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- Convenor:
-
Thomas Rath
(UCL)
- Location:
- Malet 355
- Start time:
- 4 April, 2014 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel examines the relationship between history, memory and politics in authoritarian and democratic Mexico.
Long Abstract:
Mexico's uneven democratization and War on Drugs have led to increased public debate about the recent past. Discussions ranging from indigenous rights to Mexico's "dirty war" also make explicit or implicit reference to the rest of Latin America. This panel aims to consider contemporary controversies about history and memory from an interdisciplinary and a long historical perspective, fostering discussion among Mexicanists working in different disciplines and periods often studied separately: the Revolution, PRIísmo, The War on Drugs. Panelists are invited to think about different forms of knowledge about the past- historiography, memory, historical fiction, judicial discourse- their relationship to each other and to political processes. The panel also aims to spur debate about what, if anything, Mexico can contribute to the larger, Southern Cone-dominated literature on historical memory and democratization. All panelists are encouraged to compare and contrast their findings with work on similar themes elsewhere in Latin America.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Analyzes the construction of military history under the PRI, and its contemporary legacy; focuses on the role of General Francisco Urquizo from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Paper long abstract:
Mexico's military has often been seen as an intensely secretive institution and a taboo subject for public discussion. In the last twenty years, public criticism of the military has increased, although polls reveal that it enjoys considerable public trust and legitimacy. This paper aims to place contemporary debates in historical context by examining how military history and memory were constructed during the formation of the PRI regime. It argues that the government controlled the public image of the military not only through negative sanctions and censorship, but also by promoting its own version of military history. The paper analyzes this process through the career and works of the army officer, historian, and novelist General Francisco Urquizo, focusing on the 1930s-1960s. It focuses on how Urquizo blended the genres of academic history and personal memory, and how his representations of the past aimed to legitimize projects of military reform and state building in which he was deeply involved. In conclusion, the paper suggests that a fuller understanding of the military's relationship with public culture in the past might help explain why the institution has successfully resisted calls for reform during democratization.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the longstanding interaction between communism and literature/memoirs in Cold War Mexico. The writings of communist activists and sympathisers will be viewed alongside the depiction of communism in other relevant works.
Paper long abstract:
The recent publication of the expanded Carnets of Victor Serge presents an opportunity to consider how variants of communism were etched into Mexican memory, whether in the fiction of authors working in Mexico (José Revueltas, Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, and Serge himself) or in the writings and memoirs of leftists such as Valentín Campa, Narciso Bassols, Victor Manuel Villaseñor and Vicente Lombardo Toledano. The onset of the 'postwar Cold War' was crucial for the Mexican left for a number of reasons, but it was also a literary conjuncture during which Rulfo was writing Pedro Paramo, Revueltas Los Dias Terrenales, Lowry Under the Volcano, Serge finishing Unforgiving Years and the young undergraduate Carlos Fuentes experimenting with short stories. So began a period of intense engagement between authors and communism (a constant - though eccentric and generally marginal - presence in the Mexican polity). The importance of literature as a site of political contestation is clear: Revueltas and Serge used their fiction to project an anti-Stalinist Marxism, Rulfo to expose the ravages of rural capital. The paper will conclude with the glimpses of communism (both in Mexico and more broadly) in the writings of Roberto Bolaño and Elena Poniatowska.
Paper short abstract:
This paper looks at how the legacy of the 1968 Tlatelolco student massacre has warped and obscured the narrative of modern Mexican history.
Paper long abstract:
For nearly half a century, Mexicanists have focused on the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre as the critical turning point in the relationship between the ruling party (the Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI) and wider society. For many of the Mexico City middle classes, this may have been the case. However, outside the capital, PRI primaries, reintroduced by the head of the party, Carlos Madrazo, were far more important. By promoting primary elections to select municipal candidates, Madrazo opened up divisions throughout the country as state electoral machines faced up to popular, pluralist alliances. In some regions, where central interference ensured a degree of free choice or state machines proved weak, the primaries ushered in a new generation of PRI apparatchiks, who replaced the old-style caciques of the post-revolutionary era and ensured the continuation of relatively uncontentious party rule. But, in other regions violence and vote-rigging won out. Here, the failure of the PRI primaries forced popular groups to turn to increasingly anti-systemic forms of political resistance. These often formed the basis of the guerrilla groups, social organizations, and opposition parties of the next thirty years.
Paper short abstract:
This paper argues that recent structural social policy reforms in Mexico can be explained by the high degree of institutionalisation of corporatist arrangements established during the PRI regime, now compatible with the processes of economic and political liberalisation adopted after the 1980s.
Paper long abstract:
During the twentieth century social policies in the form of social insurance programmes became one of the principal components of the Mexican corporatist regime. It has been argued that the processes of economic and political liberalisation undertaken after the 1980s resulted in the dismantling of corporatist structures and triggered the transformation of the country's social policy system. Reforms have included new social insurance legislation for private and public sector workers, the introduction of the social assistance Oportunidades programme and of the voluntary health insurance programme Seguro Popular, and more recently the expansion of non-contributory pensions and a new unemployment insurance scheme. This paper explores the causes behind these changes in Mexican social policy, attempting to combine both institutional and discoursive approaches. The main arguments are that the weakening of corporatist structures can only partially explain the reforms, and that on the contrary, historical legacies from the corporatist phase can largely account for the policy changes. Such legacies are evident in the high degree of institutionalisation of corporatist arrangements orginally materialised during the PRI regime, which made them highly resilient and eventually compatible with the neoliberal hegemony of the twenty-first century. The final outcome is a fragmented social policy system that fails to offer adequate levels of protection to significantly reduce the high levels of poverty and inequality that affect the country.
Paper short abstract:
Mexico´s new democratic government faced past state crimes from 2000 to 2006 through a Special Prosecutor´s Office, SPO. Until its closure, the SPO didn´t obtain a single criminal conviction. It didn´t deliver justice, but impunity. How did transitional justice affect the process of democratisation?
Paper long abstract:
Vicente Fox's victory in the 2000 presidential elections in Mexico ended the 71-year-old political rule of a single political party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Within the list of urgent institutional changes the new administration sought to carry out, President Fox included 'transitional justice' as a priority. In Mexico, 'transitional justice' followed a retributive justice model and thus Fox established a Special Prosecutor's Office (SPO) to prosecute perpetrators of past human rights abuses. However, Fox closed down the SPO in 2006. Until its closure, the SPO did not obtain a single criminal conviction. It did not deliver justice, nor truth, but impunity. Thus how, and to what extent, did 'transitional justice' affect the process of democratisation? I offer three answers. First, by establishing the SPO, Fox avoided an inquiry into the role played by different institutions involved in violations of human rights. By following a retributive sense of justice to deal with the past, Fox helped to legitimise key institutions that were still working under authoritarian premises: e.g., the Military. Second, beyond legitimising key institutions and tainted officials, who were then incorporated into the new democratic system as if nothing had happened, the 'transitional justice' process served another crucial political purpose: it granted a de facto amnesty to former perpetrators. As a very limited number of abuses was investigated, most perpetrators were never prosecuted; and the few perpetrators who were investigated were exonerated. Third, it blocked other 'transitional justice' efforts (a truth commission).