¹ Tannenbaum, Frank, Mexico: The Struggle for Peace and Bread (New York, 1950), p. 94Google Scholar: “The head of the party is appointed by the President …. In effect the official government party has become the recognized electoral machinery of the administration.” Cf. Mecham, J. Lloyd, “Mexican Federalism—Fact or Fiction?” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (March, 1940), Vol. 208, pp. 34–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “ … the party system … is completely subordinated to presidential control. Here without doubt is the principal extra-legal instrumentality at the disposal of the executive to effect a personal dictatorship.”

² The analysis that follows is based upon material gathered in Mexico, 1952–53. Approximately 150 persons active in Mexican politics were interviewed. Individuals active at the municipal level as well as those prominent in state and national politics were included. Some policy makers opened their correspondence files to the writer in order that the nature of their work might be more clearly understood. Election reports on file in the national Chamber of Deputies as well as those in the archives of state legislatures were examined. In geographical terms the area of most intensive research included the states of Veracruz, Puebla, Michoacan, and Jalisco as well as the Federal District. Expressions of gratitude go to Professor George I. Blanksten of Northwestern University for his valuable advice and encouragement, to Dr. Howard F. Cline of the Library of Congress for pertinent suggestions and help in making necessary contacts in the field, and to the Doherty Foundation for indispensable financial aid.

³ This, however, does not mean that a party rank and file will not emerge in the future. Observers of Mexican politics should be on the lookout for such a development and be alert to implications with regard to changes in the Mexican political system. As things now stand a party rank and file might mean a step either in the direction of representative democracy or totalitarianism.

⁴ These groups have been recognized by the party rules of organization as divided among three sectors—agrarian, labor and popular.

⁵ Of particular importance have been the committees of the National Peasants' Confederation, the Association of Small Agricultural Property Owners, the Confederation of Mexican Workers, the Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants, the Revolutionary Confederation of Mexican Workers, the General Workers' Confederation, and the National Confederation of Popular Organizations which includes teachers, professional people of all types, participants in cooperatives, artisans and small businessmen.

⁶ For example, the regional committee at Puebla in 1953 was receiving five thousand pesos per month from the state government. The regional committee president was expected to pay for staff, materials and rent with this money along with whatever could be collected from the functional committee organizations.

⁷ Partido Revolucionario Institucional, Declaración de Principios, Programa de Acción, y Estatutos (Mexico, 1953)Google Scholar. The party rules of organization make the process seem more closely tied to the decision of the CEC than it really is. The CEC has been given formal power to issue the convocatoria (a combination order of convocation and rules of the meeting) for the assembly of party municipal committee presidents which will select the president of the regional committee in a given state. But the outcome is determined beforehand by a gubernatorial decision with which the CEC does not concern itself. In fact, the authority of the CEC relative to the selection of the regional committee presidents—even the authority to make an interim appointment in case a regional committee presidency becomes vacant—will have substantial importance only when a governor has shown such ineptitude that the national government has begun to consider use of the Constitutional power of intervention. Similarly, the regional committees have been formally vested with authority to approve the selection of presidents of the party municipal committees but have been reluctant to reverse a locally made decision unless a municipal council has shown itself unfit to govern and has provoked the state government to the point of intervening in local affairs. At all levels deference will be paid the wishes of those chosen to preside over the party committees with regard to the selection of committee general secretaries and treasurers. The wishes of the sector organizations determine choice of other secretaries—agrarian, labor and popular.

⁸ Bernstein, Harry, Modern and Contemporary Latin America (New York, 1952), p. 151Google Scholar.

⁹ A great Mexican dictator of another era, the former President Porfirio Díaz, was able to appoint and remove governors at will according to currents of “palace politics.” Subsequent to the Revolution of 1910 decisions made by Mexican presidents continued to determine who could be governor and for how long. However, the liberal policies of the Avila Camacho, Alemán and Ruiz Cortines administrations in regard to expression of opinion and group organization as well as the continued emphasis upon literacy have been working to create a public opinion factor which must be weighed by the national executive in dealing with the executives of the states. To take the initiative in removing a governor when there has been no persistent and widespread public demand for such a measure is to reveal schisms and disagreements within the Revolutionary group to the newspapers and ultimately to the entire country. Rifts signify weakness; and politicians, no matter what the country, tend to think twice before providing their constituents with spectacles of intra-group tensions. On the other hand, it has become increasingly evident that presidents cannot ignore popular demands for the central government's intervention against governors whose corruption and/or incapacity have created powerful opposition in a given state. Either spontaneous mass public manifestation of discontent on a statewide scale or signs of disorder and unrest continuing over a span of months can bring about the use of the interventor power. During the period 1951–54 the events leading to the resignations of Manuel Mayoral Heredia and Tomás Marentes Miranda, governors of Oaxaca and Yucatán respectively, as well as the congressional declaration of a “disappearance of powers” in Guerrero forcing the abdication of governor Alejandro Gómez Maganda provided three pertinent illustrations.

In August, 1953 I was fortunate in obtaining two interviews with Licenciado Cosío Villegas, noted historian and economist of Mexico's National University. Cosío Villegas, who can scarcely be classified as an apologist for the Revolutionary Party, took the position that gubernatorial-presidential relationships had undergone substantial change. He recognized the necessity of a person's having the support of the President in order to become governor, but he noted that the power of the President to use federal intervention in order to bring about a governor's removal has become much more limited: “If a governor gains respect and confidence of the people of his entity through wise policy choices and their implementation—if he is a good governor—it is politically unwise, perhaps impossible, to apply the interventor power in order to secure the governor's removal.”

¹⁰ Dirección General de Estadística, Anuario Estadístico de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos—1946–50 (Mexico, 1953), pp. 446–447Google Scholar. In 1928 Mexico had only 241 kilometers of paved roads. By the end of 1945, 8,163 kilometers had been paved, and this amount had been increased to 13,585 kilometers at the end of 1950.

¹¹ Secretaría de Acción Agraria del Comité Central Ejecutivo del P.R.I. Expedients. No. 153 (Dated May 26, 1952).

¹² It should be pointed out that in some municipios which are geographically extensive, heavily populated and economically well-situated, local groups have felt the need for a liaison and communication device on a full-time basis and have contributed the necessary financial support. However, such conditions seem to be the exceptions rather than the rule.

¹³ Whetten, Nathan L., Rural Mexico (Chicago, 1948), p. 182Google Scholar. “The term ‘ejido’ as now used in Mexico, refers to an agrarian community which has received and continues to hold land in accordance with the agrarian laws growing out of the Revolution of 1910.”

¹⁴ Secretaría de Acción Agraria del Comité Central Ejecutivo del P.R.I., op. cit., Nos. 4.080, 4.126, 7.224, 7.268 (April 16, 1951 through February 17, 1953). Examples of the activity of the central committee secretariats are drawn from cases made available to this writer by the Secretary of Agrarian Action. Although there was no similar opportunity to cull the files of the other party secretariats, conversations with officials indicated essentially similar functions in spite of the fact that different groups were involved.

¹⁵ Perhaps this should have been mentioned in connection with the party's role as an electoral device, but it makes more sense to the writer to consider it as a facet of the party's communication and mediation role.

¹⁶ In other words the area of political consensus has been relatively much broader with regard to municipal problems and decisions than has been the case with problems and decisions of wider scope. The term “political consensus” is used in the sense suggested by ProfessorsKahin, , Pauker, and Pye, , “Comparative Politics of Non-Western Countries,” this Review, Vol. 49 (December, 1955), p. 1039Google Scholar. “Political consensus, as we use the term, denotes the condition of conscious involvement in the political process, where members of a territorial group or community feel the right and/or obligation to participate in the determining of a particular political decision.”

¹⁷ On the question of unanimity one of the more significant insights for the researcher focusing upon the decision-making process in Mexican society has been contributed by Kahin, Pauker and Pye. Ibid., p. 1040. “In what way are consensus-based decisions arrived at? In a great many non-Western societies, particularly at the village level, this process—though well institutionalized—is often more subtle and difficult to observe than is the case in the West. Here the Western-trained researcher is likely to encounter consensus-based decisions which resemble more closely the Quaker ‘consensus’ of the meeting idea than the simple numerical majority decision usual in the Western environment. In fact, to many non-Western groups accustomed to decision-making based upon unanimous accord, it is difficult to understand how majority decisions are compatible with the minimum degree of inner harmony required by the group or community.”

Many aspects of Mexican society do not fit in the “non-Western” category, but there are also strong folk culture tendencies which have clearly affected Mexican political behavior and to which the observation of the authors quoted above is clearly applicable. The Mexican practice of formalizing decisions by unanimous declaration can easily be interpreted as evidence of iron-fisted dictatorship, but as Kahin et al. have pointed out such a conclusion may be far removed from reality.

¹⁸ More persons capable of civic leadership are in evidence as the total number of literate individuals, and particularly the total number of professional people, in Mexico tends to expand. The most significant statistical category with regard to the efforts to combat illiteracy has been that of school enrollment between the ages of six and fourteen. The number in this category for 1942 was approximately 2,154,441. Whetten, op. cit., p. 413. By 1950 the number of those enrolled stood at 3,026,691. Dirección General de Estadística, op. cit., p. 139. For the growth of the number of professional persons the central category is that of degrees issued annually. The number of professional degrees granted, including architects, agronomists, veterinarians, dentists, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and commercial and academic specialists averaged 6,087 per year for the period 1946–50. Ibid., p. 227. In the Mexican political system the numbers in this latter category loom larger because of the interest which professional people of all types have traditionally manifested in politics.

¹⁹ The impressions recorded here need to be checked by observers focusing on other states.

²⁰ The importance of the role of ideas in social change has been pointed up with great clarity in Barrington Moore's excellent study of the Russian revolutionary experience, Soviet Politics—The Dilemma of Power (Cambridge, 1950)Google Scholar. Valuable theoretical guidance for the researcher who would undertake a detailed analysis of the role of ideology in shaping the institutions of a political system has been contributed by Macridis, Roy C., The Study of Comparative Government, Doubleday Short Studies in Political Science (Garden City, 1955), pp. 50–55Google Scholar.

²¹ Public address delivered in the city of Puebla, 1 June 1952. See Discursos de Ruiz Cortines (Mexico, 1952)Google Scholar.