the principie of state rectorship established in Article 25 of the Constitution and the definition of

for "employer-substitution'' will apply. These actions concern mainly the Ministry of Energy, with the support of PEMEX, STPRM, business

The cornerstone of the strategy is the following premise: increased investment,

organizations and interested investors, among others.

• The initiation of operations of the new public sector

mainly from the private sector, is required to develop petrochemicals.

95

VOICES of MEXICO • 38

chemicals, mentioned in Article 25 and 28 Mexico is the only country in the world of the Constitution.

• It allows for development planning as well as that requires separate classifications for the achievement of the state's commitment to foster and legally protect private investbasic and non-basic petrochemicals. ment in a more active participation in the development of the non-basic petrochemical industry. strategic areas mentioned in Article 28 of the ConsBasic petrochemicals are specified by law, accordtitution. ing to Article 28 of the Constitution. Previously • To establish a legal and regulatory framework that they had been established only by administrative will facilitate reaching the basic objective of fostering resolution. the Mexican petrochemical industry and increasing private investment. would like to close by saying: The federal government has launched a new strategy for the development of the petrochemical sector.

In this new strategy, divestiture is only one element.

Many questions remain pending; we will have to analyze and solee them together. Perhaps the most important part of the new strategy is precisely that: it is susceptible to change.

The federal government reviewed its objectives and continues to emphasize the main one: fostering the Mexican petrochemical sector.

The federal government has complied with the president's basic directive and will continue to do so: to act with transparency and in absolute accordance with the law.

Society and government debated the subject for months in one of the most open and democratic processes that we can remember.

The legislative branch claimed its prerogative of legally defining basic petrochemicals.

7. Mexico is the only country in the world that requires separate classifications for basic and non-basic petrochemicals. This is a result not necessarily of technical criteria but of the institutional framework established in our Constitution that reserves certain activities to the state.

Therefore, the corresponding classification combines economic policy, industrial strategy and technical criteria. The activities in basic petrochemicals exclusively reserved for the state are those which produce hydrocarbons and fulfill the following criteria: • They are the result of a first industrial transformation process; • They are the starting point of other petrochemical chains; • They are produced in important volumes by PEMEX and its subsidiaries, as an inherent part of their oilrelated activities; • Therefore, they are strategic raw materials for the development of the petrochemical industry as a whole; • The basic petrochemicals proposed are hydrocarbons, but to serve as raw materials for petrochemical chains, according to the law, they must first be subject to industrial transformation.

Now we all have to work together rapidly to do what had been postponed and to unlock the great potential of the Mexican petrochemical sector. This is the goal that President Ernesto Zedillo set.

There are steps and stages that must be accomplished.

We cannot and will not skip them. We will advance in an orderly fashion, according to the law and with total transparency.

The proposed classification, approved by Congress October 23, has other essential implications: • It grants specific and precise content to the constitutional principie of state rectorship regarding petro96

ECONOMY

PRIVATE PARTICIPATION IN MEXICO'S NATURAL GAS INDUSTRY Víctor Rodríguez Padilla* Rosío Vargas**

The law was changed in May 1995

T

here has been much speculation about Mexico's future participation in the North American natural gas market.

Numerous studies take for granted that Mexico will continue being a net importer at least throughout the next decade. 1 President Ernesto Zedillo made several decisions in 1995, however, that seem to question the consensus in entreprenurial, financial and academic circles. First, Petróleos Mexicanos (PEmEx) is allotting more resources to gas production and one of its priorities is to develop dry gas reserves. Second, legal and regulatory changes have been made to create a real market and open up all the links of the natural gas chain to private investment, except for exploration and production, which will remain in government hands.

Before focusing on the last two years (1995-1996), let us look at some of the main characteristics of the previous period. From 1988 to 1994, the government decided to make a transition to natural gas because of its environmental advantages, the existente of new technologies, the great potential consumption and the proximity of

to allow private ownership in natural gas transport, storage and distribution. foreign supply sources at competitive prices. The possibility of large-scale imports accelerated consumption.

The transition was slow because the government did not allocate enough funding to PEMEX or effect structural reforms at the regulatory level and in asset ownership.

The 1994-1995 financial and economic crisis brought the natural gas industry out of an impasse. There was great pressure from abroad to extend privatization to strategic sectors.

Oil and natural gas were among the main commitments of administration. Already existing plans to open up the natural gas industry were brought up again.

The Regulatory Law for Constitutional Anide 27 Regardin g the Oil Sector was changed in May 1995 to allow private ownership in natural gas transport, storage and distribution. A decree was also issued to establish a shared market between PEMEX and private companies. Six months later, a regulatory institution was set up, together with regulatory instrumenta. Freedom to impon and export was established to facilitate competition in a single-producer market.

* Professor at the UNAM Graduate Division of Engineering. ** Researcher at cisAN-uNAm. 1

M. Foss, et al., "The Economics of Natural Gas in Mexico Revisited," in The Energy Journal, No. 14 (3), 1993, pp. 17-49.

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EXISTING NATURAL GAS INDUSTRY STRUCTURE SUPPLY

TRANSPORTATION

DISTRIBUTION Private LDC'S

DEMAND 000 o o o 00000 o oo 0+o 0

•

Val

Oil and Gas Wells

State Owned LDC'S

PEMEX

000

oo o

Small Users • Industri 1 • Commercial • Residential

Competition from other fuels

8 20000)0000 ►

Large Users

Transportation activities Processing plants

—

• CrE • PEMEX-Perrnchemicals • Industry

PEMEX

_ Exports Supply Transportation 000000000 ► Distribution -

Imports

Source:

PEMEX

PEMEX

Gas and Basic Petrochemicals

As of mid-1995, the situation was the following: greater natural gas consumption was not affecting the crude oil expon platform; Mexico's gas fields were developing quickly; privare capital was being allowed to participate; and functions were being reassigned (PEMEX was in charge of downstream activities and privare capital of upstream activities).

The government decided to increase production by intensifying exploitation of oil wells with high gas content in the Southeast. It also started developing gas fields in Mexico's Northeast, close to important consumption centers and in direct competition with Texan oil wells. 2 This was to prevent hard currency flight with the massive entrance of imports, foreseeable because of the potential demand and the indexing of natural gas prices to international prices.

2

Activities reserved to

The strategic lines of action are as follows: 1) to concentrate PEMEX'S attention and resources on basic activities; 2) to vigorously develop Mexico's gas fields; 3) to become efficient and competitive; 4) to allow and foster the privare sector participation; 5) to promote dynamic complementation of the public and privare sectors. PEMEX is in charge of developing the strategic activities of gas exploration, exploitation and processing, whereas the privare sector is responsible for the secondary activities: transpon, storage and distribution. 3 This new strategy gives rise to difficult questions, and its viability depends on each participant's making the investment expected of it. This assumes that two conditions will be met: 1) that PEMEX will have the financial resources to maintain the crude oil production platform and to develop dry gas reserves; and 2) that privare capital will consider the rules clear, profitability sufficient and the political risks acceptable, and that legal guarantees will be in place.

At present, PEMEX is designing a proposal to fully develop Burgos Creek, located between Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros along the U.S. border, the proven reserves of which are estimated at dose to 4.6 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) and the unproven reserves estimated at 6 Tcf.

3

98

Ernesto Zedillo, "Iniciativa de Decreto que Reforma y Adiciona Diversas Disposiciones de la Ley Reglamentaria del Artículo 27 Constitucional en el Ramo del Petróleo," Cámara de Diputados, Mexico City, May 1995.

ECONOMY

NATURAL GAS INDUSTRY LONG TERM VISION DISTRIBUTION

TRANSPORTATION

DEMAND

r-

"".

Small Users

-1\1,

•

• Industrial • Commercial

PEMEX GAS

• Residential

Competition from other fuels

• CFE • PEMEX-Parochemicals • Industry

Trading

Imports

DESCRIPTION Supply Transportation Trading

* LDC: Local Distribution Companies.

Source: Energy Regulatory Commission.

Non-associated gas fields are fields that yield exclusively natural gas and

5

not oil. [Editor's Note.]

Announced by Ignacio Pichardo Pagaza, then Energy Minister, during the Round Table on Energy Developments in Mexico, Mexico City,

Storage Distribution

Activities reserved to Pemex

duce a modest surplus for export. He foresees that as of 1998, once the new environmental regulations are enforced, imports will be needed temporarily until Mexico can expand its own production. 6 Various official communiqués have also played with the idea of turning PEMEX into a net natural gas exporter in the next five years. 7 What could the private sector role in this strategy be? In the 1993-2010 period, duct construction will require between U.S.$2.2 billion and U.S.$4.2 billion (at 1992 rates) which must come from the private sector. Severa!

It is impossible to know for sure how PEMEX will únanse the development of non-associated gas fields. 4 Since the Finance Ministry tends to constrain financial operations for macroeconomic reasons, it is feasible that PEMEX will face more or less important difficulties in obtaining the resources it requires. However, the government has not closed all doors. Top energy officials have pointed out that the private sector will soon be invited to participate in natural gas development and production megaprojects in key areas such as Cuenca de Burgos or Sonda de Campeche under a service contract. 5 The official argument to propose this contract form is that there is no geological risk and that the Constitution prohibits concessions and risk contracts.

Regarding the predictable increase in domestic supply in 1995-1996, PEMEX Director Adrián Lajous has said that PEMEX may have balanced exports and imports or even pro4

00000000000.-

According to Pemex Gas and Basic Petrochemicals' most recent forecasts, imports are to increase, from 126 million cubic feet daily (Mmcfd) in 1994 to a maximum leve! of 713 Mmcfd in 1998; they will later decrease until they reach 641 Mmcfd in the year 2000 and 531 Mmcfd in the year 2005. If this happens, imports will go from 5.4 percent of domestic consumption in 1994 to 19.7 percent in 1998, finally dropping to 11.6 percent in the year 2005. See J.J. Bravo, "The Evolving Market for Natural Gas in Mexico," a paper presented at the Round Table on Energy Developments in Mexico, Mexico City, November 29, 1995.

7 See the Energy Regulatory Commission (Cae.) report, "La regulación de gas natural en México," 1995, CRE, Mexico City, November 1995.

6

November 29, 1995.

)'1

VOICES

of MEXICO • 38

November 1997, with open arr^s to the pipeline network to all usen (both for imponed and domestic gas supplies). the private sector will soon be invited 3. In Mexicali, Baja California, on the U.S.-Mexico border, a binational group to participate in natural gas development led by Southern California Gas Co. and San Diego Gas & Electric won a 12-year and production megaprojects in key areas. concession to distribute natural gas in the area.

In addition to Mexicali and Chihuaconstraints and obstarles must be eliminated in the instihua, which will soon come up for bidding, the Energy tucional, regulatory, entrepreneurial and legal frameworks Ministry defined natural gas distribution zones where to guarantee the strategy's success. privare investors will be invited to participate. These One of the most important challenges for the Energy zones are northwest Baja California (Tijuana, Rosarito, Regulatory Commission (cRE) is related to PEM&S "direct Ensenada, Tecate); Hermosillo; La Laguna (Torreón, Gósales" of natural gas and its efforts to operate existing and mez Palacio, Lerdo); Tampico-Madero-Altamira; the Bajío new transportation, storage and distribution facilities. It area (León, Salamanca, Celaya, Irapuato); Mexico City could be difficult for regulators to calculare a price that (the Federal District and surrounding areas); Pachuca, Towould ostensibly be the same as the price established in a luca, Cuernavaca and Querétaro-San Juan del Río. Politcompetitive market. Another concern is the fact that PEMEX, ical will is now particularly necessary for PEMEX to stick as Mexico's only existing oil transponer, could be in a position to the new ground rules and for private capital to set to completely comer distribution. "Moreover, because of itself up and grow. Nevertheless, there is good reason to PEMEX'S existing depreciated pipeline system, potential think PEMEX will participate pro-actively: investors may find it difficult to construct new facilities to 1. The commitment to privare investment in the induscompete against the price of PEmEx's authorized services. try originales at the highest levels of the Mexican governThus, pEmees vertical integration could be protected by a ment: the executive branch. significant barrier to the entry of any new transporter will2. PEMEX Director Adrián Lajous and the director of ing to serve that distribution market." 8 PEMEX Gas both attended the November 8, 1995 cereSome of the current salient results in the Mexican gas monies announcing the new regulations, demonstrating industry are the following: PEMEX'S willingness to comply with the new rules.

1.To date CRE has come up with two formal products. First, 3. The Zedillo administration has moved aggressively the Natural Gas Regulation and, second, the issuance of provito eliminare goverment subsidies for liquid pressured gas sional permits to existing natural gas distributors and transporten.

(LPG), which competes directly with natural gas in many 2. Mexico allows third parties open access to transporting markets. natural gas through its 9,751 km of pipelines in a four-step 4. PEMEX is interested in complying with the new regprocess that began September 1, 1996. This means unrestricted ulations: much of its gas system is under-utilized and acres to the pipeline systems located in Naco-Hermosillo, Ciuexpanding the natural gas market is possible through dad Juárez and Piedras Negras, all cines in northem Mexico. open access to third parties, which will also bring PEMEX This allows U.S. companies access to northern Mexico, where more revenues. 9 The transition to natural gas is rherefore PEMEX cannot meet the demand. The final phase will begin in likely to continue.W

Top energy officials have pointed out that

8

David K Shumacher, "Mexico's New Regulations: I argely Positive, a Few Questions," in Natural Gas, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., March 1996, p. 17.

9

100

Luis Vázquez, "New Rules Set Stage for Mexican Natural Gas Industry," in Natural Gas, Wiley & Sons, Inc., February 1996, p. 11.

Eco NOM Y

MAQUILADORAS AND FREE TRADE Monica Gambrill*

ost people think of maquiladoras as precursora to free trade, since they entail tariff exemptions on movements of intermediary goods across borders; some even consider it to be an indicator of what is to come under NAFTA. However, there has also been an important protectionist element in this type of production. I think the worst aspects of maquiladora production are directly related to this protectionism that will disappear under NAFTA. The purpose of this anide is to explain briefly how protectionism worked, how it will change, and on that basis, pose the question of how free trade will impact the low wages and the insignificant use of Mexican intermediary goods that have characterized the maquiladora industry from its inception 30 years ago.

Without denying the overriding importance of Mexican protectionism, the United States Harmonized Tariff Schedule 9802.00.80 is the most imResearcher as

portant single element that has kept the maquiladoras from evolving beyond the limits of an underpaid assembly industry. This tariff provision deals with intermediary goods of U.S. origin, temporarily exponed and then re-imported. It exempts U.S. duties on these goods if, and only if, they are still recognizable when the finished product is returned to U.S. customs territory.

Therefore, any industrial process over and aboye assembly that transformed these goods substantially is precluded because, were they unrecognizable, the Mexican maquiladora would have to pay U.S. tariffs on the value of the U.S. components, even though it had not been instrumental in manufacturing them. Since the vast majority of inter-

mediary goods used in Mexican maquiladoras is of U.S. origin, it has been essential for them not to lose the tarifffree status of U.S. intermediary goods.

Even a small tariff on the total value of maquiladora products would represent a very high rate of protection when calculated on the basis of its value added to the U.S. components. Whereas the nominal rate of protection might be insignificant, the effective rate on value added in Mexico would be prohibitive.

For example, a three percent nominal tariff, were it based on the entire value of the maquiladora product, could mean an effective 70 percent rate on the value added by the maquiladora.

Therefore, it is not surprising that this tariff has acted as a deterrant to manu-

Maquiladora workers have seldom made more than a little over 50 percent of the average wage in formal manufacturing establishments.

CISAN, UNAS1.

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Assembly work has generally required an unskilled work force.

facturing beyond assembly. Assembly

So, it will no longer matter whether

tariffs on maquiladora products elimi-

work, in turn, has generally required an unskilled work force, thereby explaining the fact that, since data began to be col-

U.S. intermediary goods remain essentially unchanged by assembly or whether they are totally transformed

nates a deterrant to upgrading the productive process in maquiladora plants, but the degree to which it will be taken

lected in 1975, maquiladora workers have seldom made more than a titile over 50 percent of the average wage in

by a complex manufacturing process.

As of January 1, 1994, NAFTA eliminated U.S. import duties on 81 percent of

advantage of remains to be seen.

Although this makes us optimistic about the possibility of bettering

formal manufacturing establishments. 1 NAFTA offers an alternative to this situation by freeing maquiladora goods from U.S. tariffs if their component

goods previously exported by maqui-

wages, 1995 data show that two years alter NAFTA went into effect, the ayer-

parts are of North American origin. ' This example is developed in: Monica Gambrill, "La polĂ­tica salarial de las maquiladoras. Mejoras posibles bajo el nc," in Comercio Exterior (Banco Nacional de Comercio Exterior), Volume 44, Number 7, Mexico City, July 1995, pp. 543-549.

ladoras to the United States; 7 percent were already duty free in the United States before NAFTA carne into effect, and the remaining 12 percent was scheduled for gradual removal thereafter. 2 This rapid liberalization of U.S.

2

These figures, as well as data for opening the Canadian market to maquiladora goods, are

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presented in Monica Gambrill, "NAFTA and the Mexican Maquiladora Industry: Implications for Canada" in Christos C. Paraskevopuolos, et al. (ed.), Economic Integration in the Americas, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, U.K. and Brookfield, U.S., 1996, pp. 78-87. It should be said in passing that Mexico also permits the sale of maquiladora goods in their market.

age wage in the maquiladora industry was still only 56 percent of the average wage in manufacturing. This is even less than 20 years earlier when, for 1975, wages in the maquiladoras were 59 percent of those in manufacturing as a whole. So, there is no statistically observable improvement in wage levels in maquiladoras. Likewise, when controlling for inflation, real maquiladora wages fell 48 percent between 1976 and 1995, whereas real manufacturing wages fell a bit less, by 45 percent. Undoubtedly it is still too soon to conclude anything definitive about the impact of free trade on wages in the maquiladora industry, but the results to date are worrisome. 3 A similar situation exists with respect to the degree to which the maquiladora industry integrates Mexican intermediary goods in their final products.

Although one might expect that the elimination of normal U.S. tariffs on Mexican content would lead to their increased use, the immediate reaction to NAFTA has been to reduce the percentage of Mexican intermediary goods to 1.5 percent for both 1994 and 1995, compared to 2 percent in 1992 and 1.8 percent in 1993. The degree of national integration has always hovered around these figures, so, again, nothing final can be concluded on the basis of two years; but it is not encouraging to think that the end result of NAFTA might be to reduce Mexico's relative

participation in supplying the maquiladora industry with intermediary goods even further.

NAFTA opens the Mexican market to maquiladora products, gradually eliminating the non-tariff barriers that had effectively blocked their sale in Mexico while also reducing tariffs. The first year of NAFTA, maquiladoras had the right to sell 55% of their previous year's exports in the domestic market; the second year, 60%; the third year, 65%; and so forth until the eighth year, when there will be no more percentage requirements. NAFTA tariff reduction proceeds simultaneously with this eight-year liberalization of nontariff barriers on maquila products; during this period almost all tariffs will be eliminated among member countries, thus completing Mexico's opening to free trade.

What will the balance of free trade in maquiladora products be at the end of the road? If there is no major improvement in value added in Mexico, both in terms of wages and the integration of intermediary goods of Mexican origin, the situation could

Maquiladora workers' wages have not improved under NAFTA.

be significantly worse for Mexico under the influence of free trade; before, at least, a surplus in maquiladora trade was guaranteed.W

Undoubtedly, it is still too soon to conclude anything definitive about the impact of free trade on wages

3 Calculated on the basis of data from Instituto

Nacional de Estadística Geografía e Informática, "Estadística de la Industria Maquiladora de Exportación" and "Estadística Industrial Anual" as well as Banco de México, "Indice de Precios al Consumidor."

Imagen latina-Herón Alemán

Ec

in the maquiladora industry, but the results to date are worrisome.

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A New Era in

MEXICAN-CANADIAN RELATIONS

Photos by Sa muelGa rc ía

Sandra Fuentes*

T

e history of the relationship between Mexico

and Canada may be short, but it has always been one of respect and understanding. Although Canada and Mexico did not establish diplomatic relations until 1944, the commercial relationship between the two countries goes back to the early years of this century.

At that time, Canada played a significant role in Mexico through major infrastructure projects including railways, urban transportation, hydro-electrification, water treatment and the establishment of the banking system.

Furthermore, in 1905 in a historically important bilateral effort, Mexico and Canada formed a joint venture to launch a commercial shipping line to avoid paying customs duties to their common neighbor.

The potencial of this special relationship was foreseen

by Juan Almazán, minister of commerce in 1930, who reported to President Pascual Ortiz Rubio alter his visir to Canada that "there are probably no other two countries in the world that can complement each other so admirably as Mexico and Canada to form a new economic entity." 1 The development of the relationship was impeded first by the Mexican Revolution, followed by World War I. Later on, when Mexico nationalized its oil industry in 1938, Canada, still considered a British colony, could not advance its diplomatic relations with Mexico. Despite its recognition of our country's importante in the region, between 1938 and 1940,

* Ambassador of Mexico to Canada. '

Opening of the exhibition Monarca: Butterfly Beyond Boundaries, at the Canadian Museum of Nature.

104

David Winfield, "Relaciones bilaterales Canadá-México," Revista Mexicana de Política Exterior, no. 38, Mexico City, 1993, p. 34.

Sa lISS I XIVICE V I■IVD 11•111111111~:ari•JIIr1/11:

The Mexican flag flying outside the Canadian Parliament as seen during the state visit of President Zedillo in lune 1996.

as environmental issues, ilegal fishing by American vessels and the temporary employment of Mexican workers, but no formal treaty or agreement was signed on that occasion. 3 Meanwhile, a commercial relationship continued to evolve with little government participation. In 1959, during his term as ambassador of Mexico in Canada, Rafael de la Colina noted:

Canada reached out to Latin America and established diplomatic relations with Argentina, Brazil and Chile while declaring that it was not yet prepared to formaliw relations with Mexico. 2 With the establishment of formal diplomatic relations in 1944, one would have thought that there would have been a flurry of activity between the two countries, but this was not so. In fact, over the next 30 years, while the two countries often shared similar views on major issues of the times (as demonstrated by their respective foreign policies committed to the pacific solution of controversies and complete adherence to international law) bilateral interaction was very limited.

In 1956, the first trilateral meeting Mexico-CanadaU.S. took place in White Sulphurs, Virginia, at the initiative of U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower. At that meeting, President Adolfo Ruiz Cortinez and Prime Minister Luis St. Laurent raised with their U.S. counterpart similar concerns related to their proximity to their powerful neighbor, such 2

.... the links with Canada have been strengthening not so much because of the efforts of our governments, but because of the effective participation of the people dealing directly with trade....They are opening doors (in both countries) that help make the miracle of our commercial expansion and the exchange of products and economic activites a reality. 4

3

Cuarto Informe de Gobierno del Presidente Adolfo Ruiz Cortinez, Mexico City,

4

Rafael de la Colina: una vida de hechos. Archivo Histórico Diplomático

pp. 127-128.

Mexicano, Serie Testimonios 1, Mexico City.

J.C.M. Ogeisby, Gringos from the Far North, McMillan, 1976, p. 167.

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well, but a new chapter began to Today, Mexicans and Canadians are becoming unfold at the end of the 1980s, when Mexico and Canada acknowlmore aware of each other's culture and history. edged the great significante of their association and established the Spanish is becoming the second most popular conditions for a new, doser bilateral relationship. language studied in certain regions of Canada.

At a critical juncture in both their internal economies, Mexico and Canada, together with the United States, embarked on often President Adolfo López Mateos wanted Canada to be difficult negotiations that eventually led to the signing of the the destination for his first state visit to break away from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). tradition of first visiting the United States. His visit in 1959 The negotiations presented both nations with the opporwas reciprocated a year later when the prime minister of tunity to innovate, assess and complement the many similarCanada, Sir John G. Diefenbaker, led an important delegaities they shared and to adapt their economies finto this new tion to Mexico in an effort to tip the commercial balance agreement. NAFTA was heralded as the advent of a new ecobetween the two countries in favor of Canada, and to lend nomic era in which traditional activities would be encouraged support to the Estrada Doctrine put forward by Mexico at to restructure or fail. As such, it encountered strong opposithe United Nations. 5 tion with arguments that would test the adaptive capacities of During the late 1960s a modern liberal, Pierre Elliot each country's government and respective societies.

Trudeau, became prime minister of Canada. His foreign However, for many people, NAFTA became an instrument and policy was to engage in more active relations with the rest an opportunity that could be seized or lost. In Mexico and of the world, particularly with Latin America and especialCanada, a keen interest emerged in getting to know each other ly with Mexico. His intent was to separate Canada from the beyond the fixed perceptions already established. Today, United States and to promote a North-South dialogue. His Mexicans and Canadians are becoming more aware of each philosophy was echoed by President Luis Echeverría other's culture and history. Spanish is becoming the second most Alvarez, who became president of Mexico in 1970. popular language studied in certain regions of Canada, due in During this period, both governments instituted several part to business opportunities in Mexico and Latin America. 6 mechanisms to foster stronger cooperation in trade, tourism As Henry Kissinger stated in his last book on diplomacy: and foreign investment. The impact of most of these mech«Intellectuals analyze the operations of international sysanisms was limited, with the exception of the Ministerial tems; statesmen build them." 7 Therefore, current internaCommission, which meets every two years, and the very tional trends have boosted the Mexico-Canada relationship. innovative Mexican Agricultural Temporary Workers ProThis new prioriry is demonstrated in numerous ways: gram. The latter is still in operation, sponsoring approximately 6,000 Mexican workers who come to Canada each • Prime Minister Jean Chrétien made Mexico his first year to work under the same conditions and with the same official destination abroad. President Ernesto Zedillo provisions as Canadian farm workers. reciprocated by visiting Canada first as president-elect A number of treaties and agreements were signed beand later as president, in June 1996. tween the two countries in different fields of cooperation as 6 See H. P Klepak, "Los desconocidos se conocen: Bridging the Knowledge

Gap Between Mexico and Canada" in Natural Allies? Canadion and Mexican Perspectives on International Securi, Ottawa, Carleton University Press, 1996.

7 Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1994, p. 27.

5 Boletín de prensa no. 3, Visita del Primer Ministro del Canadá, Sr. John G.

Diefenbaker, S.R.E., exp. 314 a, fol. 1, Mexico City, 1960.

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CANADIAN ISSUES

• Meetings between the leaders of both countries are more regular.

• A Canadian Chamber of Commerce has opened in Mexico and, very recently, a Mexican Chamber of Commerce in Canada.

• Several fora for corporate issues between the two countries have been established.

• Ministers of both countries meet frequently to discuss common concerns.

• Five new Mexican honorary consulates in Canada are located in Quebec City, Calgary, Halifax, Winnipeg and St. John's.

• Hundreds of joint ventures have been established in the mining, environment, automobile, textile, energy and agricultura) sectors, among others.

• Representatives of top Canadian corporations travel to Mexico on fact-finding missions.

• In 1995, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAN) opened a School of Extension in Canada's national capital region, attracting more than 280 students in its first year.

• Mexican commercial delegations frequently visit different provinces in Canada.

• Mexican-Canadian trade increased 40 percent overall between 1993 and 1995, and 23 percent in the first eight months of 1998.

Mexico and Canada have certain common characteristics that facilitate communication and understanding.

Through independent processes, Mexico and Canada found themselves dealing more often and more deliberately with the same kind of issues and similar objectives at the same time. And many of our policy options converged in North America.

It was in this context that our relationship gained a richer content. Our ties diversified and deepened because we share common interests, and we coincide in many policy areas.

On the one hand, we have realized that many U.S. decisions, even if directed exclusively toward one of us, may have indirect consequences for the other. Furthermore, when the U.S. government has tried to extraterritorially extend the application of its national laws, as in the case of trading with Cuba, Mexico and Canada have expressed similar positions.

On the part of Canada, the late 1980s involved a redefinition not only of its relationship with the United States but also with the rest of the Americas, as expressed in Canada's finally joining the Organization of American States in 1990.

By 1995, Canada expressed its strong commitment to "devote close attention to Mexico, a partner of growing importance.... Canada and Mexico have much to gain and learn from each other through further cooperation in NAFTA. This relationship holds promise over time in other spheres as well, including close cooperation in a broad range of multilateral institutions such as the United Nations. " 8 Beyond North America, Mexico and Canada have found common ground for cooperation on international issues.

They include the support of international law and interna-

All of this is new to the bilateral relationship. It marks a new era that presents enormous opportunities as well as challenges. We have a long way to go to further our knowledge of one another, but despite the obvious differences and particularities, Mexico and Canada have certain common characteristics that facilitare communication and understanding.

One of them, and perhaps the single most important one, is having a common neighbor. Although both of our countries possess rich and diverse cultural and social institutions, the U.S. influence is clear in many aspects of our daily life.

It is obvious that having a common neighbor enriches Mexico and Canadds bilateral relationship. Certainly, our proximity to such a powerful nation presents some difficulties, but it also offers opportunities for cooperation and mutual benefit.

8

Canada in the World. Government Statement, Public Works and Government Services Canada, Catalogue No. E2-147/1995, p. 17.

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All there elements undoubtedly converged into the materialization of NAFTA. Mexico, Canada and the U.S. look to NAFTA to oversee their trade relationship, to increase the integration of their economies and to solve their frequent trade disputes. The three countries, and most organizations and sectors within each one, agree that olear and permanent rules need to be established for our economic exchanges, for creating jobs and ensuring long-term, sustainable development in North America. It is vital to promote cooperation and mutual benefit rather than competition and confrontation.

NAFTA was a means of realizing President Ernesto Zedillo addresses a Canadian delegation of businessmen. To his right, Ambassador Sandra Fuentes. this goal. Although not a panacea, it certainly is an important tool for detional organizations, the liberalization of world trade, the velopment. NAFTA is also the expression of a stronger, selfprotection of the environment and the fight against drug assured Mexico that casts aside its doubts and suspicions in trafficking, among others, along with calling for an end to order to establish a relationship with its northern neighbors the embargo against Cuba. based on equality, cooperation and respect.

Mexico and Canada have also given priority to strengthFurthermore, NAFTA was inevitable because unless ening ties with countries in the Pacific and Latin American North America devises a coherent strategy to integrate its regions. This interest has allowed us to increase consultaeconomies, there is no possibility of successfully facing the tions in regional organizations such as the OAS and APEC. tough economic competition of the integrated regions of Finally, we have been successful in promoting a closer Europe and the Pacific region. relationship between our countries because our societies At the same time, for both Mexico and Canada, NAFTA and economies are clearly complementary. represented an opportunity to inject new dynamism into Our respective climates, demographic structure, level their relationship with their largest trading partner. of economic development and technological advanceSince its implementation, exports of Mexican goods to ment provide us with countless opportunities to comCanada have increased almost three times more than plement each other. growth in exports to Canada by non-NAFTA countries.

Recently announced joint ventures indicate that In terms of investment, Canadian interest in Mexico has Canadian business people would like to take advantage increased substantially. In spite of the economic crisis that of the Mexican experience in order to expand their marhas affected Mexico, commercial and investment ventures kets into Latin America, while Mexicans acquire the latbetween the two countries keep multiplying. est technology from Canada. Even more encouraging to Mexico's cunent administration gives high priority to our see are the joint ventures directed toward penetrating ties with Canada. President Ernesto Zedillo has refexted to regions of the U.S. market where the presence of either Canada as a strategic ally with whom we can present comMexican or Canadian products has been limited. mon positions in various regional and global fora.

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CANADIAN ISSUES

Mexico sees Canada as part of North America, as a permanent partner for dialogue and initiatives; as a friend that lives in and is part of the continent.... Mexico is interested in developing closer ties with Canada, a nation built upon a rich diversity which is the foundation of its strength and which vigorously shoulders continuous transformation." 9 If there were to be a change in Mexico's policy toward Canada, it should be to set higher goals for our relationship.

In the last five years, we have made effective and frequent use of bilateral consultation mechanisms such as the Joint Ministerial Commission to analyze issues of common interest and to advance in our relationship.

During the past few years, Mexico signed approximately 30 agreements with Canada. This is a significant number in itself, but even more so if we consider that between 1982 and 1988 our two countries signed only two.

In a cense, our exchanges have gained impressive momentum which will be carried well into the next century. This is due in part to the fact that the goal of forming a new partnership with Canada is supported by the most influential members of Mexican society.

They vary from university professors and students to union leaders, business people and government officials.

We need to continue exploring arras of cooperation which will become strong building blocks in our collaboration.

At the same time, we have to get to know each other better. We must continue to strengthen the ties we already share.

Our relationship has evolved over the years. We have not only accepted the realities of the silent integration which has occurred in North America over the last few decades, but we have also learned to take advantage of the complementary aspects of our economies.

Obviously, there has been a profound change in our mutual perception. We have become partners in a common project. That is, the construction of a society which assures sustained economic growth within a framework of freedom and social justice.

As political and economic progress in Mexico is the sole responsibility of Mexicans, countries such as Canada

can play an important role in this process through cooperation and the promotion of a better understanding of our reality.

This is why our relationship must continue to grow while respecting our differences and taking advantage of our similarities.

This way, we will ensure that future generations of Mexicans and Canadians benefit from the opportunities offered by cooperation and democracy.

9 Address of Dr. Ernesto Zedillo, president of the United Mexican States,

Building where the offices of the Mexican Embassy are located in Ottawa, the capital of Canada.

before the Canadian Parliament, Ottawa, June 11, 1996.

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Fragments of

ASTORYNEVER FILMED 1

Jorge Volpi*

1 "It shouldn't be like this, should it?" the young woman asks him, happy, but with reservations. He has her lying against his chest. The sheets cover them both to the waist, revealing the girl's small, perfectly formed breasts.

Renata's hair spills over his skin and he limits himself to holding her up by putting his hand over her forearm. She's a little frightened, only slightly less so because of the trust she has been able to place in the director. Gruber does not speak, but his silence is comforting, perhaps even better than words, as though for the first time the actress feels that she actually knows him, as though it were the first time he has

* Mexican writer.

Plural magazine essay prizewinner in 1990. Author of Pieza en firma de sonata, Cuadernos de Malinalco, Mexico, 1991; A pesar del oscuro silencio, Joaquín Mortiz, Mexico City, 1992; Días de ira, Siglo XXI, Mexico City, 1992; and La paz de los sepulcros, Aldus, 1995.

Scenes from Chapter 6 of the novel El temperamento melancólico, published by Joaquín Mortiz, Mexico City, 1996.

Drawings by Lydia Peña González.

been completely sincere. Underneath the doth, she presses Gruber's thighs with her knees. The only thing that can be heard is Renata's timid breathing and the director's panting.

She still feels strange. It's true, she has always liked older men; Carlos is several years older. But Gruber could not only have been her father; he could have been her grandfather. The age difference —she does the subtraction in her head, embarrassed, so he cannot guess what she's thinking— is almost 40 years. Could something like that really work? She notices the silver hairs on his chest and realizes just how big a mistake she's making. But she can't resist either. She can no longer look at him like an old man or the famous cinematographer he is. Nor as the myth everyone bows down to, nor the dark, bitter, terribly intelligent personage he has always been made out to be. Now he's just another person, just a naked man —defenseless— next to her, but who holds her affectionately to protect her. She has finally gotten to know him and he turned out to be 1IO

any more and torturing herself with presentiments of disaster. She climbs up on top of the director's body and kisses him on the mouth, an unending kiss; she doesn't want it to end; she refuses to let time erase the image in front of her.

Gruber receives her tongue frenetically and begins caressing her again; he picks her up, changing position on the bed. He is now on top and she is underneath. Their bodies unite; he begins kissing her body slowly, her neck, her breasts, her belly, her pubis, her legs and her feet, without tiring, like an unspeakable show of affection.

Renata, trusting, lets herself go in his hands.

2

"I remember something I read not long ago," he tells the hurt young woman with the devastated face. "The more people love each other, the more they violate each other. That's terrible, don't you think? Love makes us want to know everything about the other; it destroys intimacy and secrets.

But if lovers do not violare each other, as McCormack says, love dies."

She understands why he is speaking to her in this way. Throughout their relationship she has always asked him questions, interrogated him, when they went out, at rehearsals, about each and

every part of his life. Gruber, on the other hand, outside of the preparations for the film, has hardly questioned her at all.

But perhaps, Renata thinks in order to not feel guilty, that is only because he already knows her completely. Yes, one way or another she has tried to dig into his memories, possess him as though she had always known him, as though the distance of forty years that separated her from him were unreal. Why did you leave your homeland? What was Sophie like? Why did you marry Magda?

What do you think about art? Gruber, a little abashed at reproaching her, thinks that his whole life he has been subjected to an interminable interrogation, as though he has had to explain to the world each of the decisions he has made and every one of his actions. As though he needed to justify himself before a non-existent audience and he were subject to the opinions of others.

Both in his public life and in private he has behaved this way. Is it perhaps that he displays himself voluntarily, that what he wants is to be seen and judged at every moment, unsure of himself when faced with the statements of anyone elle? For a moment, he believes that he operares that way. "If you were my age," he says to Renata, "you would understand that sometimes it's better not to know, not to ask more than you should. If you got to know me as I do, you would have no choice but to detest me. You would be disgusted and you'd

Love makes us want to know everything about the other; it destroys intimacy and secrets.

111

Allfl IV ITH I I rl

quite different from what she imagined, the extreme opposite, totally unrelated to months of accumulated preconceptions.

"NX/hy don't you answer?" she prompts, anxious to hear his voice even though, deep down, she knows the answer. She'll risk hearing it, divesting herself of her illusions about him once and for all. She asks because she must, though she would prefer the silence to continue forever; cautiously she caresses his yellowish skin, the wrinldes that, despite his exercising and the still-firm muscles, undoubtedly betray the decadence of his body.

"You know why," he murmurs, dragging out the vowels and kissing her hair. Gruber breathes in the young woman's aroma, her young sweat, her dreams. "It's the only scene I shouldn't have allowed myself," he explains affectionately, as though he weren't saying anything important, but only a comforting word alter love-making.

Renata demands the answer even though she doesn't want it. A misgiving sought out deliberately comes back to her: in a few weeks, she has gone from Carlos to Gamaliel and now to Gruber. What ails her? What infirmity stalks her? Is she really the guilty one, the one responsible for the acts of others? She feels she has a power that she doesn't know how to manage. Is it really that easy? She has always been able to satisfy her vanity, but now she becomes aware of how much damage she can do to herself. She carefully goes over the examples and convinces herself that she's cursed, that without exception, pride has ended by consuming her. She resists thinking about it

VOICES

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leave me right away. If you keep on asking, you risk the answers being too hard to take. Investigation is not a simple thing. You have to be hard enough to accept responsibility for what you come up with. Even if you don't like it.

Even if it kills you."

Renata just wishes she could weep at his side.

little boy, Renata thinks to herself, moved. But, she cannot stop thinking that it is her father's body slithering between her hands.

4

3

"Do you still think love is a fie?" she asks.

"And how do you know what I think?" Gruber's words come out with

They bathe together. The house has an enormous bathtub with a shower.

Renata undresses and plays with the water; she undresses the old man with a mixture of tenderness and mischievousness. She splashes his face, puts her cold hand on his back and, amused, watches him shiver. Finally, she takes him with her into the water; she laughs and makes jokes, taking any solemnity out of the situation. Gruber also smiles and for the first time Renata sees him smile without reservation, without being sarcastic or coming up with an ironic remark.

He smiles like a little boy.

She suds her hands and begins sliding them over the director's wet skin. She slaps him lightly, but her wet palms magnify the sound. She washes and rubs him on his cheeks and his shoulders, his legs and his ass with a green sponge. For once, he is not ashamed as she looks at him in the clear light of day. He squirms like a little boy. Like a

difficulty; he's trying to break down Renata's solemnity.

"I read it somewhere, in an interview or something."

"Never trust interviews. That's partly why I stopped speaking in public. They always misrepresent what you say, and, what's worse, they put words and opinions in your mouth.

112

It's the worst way of discrediting you.

They make you do it yourself " "Well, just tell me what you want from me."

"Everything," answers Gruber, courtly, dodging any commitment.

"Right," Renata says, playing his game. "But what's everything?"

"Everything is everything," growls the director, "your body, your soul, your company, even the stupid questions you ask me."

She pretends to become furious, and finally, she does.

He has treated her like a little girl so often. Perhaps she has provoked it; other times, she likes it, but not when she's being serious. "Don't make fun of me," she demands willfully.

"My God!" laughs Gruber.

'Do you want to tulk about love seriousbr "Yes." "Renata," his tone becomes paternal again, "you and I have no prospects. You know that perfectly well. This should not be happening.

What use is it for us to torture ourselves?"

"You're the one who doesn't understand." Renata is becoming aggressive. "Because, I'm not another one of your adventures."

"Of course not, Renata. Please!" On the one hand, Gruber thinks it is funny that he is going through the emotional problems he has always managed to avoid, but on the other hand, he is uneasy. He is not sure just how long he is going to be able to control her.

LITERATURE

"I just want to know what I'm

doing here."

"You are doing just what you feel like," he answers. "You always impose your will on everyone else, so don't act the victim either. From the beginning you were completely aware of what was going to happen."

All that's missing now is for you to say I seduced you."

"You did." He wants to make her angry; he likes to see her angry "Or do you really think I always plan everything?"

"Didn't you ever think about having children?" It's Renata again.

"No. Who knows why, but since I was a little boy I had a horror of fatherhood." The director's features betray certain embarrassment. "All that business about having a child meaning endorsing the world we live in or committing the worst of sins.

At bottom, it's very easy to see that it's just another aspect of my fear of taking responsibility for another person. When you're not able to be responsible for yourself, you shouldn't try to do it with an innocent."

"I don't agree, but what surprises me is that you are taking a very moral

position. At the end of the day, you're a lot more moral than you say."

"You may be right, Renata," he says, resigned. "Perhaps my whole life, I've done nothing more than contradict myself."

10

When he begins to caress her breasts, she begins to cry. Suddenly, and without being able to stop herself, she breaks down in cold, uncontrollable tears.

"I just want you to hold me," she says. "Hold me for a long time."

He does the opposite. Gruber moves away and leaves her alone. He cannot avoid disgust at any show of sentimentalism, at his own weakness.

11

She never thought she would like an old man's sex. She takes it in her hand and looks at it carefully. She observes each one of its details without any erotic intentions, as though she were doing an anatomical analysis. It is no different from others she has seen. The only difference is that he is not circumcised. It has not been long since they made love and the minute contact she is making does not give him an erection. The tes-

She pretends to become furious, and finally, she does. He has treated her like a little girl so often.

113

tices, perhaps, seem a little larger. She plays with them a while, feeling their consistency as though she were pursuing them inside his skin. It seems curious: she had never imagined she would find grey among his pubis hair. She is delighted with her discoveries, like a little girl having fun undressing her yo unger b ro ther.

"My love for film is stronger than any morality," he tells her, furious, as the conclusion of their endless bickering.

15

"Tomorrow is the day." Renata is massaging his neck while speaking into his ear.

Gruber nods yes, apparently satisfied, although really a little disheartened. It is not that he does not want to start shooting. It is just that sometimes the wait for something you fervently desire is more gratifying than its fulfillment. Besides, he still has his doubts about the consequences of what he is planning to do with his actors. He will finally push the passions that he has been sowing among them over the last two months to their logical conclusion; he will release them, indomitable, to operate alone, emotions and feelings out of control, ready to be filmed as though they were real. No. Gruber corrects himself mentally. The truth is that they are already real

Renata has gone on to kiss his neck; she takes his shirt off little by Now

little and puts her doled lips on the director's tanned skin. He picks her up and puts her on the floor. After a few moments they make love languidly, aware that after the next day things cannot be the same. They caress each other with enjoyment, but slowly, prolonging as much as possible the movements, textures and smells. It is a kind of last chance to enjoy a game of their own their making, far from the world, the old man and the young woman who do not see each other as such, but as two bodies, two minds united and carried away until exhausted. Later, it will no longer be like this. They are not sure what will hap-

THE CRACK GENERATION AND ITS EXPONENTE In August 1996, a group of writers born in the 1960s published a manifesto calling themselves "The Crack Generation." Ricardo Chávez Castañeda (1961), Eloy Urroz (1967), Pedro Angel Palou (1966), Ignacio Padilla (1968) and Jorge Volpi (1968) are the signers. What does their manifesto propose? The will to embody a literary break to renovate contemporary Mexican narrative.

pen, but they at least know it will be different, that the rhythm of filming will fill their lives, too, that they will concentrate the whole time on that, and as long as it lasts their energy will wane. For once, they do not think about whether they love each other or not, or whether their love is real. They do not stop to measure their actions or

"Crack novels" they say, are not born of certainty, mother of the anni-

judge the acts of the other. They just

hilation of all creativity, but of the most profound doubt about knowing.

Therefore, we cannot say that there is one type of "crack novel," but

let themselves go, lost in their sensations, while their wills are annihilated and they approach a vacuum. At last they

many. They do not seek a better world; they do not believe in a utopia and, without trying to be, they are subversive. Their novels are not romantic, optimistic or "nice." Their novels' dílemma consists of seeking heroically to carry out the feat of finding what the famous Argentine novelist, Julio Cortázar, called their readers' active participation, just when what is being sold and consumed is an abominable reluctance to participate.

The manifesto says, "The narrative has been dying little by little of anemia and complacency. Risk-taking and the desire for renewal are lan-

recognize that this part of the story— the story of their encounters— will have to disappear as though it had never existed, as though no one knew of it,

guishing. A vacuum of several years mucks up the ground surrounding

not even they themselves. Once the film begins, they will become strangers again,

letters with absenteeism, absenteeism of novelists who do not write, or,

director and actress, boss and subordi-

worse, writers who cannot be called novelists."

nate, subject to the unprediceable forces of fiction. Their common destiny will have

This generation has no single prophet, but many. Their art is less the art of what has been completed than that of the incomplete.

vanished, leaving only a few traces, small glimpses, the fragmenta of a random and impossible story never filmed.M1

THE HAND' Alberto Ruy Sánchez*

1

t could have been that Fatma's secret motives were more carnal than many believed and that the strange spiritual presence which some attributed to her had actually been a quiet absence. Because the beauty in Fatma's face, in her whole body, was colored precisely by absence. Her hands held things with the fear of losing them, with strength and at the same time with great care, as if she were also afraid of breaking them. Her lips seemed drawn to shape the sound of the most fragile words and to be moistened biting into the flesh of strange fruits, unknown yet foretold by her mouth. The most intimate appetites seemed to rule the tension in the muscles of her long legs, and to have subtly hidden their urgency under the delicacy of her skin.

* Mexican writer. Winner of the 1987 Villaurrutia Prize for best Mexican novel.

This is a chapter from Alberto Ruy Sánchez, Mogador. The Names of the AM Mark Schafer [trans.], City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1992, pp. 39-42.

Drawings by Lydia Peña González.

She walked as if she always knew where she was going, but she always took her time getting there. Sometimes the absences tracing her figure were so great that she could no longer be seen, and people would pass under her window without perceiving her and would feel the fragility of her presence when they spoke of her. In Mogador it was believed she had one foot in another world and that someone in the distance was, with dark powers, calling to her yet not showing her the way. When people mentioned her, they wouldn't say, "There she is," but rather, "It seems as if she's there." For the rest, "the melancholy Fatma" was something akin to her own reflection: the image of an image in pain, something barely perceptible in the air.

To some, her open window seemed even emptier when she was looking out of it. For Fatma, however, the window was not the box of her nothings, as those who saw her assumed it to be, but rather the door that led to all things and to none. It was the con115

tainer from which she drew her thirst for everything, since all the volatile absences that formed the air of her melancholy were rooted in the parts of her flesh most easily pierced by the imagination. Roots that took their heat from the belly and their moisture from the skin.

So often sitting at her window she let her lingering fingers slide over her lips until she herself no longer knew whether her finger moved from one side or the other, for she seemed instead to be plumbing profound depths, provoking the eruption of nocturnal senses, the accelerated moisture of her breath. The sea air she breathed in at the window was the hand that gently touched her inside. Sitting up straight, she would fill her lungs, abandoning herself to the air to feel its progressive pressures within her. At the same time, she let her fingers fall on her throat, painted elongated caresses on her neck that became slightly rounded as they descended to meet the rise of her breasts, which offered to

VOICES

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reward her with sweet tarrying on the hardness of their summits.

Her fingers follow the rise and fall of all the spirals of her body, coinciding at every moment with the other fingers traveling her body from

inside. They recognize each other through the skin like the points of two burning pins that travel the two surfaces of a piece of cloth and char where they meet. The fingers of the air she breathed at her window gave

1987 VILLAURRUTIA PRIZE FOR BEST MEXICAN NOVEL

Set in an imaginay walled city off the coast of Morocco, Mogador. Los nombres del aire (Mogador. The Names of Air) traces the days and nights of Fatma, a young woman who finds herself suddenly seized by desire. As she wanders the city's maze of erotic pleasures, she encounters other desiring bodies and the imaginary worlds those desires create. Here is a vital fusion of Latin American magical realism with the geometric and mystical imagery of Arabic literature, written in a style the author calls a "prose of intensities."

Alberto Ruy Sánchez has written severa] works of fiction in addition to his well-known art and literary criticism. He was an editor of Octavio Paz's Vuelta and is now the Editor-in-Chief of Artes de México.

This extremely talented Mexican writer assumes his own Islamic roots in one of the best written novels of recent years. He is truly a painter of dreams, who manages to fuse the most unblemished sensuality with the most transparent spirituality.

her hands the power to set her body afire. It is the same air that draws her legs taut, that creates whirlwinds between her legs, the days' other climate that rises like the tide, that floats indecisively at six in the evening.

What could those who saw Fatma sitting placidly at her window know, if she herself was uninterested in showing the density of what startled her and the pungent flavor of its barbs. For even when she left her house to walk the streets near the dock, seeking to provoke chance with her uncertain steps, to favor an encounter, she would never allow others to imagine they knew those whom Fatma hoped to meet on every comer; what faces and names they had, who it was who inhabited the air pushed by the sea toward her window.

And it could have been that their backs were slightly rippled and muscular, like that of the dyer whom Fatma surprised bathing in the fountain the morning she left her house earlier than usual to get water, or that they had the smooth waist and vibrant breast of the woman she saw running naked over the rocks before entering the sea, or the gray eyes of the twins who played dice in the spice shop, or the arms, rising light as the night, of the slim black woman who sells milk.

The arms that disturbed her every time they reached out to hand Fatma a purchase or her change. But only Fatma could know whether the air that was reaching out its hand to her body and cutting her breath short had a name, a single name that could be secretly uttered in joy. N'M

Interpretations and Implications for Mexico Rafael Fernรกndez de Castro*

his anide will attempt to explain the meaning of the simultaneous reelection of both President William Clinton and a Republican Congress and analyze some of the main aspirations and the most significant challenges that President Clinton will face during his second term. It will also briefly review the implications for Mexico.

The reelection of both Clinton and a Republican Congress has been interpreted as an endorsement of the status quo: Americans are content with a Democratic president but since they do not trust him very much, they decided to reelect a Republican Congress to increase their political system's checks and balances. This interpretation, seemingly valid at first glance, is questionable for two important reasons: the enormous abstentionism and the 1994 election results.

According to the weekly The Economist, only 49 percent of eligible voters actually cast their ballots in the last November 5 federal elections, the lowest percentage since 1924. If the status quo was endorsed, then, it was only endorsed by a minority of the electorate.

At the same time, the 1996 electoral results contrast sharply with the results and interpretation of the 1994 elections. The Republican Party won the majority of both houses in that election in the middle of a presidential term, something that had not happened in the last 40 years. This Researcher at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (rrAm).

Mr. and Mrs. Clinton enjoying the victory.

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SIIIV AA VS HI VI SQ AI

THE U.S. ELECTIONS

~OIL

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from the process may become a concern if we consider the outbreaks of violence in the United States in recent years: religious and racial fiindamentalism have both spawned church burnings, collective suicides or urban neo-Nazi movements. In that same period, the world saw the sinister advent of terrorism in the heart of the United States: the bombings in Oklahoma and Atlanta.

PRESIDENT CLINTON'S CHALLENGES AND ASPIRATIONS Analysts emphasized both before and after the elections that the average American decided to reelect President Clinton for two main reasons: the good shape the economy is in and Republican contender Robert Dole's inability to establish an electoral platform and put it across to the voters. The low inflation, unemployment and interest rates during Clinton's first term had not existed since 1968. According to U.S News and World Repori the most important factor was that Clinton convinced the electorate that his actions had an impact on that economic well-being. The Republican candidate, exSenate leader Robert Dole, was destined to failure. His only hope was that a scandal shatter Clinton's hope of reelection.

However, to a certain extent, the analysts have left out the main reason for Clinton's reelection: his political acumen. Several times in the past, as governor ofArkansas and clearly in 1994, Clinton has shown great ability to reinvent himself and recover after crushing defeats. In 1994, after the overwhelming Republican victory in the congressional elections, Gingrich took center stage in U.S. politics. This allowed him, and not the president, to impose the government's agenda. Alter a few weeks of consideration, Clinton returned with his new, moderately conservative profile and made some of the most popular Republican initiatives his

President Clinton with the press alter his win.

surprising Republican victory was interpreted in exactly the opposite way from the 1996 results: it was a clear demonstration of the electorate's dissatisfaction with the federal government. Most analysts interpreted the arrival of Gingrich and 77 Republican newcomers to the House as an ariti-Washington â&#x20AC;&#x201D;that is, anti-status quoâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; vote.

Gingrich's anti-government creed, the "Contract With America," which won him the House is testimony to that rebellion against the status quo.

It is difficult to believe that this dissatisfaction rapidly disappeared from the minds of the U.S. electorate. It would seem, rather, that the voters did not consider any of the presidential contenders (Clinton, Dole or Perot) an option to their uneasiness with Washington and, resentful, they simply decided not to go to the polis. Meanwhile, the "minority" that did vote clearly cast a conservative ballot: it elected a Democratic president dressed up like a conservative and, to ensure that he would not ny to change his clothes, it imposed one of the most conservative Congresses in recent decades.

The self-exclusion of an important pan of the electorate 118

UNITED STATES AFFAIRS

own: the reform of the welfare system asid the reduction of the budget deficit.

The 1996 campaign was the last for one of the ablest candidates the American public has ever known. Some chroniclers of the presidential campaign observed that Clinton could not only imitate any regional accent but that, quite naturally, he was able to steal the limelight away from anyone who introduced him to the jubilant voters. Clinton has distinguished himself for his stage presence, both before a crowd and on television, and he also has the innate politician's ability to create the image of feeling good about patting people on the back. At moments of tragedy for the American people, he has shown his ability to console the victims and move the entire nation, as he did for example, with his historic speech at the funeral of the Oklahoma blast victims.

Analysts have also emphasized the fact that William Clinton is the first Democratic president reelected since the legendary Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). Clearly, he cannot aspire again to reelection. Clinton's real test will be earning himself a place in history with a legacy and popularity similar to FDR's. Many people think that Roosevelt reinvented the U.S. political system by creating the welfare state. His legacy made it possible to build a scenario of domestic political harmony which would be the context for the most prosperous period his nation ever knew.

Clinton's main challenge —perhaps of the same proportions that Roosevelt faced more than half a century ago— is to incorporate marginal sectors of the population into the U.S. political mainstream, giving both the militias and the ethnic and religious fundamentalists their place in the game of U.S. democracy. This is the only way the grave threats of violence and terrorism can be erased from the country which, paradoxically, has the largest army on Earth. Only a policy which includes —not excludes— will create the social and political framework required to begin to cure the social cancers in the United States which have become more acute at the end of the century: drug addiction, gangs and delinquency and neo-fascism.

Foreign policy has traditionally been one of the great temptations of second terms. Clinton has shown that he quickly learned to move on the international scene. After

The reelection of both Clinton and a Republican Congress has been interpreted as an endorsement of the status quo.

a torturous beginning in which he took more than a year to set up his foreign policy team, Clinton ended his first four years in office with the trust of many international leaders, among them Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo.

More than one international analyst has speculated about whether Clinton will attempt to leave an important legacy as an international statesman by trying to achieve the following goals: expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; fostering elections in Bosnia, strengthening civilian rule and thus creating the conditions for pulling U.S. troops out; opening up to China and at the same time not moving away from Japan and other Pacific Rim countries; and, lastly, creating a new form of hemispheric cooperation in the Americas based on free trade and strengthening democracies.

Clinton will have to dodge many dangers and deal with many challenges to avoid going down in history like the last two presidenta who were reelected, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Nixon is associated with a greater propensity for scandal in second terms. Clearly, Clinton is a politician who has been close to scandal. and he will therefore have to take care that an ex-mistress or conflict of interests do not destroy the possibility of being remembered as a popular president. The second challenge he must face sooner or later in his new term is an economic slowdown and even the possibility of a recession. An economy like the U.S. one, which has grown for the last five years, is sure to hit a pothole in the next four. Just when and how it is managed will influence the legacy Clinton is trying to forge.

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rapidly understood the strategy of the relationship with his neighbor to the south. When Clinton was president-elect, the first head of state he met with was Carlos Salinas, in Austin, Texas. Thanks to a determined campaign, the U.S. Congress approved NAFTA in 1993; and, in early 1995, he rapidly and decisively authorized a loan unprecedented in size to ensure the stabilization of Mexico's and the rest of Latin Americas financial markets.

It is a matter of concern that Mexico's prolonged economic crisis, its rocky road to democracy and the lack of political determination on the part of Mexican diplomats to continue actively participating in the U.S. decisionmaking process have weakened the bilateral cooperation forged during the 1989-1993 period. This point will necessarily influence our relations with the Democratic president and the Republican Congress that carne out of the November 5 elections.

ONCE AGAIN A UNITED REPUBLICAN CONGRESS

The one-hundred-and-fourth Congress (the 1994-1996 session) showed a series of tendencies which little favored U.S. international policy and cooperation with Mexico: it was isolationist, parochial and neo-populist. The majority of representatives in the one-hundred-and-fifth Congress won their seats in the post-Cold War period and are not very familiar with, much less interested in, their country's international commitments. Far from being interested in reforming the United Nations system, they ask themselves how to get rid of an organization that costs the U.S. taxpayer so much money.

This Congress, less and less trained for forging U.S. international policy, is today even more important for U.S.Mexico bilateral relations for two reasons: the growing interdependence between both countries and the fact that a series of mechanisms have been put in place in which Congress intervenes directly, like the certification of Mexico's cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking, the annual report on human rights in Mexico and the evaluation of the development of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Mexican authorities have no alternative but to strengthen the nation so it is less vulnerable to the furious criticisms that sooner or later will come from the U.S. capitol from legislators like Jesse Helms (Republican from North Carolina), who will head up the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, or New Jersey's new senator, Robert Toricelli.

Clinton, for his part, has shown a clearly positive attitude toward Mexico, and he Mr. and Mrs. Robert Dole accepting defeat.

120

Photos: Xcaret Eco-Archeological Park

estled in a jungle full of natural wonders, Xcaret, the Caribbean's most spectacular eco-archeological park, is one of the CancúnTulum areás main tourist attractions.

In Maya, Xcaret means "little inlet."

Originally a pre-Hispanic Mayan port in the late Post-Classical Period (from A.D. 1200 to 1400) called Polé. Ships sailed from Polé to nearby Cozumel Island and the sanctuary of Ixchel, goddess of fertility. Pilgrims carne to the port from all over to ritually purify

their bodies and souls by bathing in the cenotes' and temascales2 before sailing for the sanctuary. Polé's location turned it into a prosperous center of highly organized trade with far-offareas; at the same time, it benefited from the expansion of Cozumel's booming economy.

The Spanish Conquest put an end to the Cozumel sanctuary and trade along the coast. What remains of the

Deep pools of water found in the Yucatan Pe2

ninsula. [Translator's Note.]

Ritual herbal steam baths. [Translator's Note.]

121

port, apparently abandoned in the sixteenth century, however, is preserved in the archeological area of Xcaret Park. The area measures about 800 meters along the shore and 500 meters inland.

Everything has been done to preserve the natural attractions and the archeological heritage of the area. All modern roads and buildings were planned to preserve this harmony.

The visitor enters the park through a replica of the Labná Arch, an example of Post-Classical Mayan architec-

VOICES

of MEXICO โ ข 38 -

Xcaret has become one of Mexico's visitors' favorite spots.

Urzderground River. One of Xcaret's

On the coral-lined shore that extends to the open sea, the motion of the waves turns tidal pools into natural jacuzzis. ture. The museum, built in the chape of a pyramid, exhibits models of the most important Mayan settlements (Uxmal, Palenque, Chichen-Itzรก, Cobรก and Tulum, among others) and a beautiful mosaic mural recreation of what pre-Hispanic Xcaret must have looked like. It also presents temporary exhibits of paintings and sculpture by local artists. An outdoor stair-

way leads to a look-out point which boasts a panoramic view of the jungle, the Caribbean and Cozumel Island on the horizon.

NATURAL WONDERS

The visitor to Xcaret can delight in a series of natural wonders: 122

unique attractions is its underground river. Visitors float 530 meters down its crystalline waters, crossing cenotes and prehistoric caverns, canals and tunnels. Natural light iluminares shells and coral dating back thousands of years.

The Blue Lagoon. A labyrinth of transparent salt-water canals is dotted with rocky islands teeming with local flora and fauna. Visitors can swim or just sit and enjoy the birds and the exuberant vegetation.

The Inlet. The original port opposite Cozumel is today a natural, corallined aquarium full of multi-colored fish. On the coral-lined shore that extends to the open sea, the motion of

EcoLo GY

Tortoises, fish, birds, butterflies, bats and a myriad of plants and flowers native to the region live

and reproduce here in their natural habitat. the waves in tidal pools give swimmers the benefits of a natural jacuzzi.

The Auditorium. A natural, shellshaped proscenium arch gives the auditorium perfect acoustics. Visitors can schedule their trips to see performances which take place on a stage carved in rock and set beside the underground river.

The Xcaret Underground. Wandering through this underground labyrinth of paths is an adventure that will take the traveler to the heart of the Mayan people.

SPECTACULAR FLORA AND FAUNA Tortoises, fish, birds, butterflies, bats and a myriad of plants and flowers native to the region live and reproduce here in their natural habitat.

With the supervision of park personnel, visitors can get close to some of the animals: 123

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• The wild bird house has both exotic species and local birds on display; • The botanical garden and greenhouse are in a protected part of the jungle with its own, more humid, microclimate, permitting a great variety of native plants and trees to survive in their original form. Experts have classifled and labeled the plants for visitors.

• The House of Bats and the Valley of Butterflies have hundreds of live specimens.

• Marine tortoises are bred in a special area where baby white tortoises are protected and researched for a year and freed when mature.

• The tropical aquarium exhibits marine habitats of most of the ecosystems of the Caribbean Sea, particularly the coral reefs. Touchpools, supervised by a biologist, allow visitors to touch starfish, rays, marine cucumbers and spiders and octopi.

• Another hands-on activity is the dolphin pool, one of Xcaret's special attractions, where visitors can swim with the dolphins.

OTHER AITRACTIONS AND SERVICES

Visitors can also learn to scuba dive and snorkel; they swim in the surf or take a

Everything has been done to preserve the archeological heritage of the area.

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ECOLOGY

The Blue Lagoon.

The dolphin pool, enjoyed by children and adults alike.

The Underground River, one of Xcaret's unique attractions.

Visitors float 530 meters clown the crystalline waters

of the underground river, crossing cenotes and prehistoric caverns, canals and tunnels.

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What remains of the pre-Hispanic Mayan port Polé is preserved in the archeological area of Xcaret.

guided horseback tour through the jungle and the archeological cite.

In the Mayan town, where indigenous people from the area make and exhibit crafts, visitors are treated to a view of traditional houses, paZapas, built with techniques and materials specific to the region.

The park has restaurants, bars, shops, and dressing rooms with showers, bathrooms and lockers. There is also 126

an information office and a first aid center.

Picturesque air-conditioned buses take visitors back and forth from Cancún.

The beauty of Xcaret fully justifies the billboard outside the Cancún airport: When in Xcaret, don't miss a visit to Cancún!

Eisie Montiel Assistant Editor

EcoLOGY

CACTI Salvador Arias Montes .

C

acti are particularly plentiful in Mexico's arid,

warm, dry regions. Over the last several decades, important floristic, systematic and eco logical studies, and others which look into sustainable management of natural resources, have made cacti one of their research priorities. Because of their strange shapes and colorful flowers, many cacti are also used for decoration. This has made them increasingly important items on the ornamental plant market, which has expanded considerably in recent years.

WHAT

Is

A CACTUS?

Cacti are distinguished from other groups of plants or botanical families by the particular morphology of their stems and flowers. Without going into great technical detail, they are practically without leaves, although there are some notable exceptions like the Pereskia lychnidiflora (matiare) and the Pereskiopsis aquosa (water prickly pear). They usually have spines (there are exceptions to this also, such as the Lophophora wilĂźamsĂź [peyote]), and their fleshy stocks take many different shapes. For example, some are flat and shaped like tennis rackets, *Researcher in the Botanical Ganien's Cacti Labotatoty at the

UNAM Cacti come in a myriad of shapes and sizes.

Institute ofBiology.

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humidity, low atmospheric humidity (with a few exceptions, like the arid region of Baja California), high daytime air temperatures and abundant sunlight, which can raise the ground temperature as high as 60°C. These physical characteristics make it easy to suppose that, to adapt, plants and animals native to there areas must make efficient and economical use of water. Cacti's thickened stems, roots or leaves do just that: they store water to survive during dry periods.

Thickened plants are known as succulents, of which there are a wide variety, but practically all species of cacti are included.

The evolution into cacti of some not particularly succulent South American plants was basically the result of a process of adaptation to seasonal periods of drought.

Today, cacti grow in all the main natural regions of the Americas, from damp tropical forests to the bush areas of the arid zones. In tropical forests, the only cacti

such as the Opuntia spp. (nopal)) Others have cylindrical stocks of different widths and heights, like the Cephalocereus semilis (the viejito, or "old man"), which can grow to as high as 8 meters and is typically shaped like a column, or the Echinocereus schrnollii (known as the "sheep's tail"), which grows no larger than 10 centimeters and is just a tiny reed no thicker than a pencil. Severa! kinds of cacti, like the Echinocactus (the "burro biznaga") and the Mammillaria (the "little biznaga"), are spherical.

However, the most distinctive feature of cacti is that they have little pads covered with tiny, light-colored hairs called areolas. The spines and flowers sprout from the areolas: they are structures similar to lateral buds in other flowering plants.

"Cactus" comes from the Latin word for "thistle"; it is a broad term applied to any spiny plant. Today, however, the Latin word "cactus" (plural "cacti") applies only to the genus we have described aboye.

CLASSIFICATION The cactus family (Cactaceae) includes more than 1,500 species. Taxonomically, it is divided into three sub-families: the Pereskioideae, with only two genuses, one of which has leaves in the shape of sheets; Opuntioideae, with five genuses and over 200 species, including nopales and chollas, and Cactoideae, the largest group, which is found throughout the Americas and includes tree- and bush-like plants, vines and epiphytes, 2 withcylndra,speoftck.

ADAPTING TO DROUGHT Arid and semi-arid zones are characterized by minimum and irregular annual availability of cactus which is caten grilled or [Translator's Note.] salad. a in up cut boiled and 2 Non-parasitical plants that grow on other plants and derive their nutrients and water from rain, the air, dust, etc. [Editor's Note.]

1

A common Mexican

Spines and flowers sprout from the cacti's areolas.

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ECOLOGY

species are creepers or epiphytes on the trunks of large trees; in arid zones, they are trees, bushes or vines.

However, most of the species grow in intermediare areas, in what are called dry tropical forests, with both a dry and a rainy season. They flourish in these ateas because they are specialized in absorbing, storing and conserving humidiry with maximum efficiency developed during gradual, profound changes in their anatomy, morphology and physiology.

The change and reduction of the leaves are paruof this evolution. At first, primitive cacti tended to increase storage of water in their leaves and reduce the vascular system to minimum functional structures. However, a new evolutionary phase was needed to reduce transpiration to a minimum: the surface of the leaves gradually diminished to microscopic size. Today, the majority of cacti have only this kind of "leaves" and only during the earliest stages of growth. Simultaneously, the stocks also had

to change to take on the functions of storing water, breathing and photosynthesis. Besides becoming a succulent, the stock has taken on whimsical forms that give cacti maximum volume with minimum surface area: they are flat, cylindrical, column-shaped and spherical.

In order for the cactus to change its volume without affecting its internal form and structure, the stock had to change: the base of its leaf pads became tubers which expand when water is available or contract in the dry season. Genuses like Mammillaria and Coryphantha have this kind of tuber. In other cacti, these tubers are fused in the form of lengthwise ribs, forming a sort of accordion which expands or contracts depending on the amount of water stored. The Pachycereus, the Ferocactus and the Acanthocereus, among others, have this kind of structure.

Another important part of the survival of cacti in arid and semi-arid regions is their relationship with animals and other plants. One important form of biotic interaction in these areas is the interdependency during the first stages of seedling development, particularly in the phase of inicial formation (germination and early survival).

Some ecological analyses point to the importance of trees and bushes which beneath their canopies provide a micro-habitat favorable to the growth of cactus seedlings and other vegetation.

The longevity of some tree- or column-like cacti is significant for these biological systems.

In Mexico there are almost 60 species of this sort. Among those already researched are the Neobuxbaumia tetetzo (teteche) in the Tehuacรกn Valley in the state of Puebla, reported to live up to 400 years, and the Carnegiea gigantea (saguaro) from the desert of Sonora, estimated at up to 500 years of age.

100 PERCENT MEXICAN MEXICO'S DIVERSITY

Mexico boasts approximately 850 species of the slightly more than 1,500 reported in

"Cactus" comes from the Latir\ word for "thistle."

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VOICES of MEXICO â&#x20AC;˘ 38

Cacti stems, roots or leaves store water to survive during dry spells.

recent literature about all of the Americas. Estimates classify almost 700 species (nearly 80 percent of all the cacti in the country) as endemic to Mexico; that is, they originate here exclusively.

This means that Mexico has the greatest floristic diversity of cacti of any country in the world. In Brazil and the United States, for example, floristic inventories on cacti show less than half the number of species to be found in Mexico.

In addition, Mexico has been the seat of the evolution of some taxonomic groups of cacti. For example, the columnand tree-like cacti (Pachycereeae group) and the spherical ones, better known colloquially in Mexico as biznagas (Cacteae group) originated and diversified in Mexico. One

of the groups of creepers and epiphytes (Hylocereeae group) diversified mainly in southern Mexico and Central America. Clearly, the reasons for this wealth of vegetation are to be found in the complex and intricate edaphic, climatic and orographic conditions and in the geographical location of Mexico throughout its geological history.

CURRENT AND POTENTIAL USES

Today, sustainable use of natural resources is a priority, aboye all in countries with high biodiversity like Mexico, which also has a considerable gamut of economically exploitable flora.

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ECOLOGY

One of the most common uses of cacti is ornamental.

These plants were used by men as far back as the first inhabitants of the Americas. Anthropological evidence of their use as food by primitive man has been found at archeological digs in Tehuacรกn, Puebla, and in the state of Tamaulipas. Cactus stocks, fruit and seeds were part of the diet of the people who inhabited these areas as long ago as 6,500 B.C. During the rise of the great Mesoamerican cultures, some cacti were already quite an important part of the diet and the culture. Today, ethnobotany has provided us with proof of the value of cacti to different human groups in Mexico. For example, the Seris 3 use 12 species 3

of cacti for food, herbal medicines, construction, hunting and religious rites.

Another important use of cacti has been the selection and cultivation of their edible fruit, harvested both from wild and semi-cultivated plants. This is the case of the pitayo (Stenocereus pruinosus, S. queretaroensis), xoconostle (Stenocereus stellatus, Opuntia joconostle), garambullo (Myrtillocactus geometrizans), pitahaya (Hylocereus undatus), flotilla (Escontria chiotilla) and, aboye all, the prickly pear cacti (Opuntia amyclaea, O. hyptiancantha, Opuntia megacantha and a great many hybrids). 4 Amongtheculivadbsok,themipran 4

An indigenous group which lives in Mexico's northern state of Sonora.

131

All common fruits in Mexico.

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Little pads covered with tiny, light-colored hairs called areolas are cacti's most distinctive feature.

is the nopal (Opuntia ficus-indica, Opuntia megacantha and many hybrids).

Other ways of utilizing these plants include: a) medicinal uses: as a diuretic, a laxative, antispasmodic and to treat fevers, ulcers and hypoglycemia; b) as roughage; c) as a secondary food source (for cool or fermented drinks, as a condiment or snack, and ground into flour); d) as a color additive (nopal cochineal seeds, etc.).

One of the best known uses of cacti is ornamental, particularly the more rare species with limited distribution, like the majority of those endemic to Mexico (in some cases this is the reason for their dwindling numbers.) The

largest markets are the United States, Europe and Japan, where cacti are intensively cultivated and marketed.

THE IMPORTANCE OF MAINTAINING DIVERSITY

Integral research on cacti is clearly central to their conservation and the management of their natural and cultural diversity. It is a way to define strategies for their preservation at a time when "the crisis of biodiversity" —the disappearance of animal and plant species— is of great concern and interest in countries like ours.

132

And the Museum of Mexican Medicine Virginia Classing* Carlos Viesca **

1-10111Plelifirl IN; „. hf S' ."

••• ' 1 •

10211EM

•

•

er

,ftes-Bli

J.* „

Eighteenth century colonial building, today the Palace of the School of Medicine. The shield at the top of the facade dates from when the building housed the Holy Office of the Inquisition.

* Director of the Museum of Mexican Medicine. ** Head of the Department of Medical History and Philosophy of the Museum of Mexican Medicine.

133

SISIlla S fl IAI

THE PALACE OF THE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

VOICES

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T

oday's Palace of the School of Medicine is none other than the former Palace of the Inquisition, which became a medical school in 1854.

Located on one comer of the Santo Domingo Plaza a few blocks from Mexico City's Zócalo, or central square, it is an old colonial palace built by Pedro de Arrieta, the same architect who built the Basilica of Guadalupe and the La Profesa Church between 1732 and 1736.

The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition had its headquarters in this building until 1820, except for a brief period in 1813 when the Courts of Cádiz suppressed it temporarily. It later housed the offices of the government of the State of Mexico, the National Lotteryl and, in 1828, while being used as barracks, it was the first honre of the Military College. Later on, students and professors of the Lancasterian "Sun" School and members of the Conciliar Seminary walked its halls and patios.

The school of medicine, meanwhlle, wandered from place to place. Once the National Papal University of Mexico closed in 1833 and the six "establishments of the sciences" were founded to substitute it, the Establishment of Medical Sciences was first set up in the Bethlehem Convent and Hospital. Expelled from that building after being caught in a cross fire of vested interests, it was housed successively in the San Juan de Letrán, San Ildefonso and San Hipólito buildings (the latter was given to the school in lieu of back wages) and even in some private honres of professors. Finally the old palace was made its definitive address in 1854.

With an implacable sense of progress, the Establishment of Medicine began adapting the building. Classrooms were needed, as was an anatomy amphitheater and even a stable for the mule that pulled the cart to transport cadavers. With the growing needs of the student body and advances in medical science, a third floor was added.

Simultaneously, all architectural harmony was destroyed very quickly: the monumental shield of the Inquisition was replaced by a neoclassical frontispiece with a simple inscription announcing the new use to which the building was being put; the carved stone pilasters that flanked the first floor balcony were extended to the second using plaster. For a while, the main patio was covered over with an iron and glass structure and the statue of Saint Luke by Mexican painter and sculptor Juan Soriano was moved from a comer to its center. Later, the statue was moved to the vestibule of the salon, then into the salon itself and finally to the great stairway. In this way, a baroque palace was transformed into a modern school of medicine. The great figures of Mexican medicine have passed through its halls: Miguel Jiménez and Francisco Montes de Oca, modernizers of hospital attention and surgery; Manuel Carmona y Valle and Eduardo Liceaga, innovators in the teaching of medicine; Fernando Zárraga and Rosendo Amor, creators of a whole school of surgery; Ignacio Chávez and Salvador Zubirán, founders of the institutes for medical specialization.

Great changes were made in 1933 to celebrate the First Centenary of the Founding of the Medical Sciences Establishment. Old walls and structures were renovated and strengthened and other parts of the installations modemized. José Villagrán, clearly breaking with the previous style,

All revenues from the governmental National Lottery are used for public charitable activities. [Editor's Note.]

Reproduction of a mid - century clinical laboratory.

134

built in Art Deco a library, classrooms and laboratories, and an auditorium in what had been the Orange Grove Patio.

When the National School of Medicine was incorporated into the UNAM and moved to University City, the palace declined considerably until the Department of Medical History and Philosophy took up residence there in 1972.

The fund-raising project with the slogan "Lees Breath Some Life into the Past" to restore the building was very successful. The Department of Medical History and Philosophy familiarizes undergraduate students with the constant research carried out in the most important areas of the medical humanities. The department offers researchers books and documents from one of the most important collections of its kind in Latin America. The Museum of Mexican Medicine also creates a high profile for the discipline by explaining the vicissitudes of its history. Also, the building's auditoriums and rooms host all kinds of academic events to keep medicine up to date in Mexico, with the participation of members of the medical profession and representatives from medical institutions from all over the country.

A window for the public, the museum offers a view —as yet incomplete though it is— of Mexican medicine. Its pre-Hispanic origins are ordered in such a way as to take the visitor from the surroundings to a symbolic structuring of reality in the period: what it meant to live, fall ill and die for our ancestors, all the while taking into account the central ideas of indigenous thought. Medicinal plants, then, a bridge through time, link the vestiges of cultures which have disappeared with those of today in relation to both the treatment and cure of different ailments.

Since it also deals with the colonial period, it is the best testimony to the mix of ideas, knowledge and procederes in Mexico; to charitable foundations; to the transformat'ion of European models for medical training and care; to devastating epidemics; to the gradual and painful formation of the new nationality.

The new science of medicine was born with the nineteenth century. An enthusiastic group of professors at the Establishment of Medical Sciences took upon itself the responsibility of modernizing Mexican medicine. The discipline began to Frenchify and venture into the new realm

Nobel Prize winner Ramón y Cajal's desk in the Tomás Perrin Room.

Mid-twentieth century histology lab.

of positivism, creating a nacional public health project and developing the National Medical, Bacteriology and Anatomy-Pathology Institutes, as well as a series of modem hospitals headed up by the General Hospital and the La Castañeda Asylum.

The museum's specialized rooms cover particular aspects of Mexican medicine over the last 100 years. One of them exhibits the furniture of the "Esessarte" apothecary shop, in existence in Oaxaca at the end of the last century. It includes a few glass jars with the National Medical Institute emblem. Another room exhibits a great many 135

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excellently preserved wax figures manufactured in France which show different skin diseases and disorders.

The philosophy of Mexican medicine makes itself felt in two recreated laboratories: one exhibits pieces from the beginning of the century and the other, the apparatuses with which Drs. Fernando Ocaraza and José Joaquín Izquierdo began modern experimental physiology. The museum also boasts the reproduction of a histology laboratory (for the study of tissues), based on the one worked in

by Dr. Tomás G. Perrín at the UNAM Medical School in the 1930s. The room contains the desk that belonged to the eminent Spanish doctor and Nobel Prize winner for medicine, Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Another room presents the visitor with a recreation of a mid-twentieth century clinical laboratory, complete with the equipment of the period, from centrifuges to colorimeters.

Lastly, the gallery connecting the palace with the old La Perpetua jail has a display of X-ray machines dating from the time of their inception 100 years ago until today.

The Palace of the School of Medicine, its museum and the academic activities carried out there are good examples of the uNAm's interest in extending culture to the Mexican public. Ml

Two views of the display of X-ray machines dating back 100 years.

Apparatuses with which began modern experimental physiology in Mexico.

136

REVIEWS

Only the Good Times

Juan Bruce-Novoa Arte PĂşblico Press Houston, Texas 1995, 286 pp.

Bruce-Novoa, best known as a leading Chicano critic, has now published his first novel. Although publicized as a romance, the book is more a postmodern parody of romance and several other narrative subgenres. First, it is a novel of artistic apprenticeship, with the mature artist narrating the source of his inspiration: his first love, the woman who got away â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Ann Marisse. Paul, an internationally successful screenwriter, has spent his life rewriting key scenes of his youth with Ann Marisse, both remembering and altering them to eliminate the unhappy ending that threatens to impose itself as the ultimate proof of his existence.

Only the Good Times also parodies the traditional "first novel," the disguised autobiographical text we expect of writers in their first book. Bruce-Novoa plays with firstnovel cliches, from the opening sentence, "The first time I saw Ann Marisse, she was running towards me..." to the last, "We are...the product of this life and, now, this book." However, the author undercuts all platitudes through comments in the text. For instance, we learn that Paul's "first time" was not really the first when Ann 137

VOICES of MExICO â&#x20AC;˘ 38

imagination and the heart of the artist. In the end, it is the image of Ann Marisse that endures here, despite the distractions of reality; her ability to center the world with a simple movement of her body. Bruce-Novoa's obsessive insistence on making the image of love our image of his book wins out. A highly recommended addition to the new U.S. Latino literature. wli

While the essence of the scenes remains the same, details are altered to give the experience a feeling of intense observation

Mike Estrella

possible only when reality is preserved in artistic representation.

Marisse corrects his memory, offering an alternative beginning to their relationship, thus casting a veil of doubt over the narrator's accuracy. And the book's last sentence is printed in italics, a visual code Bruce-Novoa uses to convey that what is being read is actually from a film, and as such not a "real" experience, but an image contrived by the narrator.

Other postmodern techniques constantly interrupt the narrative flow, making it impossible to read chis as a straightforward, traditional novel. Footnotes appear in which the narrator argues with his editor over writing style, factual details, or changes the publisher imposes.

He includes a letter from the "real" Ann Marisse in which she gives her prosaic, angry version of a key scene written in highly romantic, poetic fashion by the narrator. Movie scenes replay what readers have already seen as factual material. While the essence of the scenes remains the same, details are altered to give the experience a feeling of intense observation possible only when reality is preserved in artistic representation. The characters involved in the narrative also discuss the text.

Finally, film and the characters' lives are so intricately interwoven that it is difficult to distinguish them.

However, what attentive readers will retain aboye all from this complex novel is the power of the vision of love â&#x20AC;&#x201D;the image of the loved oneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; to take hold of the

Luz y luna, las lunitas (Light and Moon, the Little Moons) Elena Poniatowska Ediciones ERA Mexico City, 1994, 206 pp.

138

REVI EW S

Luz y luna, las lunitas In "Juchitán de las mujeres" (Juchitán of Women), (Light and Moon, the Little Moons) is a book we discover women's open eroticism, of essays and feature stories, memoirs and exright on the surface, their customs, their periences, interpretation of different realities and initiation or matrimonial rites, their lives recreation of myths. It does not seem to belong to in the market or at home and their playful, any particular genre and, though at first glance the pleasurable relationship with men. different texts do not seem related, a common thread actually runs actually saw but has heard about from other people, through them: the author's sensitivity toward, sympathy with and compassion for the dispossessed, as well as her plus the ones that have lasted until today. The occupagenuine admiration for Mexican artisans' artistic ingetions, loudspeakers blasting sales pitches, noises, items nuity and ability and Mexican women's strength. The for sale and tools, from the mecapal2 and knife sharpcollection of these texts makes for a book of nostalgia, eners to strong backs for carrying wardrobes or people. yearning and enchantment with a reality we can neither In "Juchitán de las mujeres" (Juchitán of Women), we discover women's open eroticism, right on the surface, trap nor be part of. their customs, their initiation or mattimonial rites, Elena Poniatowska's writing here is a juxtaposition of their lives in the market or at honre and their playful, fragments, writing I would call feminine, that produces a fresh, spontaneous sensation. It does not seem to be a litpleasurable relationship with men. "Se necesita muerary text, even the most consciously literary of all the chacha" (Maid Wanted) comes and goes from Mexico parts, "Las señoritas de Huamanda" (The Señoritas of to Peru or other places in our hemisphere, making us Huamantla). I say it is the most literary of all because the feel deeply the pain of peasants' physical and spiritual author plays with the myths about Malinche Mountain oppression, but particularly that of peasant women who come to the cities to "serve" as hired girls, servants, and others like Xochiquetzalli l and Our Lady of Charity.

Each text is constructed on the basis of scenes relived maids, gatas, cholas, kikapú,3 etc. Perhaps the only from a book or recreated from her own experience, but chapter which seems like a more tightly woven story is the portrait of Jesusa Palancares; it is, however, divided they are scenes that seem to bump up against one anothinto two parts written nine years apart. And even so, it er all at the same time in the author's mirad, and yet they goes from the description of her room in a tenement, each need to wait their turn when written down. One idea follows another; an image, a reflection, a memory, to her conversation, her hostility toward Elena, the cigarette she smokes while listening to the radio, the phoeach linked to the next with no continuity. tos that Jesusa tore up because they were not "from a This is the case of the first essay that deals with occustudio," her spiritualist religion and so on until the day pations in Mexico City, including the ones Elena never of her death.

Also known as Xochiquétzal, the Mesoamerican goddess of flowers and dances and the protectress of pregnant women, weavers, embroideresses and painters. Companion to Xochipilli, she was also known as "the bird flower" or "the plumed flower." [Translator's Note.]

2 3

139

Leather band used by stevedores. [Translator's Note.]

Extremely derrogatory terms for maidservants. In Spanish, for example, gata literally means "cat." [Translator's Note.]

VOICES

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responsibility for, shared. This is a book written from "the other side," from foreignness, from strangeness, and not because Elena is not Mexican, which she is and says she is, but because everything she presents to us with profound wonder is seen from outside, from her condition as an urban woman, a "catrina," 4 a writer: her class position in a terribly classist country.

Elena tells us about other countries, other worlds that we, like her, have only heard about, have glimpsed, but that we have not experienced. We visit them like she visits Jesusa Palancares on Wednesdays, and we forget them to go on living our lives. There is a reason behind what Jesusa Palancares asks Elena, "What country do you live in?" Elena, aware of this dilemma, makes a sincere, frank statement about Jesusa Palancares/Josefina Bórquez, the character who was the basis for her novel Hasta no verte, Jesús mío (Not Until I See You, My Jesus):

Luz y luna, las lunitas tells us about the peasants, both

men and women, who come to Mexico City to look for work doing odd jobs or "going into service"; about the pride and sensuality of women from Juchitán, the fierceness and strength of Jesusa Palancares, domestic workers' struggle for dignity, as well as the painstaking labor done by the magic hands of Huamantla embroidresses, the makers of flower rugs or women who collect mushrooms beneath the threatening shadow of Malinche Mountain and the sweet gaze of Our Lady of Charity.

And all this with the surprise of a little girl who is seeing her surroundings for the first time. Let us look at what she says about the women from Juchitán: You would have to see them arriving like walking towers with their windows open, their heart-windows, their night width that the Moon visits. You would have to see them arrive, they, who are already government, they, the people, guardians of the men, distributors of foodstuffs, their children astraddle their hips or lying in the hammocks of their breasts, the wind in their slips, flowery vessels, their honeycombed sex overflowing with men;

Neither the doctor in anthropology, Oscar Lewis, nor I really took upon ourselves the lives of others. Ricardo Pozas never left the indigenous people.... they were his life, not just a piece of academic research. For Oscar Lewis, the Sánchezes became the splendid protagonists of the so-called anthropology of poverty. For me, Jesusa was a character. The best of them all.

Jesusa was right. I profited from her just as Lewis did with the Sánchezes.... The life of the Sánchez family did not change at

there they come, belly swaying, pulling the machos along, those machos who, contrasting with them, wear light pants and shirts, sandals and a straw hat that they throw into the air to shout, "Long live the women of Juchitán!"

In this vivid and sensual description, there is enchantment, but also yearning for a life not lived, taken

all; it got no better and no worse. Lewis and I earned money from our books about Mexicans living in tenements. Lewis kept on living the antiseptic life

This book is written from "the other side," from foreignness, not because Elena is not Mexican, but because everything is seen from outside, from her condition as an urban woman, her class position in a terribly classist country.

4

Catrina in Mexico is someone "ritzy" or "swanky." [Translator's Note.]

140

of an American anthropologist.... and neither my life today nor my life in the past can be in any way compared to Jesusa's. I continued to be first and foremost a woman sitting in front of a typewriter.

At the same time, Elena recognizes that Jesusa did something for her. When she identified with Jesusa, Elena felt that she was growing, she felt Mexican and

REVIEWS

"The women from Juchitán have very strong personalities and temperaments.... they impose their will with the white ruffies of their headdresses, the tinkling of their jewelry, the flash of gold in their smiles."

boils to give the children breakfast number 17159374628430000.

An extremely eloquent quote, whose guilt feelings I share completely.

Margo Glantz, in her essay "Las hijas de la Malinche" (The Daughters of Malinche), 5 tells Elena Poniatowska: The same guilt feelings that Elena

she could finally say, "I do belong." She could leave behind the "I don't belong" of her aristocratic European family. What is painfully ironic is that it should be Jesusa who feels like a foreigner in her own land:

Garro and Rosario Castellanos suffered make her tend to embrace "the cause" of the helpless, those who, like her servants, speak an inferior language, the domestic lan-

guage, and belong to that vast social layer which makes up what she calls "the denseness of reproach."

At bottom, I have no homeland. I'm like the gypsies: from

I am inclined to underline this, and I would like to add that it is perhaps not only guilt that makes Elena protect and be the voice of the helpless. A certain insecurity can also be perceived ("my weak character"), curious in such a brave woman, which induces her to admire what she considers to be her opposite: strong, fierce, severe women who, like Jesusa Palancares, need nothing and no one. "My God, what a great old woman! she has no one in life; I am the only person who visits her, and she is capable of sending me to Hell." Or women who stand up for themselves, like the ones from Juchitán:

nowhere. I don't feel Mexican; I don't recognize Mexicans.

Here there is nothing but personal, vested interest. If I had money and things, I would be Mexican, but since I'm worse than trash, well, I'm just nothing.

And the book, because it is written from outside, is also written from the perspective of guilt. Elena is, in Jesusa's words, "A catrina, and good for nothing." A woman who, like many of us, needs a maid to be able to do what we do and be what we are: writers or academics or professionals.

When Elena reflects on this, you cannot help but feel guilty like she does and grieve at the dilemma we face every day:

The women from Juchitán have very strong personalities and temperaments, in contrast with other regions where women make themselves small and cry, in Jalisco, in the Bajío, in Mexico City. Not them. There's nothing of the little self-sacrificing Mexican mothers drowning in tears about them. In the Isthmus, they impose their will with the white ruffles of their headdresses, the tinkling of their jewelry, the flash of gold in their smiles.

The patrona has another fate; she has cultivated her mind, she has nourished it. What is more, the government has paid for it. It's only right that another human being, with no destiny, no trade, no advantages, the maid, do what would waste an enormous amount of her valuable time....

As I write, María, in the kitchen, is heating up the milk to give my children breakfast. Of me, they will say later

Luz y luna, las lunitas centers on characters, places, customs and myths of different regions of our country,

"What a good book!" (or what a bad one) and "How

intelligent!" or "What an idiot!" but one way or another I'll be in the so - called cultural limelight. María will

find herself in front of the stove again, turning on the gas, not to put her head in the oven like Silvia Plath (a ruling class privilege), but to make cure the milk

probably

5 Malinche is a derivation of the name Malintzin, the conquistador Cortés'

mistress and translator, today a symbol of betrayal and the hatred for everything Mexican. [Translator's Note.]

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VOICES of MEXICO • 38

which are partially alien to us. However, it tells us a great deal about the author because it is sprinkled with frank, spontaneous comments about herself and her reactions to what she observes. And when we reflect upon them, the book tells us a lot about ourselves the readers, both men and women.

México en los informes presidenciales de los Estados Unidos de América

(Mexico in U.S. State of the Union Addresses) Ricardo Ampudia Fondo de Cultura Económica/sRE Mexico City, 1996, 259 pp.

Eva Cruz Yáñez

A considerable amount has been published about relations between Mexico and the United States of America because their complex history of interaction has been of constant interest to outstanding scholars at research centers of both countries, as well as to political leaders who interact and actively participate in this difficult association. For those familiar with the topic, the day-to-day doings shared by these two nations come as no surprise since they not only share a very long border, but also differ in an infinity of historic, economic and social ways.

Knowing your neighbor is vitally important to achieving a fluid day-to-day relationship based on common interests but without sidestepping individual points of view and interests which are usually contradictory.

Ricardo Ampudia's book México en los informes presidenciales de los Estados Unidos de América (Mexico in U.S. State of the Union Addresses) is unique in that his enthusiastic research highlights references to Mexico, the historical development of the bilateral relationship documented in the State of the Union Address's that each first executive is required to present to the joint

UNAM

Ricardo Ampudia

México en los informes SRE presidenciales de los Estados Unidos de América

Ampudia points out interesting inconsistencies in U.S. foreign policy toward Mexico which reveal ambivalence and contradictions, a result of the pragmatic pursuit of its interests.

142

REVIEWS

session of Congress, and The Good Neighbor Policy promoted by Franklin the vision that they reveal of U.S. foreign policy Delano Roosevelt in 1933 resulted in Latin toward Latin America and the Caribbean. The work America's participation in World War is also enriched with two appendices: a list of Mexon the side of the United States and the Allies. ico's ambassadors and representatives in Washington and another of U.S. diplomats in Mexico. ficking, migration, the defense and fostering of democAmpudia cites the first reference to Mexico in President George Washington's 1789 address, followed racy, the environment and trade relations.

We also come across constructive references to the by recurrent if not constant mention of Mexico by the following 39 presidents, up until the next-to-the-last bilateral relationship. The Good Neighbor Policy promoted by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933 resulted in address by President William Clinton in February 1995 Latin America's participation in World War II on the side (the lasa one included in the study). of the United States and the Allies. Dwight D. Ampudia states that as the United States began to take on a more important role in the world and give more Eisenhower announced in 1959 the creation of the importance to world affairs, the mentions of Mexico drop Interamerican Development Bank in order to "bring all and even disappear. He also points out interesting inconsisthe American republics together in a common institution to foment and finance the development of Latin tencies in U.S. foreign policy toward Mexico which reveal ambivalence and contradictions, a result of the pragmatic America." The Alliance for Progress proposed by pursuit of its interesas.

President Kennedy in 1961 aimed to promote economic and social reform. George Bush proposed the creation of The addresses touch on different topics regarding Mexico: borders, U.S. rejection of possible intervention a free trade agreement between the United States, by the European powers in affairs in the Americas, the Mexico and Canada in 1990. implementation of the Monroe Doctrine (justifying its Ricardo Ampudia has been a Mexican government own intervention), the protection and security of its borofficial in the ares of international relations and has also represented his country at the Mexican Consulate in ders, the defense of U.S. interesas in Mexico, payment of Houston, Texas. This book is the companion to a 1994 compensation and claims, oil, the fight against drug trafpublication, The United

II

States of America in Mexican Presidential Reports.

Dwight D. Eisenhower announced in 1959 the creation of the Interamerican Development Bank in order to "bring all the American republics together

For scholars of Mexican and U.S. history and the relation between the two countries, this book is required reading.

in a common institution to foment and finance the Fernanda Riveroll Editorial Advisor

development of Latin America."

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• •• • • • • • •• • • • • • •• • • • • • •• • • • •• •••••••• •• ■ • • • •• •• • ••• • • ■ • •• ••••••• • • • • • • • ••• .

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