Political Recruitment across Two Centuries: Mexico, 1884-1991 9780292733626

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POLITICAL RECRUITMENT ACROSS TWO CENTURIES

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Political Recruitment across Two Centuries MEXICO, 1884-1991

Roderic Ai Camp

*v* UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS AUSTIN

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Copyright © 1995 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 1995 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Camp, Roderic Ai. Political recruitment across two centuries : Mexico, 1884-1991 / Roderic Ai Camp. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-292-71172-7 (cloth : acid-free paper). — ISBN 0-292-71173-5 (paper : acid-free paper) 1. Political leadership—Mexico—History. 2. Elite (Social sciences)—Mexico—History. 3. Politicians—Recruiting— Mexico—History. 4. Mexico—Officials and employees— Recruiting—History. 5. Mexico—Politics and government— 19th century. 6. Mexico—Politics and government—20th century. I. Title. II. Title: Political recruitment across 2 centuries. JL1281.C34 1995 305.5'24—dc20 94-893

ISBN 978-0-292-73362-6 (library e-book) ISBN 978-0-292-73368-8 (individual e-book)

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To my friends and mentors

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Contents

LIST OF TABLES

ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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1. RECRUITMENT AND MODERNIZATION: A MEXICAN MODEL 1 Arguments for Examining Political Recruitment The Mexican Approach: A Brief Aside 4 The Theoretical Constructs 6 Conclusions 26 Notes 30

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2. AGE AS A VARIABLE IN POLITICAL RECRUITMENT Factors Contributing to Age Cohorts in Mexico 40 Presidential Political Generations 41 Conclusions 52 Notes 54 3. EXPERIENCE AND LEADERSHIP: THE ROLE OF COMBAT 58 The Role of Nineteenth-Century Violence The Role of the Mexican Revolution 65 Conclusions 76 Notes 77

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4. EDUCATION AND POLITICS: FORMATION AND RECRUITMENT OF NATIONAL LEADERS 81 The Institutionalization of Education 82 Centralizing Education and Enhancing the Recruitment Function 93 Conclusions 108 Notes 111

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5. EXPERIENCE AND LEADERSHIP: THE INFLUENCE OF CAREERS 120 The Interlocking Structures—A Power Elite in Mexico? The Military 124 Business Leaders as Politicians 131 The Public Sector and the Professions 134 Conclusions 147 Notes 149

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6. GENDER, PLACE, AND FAMILY IN LEADERSHIP CREDENTIALS 156 The Role of Gender 156 The Influence of Place 164 Socioeconomic Origins 172 Conclusions 184 Notes 186 7. THE OPPOSITION: AN ALTERNATIVE PATH TO LEADERSHIP? 194 Special Qualities of Opposition Leadership 195 Opposition Socioeconomic Origins 197 Conclusions 210 Notes 213 8. THE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT: WHO RECRUITS WHOM 216 Background Variables 218 Career Choices 222 Educational Influences 225 Conclusions 233 Notes 234 9. SALINAS IN POWER: A CASE STUDY OF RECRUITMENT IN PRACTICE 237 Presidential Mentoring 238 The Political Technocrat 243 Conclusions 259 Notes 264 BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY INDEX

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Tables

2.1. Generational Patterns of First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 42 2.2. Generational Patterns of All Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 44 2.3. First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 46 3.1. Participation of First-Time National Officeholders in Major Nineteenth-Century Conflicts 60 3.2. Participation of Porfiriato Leaders in Major Nineteenth-Century Conflicts 62 3.3. Political Positions of Supporters of the Plan of Tuxtepec

63

3.4. Participation of First-Time National Officeholders in the Mexican Revolution 67 3.5. Revolutionary Experiences of National Politicians by Administration, 1911-1935 68 3.6. Relationship between Revolutionary Experience and Father's Occupation among Postrevolutionary Political Leaders 71 3.7. Relationship between Revolutionary Experience and Social Class among Postrevolutionary Politicians 71 3.8. Geographic Origins of Politicians Who Participated in the Mexican Revolution 74 4.1. Educational Background of First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 85 4.2. National Preparatory School Graduates among First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991

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4.3. National University Graduates among Officeholders by Political Generation, 1820-1940 92 4.4. Educational Fields of Political Leaders by Region

95

4.5. Student Peers among Appointees of College-Educated Presidents, 1935-1991 97 4.6. Educational Background of College-Educated First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991

98

4.7. College Degrees of First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 101 4.8. Graduate Training of First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 102 4.9. College Teaching Experience of First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 107 5.1. First-Time Officeholders Who Were Career Military Officers by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 126 5.2. Military and Civilian Careers among Politicians by Generation 129 5.3. Mexican Generals with Political Careers by Generation

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5.4. First-Time Officeholders Who Were Business Leaders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 132 5.5. First-Time National Officeholders Who Previously Held Local Office by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 136 5.6. Elective Officeholders among First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1934 138 5.7. Political Experiences of First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 140 5.8. National Party Experience of First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1935-1991 141 5.9. First-Time Officeholders Who Were Private Secretaries by Presidential Administration, 1935-1991 145 6.1. Female First-Time National Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1934-1991 157 6.2. Female National Political Officeholders by Generation, 1880-1950 159

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TABLES

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6.3. Credentials of First-Time Officeholders by Gender, 1934-1991 161 6.4. First-Time National Officeholders with Urban Origins by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 165 6.5. Region of Birth of First-Time National Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 167 6.6. Rural and Urban First-Time Officeholders without a College Education by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 169 6.7. College Degrees of First-Time Officeholders by Region of Birth, 1884-1991 171 6.8. Socioeconomic Background of First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 174 6.9. Family Occupational Backgrounds among Mexican Political Leaders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1934 178 6.10. First-Time Officeholders with Political or Military Fathers by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 180 6.11. Family Political Ties among First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 182 6.12. Persistence of Porfirian and Revolutionary Families in Contemporary Mexican Politics, 1935-1991 184 7.1. Socioeconomic Background of Politicians by Party Affiliation 197 7.2. Politicians' Connections to Important Porfirian and Revolutionary Families by Party Affiliation 201 7.3. Mexican Partisan Sympathies by Socioeconomic Status

202

7.4. Urban and Rural Origins of Political Leaders by Party Affiliation 205 7.5. Regional Origins of Political Leaders by Party Affiliation 206 7.6. Educational Levels of Political Leaders by Party Affiliation 207 8.1. Rural Backgrounds among Politicians by Branch of Government 219 8.2. Politicians' Socioeconomic Background by Branch of Government 220

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8.3. Politicians' Family Ties by Branch of Government

221

8.4. Politicians Who Were Military Officers by Branch of Government 223 8.5. Politicians' Local Political Experience by Branch of Government 224 8.6. Politicians' Educational Level by Branch of Government

226

8.7. Politicians' Educational Institutions by Branch of Government 228 8.8. Degree Choices of College-Educated Politicians by Branch of Government 230 8.9. Politicians' Teaching Experiences by Branch of Government 232 9.1. Presidential Credentials

239

9.2. Career Highlights of Carlos Salinas Gortari

242

9.3. Career Highlights of Ramon Beteta Quintana

244

9.4. Career Highlights of Raul Salinas Lozano

246

9.5. Career Highlights of Miguel de la Madrid

248

9.6. Linkages within the Secretariat of the Treasury

249

9.7. Linkages within the Secretariat of Programming and Budgeting 251 9.8. Linkages within the Bank of Mexico 9.9. Salinas's Collaborators

251

253

9.10. Educational Linkages between Salinas and Other Political Technocrats 254 9.11. Teaching Links between Salinas and His Collaborators

257

9.12. Longevity of Politicians by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 258

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Acknowledgments

I initiated my professional career exploring the role of political recruitment in Mexican politics. Writing this book has allowed me to come full circle, to grasp many more intricacies of this function than when I began some twenty years ago. I owe an intellectual debt to many scholars in American politics who through their theoretical contributions have stimulated and tested my own knowledge and interest in the topic in a Third World context. I abused my friendship with many professional colleagues to obtain their criticisms and insights, for which I am deeply grateful. I am particularly indebted to Isabel Rousseau, a close student of Mexican leadership, who provided a European and contemporary interpretation of recruitment processes. Bob Robbins, who examined this phenomenon in the 1970s, and Ron King of Tulane offered cogent observations on the theoretical chapter. Kenneth Prewitt, a major pioneer in the field, provided strong encouragement for the model. My effort to explore the generational perspective benefited from the oral comments of Wayne Cornelius, Peter H. Smith, Alan Knight, and Ronald Hellman, who reviewed various versions of this chapter. Moving from political science to history, I sought and received many suggestions and criticisms from Bill Beezely, Paul Vanderwood, and Tasha Tennenbaum, which strengthened Chapter 3. Charles Hale, David Lorey, and Hank Schmidt, who have contributed heavily to our knowledge of culture and education in Mexico, commented on Chapter 4. David Lorey shared much new data on trends in academic disciplines, complementing my own data. My efforts to trace the recruitment patterns of opposition leaders benefited from the work of Peter Ward and Joe Klesner as well as their individual insights. Little information is available on comparative differences within the Latin American elite, but Ben Schneider thoroughly tested my propositions and added tremendously to the comparative perspective, especially from Brazil. Finally, George Grayson,

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who continues to explore all facets of contemporary Mexican policy, shared his insights on the Salinas administration. I am particularly indebted to Bill Beezely and Judith Gentleman, who closely reviewed the entire manuscript. Bill's editorial hand, as always, has contributed to the lucidity of the text.

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1 Recruitment and Modernization: A Mexican Model Political recruitment studies as a focus of political science had reached a theoretical apex by the late 1970s, and the general work had laid out most of the constructs of recruitment theory before 1980.1 Since that date a voluminous literature has appeared in scholarly journals, and to a lesser extent in monographs, focusing on leadership recruitment in various societies, most frequently in Canada, Great Britain, France, Japan, the Soviet Union, and China. 2 China was the only Third World country to receive extensive attention over a long period of time. The last major effort to synthesize recruitment theory with the body of field literature it spawned was that of Moshe M. Czudnowski, who devoted many years to expanding comparative studies of the recruitment process. 3 Unfortunately, his work omitted elite recruitment in the Third World, thus suggesting that such regions are not easily researchable. Using his seminal article as a foundation, I wish to lay out some fundamental characteristics of recruitment theory; to contrast the general findings, largely from industrialized nations, capitalistic or socialistic, with those from Mexico, and to offer to the theoretical literature some additional insights drawn from the Mexican case. ARGUMENTS FOR EXAMINING POLITICAL RECRUITMENT As Czudnowski and others suggest, the general purpose of recruitment studies is to explain those processes that distinguish political elites both from the masses and from other elites. 4 In this context, recruitment becomes an extremely important variable of political analysis. Access to political office and to decision-making authority are two basic categories of elite recruitment, essential because they may provide equal opportunity for acquisition of power or because they may severely restrict its acquisition in various ways. Political equality is a matter not of equal power sharing but of equal access to positions of power. 5 Control over recruitment policy is a critical ingredient of poli-

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tics because those who possess it can modify social structures, political opportunities, decision-making processes, and public policies. 6 To those two categories I will add a third. Recruitment studies need to move beyond traditional comparisons of the elite with the masses or comparisons among elites (power elite theories) to examine intraelite characteristics. Numerous studies have examined differences among geographic or hierarchical levels of political elites, namely, local and state politicians and national political leadership. Surprisingly, however, few studies make distinctions within a national political elite at any given point in time. This lacuna in recruitment studies contributed to the popular belief that national politicians, in terms of background characteristics, are a fairly homogeneous group. In many respects this is true, but it ignores important differences in the ways that institutional structures influence the selection processes of various sets of political leaders—for example, bureaucrats versus judges. The selection process itself, in many circumstances, may alter the basic workings of the institution in which it operates. 7 Another area neglected in nearly all the substantive and theoretical literature on Third World recruitment is the loser in the recruitment game, whose characteristics are not those identified most frequently with successful political leaders. Exceptions to the rule reveal additional, differing qualities relevant to recruitment specifically and to the political process generally. 8 For example, some public figures (e.g., Agustin Yanez, secretary of education in the late 1960s) never created a political group, which is generally essential to a successful career in Mexican politics, yet they held multiple political posts. 9 Other political figures entered public life at a mature age with no prior experience, a phenomenon common to U.S. politics but not to Mexico's. It is useful to ask not only why these individuals did not share in the characteristics of their peers but also to what degree they were more or less successful than the "typical" politician and why. Finally, comparisons between winners and losers can shed more light on the decision-making factors that influence the selection of the winners. A final justification for recruitment studies, perhaps the most controversial but least explored, at least empirically, is the belief that any leadership group's orientations and policy choices are strongly influenced by its members' shared characteristics, especially social origins and experiential variables. Although critics rightly have identified a lack of consistency in significant relationships between elites' characteristics and their beliefs, numerous studies suggest such a connection. In Mexico, for example, my work on the socialization of Mexico's postrevolutionary leadership clearly established a linkage between generational experiences with the violence of the 1910s to attitudes

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about peace, development, and stability in the decades following the 1940s.10 It is also worth identifying and understanding comprehensive changes in leadership, because they also reflect alterations in the social and value structure of their society.11 Political recruitment is the vehicle by which individuals are brought into the political process at all levels and through numerous channels, formal and informal. Most elite studies have concentrated on the results of this process, the composition of select individuals. Even more significant for understanding political behavior, however, are the consequences of choosing one group of leaders versus another. In this book I address both these aspects of recruitment. On the other hand, I am equally concerned with the selection process itself—that is, how one arrives at the highest national political offices, who does the selecting, what credentials and experiences are important, what paths are most likely for upward political mobility, and how the selectees are tied to the selectors. As in the exploration of political socialization, we can study the recruitment process at various stages, the most important distinction here being between the variables that facilitate entry into a political career (known in the literature as initial recruitment) and those that foster success in that career (intermediate and final recruitment). My examination of the Mexican case explores both these facets of recruitment, those factors drawing an individual into politics and those promoting upward mobility within the political structure. With European and U.S. politics, given their more competitive structural environments, recruitment theorists have been interested in the differences between amateur politicians (e.g., Ross Perot) and the professional politician, an individual who carves a lifelong career out of public service. Although it is of great interest to theorists elsewhere, such a distinction would not even be raised in the Mexican case. With few exceptions, Mexican politicians fall into the "professional" category, by which I mean individuals who make public life a career. Members of the opposition are exceptions, especially those affiliated with the National Action Party. Opposition party representatives, however, have rarely exercised political power. 12 An examination of Mexican politicians, especially since the 1940s, suggests that they typically entered political careers during or shortly after completing a professional education, in the same way that military officers were committed to their careers as teenagers in the military academies. 13 Thus, it is essential to understand that Mexico's system exhibits two characteristics that determine and establish boundaries for political recruitment. 14 In the first place, as in most Third World countries, the state looms large in economic development. This not only

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flavors the ideological interpretations of elites and masses, but more important for recruitment specifically, it also affects employment goals and decisions as well as the prestige of working in the public versus the private sector. Since the state is a primary source of resources, especially in Third World countries, state elites control most resources. 15 Thus, the state's role in this context significantly affects various groups, including members of the intellectual and business communities, and their relationships to the state. In Latin America and many other regions, this has led to corporatist relationships. These influences have psychological and structural consequences. 16 In the second place, Mexico evolved into a semiauthoritarian, executive-dominated, centralized political system. Its authoritarian characteristics, including a dominant one-party polity and powerful presidency, narrowed the potential recruitment channels for any Mexican seeking a successful national political career. 17 Unlike the situation in socialist systems, where a party apparatus typically controls the bureaucracy and elite ideological commitments are a prerequisite to entry, Mexico's leadership required little party activism and official rhetoric from its initial applicants. Ideologically speaking, Mexico placed no limits on initial recruits. Pragmatically, however, to rise u p the political ladder, able Mexicans gave their loyalty to the state and to incumbent leadership, each synonymous with the other. Given Mexico's centralized, state-controlled incumbent selection processes, few amateurs succeeded; those who did were recruited greedily by establishment politicians. THE MEXICAN APPROACH: A BRIEF ASIDE This work examines recruitment practices in Mexico from 1884 to midway in the Salinas administration (1988-1994). The selection of these dates is purposeful. Historians and social scientists alike have been interested in Mexican political development since the last third of the nineteenth century under Porfirio Diaz's administrations. Diaz continuously dominated Mexican political life from 1884, marking the beginning of Diaz's second administration after a four-year interlude by another general, Manuel Gonzalez, until 1910 and the Mexican Revolution. Two other published works examine Mexican elites over long periods—one u p through 1910 and the other from 1900 to 1970.18 But despite their excellent and broad coverage, neither deals with the last twenty years, which have witnessed tremendous changes in the recruitment process, nor do they compare the complete Porfiriato, the revolutionary years, and the contemporary period. Political development in the pre-1900 era teaches us much about

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that of the POSM940S era. This work examines variables not only by presidential administrations because of the importance attributed to the Mexican presidency, but by generation as well. As will be seen in the following chapter, generational criteria reveal characteristics essential to understanding leadership patterns in Mexico and raise new questions about the interrelationship between leadership, upward social mobility, and political violence. Furthermore, the data used in this work differ qualitatively from those of Guerra and Smith, both of whom used collective biography as an essential basis for empirical examination of elite recruitment and leadership. Guerra focuses on the relationship between modernity and tradition as well as the linkages between individuals and communities. Smith primarily examines recruitment but focuses on mobility and elite circulation. My study also relies heavily on collective biography, but the data pertaining to elites, while imperfect, are more detailed, comprehensive, and interlinked than in the previous two studies. In fact, they constitute one of the most detailed elite data sets of Third World leadership covering the entire century. Unlike these previous studies, this work has the unusual advantage of being built on a personal data bank of published biographies that has been collected, augmented, and revised since 1968.19 This is an unending task, and I have incorporated literally thousands of sources in the search for more complete information on Mexico's political elites. Long-term research and the contributions of many colleagues, including Smith and Guerra, improved the depth of the biographical data, especially where difficult-to-obtain data on social origins, parental occupations, and kinship ties straddling multiple generations were concerned. 2 0 1 have tried, as best I could, to duplicate for Mexico Philip H. Burch's massive work Elites in American History.21 Other than relying on published research, which is scant on Mexican political recruitment per se, this work uses several unusual data sources. The biographical data bank is the first of these resources. These data are collected under the umbrella of a larger data set, the Mexican Political Biographies Project (MPBP), which is designed to explore Mexican leadership in the twentieth century. To that end, the project gathers information on politicians from 1884 through 1992, intellectuals from 1920 through 1982, entrepreneurs from 1920 through 1986, and military officers from 1940 through 1990; information on Catholic bishops from i960 to 1992 is still being collected. The data are coded and can be manipulated by the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Complementary variables appear in each of the elite data sets, facilitating comparisons among each collection. The political elite subset contains fairly detailed informa-

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tion on nearly 3,000 individuals, all of whom held important national political offices or were state military or political chiefs during lesser periods of political institutionalization. I have also included state governors throughout all periods covered since they represented the national political system, specifically the presidency, which in effect selected them. In a sense, they served as proconsuls, designated representatives of the most important recruiter in the Mexican system, the incumbent president. Czudnowski lamented the lack of scholarship on Third World political recruitment. Indeed, the obstacles placed in the path of researchers are difficult because of the limited amount of published information. Nevertheless, Mexico fares better than many other countries, and Mexican scholarship on political processes, including political recruitment, has flowered in recent decades. 22 Yet an understanding of what actually occurs in Mexico, as in most systems with authoritarian features, requires access to political actors. Consequently, this study also relies strongly on several decades of interviews with hundreds of politicians and other informed lay persons, in addition to numerous unpublished and published documents and scholarly works. These interviews and correspondence fill in extensive gaps in our understanding of the informal processes and the motivations behind Mexican elite recruitment. The methodology for selecting individuals for inclusion in elite data banks has always been debated, and there are various theoretical arguments on the question of how to identify political influentials. These arguments center typically on a positional versus a reputational approach, which Peter H. Smith discusses in his own work. 23 Empirical evidence suggests the importance of position alone in social networks. 24 Like Smith and Guerra, I have favored the positional approach, but I have also incorporated the reputational methodology into my selection process, thereby including any individual presumed by peers or analysts to have exercised political influence. THE THEORETICAL CONSTRUCTS The North American literature describes various stages or components of a complete model for political recruitment. Unfortunately, many aspects of that theory building, given North American and European political structures, have little or no relevance to Mexico. Borrowing from this literature, but combining appropriate features from different theorists, yields four components that appear essential to formulating a theory for Mexican political recruitment: (1) processes that screen and channel a potential political recruit (screening struc-

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tures); (2) characteristics that enhance an individual's potential for becoming a politician (opportunity variables); (3) individuals, institutions, or processes determining who is selected (recruitment gatekeepers); and (4) conditions affecting an individual's rise to the top of the political system (promotion variables). Screening Structures Structures play a significant role in shaping the ambitions of individuals who occupy public offices. Structural features can filter out individuals unwilling to take the risks associated with political careers. 25 In Mexico, however, these risks are tempered for establishment politicians by the fact few face perils in obtaining political office. Their personal risks, measured in job security, increase with the level of rewards desired. Opposition politicians, however, operate in an entirely different context. Their risks are greater than those found in the United States or Great Britain since their opportunities for achieving office are limited. Their value systems are also likely to be quite different from those of their incumbent competitors, who have never relinquished national power. 26 In a democratic polity, structural variables produce entirely different consequences, measured in terms of career risks, from those found in semiauthoritarian or authoritarian systems. The potential political recruit in any culture is most affected by societal structures, political and nonpolitical, which encourage political involvement and determine formal patterns of participation. The political system itself, to a great extent, determines the willingness and ability of individuals to participate in politics and to reach leadership positions. In a one-party, authoritarian political system, where party membership is a prerequisite to political leadership, only a limited number of individuals—those who meet the criteria of that institution, and share an interest in the opportunities that institution offers—have a potential for political leadership. Competitive political systems produce other, peculiar conditions. For example, Richard Rose notes that the recruitment of British cabinet members was restricted to established M.R's, preventing "a nationwide canvas for men with specialists skills for particular posts. Little more than one tenth of ministers are appointed to departments where they can claim specialized knowledge." 2 7 The institutional outlines are not the only explanation for systemic influences. A qualitative variation on this is the comparative strength of institutions. Herbert Jacob discusses the role of political parties on recruitment. As he points out, where "party organizations control

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nominations, only those brokers who have contact with the machine will enter politics. Where party control is weak, a random entry of brokers may be expected." 28 Even though it is semiauthoritarian and dominated by a single party, the Mexican system provides for some degree of random entry because of the personal nature of the selection process. However, randomness in recruitment is restricted not so much by the political structure per se as by the formal credentials required to bring together recruiter and recruit. A blend of institutional and informal forces characterizes Mexico's recruitment process. At certain points, institutional variables take precedence over the informal variables. Generally speaking, formal institutional characteristics structure recruitment, channeling recruits during the screening process. Gatekeepers establish the informal rules, but they too operate within the confines of some institutional patterns, even if the gatekeepers themselves established these institutions earlier. For example, in the Mexican legislative branch, the government party, arranged along corporatist, sectoral lines, allocated a certain percentage of posts to each of the three sectors of society represented. Even though the popular (professional, middleclass) sector was given a greater share, this built-in feature explains, to a great degree, why working-class and peasant leaders have greater opportunities for recruitment to the legislative branch than to the judicial or executive branches. Theorists have also suggested a strong linkage between general societal conditions, political and nonpolitical, and recruitment practices. Some theorists have argued that as a society becomes more economically and politically complex, changes occur in recruitment processes that involve several of the components mentioned above. As Mostafa Rejai stated so well in his comparative examination of political leaders, the more advanced a political system: —the more universalistic the recruitment base —the more achievement-oriented the recruitment processes —the more universalistic the recruitment processes —the more differentiated the skills and backgrounds of political decision makers.29 Most of the theoretical literature on recruitment, as suggested above, has been constructed from the experiences of industrialized communities. As these societies developed over the long term, systemic political pluralization led to the importance of merit-based selection criteria, to a broadening of eligible candidates and processes for selecting them, and to a greater level of heterogeneity in the deci-

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sion makers' backgrounds. However, even in many of these countries, where recruitment processes replicated these conditions, they are not necessarily headed in the same direction today. In fact, narrower criteria, different from those anticipated by theorists, substituted for universalistic and heterogeneous criteria. For example, among some top public officials in England, observers discovered an increase in select, private education, not the corresponding decrease expected from an expanding, publicly funded British university system. 30 The larger question here involves two elements. Even in political systems that have become more competitive, where political pluralization has been the norm, why have recruitment processes remained unaffected, or affected to a much lesser degree than expected? Second, why have the industrialized nations on which most recruitment theory has been built followed different political paths, in terms of modernization and development, from those found in the Third World? Despite U.S. leaders' naive expectations of the flowering of democratic institutions, most Third World countries have not, for any length of time, operated under the guise of competitive political processes. The democracy of the industrialized world is the exception, not the rule. In terms of traditional measurements of modernization, Mexico obviously did not remain stagnant during this century despite the fact that many social and economic conditions of the nineteenth century still remain. To what extent have Mexican economic, social, and political achievements transferred themselves to recruitment practices specified by Rejai? More Mexicans are proportionally involved in politics than in earlier periods. More of those individuals differ qualitatively from their office-holding antecedents in the nineteenth century. More officeholders share credentials, many of which can be found among all educated Mexicans. Yet at the same time, although elite criteria have altered somewhat over a century, in many respects they remain unchanged. In fact, as subsequent chapters illustrate, many of these characteristics, new and old, are increasingly homogeneous and selective. The contradictions in the Mexican system vis a vis the general theory of political recruitment stem from the authoritarian structures found in most Third World countries and from influential ascriptive political attributes. From a structural point of view, authoritarian institutions, even within the larger context of a highly developed society, will influence the institutional procedures characteristic of the political system, including recruitment. Such a political system could impose a narrow ideological criteria in its selection process, thus thwarting the influence of social and economic variables that tend

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to contribute to more diverse and universalistic recruitment characteristics. In Mexico's case, ideological credentials were relatively insignificant. These contrary patterns in Third World and other countries cannot be explained by institutional patterns alone. Cultural behavior also looms large as an explanatory variable. Many of the characteristics attributed to "developed" societies do not substantially affect cultural patterns. Contrary to modernization arguments, traditional patterns of behavior are often flexible, ingrained, and somewhat impervious to institutional changes. The degree to which these patterns remain undiluted is determined by the strengths of cultural behavior—in short, a qualitative variable. As Sharon Kettering warns, "It is a logical assumption based on the fact that clientelism accommodates itself easily to changes in the society and state of which it is a part. But changes in clientelism do not have to be evolutionary or occur in a continuum, nor must they closely parallel changes in the society of which they are a part [emphasis added]; there need not be a direct causeeffect relationship." 31 For example, England has long had a competitive political process, and participation has increased since the nineteenth century; yet social class, much more important to English than to U.S. citizens, continues to exert a substantial influence on political recruitment. 32 Japan illustrates even more completely the combined effects of structural variables, a one-party democratic system, and cultural variables, the relationship between superiors and subordinates in many facets of Japanese culture. 33 Finally, the interaction between cultural and institutional features impacts on recruitment practices and possibilities. Among the most important of these features, often ignored in North American political analysis, is the desirability of a career in the public sector. As David Schwartz suggests in developing his theory of political recruitment, a crucial component is an individual's expectations or predisposition about politics, combined with personality traits. 34 While it is not in the purview of this study to expose the psychological attributes of Mexican politicians, or the ways in which they differ from Mexicans generally, some of which can be intimated from my analysis of socialization, it is helpful to paint a picture of Mexican images of their polity. Mexicans have a somewhat contradictory view of their political process. If we distinguish between leadership, the processes of determining who gets selected (electoral arena), and the state itself (governmental apparatus), those contradictions are more pronounced. In the first place, most Mexicans, as is true of many citizens in the United States and Europe, are increasingly frustrated with their country's po-

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litical leadership and express a lack of trust and confidence in government. 35 Second, as is true of most overtly participatory systems, the majority of citizens who take an active role in politics do so through voting and elections. The long history of electoral fraud perpetrated by the governing elite's electoral machine reduced the credibility of the electoral process. As opposition groups began, for the first time, to acquire important political offices, expectations of the process began to rise. Interestingly, however, despite leadership's lack of legitimacy and the public's serious doubts about the electoral process, Mexicans value their political system and many of their institutions. In fact, they express pride in the Mexican state. The positive image of the Mexican state encourages individuals to pursue public careers and reinforces political ambitions among interested citizens. Recruitment

Gatekeepers

The interplay of institutional and cultural variables also influences who makes the recruitment decisions. In industrialized, democratic polities the most common form of recruitment is sponsorship.36 It has been described in one model as the "cooptation and appointment" approach—that is, "an elite group designates its own successors. The elite group often exercises considerable latitude in sponsoring careers and controlling entry points into political office."37 According to Lester G. Seligman, sponsorship makes the individual "the agent of interest groups and organizations. Sponsorship may be used to draw recruits from within an association or may be used to co-opt individuals of high status to shore up party strength." 38 In Mexico, however, sponsorship takes on a somewhat different meaning. Mexico has a political system that is semicorporatist. Within that system, political parties have not played influential roles in the decision-making process or, for that matter, in leadership recruitment. Much of the theoretical literature is premised on the importance of political parties in the societies studied by recruitment theorists. In the United States, "parties perform the major role in recruitment, both as initiator and sponsor of candidacies, and as gatekeeper for the continuous influx of politically ambitious apprentices." 39 Although parties in the United States provide the institutional vehicle through which most politicians travel, most individuals joined on their own initiative rather than being recruited by the party or its leadership. In the Mexican context, however, sponsorship is that of individuals, not of organized groups or institutions. It is also true, as Seligman suggests, that sponsorship exerts an antecedent and anticipated influence on the future politician, arising from obligations and

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dependencies incurred in his or her selection and promotion. 40 Although it is the executive branch, specifically the federal bureaucracy, that serves as the primary institutional vehicle for leadership recruitment in Mexico, individual bureaucrats are the gatekeepers. In a polity where sponsorship is king, the importance of " 'who you know' rather than 'what you know'—cannot be discounted in political recruitment. Who is to read the tests and letters, vouch for their authenticity or candor, and convince the selecting unit, whether it be electorate, executive, or conciliar body?" 41 This feature introduces an additional, critical variable in the recruitment process. If a system relies heavily on sponsored recruitment, as Mexico's does, then the recruiter's characteristics become as significant as, or more significant than, those of the person recruited. To understand the recruitment process in Mexico and elsewhere, one has to analyze the gatekeepers. The nature of the gatekeeper is also determined in large part by the confluence of political culture and a semiauthoritarian, executive-dominated, subordinate party structure. Under a competitive party system, such as the one in the United States, potential politicians can enter the process through conscription, self-recruitment, cooptation, and interest representation. 42 With the exception of self-recruitment, most of these have little relevance to the Mexican case. 43 Instead, the Mexican process is dominated by a subcategory of sponsorship, incumbent selection. In all political systems, unless a prohibition exists against incumbency after a certain tenure, incumbents are likely to exert influence in recruitment. But in Mexico structural elements have essentially eliminated the judicial branch (appointive), the legislative branch (elected), and state political careers (governorships) as career tracks independent of the executive branch. 44 Consequently, recruitment relies heavily on national political leadership, represented in the executive branch, and the institutional recruitment structure is narrow. In effect, incumbent selectors reside within a national, single institution, the executive branch, which is in turn dominated by the presidency. Personnel decision making, both as a form of political patronage and as the essence of political recruitment, is in the hands of the president and his closest collaborators, generally his cabinet. In political systems where sponsorship is "widely practiced, the recruitment process is relatively closed and generally under the control of persons in power," 45 an apt description of the Mexican reality. The Mexican president is restricted to a six-year term, thus limiting his recruitment influence to a relatively short period. On the other hand, because presidents have come, without exceptions, from the executive branch since the current political system evolved in the 1920s,

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each builds a coterie of bureaucratic recruits long before reaching the presidency. The ability to serve as a gatekeeper in an incumbent, sponsorship system is dependent on the politician's ability to place recruits in public office. Because senators and legislators in the Mexican system do not exercise policymaking power over executive branch budgets, they have no patronage power. Consequently, it is the department, division, and cabinet agency directors who can place their recruits advantageously in the federal bureaucracy, an institution that expanded rapidly in this century. Given the private sector's relative immobility during much of this same period, the public sector attracted many of the most ambitious and talented Mexicans. Competition for these prestigious positions and for the ability to place one's colleagues and friends into similar posts was fierce in many Latin American countries, but was moderated in Mexico through single-party and elite continuity over six decades. 46 Expressed differently, while the competition for the gatekeeping role extended into the public arena and in electoral politics throughout Latin America, 47 in Mexico it was confined to a set of postrevolutionary Mexican leaders and their election machine, thus internalizing competition. Among the most talented and ambitious politicians, few were left out, as the philosophy of Mexican leadership was never exclusionary but inclusionary. In each political system individual gatekeepers, incumbent or nonincumbent, rely on various techniques to identify, recruit, and place their favored political disciples. In all aspects of U.S. culture, various forms of career networking have been present for decades, just as all cultures have relied on personal contacts for a variety of favors, including job placement and promotion. 48 For example, among U.S. ward committee leaders, over two-thirds identified friends as the essential element in recruitment. 49 In Japan at the highest political level, the cabinet, most have been recruited through group relationships. 50 Both recruitment and advancement are guided by the same unwritten rules. Networks of friends evolve into small informal groups. Within a political environment, these groups perform socializing functions, reinforcing certain values and political behavior, as well as recruitment functions, typically selecting individuals who comport with their values, who will enhance their group's capabilities, and from whom the group can obtain influence. 51 Networking occurs within all institutions and between institutions and society at large. Keith Legg argues in his study of industrial countries that, for both aspiring politicians (those seeking positions of power), and incumbent politicians, (those seeking proteges), "per-

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sonal, reciprocal relationships appear functional." 52 As he suggests, even in political institutions, and by implication political systems, where little risk exists in getting into the political structure, it is still necessary to establish client-patron relationships through membership in an acquaintance network or clique in order to advance from within. For example, to advance to a higher rank, career military officers in the United States and Mexico rely heavily on both their relationship to superiors and to members of promotion committees as well as their performance. 53 In Mexico networking processes are the essence of informal, incumbent recruitment. Individual recruiters form cliques of individuals, often called camarillas. Although this term carries negative connotations to some Mexicans, it has acquired popular usage. 54 The camarilla, which incorporates features I have described elsewhere, is essential to initial recruitment and to the intermediate and final recruitment of career politicians to influential posts. 55 Merilee Grindle describes this latter role within the Mexican bureaucracy, a role it plays within other institutions and at other stages of the recruitment process: "As a result, individual careers become dependent upon the cultivation and maintenance of personal and political alliances that are mobilized to acquire jobs. Fundamentally oriented toward the goal of career advancement, these alliances are based upon informal norms of reciprocity and loyalty and are conceptually similar to a specific type of interpersonal exchange alliance which has been termed a patronclient relationship." 56 The dominance of a networking system on recruitment and upward mobility affects numerous aspects of Mexican politics. In the first place, according to Marye T. Hilger, important personal alliances strongly influence decision making, policy formulation, and resource allocation. 57 Recruitment power is commonly abused in the policy process. Cabinet figures and presidents have not been shy about using their selection powers to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of decisions. For example, Juan Jose Gonzalez Bustamante was offered the position of Supreme Court justice by the attorney general of Mexico in the name of President Manuel Avila Camacho (1940-1946), who said, "Licenciado, if you wish to be a justice tomorrow, you should deny the amparo [legal writ] requested by Carlos Madrazo. If you do this, tomorrow you will be a justice." To his credit, Gonzalez Bustamante refused, asking the attorney general to inform the president "that I appreciate his offer, but if I arrive at the Supreme Court of Justice, it will be through my own merits." 58 The incumbent selector can also enhance his or her own influence through a knowledge of potential candidates for vacant offices. Op-

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erating as an internal, institutional headhunter, personnel information becomes a valuable resource. As Keith Legg concludes, whenever access is viewed as a resource—and access to public office is highly valued in Mexico—then such knowledge increases in importance: "The ability to supply the name of the successful applicant for a position within your own organization not only reinforces personal links with the individual, but provides some control over the job specifications as well." 59 It is important to emphasize that incumbent selectors oftentimes do not have a position available within their own circle of influence, but they provide names to others seeking out capable figures. The application of networking techniques has numerous and sometimes unanticipated consequences. In Mexico knowledge of a candidate does not always imply a concerted or devious attempt to push that person into an available slot. For example, Eduardo Villasenor, a highly successful figure in economic policy circles, began his career in the secretariat of foreign relations. One day the secretary called him u p to ask who, based on reports he had received, was the most efficient consul. Villasenor did not hesitate to reply that it was the consul to Japan. 60 Without knowing him personally, Villasenor gave this consul, Manuel Tello, the career break he needed—a step u p the ladder in becoming foreign relations secretary years later. Individuals who actually exercise selection powers, rather than just giving advice on who might be selected, use their authority to deter or terminate the careers of established, loyal politicians. 61 This is the disadvantage of a recruitment process that centralizes power in the hands of a few influential incumbents, especially the president. It is also why recruitment practices can be described as "closed" rather than "open" in the Mexican case. Illustrative of these consequences are two examples, both under the same president. Antonio Martinez Baez, secretary of commerce and industry under President Miguel Aleman (1946-1952), describes such an instance: After appointing me as secretary, he asked me what my relations with Espinosa de los Monteros [former cabinet secretary and ambassador to the United States] were like. I thought he was implying by this question that Espinosa would be the new secretary of the economy. I told him that I had gotten along well with him on the banking commission and that we had a good relationship with each other. I had often provided him with a legal rationale for economic ideas. Aleman said that was fine and he would make him my subsecretary. This shocked me, and I said he would never accept such a position. Then I realized that Aleman actually wanted to get him out of the way politically by giving him that position.62

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Aleman used a different technique to remove someone from a post. He instructed his secretary of finance to appoint an adviser to an agency head at a salary higher than the director's. When the agency head asked the finance secretary to fire this individual, the secretary said he couldn't because the individual was Aleman's appointee. Subsequently, the director himself resigned. 63 Another consequence of the networking system is the level of integration found within the Mexican state. Since a relatively small number of individuals exercised authority over those recruited to public life and, more important, over those who would achieve the greatest career success, they accomplished "the institutionalization of a vast middle-level bureaucracy whose obedient functionaries were tightly controlled through the patronage powers of the top elites. This bureaucracy was carefully attuned to the protection of elite interests." 64 This control over personnel also implies that elite leadership, intentionally or unintentionally, sometimes makes poor choices. 65 Although incumbent decision makers do not operate in a political vacuum even in an authoritarian environment, without institutional controls from other elites or citizens generally the potential for abuse is present. This is clearly illustrated in the Mexican system through the president's virtual appointment power over governors, at least until 1989, and, more important, his ability to designate his own successor, making the ultimate recruitment decision and choosing the future gatekeeper. President Salinas has abused this power more than any predecessor in recent history, having removed nine governors from office between December 1, 1988, and October 15, 1992. One of the advantages of incumbent sponsorship, where the recruiter is not the shared product of an interest group or multiple organizations, is that decision making is somewhat more predictable because officeholders want to please a single authority, the Mexican president. In political environments involving multiple or coalition sponsorship, control over decision makers is less predictable and direct because individuals are trying to keep together a coalition of sponsors. 66 The sponsorship system, relying on elite, incumbent control, involves more than just withholding or giving access to patronage powers. In a political system where networking is so pervasive, interpersonal connections themselves become significant resources. In addition to being critical to accomplishing policy goals, "it is through connections, through the maintenance of acquaintance networks, that access and information can be exchanged." 67 Information is not widely shared in the Mexican system because of the authoritarian

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structure, the attitudes toward the public's right to know, and the bureaucratic rivalries typical of any political culture. 68 The Mexican networking system is institutionalized and widespread informally, if not formally. Its extensive use in the Mexican system has been documented repeatedly at all levels, and this comprehensiveness is what has led to its institutionalization. As one local politician stated bluntly, ' T h e only way to political success is through friends and contacts." 69 At the national level, Grindle discovered in her examination of a single agency that all but eight of seventy-eight individuals had mobilized personal ties to obtain their posts. 70 Within the government party, which is not Mexico's most successful agent for upward mobility, an individual who is unable to develop a group of followers reduces his or her chances for advancement. 71 The heavy reliance on networks encourages potential rivalries among the followers (proteges and disciples) of incumbent gatekeepers. This competition is designed to enhance the ability of their patron to move farther up the ladder, thus improving their own chances for career success. These patterns occur in other institutional environments, especially in the intellectual community, and in public universities. 72 What is somewhat unusual about the personal networking system in Mexico is its relatively open character compared with that of the United States and other industrialized nations. 73 This process is also fairly open in other Third World countries, such as those of the Middle East. In highly industrialized societies, the networking system is kept from view because it contradicts expected legal and cultural norms by which individuals are selected on the basis of merit or other institutional determinants. Mexico's camarilla system is much more extensive, and to some degree more formalized, than "old boy" networks in Great Britain or the United States. Despite recent recognition of its extensiveness and influence in Mexico, the rules have remained implicit. Network associations in Mexico extend beyond establishing recruitment bridges to new and more influential positions. Anthropologists believe networking also involves a form of acculturation, including "the acquisition of a specialized vocabulary, a set of patterns of thought and behavior, and most importantly a network of likeminded associates" among their peers. 74 An essential element in the acculturation process is loyalty to one's political mentor and loyalty to the selection process itself. Although exceptions exist, most politicians have accepted the consequences, including the worst abuses, of the incumbent sponsorship system, maintaining a self-disciplined silence even when they are the victims of political shenanigans.

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The interrelationship between incumbent decision makers and their followers determines career success and introduces to political ambitions an element of not only unpredictability but luck.75 One's chances are typically intertwined with someone else's career opportunities. As one public figure described it, "Political advancement in Mexico is a lottery—you never know."76 The individualized nature of the selection process has not reduced the homogeneity among successful political figures. Unfortunately, most elite studies fail to consider those who lose out to successful politicians moving farther up the ladder. Instead, studies concentrate on those who make it into public life and those outside it. Mexico's networking system is such that it forms a personal, pyramidal structure. Although groups are built around an individual leader whose career affects the potential of the leader's followers, followers can easily overtake a leader's success. The leader is subject to the same whims of fate as all other participants; thus a major failure in the leader's career trajectory would have serious repercussions on the disciples' future. Consequently, it is necessary to have a "variety of contingency plans should the sponsor fall from favor."77 In short, it is not wise to be tied too closely with any one patron. Although most individuals have a primary sponsor, they are linked to what might be called associate sponsors, who may substitute for their primary mentor or recruit them horizontally into their own group. Recruitment within the camarilla system follows certain patterns. The first and most common pattern is direct recruitment, whereby an individual in charge of an agency or a department or division within an agency recruits a specific individual for a position in that agency. Most gatekeepers reward their followers with such positions. The second pattern is third-party recruitment, whereby an individual outside the particular institution, generally someone familiar to the potential recruit, mediates recruitment to the individual exercising patronage power. An excellent illustration of this pattern can be found in the initial recruitment of President Miguel de la Madrid to public life. Although most analysts incorrectly believe that the president relied on his uncle, then head of the Bank of Mexico, to give him a job, de la Madrid obtained his first position at the bank through a well-connected college professor who recommended him to an agency head.78 The final pattern of recruitment also occurs through a third party, but this is someone employed within the same agency and generally, but not always, within the patronage-giver's circle of power. Thus, a cabinet secretary may ask his or her chief of staff or a subordinate to recommend an individual for a specific task or post, or

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those same individuals might take the initiative to recommend that their chief hire someone. 79 Opportunity

Variables

Political systems provide a variety of screening structures that encourage certain individuals and discourage others from entering public careers. Gatekeepers in control of the recruitment process determine which of those ambitious, potential politicians enter the system, giving them the basis for but not guaranteeing a successful career. It is clear from dozens of studies across cultures, however, that certain background variables enhance the opportunity of some individuals over others to become these likely politicians. These variables are worth examining in isolation because over a period of time analysts could deduce what contributes to effective opportunities among prospective political figures. 80 These variables have nothing to do with the institutional channels characterizing the political system but rather with the gatekeepers's personal characteristics and with societal structures placing potential politicians in contact with political organizations and gatekeepers. In most institutional environments, politics not excluded, informal rules exert tremendous influence on how things are done, who does them, and who accomplishes them most successfully. The same is true of the recruitment function. In other words, as Dwaine Marvick has suggested, formal recruitment processes rarely bestow political influence within an organization; rather, it is the intramural role patterns to which a politician conforms that enhance his or her potential.81 Within an organization, this process involves meeting the expectations of one's superiors. At the point of recruitment, however, it translates into incumbent sponsors choosing individuals with similar personal, social, and educational traits. This is true in the private and social sectors as well as the public sector.82 Given this universal prejudice among gatekeepers, their background characteristics become as important as those of their recruits, since they determine the latter and often presage changes among a new generation of politicians. The importance of the potential politician's personality traits and background was pointed to earlier. Although my analysis will not examine that variable, a connection exists between political motivations and certain background characteristics. For example, Schwartz notes in his discussion of political recruitment that certain social backgrounds are regularly associated with political efficacy. He cites the example of people with higher socioeconomic

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status aspiring to political positions because their backgrounds have given them a more positive attitude toward politics. 83 If certain background characteristics enhance the opportunity of some individuals to be considered for political careers, then structural conditions in society generally empower certain individuals with preferred characteristics. Major structural variables include level of economic development, availability of economic opportunity, and degree of social equality. We have seen how economic development affects the role, prestige, and perceptions of the state. The greater the opportunities in other economic activities, the less desirable the state becomes as a career choice. A simple but significant consequence of expanded opportunities is their impact on the age at which a decision is reached to pursue a political career. In open political systems, where party systems are competitive and most political careers are decided by the electoral process, most individuals follow other professional interests before becoming candidates for office, usually after the age of thirty. As Jacob argues, "We may expect, for instance, that few men will seek office until they are settled in their community and occupation, for they lack the skills, contacts, and standing necessary for a political career." 84 In Mexico, examples exist of prominent political figures who have entered politics at a comparable age. After all, given the power of incumbent sponsorship, a person could be selected from a professional career at a mature age and immediately thrust into active politics. This happens, but it is highly unlikely. Instead, most Mexicans have already exposed themselves to politics before graduating from college or professional school. An intervening structural variable introduces an entirely different context for political recruitment, the role of higher education. Initial candidate recruitment in Mexico occurs at a much younger age because the university is the community from which politicians are selected, for their skills are developed and observed in the classroom and in campus politics. The primary recruiters in Mexico's initial recruitment process are politically ambitious professors and students. Since the initial locus for the formation of personal cliques, and consequently recruitment, is within a campus setting, higher education becomes a crucial variable. In all political settings, even those which for ideological reasons stress leadership recruited from manual occupations, educational attributes of political elites and all other types of leaders are much higher than they are among the general population. Individuals with higher education, then, have increased opportunities to become political recruits. University training as a for-

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mal credential has become almost axiomatic in contemporary political life in the Third World and in industrialized nations as well, socialist and nonsocialist alike. In Mexico the level of education is not as important as the type and location of education. The reason for this is twofold. Gatekeepers who are college educated value their education and select someone with equivalent educational credentials. College-educated leaders also have a tendency to replicate their own university backgrounds among their disciples. Thus, Ivy League schools continue to be highly overrepresented in the backgrounds of the U.S. elites, despite higher education's extraordinary expansion and the proliferation of prestigious public institutions. Since initial political recruitment often occurs within Mexican universities, the recruiter is not only potentially biased in favor of his or her alma mater but, more important, by contacts at that school. Sponsored recruitment, therefore, replicates the institutional locus of recruitment in politicians' backgrounds. In the United States this locus might be some type of party activity. In Mexico it is a select number of universities. The majority of politicians and nonpoliticians who teach do so at institutions from which they have graduated. This fact, and not necessarily a bias in favor of their alma mater, is what replicates the educational pattern over time. It also, of course, replicates the professional discipline of the recruiter, who typically teaches in the area of his or her own professional expertise. As in many countries, the typical professional background has been law. This professional choice, as discussed in later chapters, has undergone significant change as both gatekeepers and a new generation of recruits altered their educational preferences. In incumbent sponsorship systems recruits are universally selected young, giving recruiters the opportunity to thoroughly indoctrinate them into elite political culture.85 Mexicans begin their professional education at the age of seventeen or eighteen and, if successful, complete their degrees by twenty-two or twenty-three. Therefore, they encounter their initial political mentors at a relatively young age.86 This youthful recruitment encourages apprenticeships. Generally these are lowly, uninfluential positions from which a prospective recruit can be observed and tested. When Mexican political careers are thoroughly researched, they usually reveal an ihdividual who held a public post, sometimes as an intern, while still a student. For example, Miguel de la Madrid worked four of his five years in law school under a professor at the National Bank of Foreign Commerce, and Carlos Salinas de Gortari served as an aide to the government party's Federal District head during his days as an economics student.

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In other cases, students often prove their intellectual capabilities and loyalty by serving as an assistant or adjunct professor to their mentor. Whether apprentices demonstrate their abilities in the bureaucracy or the university, the practice of apprenticeship further reduces the population from which political leaders are chosen. If serving such an apprenticeship is institutionalized, even if informally, then gatekeepers are provided with a helpful criterion for choosing between potential recruits. 87 David Schers described this pattern for potential recruits in the national party, a description that could well apply to President Carlos Salinas's first political experience as an aide to the Federal District party chief: These young aides come to the headquarters almost every evening and many times during the day. They are students, young lawyers, and other professionals looking for a political career. The personalistic characteristics of Mexican politics are illustrated by this type. One of the leaders said about these aides, 'They help; they have ambition." Another explained the path they follow: "They accumulate merit points, and I try to get them political positions." The apprentice's functions serve another purpose, too. They give the leader a good opportunity to evaluate the young recruit's potential and loyalty. They teach the apprentice himself how suited he is for politics . . . A senator, a veteran member of the National Executive Committee, talking about political promotions in general said: "We study the people, there are no improvisations."88 One of the experiences that increases the opportunities of probable political recruits is family background. The most specific quality is a family interest in politics. This variable, particularly in the form of family political activism, is found to be common in many cultures, including Mexico. There are three ways in which a family's political interests affect career opportunities for the children. First, general socialization patterns within the family encourage (or discourage) an interest in politics. The socialization literature is replete with examples of politicians recalling family political discussions around the table. Second, parents who are politically active, to the extent of holding influential political office, can themselves act as a political gatekeeper for their children or relatives. Czudnowski concludes that broad generalizations about such family influence cannot be made for industrialized nations because such studies do not exist.89 I have, however, documented this influence clearly in Mexico, where typically families exerting this type of influence on the national level do so through others, rather than specifically appointing their relatives to a post. Third, the most likely influence families exert on a potential

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politician's career is to bring a child into contact with dozens of influential figures. Given the dominance of a networking system on recruitment and promotion, contact is the essential ingredient in enhancing one's political opportunities. Finally, two background variables that are universally important to most political elites are an urban birthplace and place of residence as well as a higher socioeconomic status. These and other background characteristics are meaningless unless, as Czudnowski suggests, these variables are examined in a larger context. 90 These two variables are very much interrelated, especially in Third World countries, where economic opportunities are more uneven and determined by geography. One's place of birth and childhood residence, as well as the income and cultural values of one's family, have a pronounced effect on educational opportunities, which are typically more available in larger Mexican cities, often provincial capitals. Given the importance of higher education in the backgrounds of political elites as well as the extraordinary role of universities as a recruitment institution in Mexico, family income and geography take on special significance. Promotion

Variables

Recruitment can be likened to a large societal funnel in which most citizens never reach the spout's end, either because they are uninterested or they lack characteristics bringing them in contact with the lip of the funnel, allowing them the opportunity to pass over the top. Once an individual has passed muster and been selected by institutions and gatekeepers to enter the political arena, he or she joins a select but still relatively large group. As is true of any profession, many successfully meet the criteria to pursue the profession, but very few reach its apex to become well known and respected by peers and outsiders. Analyzing a political elite through recruitment theory distinguishes select public officials who rise to the top from the majority of political careerists who remain elsewhere in the system. Those variables affecting political advancement often overlap with those that explain initial recruitment. It is even more difficult to identify and separate out those variables that determine whether one politician will be more successful than another politician and not simply more successful than the general population. Unfortunately, there are no studies of Mexican public figures that compare the ordinary with the highly successful. 91 There are at least two reasons why this task poses additional obstacles. First, given the Mexican networking system, the incumbent gatekeeper is often the same individual respon-

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sible for political advancement. Consequently, the criteria that favored this person's initial choices often determine upward mobility within the political system. The second reason is that many of the variables that explain upward mobility are often informal; some have to do with the personality of the individual politician (intensity of ambition, discipline, etc.), others with the informal rules of the political culture, and still others with the values of incumbent superiors. Just as in the initial recruitment process, luck plays a role, especially in determining an individual's initial mentor and the success of the mentor's career. Age is another important variable. Aside from the importance of an early apprenticeship in the initial recruitment stage, a politician's age in relation to a president's age wields significance in the advancement process. The Mexican president, as the chief selector, chooses those with whom he has had considerable contact. Because university environments are the locus of Mexican political recruitment, school generations become critical variables. A relationship exists between a president's college-educated schoolmates and those of his collaborators. Younger and older generations are also well represented in a presidential administration, and many of these individuals are mentors to or disciples of the president's own generation. Age is also important in relation to presidential recruitment because of other generational experiences. In earlier stages of Mexico's development, and especially during the Revolution, sharing certain combat experiences proved remarkably important to political recruitment and advancement. Contacts were developed in these environments rather than in formal, institutional settings. Major changes in the political or social context have proved significant for recruitment and for attitudes among the new recruits. 92 One of the most important variables in upward political mobility is the size of a politician's network. Without a doubt, the larger one's network, the greater the opportunity for rising u p the political ladder. 93 The breadth of contacts not only increases one's chances, as in a lottery, but also protects the individual over a long career from internal shifts in the selector's recruitment criteria. In other words, the broader one's contacts as the credentials change, the more likely one is to have mentors or disciples who meet these changing criteria and who can promote them despite the lack of such criteria. For example, Gustavo Martinez Corbala, Salinas's original mentor, shares few characteristics, including ideology, with Salinas's technocratic cabinet. Despite the ups and downs of his career since recruiting Salinas in the 1960s, he retained one essential quality, his friendship with his dis-

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ciple, leading to two major responsibilities during the Salinas administration.94 Breadth of contacts also protects individuals from a single mentor's career vagaries. Individuals who maintain narrow camarillas and are closely identified with a single individual benefit handsomely when their sponsor's career is in ascendancy. But if the career of a sponsor declines, then a disciple's career is also in jeopardy. Wide networking protects against such unexpected and undesirable consequences. Familial interest in politics is definitely associated with political ambitions in many cultures, including Mexico and the United States. Family involvement in politics, especially at a high level, is especially important in political systems relying heavily on incumbent selection. Not only does such a background facilitate initial recruitment; it also plays a role in upward political mobility. If one's parent was an incumbent selector and led a camarilla, then his or her disciples would be well placed throughout the political system. These disciples owe favors to their original mentor, which they would be glad to repay by promoting the career of a mentor's child. This pattern can be seen in President Salinas's own career trajectory. In addition to increasing one's networking scope by indirectly expanding one's own camarilla, a political family affects a third variable. One of the essential reasons for the heavy reliance on networking in Mexico and other Third World countries is the importance of personal trust and loyalty. This explains in part why both in politics and in the private sector extended family members are recruited to responsible positions. Personal, political loyalty in Mexico is synonymous with loyalty to the state.95 In cultures where a continuous leadership remains entrenched in power, loyalty to a government and to its leaders is confused with loyalty to the country. In a more sophisticated context, this practice is not merely nepotism but the result of the belief that a politician's allegiance to a former mentor transfers to the relationship between the now successful disciple and the mentor's child. In the minds of politicians, kinship provides a quick and reliable litmus test for loyalty. The most successful politicians are those found in the recruitment channels leading to the top of the system. In countries with competitive political systems, these channels tended to be electoral channels, especially at the national level. In Mexico, as noted above, the judicial and legislative branches, while acceptable places to begin a career, were not useful pathways to the cabinet. This pattern is evident elsewhere in the Third World—for example, in Brazil.96 Those political figures whose careers have centered in the national bureaucracy pro-

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vide most of Mexico's top leadership. This has been true for some time, and in recent years specific bureaucratic agencies have taken on an exaggerated importance in recruitment. The importance of individual cabinet departments is analogous to specific educational disciplines and institutions within higher education. Because Mexico's sponsorship system relies on incumbent selectors, the locus of the selectors' careers as well as their teaching determines their disciples' careers, apart from their educational and teaching contacts. For example, if presidents tend to come from certain types of agencies, then a disproportionate number of their immediate collaborators and their collaborators' subordinates will also come from those same agencies. In many Third World countries facing complex developmental problems and enormous debts, economic agencies and banks have become increasingly influential within the state apparatus. Individuals most closely associated with economic agencies have thus come to the forefront of political leadership and have advanced disproportionately. Recruitment is a fluid process. It is responsive to changes in societal structures, to changes in policymaking emphasis, and to alterations in the characteristics of the sponsors, individual and institutional. Recruitment can also initiate some of those same changes, both through the strategy it uses to carry out the selection process and through the individuals selected. In recent years political advancement in Mexico has been influenced not only by work history but also by an additional career experience—graduate education abroad. Again, both place and discipline are relevant. Rarely do young public figures who study abroad absorb the new culture's characteristics. Rather, they carry their behavior patterns to that new cultural context and adapt to them. Thus, the networking that is widely prevalent at Mexican educational institutions occurs in a small number of foreign graduate programs chosen by ambitious, upwardly mobile politicians. These individuals may be chosen both for their intellectual abilities and friendship ties, but also for their shared values in what they have learned and where that learning occurred. As intellectual analysts have so aptly suggested, these future leaders developed a shared discourse and culture, in this case focused on political economy and development solutions. 97 CONCLUSIONS An analysis of recruitment literature and its application to the Mexican case suggests some variables common to that society and to Third World countries generally. Other variables that emerge from the

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Mexican case are unique to it and other Third World cultures. These patterns are essential for understanding recruitment processes outside most of the industrialized world and in polities where democracy and participation are the exception, not the norm. Not only do societal structures and culture determine different general patterns of political recruitment in these countries, but these recruitment characteristics generate their own implications for the larger political system. The most important of these findings, which provide a framework for examining many Third World countries, can be summarized in ten propositions. 1. Studies of elite background are useful indicators of the possible locus of political recruitment and differences in the structural environment related to recruitment from one society to another. Most of these studies continue to identify background and career variables and, in some cases, with the use of computer technology, to demonstrate statistical relationships between specified characteristics and their propensity to affect upward career mobility. While these are interesting data in themselves, they suggest only where recruitment is likely to occur and what might be important to it, without actually illustrating how the process occurs. 2. Who does the recruiting and how it is accomplished is more important than the background characteristics attributed to large groups of political elites. Political recruitment studies have focused on these shared characteristics of various types of politicians rather than on the actual process of how one obtains public employment (initial stage), how one is promoted within public life (intermediate stage), how one reaches the apex of one's career (final stage), and who is responsible for all three stages of recruitment. A survey of the comparative literature reveals how unusual it is to encounter a description and analysis of actual recruitment processes. It is these processes which are most significant and most mysterious, and we need to examine informal linkages to understand much more comprehensively how recruitment affects the political system and how the political structure affects recruitment. 3. The competitiveness of a political system affects political recruitment, but in Third World countries it does not appear to constrict informal processes, the most important of which are networking cliques. For example, even though a democratic polity contributes to the democratization of recruitment cliques in the sense of increasing their diversity and numbers, it would not necessarily influence the impact of informal networking processes on political behavior, including recruitment. The differences between authoritarian versus

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democratic political cultures, in terms of the recruitment function, are the number of channels available to prospective politicians and the number and type of recruiters. Moreover, such differences create opportunities for self-starters in the competitive polity since the individuals can recruit themselves by appealing to the electorate directly. 4. Authoritarian systems in the Third World, where states are strong, encourage incumbent political recruitment. A self-perpetuating elite selects its replacements. Mexico is unique because the bureaucracy, not electoral channels, provides most of the successful recruitment paths to the top. This structural characteristic is present in Mexico because of a weak party, responsive to rather than in control of the bureacuracy, and the executive branch's dominance over all other governmental institutions. 5. State-dominated systems are likely to be incumbent sponsored and typically seek most of their recruits through the national bureaucracy. Local careers in some democratic polities, but especially in authoritarian settings, provide few success stories for ambitious national politicians. Such politicians are likely to spend all or most of their careers within that same bureaucracy. When competitive electoral environments exist in these societies, many leading figures come from legislative careers—in some cases, from top state or provincial offices. 6. In incumbent sponsorship systems generational criteria are exaggerated; therefore, age becomes an important variable. Age takes on added importance in this type of recruitment process because incumbents largely determine new-recruit composition, and peers overwhelmingly dominate clique formation in Mexico within university settings. This is why presidents and other selectors tend to recruit from their own age cohort. Therefore, any shift in the age of the primary recruiters potentially alters the criteria and experiences influencing the next generation of leadership recruitment. 7. The most important recruitment vehicle, as distinct from the recruitment setting, is the political network or clique, often labeled the camarilla in Mexico. This informal, loose association of politically ambitious individuals facilitates and motivates the recruitment process. Informal networks are used in many other cultures in a variety of contexts, but these political groupings function specifically as recruitment agents in Mexico. 8. Structural variables are as important to initial as to subsequent recruitment, but these variables vary in importance as the stage of recruitment is altered. In Mexico as elsewhere in Latin America and the Third World, education is crucial to initial recruitment—not the level of education per se, although this plays a significant role, but

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the institution attended. Higher education is a universal background variable among political elites in all parts of the world, and in Mexico it is even a locus of political recruitment. As a consequence, educational recruiters in politics, including their peers, play an important role in joining together in a recruitment network (clique). These professors often serve as the initial recruiter, either as a government placement officer or as the chief mentor within a clique. Sometimes former students themselves substitute for professors by recruiting their professors and former peers to positions when they are midway or at the apex of their own careers. 9. The significance of structural variables reinforces the relationship between the state and education in Mexico and elsewhere in the Third World. The relationship is, in part, the product of the structural conditions, essentially economic, that characterize most developing countries. Weak economic development and a fledgling private sector produced strong state influence as well as a state that employs high percentages of top professionals. The comparative literature illustrates that other countries, such as Japan, select political elites who come from a small number of top universities. In Japan, however, the emphasis on higher education from a specific institution focuses more on the quality of the education (hence the institution's prestige) and the fact that the recruiters themselves are University of Tokyo graduates. In Mexico and most developing countries, such a relationship is between professional, academic staff and public officeholders. 10. In the intermediate stage of political recruitment, w h e n recruitment activities lead to mid-career moves and placement, government bureaucracy replaces national educational institutions as the primary locus of recruitment. The final recruitment stage focuses on the means through which a person obtains a major national political office. Again the bureaucracy is the primary locus for this level of recruitment. This is likely to be the case in most developing societies, given the larger importance of the state and the dominance of the executive over the legislative branch. Thus, structural variables are important in determining how an individual moves from middle- to top-level positions. The institutional channels that influence this final stage may differ from the two earlier stages. The theoretical and substantive literature on recruitment in the last two decades suggests important linkages between informal and formal characteristics. The interplay between institutional and structural versus informal, cultural variables deserves much closer examination. The persistence of informal, cultural variables in political recruitment processes over time, despite major changes in the level of economic

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and social development in a society, suggests the strength of these patterns in confronting institutional change. Third World countries, which have typically operated in a semiauthoritarian political context, have encouraged the persistence of informal rules of the political culture, achieving a blend between newly introduced Western patterns and long-standing traditions in each culture. The apparent contradictions between old and new, and informal versus formal recruitment structures, are due more to the origin of recruitment theory than to any inherent mismatch within these processes. Before our knowledge of political recruitment in most nations of the world can advance and thus expand our understanding of political systems generally, theory building must focus on how recruitment occurs in the Third World, not the industrialized world.

NOTES 1. The most comprehensive of these are Gordon S. Black, "A Theory of Political Ambition: Career Choices and the Role of Structural Incentives," American Political Science Review 64 (March 1972): 865-878; Lewis Bowman and G. R. Boynton, "Recruitment Patterns among Local Party Officials: A Model and Some Preliminary Findings in Selected Locales," American Political Science Review 60 (December 1966): 667-676; Alfred B. Clubok, Norman B. Wilensky, and Forrest J. Berghorn, "Family Relationships, Congressional Recruitment and Political Modernization," Journal of Politics 31 (November 1969): 1035-1062; Lewis J. Edinger and Donald D. Searing, "Social Background in Elite Analysis: A Methodological Inquiry," American Political Science Review 61 (June 1967): 428-445; Herbert Jacob, "Initial Recruitment of Elected Officials in the United States—A Model," Journal of Politics 24 (November 1962): 703-716; Dwaine Marvick, "Political Recruitment and Careers," International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 12: 273-282; Kenneth Prewitt, The Recruitment of Political Leaders: A Study of Citizen Politicians (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970); David C. Schwartz, "Toward a Theory of Political Recruitment," Western Political Quarterly 22 (September 1969): 552-571; Lester G. Seligman, Recruiting Political Elites (New York: General Learning, 1971); and William Zartman, "Toward a Theory of Elite Circulation," in Elites in the Middle East, ed. William Zartman (New York: Praeger, 1980), 84-115. 2. These studies are cited extensively throughout the text of this work. 3. Moshe M. Czudnowski, "Political Recruitment," in Micropolitical Theory, vol. 2 of Handbook of Political Science, ed. Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson Polsby (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1975), 155-242. 4. Ibid., 156. 5. Heinz Eulau, "Elite Analysis and Democratic Theory," in Elite Recruitment in Democratic Polities: Comparative Studies across Nations, ed. Heinz Eulau and Moshe M. Czudnowski (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1976), 22.

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6. Seligman, Recruiting Political Elites, 2. 7. R. K. Carty, P. James, and C. Sharman, "Leadership Selection Processes and Careers: A Comparison of Australian and Canadian Premiers," Political Studies 38 (June 1990): 276, conclude that "party leadership selection mechanisms may deflect the natural workings of British-style parliamentary politics." 8. For evidence of this, see Roderic Ai Camp, "Losers in Mexican Politics: A Comparative Study of Official Party Precandidates for Gubernatorial Elections, 1970-1975," in Statistical Abstract of Latin America Supplement Series, vol. 6 of Quantitative Latin American Studies: Methods and Findings, ed. James W. Wilkie and Kenneth R. Ruddle (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center 1977), 23-33. 9. Roderic Ai Camp, "An Intellectual in Mexican Politics: The Case of Agustin Yanez," Mester 12 (May 1983): 3-17. 10. Roderic Ai Camp, The Making of a Government: Political Socialization in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984), 135. 11. Henry R. Glick, "Political Recruitment in Sarawak: A Case Study of Leadership in a New State," Journal of Politics 28 (February 1966): 82. Lewis D. Edinger makes the important point in this context that rather than analyzing elite personnel, one might consider the circulation of elite values. See his "Post-Totalitarian Leadership: Elites in the German Federal Republic," American Political Science Review 54 (March i960): 81. 12. Because the system has impeded opposition control over the executive branch, it forces candidates to pursue permanent careers outside the public sector. 13. Roderic Ai Camp, Generals in the Palacio: The Military in Modern Mexico (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 142. 14. I found Charles F. Andrain's discussion helpful in placing the Mexican political model within the context of other Third World countries, even though Mexico, for many reasons, does not fit easily into one of his categories. Nevertheless, it shares many features with his "industrialized bureaucratic system" model. See his "Models of Third World Political Systems" and "A Theoretical Explanation of Political Change," in Political Change in the Third World (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988). 15. Eva Etzioni-Halevy, "Elite Power, Manipulation and Corruption: A Demo-Elite Perspective," Government and Opposition 24 (Spring 1987): 222. 16. See Roderic Ai Camp, Intellectuals and the State in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), 121; and Camp, Entrepreneurs and Politics in Twentieth-Century Mexico (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 138. 17. Even the most centralized political system rarely controls recruitment among local governmental appointments. For example, in the Soviet Union one analyst discovered that "centralization has no more than a marginal influence on the circulation of elites in the Belorussian Republic." Michael E. Urban, "Centralization and Elite Circulation in a Soviet Republic," British Journal of Political Science 19 (January 1989): 23. 18. Frangois-Xavier Guerra, Le Mexique: De Vancien regime a la revolucion

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(Paris: L'Harmattan, 1985; Spanish ed., Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1988); and Peter H. Smith, Labyrinths of Power: Political Recruitment in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). 19. Most of these are available in Roderic Ai Camp, Mexican Political Biographies, 1935-1981, 2d ed. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982); Camp, Mexican Political Biographies, 1884-1935 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991); and Camp, Who's Who in Mexico Today, 2d ed. rev. (Boulder: Westview, 1993). A revised edition of the contemporary period is also available as Politicos biogrdficos mexicanos, 1935-1985 (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1992). 20. Peter H. Smith, who incorporated my original biographies in his research, kindly gave me his complete field research biographical notes, all of which are incorporated into this data bank. Guerra's data are openly available through a cumbersome but usable coded biographical section in Le Mexiaue, vol. 2. 21. Philip H. Burch, Elites in American History (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981). 22. The most important works are Francisco Suarez Davila, Elite, tecnocracia y movilidad politica en Mexico (Mexico City: Universidad Autonomo Metropolitana—Xochimilco, 1990); and Gustavo Hernandez, "La movilidad politica en Mexico" (thesis, Colegio de Mexico, 1968). 23. Smith, Labyrinths of Power, Appendix A, 317-328. 24. See Roger Gould, "Power and Social Structure in Community Elites," Social Forces 68 (December 1989): 546-548. 25. Black, "A Theory of Political Ambition," 158. 26. For evidence of this see Carlos Gil, Hope and Frustration: Interviews with Leaders of Mexico's Political Opposition (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1992), 122.

27. Richard Rose, Politics in England (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 198. 28. Jacob, "Initial Recruitment of Elected Officials," 716. 29. Mostafa Rejai, "Toward the Comparative Study of Political DecisionMakers," Comparative Political Studies 2 (October 1969): 353-354. 30. Kevin Theakston and Geoffrey K. Fry, "Britain's Administrative Elite: Permanent Secretaries 1900-1986," Public Administration 67 (Summer 1989): 13331. Sharon Kettering, "The Historical Development of Political Clientelism," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18, no. 3 (Winter 1988): 423. 32. Theakston and Fry, "Britain's Administrative Elite," 133. 33. Joel D. Aberbach, Ellis S. Krauss, and Michio Muramatsu, "Comparing Japanese and American Administrative Elites," British Journal of Political Science 20, no. 4 (October 1990): 461-462. 34. Schwartz, "Toward a Theory of Political Recruitment," 554. 35. Roderic Ai Camp, Politics in Mexico (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); and Ronald Inglehart, Neil Nevitte, and Miguel Basanez, Convergence in North America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming).

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36. Mattei Dogan argued that for promotion to the French cabinet, sponsorship was the critical variable. As he notes, "A person can very well rise through these channels and become visible, but he is not yet a minister in title, only ministrable. A last step remains: sponsorship, even a kind of political godfathering, in the honorable sense of the French word parrainage. What is striking when one reads ministers' biographies is that this ultimate act in their careers is always a personalized choice." "Career Pathways to the Cabinet in France, 1879-1986," in Pathways to Power: Selecting Rulers in Pluralist Democracies, ed. Mattei Dogan (Boulder: Westview, 1992), 36. 37. Prewitt, The Recruitment of Political Leaders, 5. 38. Lester G. Seligman, "Political Parties and the Recruitment of Political Leaders," in Totalitarian Leadership in Industrialized Societies, ed. Lewis J. Edinger (New York: Wiley, 1967), 312. 39. Czudnowski, "Political Recruitment," 196. 40. Seligman, Recruiting Political Elites, 17. 41. Dwaine Marvick, "Political Recruitment and Careers," 278. 42. Lester G. Seligman, "Political Recruitment and Party Structure: A Case Study," American Political Science Review 55 (March 1961): 85-86. 43. In the United States, where most leading politicians come up through the electoral arena, individuals typically report that some politically active group or individual has asked them to run. See Bowman and Boynton, "Recruitment Patterns among Local Party Officials," 676. 44. As Miguel A. Centeno concludes, "Assuming that access to power is central to a politician's agenda, no-reelection deprived elite members of a means to power independent of central control. If they could not expect to be ever reelected, there was no incentive for them to cultivate a popular constituency. Why provide services to voters who could not return such favors with electoral support?" (Actually, Mexican legislators may be reelected, but not consecutively, at least not in the same chamber.) See "ElectoralBureaucratic Authoritarianism: The Mexican Case," in Politics, Society and Democracy: Latin America, ed. Arturo Valenzuela (Boulder: Westview, 1993), 19. 45. Kenneth Prewitt and Heinz Eulau, "Social Bias in Leadership Selection, Political Recruitment and Electoral Context," Journal of Politics 33 (May 1971): 311.

46. Glen Dealy, The Public Man: An Interpretation of Latin America and Other Catholic Cultures (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977). 47. Merle Kling, "Toward a Theory of Power and Political Instability in Latin America," in Latin American Reform or Revolution, ed. James Petras and Maurice Zeitlin (New York: Fawcett, 1968), 76-93. 48. Gwen Moore illustrates overlapping circles of elites unified by a common issue or organizational membership in "The Structure of a National Elite Network," American Sociological Review 44 (1979): 681. 49. Schwartz, "Toward a Theory of Political Recruitment," 564. 50. Peter Cheng, "The Japanese Cabinets, 1885-1973: An Elite Analysis," Asian Survey 14 (December 1974): 1056. 51. Schwartz, "Toward a Theory of Political Recruitment," 554.

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52. Keith Legg, "Interpersonal Relationships and Comparative Politics: Political Clientelism in Industrial Society," Politics 7 (May 1972): 9. 53. Maureen Mylander, The Generals (New York: Dial Press, 1974), 157, indicates that the generals who select other officers for general rank tap people like themselves, thus determining the future composition of the officer corps. See also Camp, Generals in the Palacio, 200. 54. This intepretation was pointed out to me by President Miguel de la Madrid, who believes that "political group" or "clique" is a more appropriate expression. 55. Roderic Ai Camp, "The Camarilla in Mexican Politics: The Case of the Salinas Cabinet," Journal of Mexican Studies 6 (Winter 1990): 85-108. 56. Merilee Grindle, "Patrons and Clients in the Bureaucracy: Career Networks in Mexico," Latin American Research Review 12, no. 1 (1977): 38. yj. Marye T. Hilger, Decision-Making in a Public Marketing Enterprise: Conasupo in Mexico (San Antonio: College of Business, University of Texas at San Antonio, 1980). 58. Interview with his brother, Excelsior, October 6, 1983, 30A. 59. Legg, "Interpersonal Relations and Comparative Politics," 10. 60. Eduardo Villasenor, Memorias-Testimonio (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1974), 81. 61. For numerous examples from Mexican political memoirs, see Roderic Ai Camp, "Autobiography and Decision-Making in Mexico: A Review Essay," Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs 19 (May 1977): 275-283. 62. Antonio Martinez Baez, interview with author, Mexico City, October 28, 1976. 63. Luis Garrido, El tiempo de mi vida: Memorias (Mexico City: Porrua, 1974), 258. 64. David Ronfeldt, Atencingo: The Politics of Agrarian Struggle in a Mexican Ejido (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973), 235-236. 65. Braulio Maldonado, a longtime political figure from Baja California, discusses the implications of this in his memoirs, Baja California: Comentarios politicos (Mexico City: Costa Amic, i960), 14. 66. Seligman, Recruiting Political Elites, 2. 67. Legg, "Interpersonal Relations and Comparative Politics," 10. 68. As I have argued elsewhere, "The blanket of secrecy traditionally surrounding the decision-making process in Mexico stems from the value politicians place on withholding information and from the competitiveness of their careers. One of the specific byproducts of secrecy in policy making is that competition among cabinet-level agencies often leads to the planning and execution of wasteful policies. Furthermore, because rivalries among various politicians exist within most agencies, departments in the same ministry are equally guilty of ignoring each other. Thus, what appears to be a homogenous team loyal to the president of Mexico is instead a group of individuals vying for power." Intellectuals and the State in Twentieth-Century Mexico, 21. The best work on information and decision making is Evelyn P. Stevens, "Information and Decision Making in Mexico" (Ph.D. diss., University

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of California, Berkeley, 1968); and Stevens, Protest and Response in Mexico (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1974). 69. Quoted in William S. Tuohy, "Centralism and Political Elite Behavior in Mexico," in Development Administration in Latin America, ed. Clarence E. Thurber and Lawrence S. Graham (Durham: Duke University Press, 1973), 271.

70. Merilee Grindle, "Patrons and Clients in the Bureaucracy," 43. 71. David Schers, "The Popular Sector of the Mexican PRI" (Ph.D. diss., University of New Mexico, 1972), 55. 72. See Larissa Lomnitz, "Organizational Structure of a Mexican Research Institute" (National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, 1980), 28. The reliance on friends to obtain employment in the nonpublic sector is common in the United States. Such friendships are also essential to influencing policy decisions. See Susan Eckstein, The Poverty of Revolution: The State and the Urban Poor in Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 28, 176. 73. This was not always the case. None of the classic works on Mexico in the 1960s mentioned the term camarilla. Kenneth F. Johnson was the first scholar to give political cliques the attention they deserved in Mexican Democracy: A Critical View (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1971). 74. Larissa Lomnitz, "The Latin American University: Breeding Ground of the New State Elites" (paper presented at a meeting of the American Association of Anthropological Sciences, Houston, January 1979), 4 - 5 . j$. Marvick, "Political Recruitment and Careers," 280. 76. Mariano Azuela, interview with author, Mexico City, October 24,1976. JJ. Richard Fagen and William Tuohy, Politics and Privilege in a Mexican City (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), 25. 78. Miguel de la Madrid, interview with author, Mexico City, February 17, 1991.

79. Grindle outlines these options in her study of Conasupo, a decentralized agency, in "Patrons and Clients in the Bureaucracy," 44. 80. Seligman, Recruiting Political Elites, 4. 81. Marvick, "Political Recruitment and Careers," 277-278. 82. As Suzanne Keller reports in a study of a factory, superiors were "often concerned to have subordinates with like traits." See The Social Origins and Career Lines of Three Generations of American Business Leaders (New York: Arno Press, 1980), 178. 83. Schwartz, "Toward a Theory of Political Recruitment," 552. 84. Jacob, "Initial Recruitment of Elected Officials," 712. 85. Ralph H. Turner, "Sponsored and Contest Mobility and the School System," American Sociological Review 25 (December i960): 860. 86. Those who joined at the youngest age in a closed bureaucracy, as in the old Soviet system, which has certain parallels with Mexico, had the best opportunity to move to the top. See Robert T. Holt, "Age as a Factor in the Recruitment of Communist Leadership," American Political Science Review 48 (June 1954): 487.

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87. Prewitt, The Recruitment of Political Leaders, 13. 88. Schers, "The Popular Sector of the Mexican PRI," 50. 89. Czudnowski, "Political Recruitment," 188. 90. Ibid., 186. 91. I did this briefly for a group of middle-level public officials in my "The Middle-level Technocrat in Mexico," Journal of Developing Areas 6 (July 1972): 571-582; as did William S. Tuohy and David Ronfeldt, "Political Control and the Recruitment of Middle-Level Elites in Mexico: An Example from Agrarian Politics," Western Political Quarterly 22 (June 1969): 365-374. Miguel A. Centeno has analyzed the reasons why department heads continued from one administration to another in "The New Cientificos: Technocratic Politics in Mexico, 1970-1990" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1990). 92. Peter Lange, Cynthia Irvin, and Sidney Tarrow, "Mobilization, Social Movements and Party Recruitment: The Italian Communist Party since the 1960s," British Journal of Political Science 20 (January 1990): 41, demonstrated that experience in a social movement, among a younger generation, had a significant impact on Communist party recruitment and attitudes. 93. This does not mean, however, that indviduals without camarillas never rise to the top. A number of prominent figures in Mexican politics became cabinet secretaries without such connections. A perfect example is the Mexican novelist Agustin Yanez, who served in three top-level posts, including secretary of education, without ever developing his own camarilla, thus leaving no disciples. For details of his public career, see Roderic Ai Camp, "Un intelectual en la politica mexicana: Agustin Yanez," Relaciones 2 (Summer 1981): 137-162. 94. Salinas selected his original mentor as majority leader of the Chamber of Deputies, an extremely important assignment in his first congress, given the government party's bare majority of seats. Midway through his term Salinas asked Martinez Corbala to serve as provisional governor of San Luis Potosi when he forced his own party's candidate to resign just two weeks after taking office. Jose Lopez Portillo and Miguel de la Madrid also appointed one of their former mentors to their cabinet. Successful disciples often rise above the careers of their mentors. 95. Guillermo Kelley, "Politics and Administration in Mexico: Recruitment and Promotion of the Politico-Administrative Class," Technical Papers Series, Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1981, 4. 96. As Ben Schneider explains, "Closing down parties and Congress did not turn politics off, it merely squeezed them entirely into the bureaucracy. Technical training became a prerequisite to entering this politicized state, but further political skills were necessary to advance." "Careers in the State: Preferences and Politics in the Brazilian Bureaucracy" (paper presented at a meeting of the National Latin American Studies Association, Washington, D.C., April 1991), 30. 97. For a discussion of this point, see Alvin Gouldner, The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class (New York: Seabury, 1976).

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2 Age as a Variable in Political Recruitment Generational research has prompted extensive debate among historians and social scientists. The focus of this debate has been the utility of grouping age cohorts as a means of understanding the development of political ideas and behavior. Generational analysis has also been utilized for longitudinal examinations of political leadership. It is not the purpose of this chapter to revive the issues raised by this debate since they have been thoroughly dealt with elsewhere; rather, I wish to explore the existence of political generations in Mexico, to analyze their respective dominance over national politics, to identify some consequences of age cohorts on political leadership, and to argue that age is a useful variable in understanding some significant patterns in political leadership. 1 Generational analysis, deserving of its controversial reputation, is not a panacea for analyzing political leadership data in Mexico or elsewhere. It provides, rather, a useful methodological tool, however analytically blunt, for examining large groups of political leaders over time. It also offers, it seems clear, insightful and significant information about political leadership unavailable through other methodologies, which are complementary and necessary to that task. Using age as a variable in elite analysis, I will first retest some assumptions about upward political mobility, turnover, and elite analysis in general. I will argue that a tiny sample of political elites, the cream of political leadership, does not accurately reflect the background of the broader national elite. The broad data set from which this analysis is generated suggests that conclusions made from smaller samples of elites can be misleading. Second, one of the most important theories stemming from leadership analysis is that slow turnover rates contribute to social upheaval—in the case of Mexico, the Revolution. 2 This chapter suggests that age cohorts, when used analytically in identifying leadership patterns, can be misleading, depending on how they are conceptualized.

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The most common conceptualization for using age cohorts to examine elite continuity is generational. A generational focus assumes a relationship between an individual's age and access to power. Thus, the politician's age cohort (date of birth) becomes a critical determinant of holding office. The second technique for discerning leadership trends is experiential. Has the officeholder reached that level for the first time? The distinction is extremely significant. When the analyst controls for experience as a significant variable in attaining political office, the generational impact may be quite different. An age cohort's access to political office assumes that generational fluidity and turnover are important to stability. This assumption relies on the rationale that younger generations will become frustrated, and act on their frustrations, if they lack access to power over long periods. However, if an age cohort is broken down into two groups, those having access to power for the first time and those having held power previously, intragenerational qualities become important. 3 Indeed, the separation raises the more subtle question of whether the membership or composition of a specific age cohort is the most important variable in turnover. In a sense, the focus on intragenerational qualities places greater emphasis on upward political mobility of the individual versus the group. In short, I concluded that generational domination alone may not be an important causal variable of political violence. Analysis of turnover and continuity among political leaders has focused on age cohorts only. Nagle's study, which includes Mexico, is the only broad comparative study. 4 It looks at generational patterns over time but does not identify a particular generation as significant; rather, it notes the gradual turnover taking place in post-World War II Mexico. 5 Like most analyses of leadership, Nagle's study examines changing characteristics of politicians by generation while ignoring generational differences on the basis of previous experience in such positions. 6 The third conclusion reached in my examination of political leadership, controlling for age cohorts, is that Mexico's revolutionary leadership, not its prerevolutionary leadership, has dominated Mexican presidential administrations since 1884. In fact, this overwhelming control of eight presidential administrations during thirty years represents the longest tenure of any Mexican political generation in 110 years. If a relationship exists between continuity in political leadership and political stability, then individual, not generational, access to power may be more important. Various definitions of generations exist. Without exploring here the

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pros and cons of these interpretations, we can accept Karl Mannheim's formulation as most useful for our purposes: "The social phenomenon of 'generations' represents nothing more than a particular kind of identity of location, embracing 'age-groups' embedded in a historical-social process."7 It is important to note that both Mexican politicians and intellectuals see themselves as members of political generations.8 In their autobiographies and in oral interviews, numerous politicians conceive of themselves, in Mannheim's terms, as members of an age cohort who share certain common experiences and values, which, as Anthony Esler suggests, distinguishes one cohort from another.9 Collective biographical analysis, while providing a basis for many useful insights into political leadership, poses practical problems for generational analysis. It is difficult to identify precisely what constitutes a generation when these characteristics must apply to thousands of individuals. Some theorists argue that the shared attitudes of a group—that is, the cohesiveness of its beliefs—are more important than age in determining generational identity. Others, focusing on birthdates, have singled out various time frames (generally spans of fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five years) to establish generational boundaries. I believe a group's shared attitudes and common experiences are more important than age in conceptualizing a definition, but one's age will usually, if not always, place one within the context of a shared set of values. Obviously, it would be helpful if we could determine the shared values and attitudes of hundreds of political leaders over time, similar to the way in which biographers, literary critics, and historians have examined small intellectual and literary coteries. Although hundreds of oral interviews have enabled me to do this with a single Mexican political generation, that of President Miguel Aleman (1900-1919), this methodology cannot be used to study an entire century of political leaders.10 To carry out an empirical analysis of political generations using collective biographical techniques, it is necessary to make some pragmatic choices. For large samples of leaders, age cohorts become a practical necessity. Despite its methodological limitations, generational analysis based on age cohorts can be justified on the basis of what collective biographical data reveal about trends in Mexican political leadership. I have used ten-year divisions within an age variable, thus making it possible to explore age groupings or cohorts in ten-year increments. Naturally, smaller yearly increments could be used to reconstitute age cohorts in somewhat more subtle combinations, but I have found that Mexican political generations typically

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fall into twenty-year cycles. Twenty-year age cohorts are quite satisfactory as long as one does not become inflexible in assigning an individual automatically to one age grouping. FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO AGE COHORTS IN MEXICO Generational ties among Mexican politicians are exaggerated by special characteristics of the political culture. At least as far back as the 1880s, Mexican political leadership has been formed on the basis of personal cliques, or camarillas, a phenomenon continuing to the present. 11 The basis for building a political group is the level of trust one has for a potential collaborator. 12 Since Mexicans have been less ready than members of some other cultures to accept the loyalty of their peers, they generally require long bonds of trust developed over a period of many years. 13 It has been clearly established, at least for politicians since the Revolution, that these bonds are typically formed in childhood or as young adults and extend over many political generations. 14 President Salinas and his confidants are a case in point. Salinas himself initially rose up the political ladder through contacts encountered during his economic training at the National University and after his initial appointments in the executive-branch bureaucracy. Both sets of alliances were aided by the fact that his father, a prominent figure in the 1900-1919 generation, had disciples or acquaintances in useful political posts. From a historical point of view, all post-1920 political cliques are interconnected. As illustrated elsewhere, Salinas is a product of a political camarilla that goes back through Miguel de la Madrid (1982-1988), his major political mentor, and Ramon Beteta and Hugo Margain (former treasury secretaries) to Presidents Miguel Aleman (1946-1952) and Lazaro Cardenas (1934-1940). Salinas's political origins represent a strange political mixture that has produced most Mexican politicians, the heritage of Cardenas and Aleman, or state-led populism versus state-led capitalism. A significant institution of political leadership, this camarilla system at some point gave birth to all prominent political figures from the same womb. 15 Another element of the post-1884 Mexican political culture that affects generational leadership is the dominance of a single personality, usually the president, over the political system. 16 Decision making is overwhelmingly in the hands of the president, especially the selection of prominent personnel in the administration, whether they are found in the legislative, judicial, or executive branch. 17 Because the president surrounds himself with those he can trust, he typically se-

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lects generational peers, individuals with whom he logically would have come in contact in his youth or young adulthood. PRESIDENTIAL POLITICAL GENERATIONS The reliance of Mexican political leaders on camarillas constructed from a network of lengthy friendships and on personal ties to a presidential figure strengthens the importance of a single generation. 18 Since the 1880s, generational representation has been institutionalized in a pattern whereby each president typically gives the strongest representation to his own age cohort and the age cohort closest to it, often the next youngest (see Table 2.1). The data confirm this pattern for first-time (new) top-level politicians as well as for those holding equivalent positions in prior administrations. The dominance of presidential generations is true for the prerevolutionary period. Porfirio Diaz, who overshadowed the national political scene from 1877 to 1911, recruited the majority of leaders from his own generation (those born before 1839) if we consider his first two consecutive administrations after he reentered the presidency in 1884 as representative of a typical, contemporary presidential tenure. To compare Diaz's appointees more accurately with successive political generations, it is fairer to break down each of his presidential periods, given his length of time in office, rather than lumping them together. The data on Diaz provide extraordinary insight into what some theorists have argued was a cause of the Mexican Revolution, a lack of upward mobility among a generation of political leaders allegedly kept from power by a president who selected cronies his own age. 19 This view has been best stated by Martin Needier, who argues that "when Madero raised the standard of 'effective suffrage; no reelection,'" he was pleading that offices should be made available to a younger generation frustrated by the longevity of Diaz's cientificos.20 His argument has been well documented by Peter Smith, who states that "the late Diaz regime was old: none of the top-level elite fell in the under-40 bracket, and nearly half were 60 or more. Partly in reaction to this situation, the Revolution was a revolt of the young." 2 1 Most scholars, including myself, would be in full agreement with these findings. Smith's analysis, however, surveyed only a tiny group of cabinet figures (between thirteen and sixteen from 1900 through 1911). The data in Table 2.1 incorporate a broader sample of political elites, from 1884 through 1911, and present a far different picture. To understand the mobility of a political generation one must examine access to more than just a dozen or so positions, which are

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TABLE 2.1. Generational Patterns of First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 Generation (%) Presidential Administration 1884188918931897190119051910De la Barra Madero Huerta Carranza Obregon Calles Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas b

1820- 1840- 1860- 1880- 1900- 19201839 1859 1879 1899 1919 1939 1940 63 48 27 18 12 06 06 06 02 06 — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

34 46 65 51 49 46 41 35 28 47 04 — 02 — — — — — — — — — — — —

01 06 08 31 36 49 53 53 61 35 37 17 11 — 08 08 05 02 — 02 — — — — —

— — — — 03 — — 06 10 11 59 83 87 100 88 83 75 58 31 23 15 06 02 01 01

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — 04 08 20 35" 67 65 69 54 33 16 07

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — 05 02 10 16 39" 56 61 52 36

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — 01 09 22 42" 63

Note: Boldface entries indicate the generation with the greatest representation in the administration. The interim de la Huerta administration (1920) has been omitted because the sample size is too small to be statistically accurate. "These generations comprised more than one-third of the officeholders and became the dominant generation in the next administration. T h e data for Salinas are not fully comparable since they do not cover a full six-year term.

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not necessarily the best indicators of thousands of Mexicans' possibilities. This is especially true when alleging that their inaccessibility might lead to major, violent social upheaval. The entire scope of the national political elite—those in the subcabinet and in legislative and judicial posts—must be examined to determine a generation's representativeness and its access to power. If this proposition is accepted, a completely different pattern emerges over the length of Diaz's administration. In the first place, Diaz gave his own generation its due in his first eight years (1884-1892), offering members of his age cohort one-half to two-thirds of the top political posts (Table 2.1). The next generation, the 1840-1859 cohort, produced the vast remainder of new officeholders. Diaz introduced a second pattern as well, one carried throughout all of his administrations and typical of most later presidents. Two generations typically account for 80 percent or more of the top political leadership, and the president's own generation, generally the dominant one, usually hovers somewhere between 50 to 65 percent of the total (Table 2.2). Although examination of Diaz's cabinet suggests an image of generational stagnation, quite the contrary is true for broader, top Mexican leadership. As Table 2.2 demonstrates, every eight to twelve years each of three generations is represented in Diaz's administration, his own (1820-1839) and two subsequent generations, those of 1840-1859, and 1860-1879 ( ^ e generation of his political opponent, Francisco I. Madero). Indeed, more than half of his new appointees by 1905 were forty-five years old or younger, hardly a picture of doddering leadership. Among all of his collaborators, new and repeaters, this younger group accounts for a smaller proportion, approximately a fourth. In fact, a generational comparison of officeholders, controlling for first-time (Table 2.1) versus all (Table 2.2) prominent political figures, illustrates the importance of experience as a generational variable. Under Diaz, for example, the differences between new officeholders and all officeholders in his first two administrations are not significant. By the 1893 administration, important differences become apparent. If we look at the same age cohorts but control for experience, a much different pattern emerges. Instead of giving equal access to the two generations, Diaz gave the younger generation much greater access to these offices, a pattern he retained through 1911. It may well be that the older generation of cabinet members Smith refers to is symbolic of Diaz's longevity and a lack of access at the very top. That image, if perceived generally by upwardly mobile Mexicans

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TABLE 2.2. Generational Patterns of All Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 Generation (%) Presidential Administration Diaz 188918931897190119051910De la Barra Madero Huerta Carranza Obregon Calles Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas"

1820- 1840- 1860- 1880- 1900- 19201839 1859 1879 1899 1919 1939 1940 61 54 45 19 31 23 17 11 06 06 01 — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

34 31 49 80 50 52 57 42 34 40 04 02 01 01 — — — — — — — — — — — —

03 04 06 19 17 25 27 44 51 46 40 30 19 16 20 12 05 02 01 01 — — — — — —

01 01 01 04 16 03 55 68 80 83 79 86 76 63 42 34 17 09 02 01 01 01

01 02 19 34 56 59 72 65 43 28 14 09

01 02 06 11 25 50 56 56 52

01 05 14 30 39

Note: Boldface entries indicate the generation with the greatest representation in the administration. The interim de la Huerta administration (1920) has been omitted because the sample size is too small to be statistically accurate. "The data for Salinas are not fully comparable since they do not cover a full six-year term.

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with political aspirations, might well have been more important than the reality of younger Mexicans actually having access to all other political posts. We know from careful prior studies that political leadership in the Porfiriato, at least during the last eleven years, was characterized by relatively slow turnover among new top officeholders. In contrast, the revolutionary and post-revolutionary years introduced a period of relatively rapid turnover. 22 However, generational data show that, although much greater change in new leadership, measured in terms of each politician's continuity in high office, took place from 1920 through 1946 compared with that of earlier administrations, nearly all of those politicians were from the same generation (Table 2.1). Future analyses of continuity and turnover in Mexico and elsewhere need to examine the interrelationship between generational and individual political mobility to determine which, if either, is a more useful variable of political upheaval. I am suggesting that intragenerational mobility, measured by access to political office for the first time, may be far more significant in explaining political stability and instability than generational access to power, measured by age cohort alone. Turnover is typically measured by the relationship between all toplevel collaborators and those who have reached those offices for the first time in a given year. It is only logical to argue that the proportion of a generation of politicians entering a political elite for the first time is more important than political generations generally in the relationship between leadership turnover and political violence. 23 Expressed differently, the percentage of new individuals allowed into a presidential administration may be more significant than the percentage of specific generations. An examination of the proportion of new national political figures over time is quite revealing. New officeholders from 1888 to 1991 have accounted for, on average, 52 percent of all top political appointees (Table 2.3). Under the combined presidential administrations of Porfirio Diaz, however, new faces represented only 23 percent of the top officeholders, a figure significantly below the century's average. More important, the lowest proportion of new officeholders in any post-1884 administration (13 percent) is found immediately before the Revolution (Table 2.3). Thus generational criteria alone are not sufficient in explaining lack of upward mobility as a political variable in social violence; rather, the proportion of new individuals allowed into high political posts, regardless of generation, is of equal or greater importance than age in determining stable leadership. Diaz was succeeded by the first revolutionary president, Francisco

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TABLE 2.3. First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991

Presidential Administration Diaz 188918931897190119051910De la Barra Madero Huerta Carranza Obregon Calles

New Officeholders (%)

Presidential Administration

New Officeholders (%)

36 23 28 20 19 13 30 66 55 94 52 49

Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez Cardenas" Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas"

23 42 32 25 65 61 52 51 56 66 51 50 28

"The data for Cardenas are not comparable since they measure only his first year in office. The data for Salinas are also not comparable because they account for only the first two and a half years. Most presidents appoint a greater proportion of new figures to their administrations after the third year; thus figures for both would be substantially higher.

Madero, whose generation had many opportunities to hold political office after 1896 and was especially well represented among first-time national politicians. It is important to point out, however, that although Madero symbolized the Revolution, he did not symbolize the revolutionary generation, either in background, experience, or age. Instead, Madero was what Robert Putnam labels the "cosmopolitan revolutionary," whose tenure was short lived.24 His generation reached its apex of power under his administration (1911-1913), with 51 percent of top political offices in their hands, but their influence disappeared with Madero's assassination. The most important successor to Madero, Venustiano Carranza (1914-1920), was, like Ruiz Cortines some thirty-five years later, out of sync with the presidents of his era. Carranza, born in 1859, was a member of a "lost" political generation (1840-1859) following Diaz's. His generation guided Mexico's future into the last third of the nineteenth cen-

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tury and, preceding that of Madero, acted as a transitional group leading to the revolutionary generation. Nevertheless, as the data in Tables 2.1 and 2.2 indicate, Carranza not only ignored his own 1840-1859 generation (which accounted for a mere 4 percent of governmental leaders), but ended the dominance of Madero's generation by introducing the most important political age cohort (1880-1899) in recent Mexican history. What was most remarkable about Carranza, however, is that he was responsible for combining a generational renewal with the most extraordinary leadership renewal in Mexican political history. Only a minuscule 6 percent of his collaborators had previously held office (Table 2.3), a figure unmatched by any president since 1884. Carranza chose politicians from both Madero's and the revolutionary generations who had not held national political office, as he had. A typical example can be found in the career trajectory of Manuel Aguirre Berlanga, a fellow Coahuilan born in 1887. Like Carranza, he studied at the famous regional school Ateneo Fuente and graduated in law at the outbreak of the Revolution. Aguirre Berlanga supported Madero and entered local politics, serving as mayor of Piedras Negras, as an official in several state offices in 1911-1912, and as a state legislator in 1913. He joined the Constitutionalists, becoming provisional commander and governor of Jalisco (1914-1915). When Aguirre Berlanga was elected as a deputy to the Constitutional Convention of 1916-1917, Carranza brought him into his cabinet as subsecretary, then secretary, of government, the most influential political post. He remained loyal to Carranza until the president's murder in 1920, after which he retired. The revolutionary generation, those born between 1880 and 1899, dominated Mexican politics for three decades under eight presidents, longer than any political generation before or since. This is due, in part, to the relative youth of this generation on arriving to power. For example, 61 percent of Madero's first-time collaborators were between the ages of thirty-one and fifty-one, but 83 percent of the 1920-1924 administration were twenty-one to forty. Their youth gives them an opportunity to hold office longer. 25 Two generals symbolized this generation, Alvaro Obregon and Plutarco Elias Calles. Although Calles was born in 1877, at the end of the preceding generation, he belonged to this younger generation. All of the remaining presidents until 1946, with the exception of Ortiz Rubio, born the same year as Calles, had birthdates between 1880 and 1899. The most important of these, the president who brought this age cohort to power, was General Obregon, born the first year of this generational grouping. Obregon politically represented a break with Carranza, a moderate

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revolutionary of the old guard. Obregon ideologically and personally reflected the radicalness of the change. 26 Mexico's revolutionary generation would stand out from all other generations for its extraordinary political longevity alone. The data in Table 2.1, however, point to another striking feature of this political generation, especially in light of other studies. No period in Mexican political history since 1884 is as tightly dominated by a single political generation as is that of the revolutionary generation, a pattern that has been observed in China and elsewhere. 27 As I suggested earlier, one generation usually accounts for between one-half and two-thirds of Mexico's new political leadership. From Obregon (1920) to Cardenas (1940), fully j$ percent or more of the top new politicians came from this generation. From 1920 to 1934, it accounted for an amazing 83 percent of leading politicians. The figures were nearly as high for all top officeholders. Under Calles and his immediate successors, whom he largely controlled, figures were closer to 90 percent, leaving only one out of ten new places to older or younger generations. Miguel Aleman is to the next generation (1900-1919) and to Mexican politics what Obregon was to the previous generation and the postrevolutionary era. As I have argued elsewhere, Aleman was the prototype of the modern Mexican politician—a professional politician or administrator—and in many ways initiated policies that served as a benchmark for future political processes. 28 Aleman implemented a number of changes in personnel practices that had significant long-term effects on Mexican political recruitment processes and other aspects of the system. As one of his colleagues suggested, "This was a group which poured its entire life into the most creative period of growth for Mexico, from 1925 to the present. For better or worse we participated very heavily in the development of governmental power." 29 Two important developments were attributed to Aleman: the advent of a university-educated, bureaucratically formed, capitalcity politician and the decline of the military politician. Aleman is most often pointed to in political analyses as symbolizing the changing of the guard from military presidents to civilian presidents. 30 This change introduced tremendous ramifications for the Mexican officer corps and for military representation in politics. 31 When examined from a generational perspective, such a demarcation is even more understandable. Except for interim president Emilio Portes Gil (1929-1930), every president from Obregon (1920-1924) through Avila Camacho (1940-1946) reached the rank of general in the revolutionary army, and each personally represented the pre-1900 generation.

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In contrast, not only was Aleman himself a civilian, as were nearly all of his political appointees, but he personified the post-1900 generation, with no personal or generational ties to the revolutionary experience. As the generational data in Table 2.1 make clear, Avila Camacho, a much underrated president, undeservedly so, provided a critical generational transition in political leadership, substantially decreasing his own generation's representation from j$ to 58 percent and increasing that of Aleman's to 35 percent, roughly the same proportions in which Aleman represented his own generation versus Avila Camacho's older generation. The importance of this generational shift is accentuated by the degree to which Avila Camacho, like Carranza before him, renovated Mexican leadership, since more than two-thirds of his collaborators were new. Avila Camacho is the only president since 1916 to incorporate that level of new officeholders in his administration. One of the individuals introduced by Manuel Avila Camacho to national office and typifying this postrevolutionary generation (19001919) was Jaime Torres Bodet, who grew up in Mexico City and graduated in law from the National University in 1922. Establishing himself as a man of letters and a successful poet, Torres Bodet first joined the bureaucracy of the secretariat of public education under his mentor, Jose Vasconcelos; he then joined the Foreign Service in 1929, serving in a succession of diplomatic posts. In 1940 the president appointed him subsecretary of foreign relations, and midway through his term he became secretary of public education. Torres Bodet held numerous cabinet-level posts under later presidents, including Miguel Aleman. The changeover from the revolutionary generation to Aleman's generation significantly altered the composition of Mexican political leadership. From 1928 through 1940, more than one-fourth and at times as high as one-third of all national politicians were career military officers, almost all of whom were revolutionary veterans. Avila Camacho, by introducing a younger generation in greater numbers to national political office, significantly decreased, for the first time, the proportion of military officers in high political offices—from 27 percent in his predecessor's administration to only 19 percent in his. Aleman, however, used his own heavy generational representation to reduce that figure to a mere 8 percent, the lowest figure ever of any presidential administration from 1884 to 1964.32 Aleman's civilianizing trend was so radical that it was not duplicated until twenty years later. By 1992, military officers accounted for fewer than 5 percent of prominent Mexican national politicians. President Salinas (1988-1994), like Miguel Aleman, not only

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brought a new generation to power, his own, but introduced and emphasized important leadership patterns begun by his predecessors, notably Miguel de la Madrid. And like Aleman, he confined his personnel choices to two generational groups, his own and the preceding generation, and in the same proportions. Whereas Aleman's leadership represented a radical shift to stronger civilian representation, Salinas's generation is not obviously different from the preceding generation except in professional training. Aleman's generation symbolized the dominance of the lawyer in Mexican politics. Salinas, however, the first economist to become president, selected numerous economists for his collaborators, notably those among his own age cohort. The presidential pattern of favoring one's own age cohort in making political appointments has been broken only three times in the last twenty-one presidential administrations (1884-1991). Each exception can be explained rather easily and does not contradict the pattern's general consistency. The first two exceptions were those of Presidents Plutarco Elias Calles (1924-1928) and Pascual Ortiz Rubio (1930-1932), both of whom were members of the most important age cohort in the last century, the revolutionary generation of 1880-1899. Although their common birthdate of 1877 would make both presidents members of the generation 1860-1879, they belong, experientially and spiritually, to this younger generation of the Revolution, in which they participated. Indeed, the revolutionary generation on the empirical basis of birth date alone, probably runs from 1875 or 1877 to 1897 or 1899. The only other exception to the presidential generation rule occurred under Adolfo Ruiz Cortines (1952-1958), who was born in 1890, and was something of an anomaly. His three predecessors, Lazaro Cardenas (1895), Manuel Avila Camacho (1897), and Miguel Aleman (1900) were younger than Ruiz Cortines. Typically, an incumbent president's predecessors are close in age or older, not substantially younger. Ruiz Cortines, like Calles and Ortiz Rubio, gave representation to members of those age cohorts most logically eligible for leadership posts. However, Ruiz Cortines differs from Calles and Ortiz Rubio in that his personal experience identified him with their generation, the revolutionary group of 1880-1899, not Aleman's generation (1900-1919). Thus President Aleman made an unprecedented generational choice in Ruiz Cortines, selecting, for the only time in postrevolutionary history, a bona fide member of an older political generation to replace him. Although his choice requires much more analysis from

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a generational perspective, it helped to legitimize new directions of what turned out to be a critical age cohort, that of Miguel Aleman. 33 In short, by placing a member of the older generation into the presidency, Aleman actually delayed the decline of his own age cohort in the political arena. The year 1900, which marks the beginning of Miguel Aleman's age cohort, represents a decisive generational break because those born after that date were too young to participate in the Revolution, especially during the critical years from 1913 to 1916. Although there are some exceptional cases of young teenagers who joined as ordinary soldiers at the age of thirteen or fourteen and who survived to become prominent politicians or military leaders, they do not represent the experiences of the mainstream generation. 34 Thus, members of Ruiz Cortines's generation had some personal experience with the fighting, whether in combat or as civilians.35 Aleman, on the other hand, belonged to that generation that, as young children or teenagers, experienced the results of the Revolution indirectly, not directly. 36 That division formed two equally important generations in Mexican politics and in the officer corps. The sharpness of that division is no better represented in Mexican politics than in the example of two brothers, Ignacio Maria and Ramon Beteta Quintana. Ignacio, born in 1898, belonged to the revolutionary generation and participated in the events as a young officer, rising to the position of Cardenas's chief of staff at the extraordinary age of thirty-six. Ramon, on the other hand, although a technical adviser to President Cardenas, was born in 1901. Remarkably, although younger than Aleman, as an intellectual boy wonder he actually taught Aleman at the National University, directed his presidential campaign, and distinguished himself as the prototype Alemanista as his treasury secretary. Only three years separated these brothers, but their personal experiences, although bridged through family ties, remain those of two distinct generations. 37 Generational data for twentieth-century Mexican politicians also reveal another significant finding, one with predictive power. In contemporary Mexico a changing of the guard among political leaders occurs when a younger generation reaches a certain level of representation alongside the dominant political generation. Since the 1940 administration, each time a younger generation accounts for more than one-third of new national political leadership, it will automatically dominate the next administration. This generational indicator occurred in 1940, 1964, and 1982 (Table 2.1), foreshadowing control by the 1900-1919, 1920-1939, and 1940-1959 generations.

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CONCLUSIONS Without the combined data of multiple generations, the disparity in ages of various presidential administrations would not be apparent, nor would the peculiar patterns of age cohorts discovered in this analysis. Nevertheless, the analysis of leadership turnover, mobility, and social violence might lead us to ask whether age is a false variable. Each political generation was well represented during the Porfiriato, immediately prior to the Mexican Revolution. The findings, therefore, raise some intriguing questions, but the answers are not clear. Among possible explanations for the relationship between age, turnover, and social violence is that the visible leadership, Diaz's aged cronies in the cabinet, may have symbolically exerted far more influence than did the actual access of ambitious individuals to politically influential positions. As is true of so many political issues, appearances may be more important than reality. The Diaz cabinet, in the public's eye, presented an unchanging, elderly image. A second explanation is that generational access alone is not a significant determinant of whether the rate of leadership turnover is associated with political instability. It may be more important for ambitious, budding politicians of all ages and stripes to have access to the top than the most ambitious of any single generation, waiting its turn. Therefore, individual access to power, measured by the percentage of first-time officeholders, is more significant than the access of any single age cohort. The third and perhaps most likely possibility, one that is most feasible to measure through generational analysis using collective biographical techniques, consists of qualitative generational characteristics. For example, Diaz may have helped provoke social upheaval through his leadership turnover rates not because he denied younger generations or untried individuals of any generation access to a few top positions, but because only certain types of individuals within each generation were favorably blessed. In other words, access to political office might be far more narrow in generational or individual terms than appears on the surface. Generational and individual analysis does not qualitatively measure individuals in age or positional cohorts respectively unless the correct questions are posed and detailed data are available. One of the most important qualitative variables that can narrow access to political office is the degree to which each generation is drawn from families tied together through marriage and kinship. In fact, qualitative variables explain why turnover rates themselves, focusing on individuals or generations, may be a very deceptive measure of upward

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political mobility. Such rates do not account for the accessibility of certain groups to specific positions if kinship and fictive ties are quite extensive and if incumbent leadership reserves those posts for such individuals, narrowing the pool of possible personnel choices. This is especially true in a political system like Mexico's where gatekeepers are incumbent officeholders, especially the president, who chooses his own successor. Other variables, such as social class, region of origin, and, in other societies, religion and ethnicity, have played important roles. The general findings from analysis of the biographical data bank pertaining to age cohorts suggest that several of these variables likely play a role in the importance of Mexican leadership pools and turnover. For example, contrary to common belief, detailed information on social background demonstrates for the first time that the prerevolutionary leadership overrepresented large landholders and underrepresented middle-class professionals when compared with successive political generations. Although working-class groups were also underrepresented in the Porfiriato, they were much less underrepresented than in the postrevolutionary leadership.38 As for family connections with other elites, military, political, economic, and intellectual, Diaz's own generation did not have numerous ties; rather, the ties of the two succeeding generations were most extensive. Diaz's generation, like the revolutionary cohort, was typically self-made. Although political historians point to the longevity of the Diaz generation, a generational analysis demonstrates without question that his own age cohorts, and successive cohorts, account for relatively short-lived administrations. This raises a question about the revolutionary, not the prerevolutionary, generation. How is it possible for a single generation to be in control of political offices for three decades? Second and more important, how did this generation sustain such an overwhelming level of control for two-thirds of the period, unequaled before or since in Mexican political history, without provoking further instability? It should be pointed out that the rebellions that occurred against the government in the 1920s were led by members of the same generation, not a younger one seeking power. I believe that the very heterogeneity of the revolutionary generation rather than youth alone, compared with its predecessors and successors, explains its success. Moreover, social peace was an important shared value that helped, along with the expansion of a more sophisticated, massbased party and corporate interest-group structure, sustain those individuals in office for such an extraordinary period of years. The extensiveness of Mexican leadership renovation in 1916, with 94 percent being new to such political levels, provided wide-open access to high

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government offices. Finally, the access of new officeholders, even in the same generation, remained relatively high. Contrary to any initial expectations regarding this methodology, I did not anticipate that longitudinal data would expose a predictive rule for Mexican political leadership, one that possibly may have explanatory power in other cultures. Since the 1940s, once an incumbent generation (the numerically dominant generation) is represented by only a slight majority of new officeholders and at least one-third of the officeholders come from the younger generation, the latter will automatically dominate the next administration. Moreover, the data reveal that Mexico's political leadership since the 1940s has allocated national offices among two or three generations more evenly than their revolutionary predecessor. Analyzing age cohorts over a century of Mexican political leadership reveals interesting patterns not only from one administration to the next but also between pre- and postrevolutionary generations. Contrary to expectations, the revolutionary age cohort exerted far more control over political leadership than did the aged cronies of Porfirio Diaz. It is equally apparent that access to national political office has many facets and that age alone, translated into continuity in office, is insufficient to test the political stability and legitimacy of Mexico's leadership. NOTES 1. For an excellent discussion of the theoretical issues and additional sources, see Alan B. Spitzer, "The Historical Problem of Generations," American Historical Review 78 (December 1973): 1353-1385; Marvin Rintala, "A Generation in Politics: A Definition/' Review of Politics 25 (1963): 509-522; Philip H. Burch, Elites in American History, 3 vols. (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981); Hans Jaeger, "Generations in History: Reflections on a Controversial Concept," History and Theory 24, no. 3 (1985): 273-292; Anthony Esler, Generations in History: An Introduction to the Concept (New York: n.p., 1982); Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979); Karl Mannheim, "The Problem of Generations," in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Routledge & Kegan, 1959), 276-322; Richard G. Braungart, "The Sociology of Generations and Student Politics: A Comparison of the Functionalist and Generational Unit Models," Journal of Social Issues 30, no. 2 (1974): 31-54; Julian Marias, Generations: A Historical Method (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1970); Norman B. Ryder, "The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change," American Sociological Review 30 (1965): 843-861; Bennett M. Berger, "How Long Is a Generation?" British Journal of Sociology 9 (i960): 10-23; Pauline K. Ragan, "The Emerging Political Consciousness of the Aged: A Generational Interpretation," Journal of Social Issues 30, no. 3 (1974): 137-158; and Gosta Carlsson and Katarina Karlson,

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"Age, Cohorts, and the Generation of Generations," American Sociological Review 35 (1970): 710-717. 2. For this argument see Ralf Dahrendorf, Conflict after Class: New Perspectives on the Theory of Social and Political Conflict, Noel Buxton Lectures (Essex: University of Essex, 1967), 20. 3. In comparing post-World War II political generations, Russell Dalton also recognized that "overall age patterns may mask a more complex pattern of change that occurs within generational units." "Generational Change in Elite Political Beliefs: The Growth of Ideological Polarization," Journal of Politics 49, no. 4 (November 1987): 986. 4. John D. Nagle, System and Succession: The Social Basis of Political Elite Recruitment (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977), 74. 5. Ibid., 86. 6. For other studies of turnover, see Peter H. Smith, Labyrinths of Power: Political Recruitment in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979); Roy Pierce, Politics and Political Institutions (New York: Harper, 1979); Keith Legg, Politics in Modern Greece (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969); and Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel P. Huntington, Political Power: USA/USSR (New York: Viking, 1964). 7. Karl Mannheim, "The Problem of Generations," in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, 291. 8. Interviews with Miguel Aleman, Antonio Carrillo Flores, Miguel de la Madrid, and other Mexican politicians, Mexico City, 1973-1984. For a notable intellectual's view, see Daniel Cosio Villegas, Memorias (Mexico City: Joaquin Mortiz, 1976). For a politician's view, see Manuel Rivera Silva's autobiography, Perspectivas de una vida: Biografia de una generacion (Mexico City: Porrua, 1974). President Miguel de la Madrid's concept of a political generation is clearly presented in Carlos J. Sierra Brabatta, Cronica de una generacion (Mexico City: n.p., 1983). The broadest application of generational analysis in Mexico—one focusing on politicians, intellectuals, priests, military officers, and business leaders—is Luis Gonzalez's La ronda de generaciones (Mexico City: SEP, 1984). 9. See Esler, Generations in History, 86. 10. See, for example, Roderic Ai Camp, "La campana presidencial de 1929 y el liderazgo politico en Mexico," Historia Mexicana 27 (Fall 1977): 231-259; Camp, "Education and Political Recruitment in Mexico: The Aleman Generation," Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs 18 (August 1976): 295-321; and Camp, "The Elitelore of Mexico's Revolutionary Family," Journal of Latin American Lore 4, no. 2 (1978): 149-182. 11. Henry C. Schmidt, The Roots of Lo Mexicano: Self and Society in Mexican Thought, 1910-1934. (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1978). 12. See Merilee Grindle, "Patron and Clients in the Bureaucracy: Career Networks in Mexico," Latin American Research Review 22, no. 1 (1977): 37-66. For the Latin American context generally, see Glen Dealy's incisive work, The Public Man: An Interpretation of Latin American and Other Catholic Cultures (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977). For an excellent case study

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of political leadership elsewhere in the region, see Peter McDonough, Power and Ideology in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); and the comparative study by Luis Roniger, Hierarchy and Trust in Modern Mexico and Brazil (New York: Praeger, 1990). 13. Rogelio Diaz Guerrero, Psychology of the Mexican (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975), 26. 14. This finding is based on extensive interviews and correspondence with Mexican political figures and on an extensive autobiographical literature, some examples of which include Euquero Guerrero, Imdgenes de mi vida (Mexico City: Editorial Porrua, 1986), 12; Jesus Silva Herzog, Una vida en la vida de Mexico (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1972), 61-63; Gonzalo N. Santos, Memorias (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1984), 31-34; Jaime Torres Bodet, Tiempo de arena, in Obras escogidas (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1961), 194; and Eduardo Villasenor, Memorias—Testimonio (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1974), 40-42. 15. Roderic A. Camp, "Camarillas in Mexican Politics: The Case of the Salinas Cabinet," Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 6 (Winter 1990): 96. 16. Frank Brandenburg, Making of Modern Mexico (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1964), is the classic argument for this view. Gustavo Abel Hernandez Enriquez, using the first empirical approach, pronounced Diaz's collaborators aged and unchanging in "La movilidad politica en Mexico, 1876-1970" (thesis, School of Political Science and Public Administration, UNAM, 1968), 2:257. 17. Edmundo Gonzalez Llaca, "El presidencialismo o la personalization del poder," Revista Mexicana de Ciencia Politica 21 (April-June 1975): 35-42. 18. For examples of this loyalty extending to nonpoliticians, see Larissa Lomnitz, "Horizontal and Vertical Relations in the Social Structure of Urban Mexico," Latin American Research Review 17, no. 2 (1982): 51-74. 19. Such an argument has been offered in general theories on political-elite openness and social violence. See Harold Perkins's statement that "there is an inverse correlation between the rate of upward mobility in a society and the intensity of class conflict, then the extent to which the elites are closed or open to newcomers from below may make the difference between violent social revolution and what I have called elsewhere a viable class society." "The Recruitment of Elites in British Society since 1800," Journal of Social History 12, no. 2 (1978): 224. 20. Martin C. Needier, Political Development in Latin America: Instability, Violence, and Evolutionary Change (New York: Random House, 1968), 34. 21. Smith, Labyrinths of Power, 97. 22. Ibid., 1 6 0 - 1 6 2 .

23. Smith has explored this most thoroughly for Mexico. However, he was more interested in leadership continuity as measured by presidential term, whereas I am more concerned with new leadership, controlling for generational identity, as measured by presidential term. Using Smith's concepts and comparing the results, my more complete data show the levels of continuity to be much higher, especially in the prerevolutionary regimes. See his excel-

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lent chapter "Continuity and Turnover" and Appendix B in Labyrinths of Power. 24. Robert Putman, Comparative Study of Political Elites (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1976), 199. 25. For similar findings in Turkey, see Frederick Frey, The Turkish Political Elite (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1965). 26. Brandenburg, The Making of Modern Mexico, 58. 27. See Doak Barnett, Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in Communist China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 434. 28. Roderic A. Camp, Intellectuals and the State in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), 220. 29. Eduardo Bustamante, cited in Roderic Ai Camp, The Making of a Government: Political Leaders in Modern Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984), 127. 30. Daniel C. Levy and Gabriel Szekely, Mexico: Paradoxes of Stability and Change (Boulder: Westview, 1987), 39. 31. See Roderic Ai Camp, "Civilian-Military Interlocks," in Generals in the Palacio: The Military in Modern Mexico (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). 32. Data are from ibid., Table 4.1. 33. His contemporaries, members of the younger generation, were very much aware of Ruiz Cortines's age, referring to him as the "old man." 34. For example, Hermenegildo Cuenca Diaz, as an eighteen-year-old military college cadet, escorted President Venustiano Carranza from Mexico City when he abandoned the presidency. Cuenca Diaz, later a senator and secretary of defense (1970-1976), experienced a taste of the revolutionary decade firsthand, having been born in 1902. However, militarily he is a product of the 1920s, having fought extensively against major rebellions in that decade. See Jesus Romero Flores, Mis seis anos en el Senado (Mexico City: n.p., 1970); and Revista de Ejercito y Fuerza Aerea, October-November 1976, 139-141. 35. Ruiz Cortines's early career is hazy, but he joined the Revolution as an aide to his former civics teacher, General Alfredo Robles Dominguez, and was paymaster of the Mariel Brigade. He rose to the rank of major, serving as private secretary to General Jacinto B. Trevino (1920-1921). He is not thought of as a revolutionary figure but as an administrative official. He is alleged to have worked for Carranza's secret police and to have recovered treasury funds carried by Carranza when he fled the capital for Veracruz in 1920.

36. Aleman, the son of a revolutionary general killed in a rebellion against the government, had more experience than most of his generation, however. 37. See Ramon Beteta's two autobiographical accounts, Jarano (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970); and Camino a Tlaxcalantongo (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1961). 38. In percentages based on the general population, the upper classes were most overrepresented in the leadership, as were the middle classes. The working class was the most underrepresented.

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3 Experience and Leadership: The Role of Combat Shared experiences, it can be argued, bring future leaders together. Personal affinity for another politician, based on an experiential variable, occurs for two reasons. First, individuals undergoing the same episode at the same time and in the same place develop personal bonds based on their shared experience. The more harrowing the experience, the stronger the bond. 1 Second, individuals who share the same experience, even without personal contact, may also develop some degree of emotional ties. For example, North Americans who went through the Depression share some affinity for their peers that they do not share with younger Americans. 2 Similarly, younger Americans who fought in Vietnam share links others do not have. 3 In the opinion of Mexican politicians themselves, two experiences are significant to their personal development: major political events and education. Educational experiences will be analyzed in the following chapter, political events in this chapter. These events are significant not only for their impact on values but also for the process of recruitment. Of the politicians who dominated the national scene from 1940 to 1970, nearly one-fourth identified major political events as having primary importance in their socialization. 4 There is no reason to believe that members of earlier political generations in Mexico felt differently about the importance of events. In fact, future politicians are more strongly affected by such events than is the average citizen. 5 Ruling Mexican political generations in the last 110 years have been confronted by a wide range of political events, but only four seem to have had direct impact on them: the North American invasion of 1846-1848, the Liberal-Conservative conflicts of the 1850s and 1860s, the French intervention from 1862-1867, and the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. (Other important events preceded these but did not directly affect the political leadership under discussion.) No other single event—not even the Great Depression or the 1929 oppo-

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sition campaign of presidential candidate Jose Vasconcelos, similar in importance to Cuauhtemoc Cardenas's role in the 1988 election— had such important implications for the Mexican leadership under discussion. What distinguishes all of these events from others that might be expected to exert influence over Mexican politicians is that each involved considerable violence, each occurred in Mexico, each attracted large numbers of Mexicans over a wide geographic area, and each was linked strongly to politics. Violent experiences not only etch their results on participants; they also affect the views and relationships of nonparticipants, especially in the case of war, and civil violence. Three of these four events involved widespread civil violence and, interestingly, the direct participation of politicians. Although most Mexicans were not combatants in any of the four events, the majority of national political leaders were. I have included only those politicians who were actual participants in combat. This has not necessarily been the case in other cultures. For example, Thomas Rigby discovered that members of the Soviet politburo in 1971 who were from the World War II generation had not served in the war, an extraordinary situation for such an all-encompassing event. 6 THE ROLE OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY VIOLENCE An examination of the three major events from the nineteenth century indicates a remarkable level of involvement among Mexican politicians, comparable to that found among such postrevolutionary leadership groups in the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, countries that underwent indisputable social revolutions. 7 Of all nineteenth-century Mexican politicians who were of an age to fight, four-fifths fought in one or more of the century's three major events (Table 3.1). Among the politicians of Porfirio Diaz's own generation (1820-1839), twothirds of those eligible to fight opposed the North American invasion as young officers or enlisted soldiers. If each event is analyzed separately, we discover that nearly the same proportion—78 percent—of all nineteenth-century Mexican politicians fought in the French intervention. Among those politicians who held office after 1884 and were of an age to fight, 60 percent participated in the Liberal-Conservative conflicts. Only 14 percent of all leaders during the Porfiriato fought against the North Americans, partly because the invasion affected only some regions in Mexico and partly because only the oldest generation could have participated. Surprisingly, no other period in Mexican history since 1884 has had so many military-combat veterans among its politicians; not even the

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TABLE 3.1. Participation of First-Time National Officeholders in Major Nineteenth-Century Conflicts

Event North American invasion Liberal-Conservative conflicts French intervention North American invasion and Liberal-Conservative conflicts Liberal-Conservative conflicts and French intervention All three Total

Level of Participation (%) 1 3 22 1 44 12 83

all-encompassing Mexican Revolution, which involved an estimated loss of 10 percent of the general population, had such an effect on the military background of politicians. Because Porfirio Diaz represented a political generation (18201839) that dominated his early administrations, it is worth commenting on his own involvement in these events. Born in 1830, Diaz volunteered with a group of friends in 1847 t o fight against the North Americans. Many of his slightly older contemporaries saw action against the U.S. Army. Those with political ambitions, like Diaz, used their service to cultivate "a political base in the National Guard." 8 At the age of twenty-four, Diaz rebelled against General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and, to avoid persecution, joined some Liberal guerrillas in 1854. Appointed political chief of the Ixtlan district of Oaxaca the following year, he pursued a career in Oaxaca's National Guard. Like most of his contemporaries who followed notable military careers, Diaz later shifted from the National Guard to the regular army. He gradually rose in rank during the period in which the Liberals were in control, becoming a brigadier general in 1861.9 Two years later he was named commander of the Army of the East against the French, a command he retained until their defeat in 1867.10 Some politicians were involved only politically in the LiberalConservative conflicts, but the vast majority actually took u p arms in

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defense of the Liberals. Most, like Diaz, were not major Liberal political figures who were from an earlier generation and dominated the administrations prior to 1877. Diaz was only a minor figure in the conflict until the French, with Conservative collusion, invaded. Consequently, it was his role in the fight against the French that was critical to his political generation. An excellent example of Porfirio Diaz's contemporaries, who fought the North Americans and later participated significantly in both other events, was Felipe B. Berriozabal, Diaz's secretary of war and of the navy in his 1896 administration. Born in 1829, Berriozabal left his studies in engineering at seventeen to battle the North Americans as an infantry lieutenant. He returned to finish his degree, became an engineer, and was drawn into the Liberal-Conservative fight as a captain in the state of Mexico's National Guard in 1856. Rising u p the command structure, he became an important officer during the French intervention, commanding the First Division of the Army of the East under Porfirio Diaz during the siege of Puebla in 1863. He was captured by the French but escaped. 11 In fact, one of the most typical experiences of Diaz's generation was to have been a prisoner of the French and to have escaped; this also describes Pedro Hinojosa, Diaz's minister of war from 1884 to 1896. The list of officers participating in the major battles of this period reads like a who's who of future politicians. In particular, many of Diaz's collaborators, like Berriozabal, fought under him in the Battles of Puebla and Oaxaca. Other appointees, such as Abraham Bandala Patino, governor of Tabasco (1895-1910), and Mucio Praxedis Martinez Gonzalez, governor of Puebla (1893-1911), fought with Diaz in the April 2, 1867, assault on Puebla. Martinez Gonzalez had also fought under Diaz in the battle of Fort Oaxaca on October 6, 1866, having been his companion in arms for many years. 12 Diaz tested the loyalty of many of his future political colleagues as battlefield companions. Whereas modern Mexican politicians developed a significant number of friendships at school at a young age, Diaz recruited his collaborators from his wartime experiences. Even in cases where the officer did not support Diaz's rebellion, he often returned to these contemporaries when he needed trustworthy men. Berriozabal is an excellent example. These experiences were shared by his generation, and a strong bond developed among the war's survivors. The bonding power of shared experience explains, for example, why 80 percent of France's immediate postwar parliament were members of the Resistance. In fact, until 1958, two-thirds of French deputies were veterans of the underground. 1 3 The strength of this bond in Mexico is suggested by the fact that Diaz's own genera-

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TABLE 3.2. Participation of Porfiriato Leaders in Major Nineteenth-Century Conflicts Event (%) Diaz Administrations 1884188918931897190119051910-

LiberalNorth American Conservative Conflicts Invasion 14 12 11 10 8 6 6

64 64 53 51 48 46 52

French Intervention

None

77 78 79 79 74 76 77

19 17 17 18 23 20 19

tion is by far the most homogeneous of any presidential generation that is the product of armed combat, including the revolutionary generation. Among those leaders old enough to have fought, especially against the French, their numbers remained stable over three decades (Table 3.2). The same percentage of combat veterans appeared in his last administration (81 percent) as his first. By contrast, when Francisco Leon de la Barra replaced Diaz as interim president in 1911 and the election of Francisco I. Madero took place, none of his collaborators had fought the French or been in the other two wars. Leon de la Barra was himself a civilian too young to have participated in any of these events. However, when Madero, the civilian leader of the Revolution, took office the following year, twothirds of his older appointees were veterans of the French intervention. 14 Interestingly, the administration of General Victoriano Huerta (1913-1914), the last anti-revolutionary president, represented a return of the professional army's influence in politics; thus, most of his colleagues were military men. Without exception, all who were old enough to have participated against the French had done so. Strong bonds, built on combat experiences, were put to the test among Diaz and his collaborators. The loyalty of Diaz's friends was further challenged when he rebelled in 1871 against his former mentor, President Benito Juarez, in his unsuccessful Plan of La Noria. In short, those individuals desirous of political power risked their lives to put Diaz into office. Five years later, Diaz's Plan of Tuxtepec, di-

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TABLE 3.3. Political Positions of Supporters of the Plan of Tuxtepec under Porfirio Diaz after 1884 Individual Francisco Canedo" Rafael Cravioto^ Lazaro Garza Ayala c Martin Gonzalez cd Manuel Gonzalez Flores*-e Carlos Diez Gutierrez Pedro Hinojosa* c Juan Nepomuceno Mendez* Francisco Mena Zacarias"' Luis Mier y Teran 0 Carlos Pacheco 0 * Luis E. Torres" Geronimo Trevino'1

Position Governor of Sinaloa Senator from Hidalgo Governor of Nuevo Leon Governor of Oaxaca Governor of Guanajuato Governor of San Luis Potosi Secretary of War Governor of Puebla Secretary of Public Works Governor of Oaxaca Secretary of Development Governor of Sonora Zone Commander of Monterrey

Sources: Roderic Ai Camp, Mexican Political Biographies, 1884-1935 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991); Matilde Ipifia de Corsi, Cuatro grandes dinastias en los descendientes de los hermanos Fernandez de Lima y Barragdn (San Luis Potosi: n.p., 1956); Manuel Mestre Ghigliazza, Efermerides biogrdficas (Mexico City: Antiguas Libreria Robredo, 1945); Frangois-Xavier Guerra, Mexico: Del antiguo regimen a la revolucion (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1988); and Joaquin Marquez Montiel, Hombres celebres de Chihuahua (Mexico City: Editorial Jus, 1953). "Supported Diaz's failed Plan of La Noria (1871). b Served under Diaz in the battle for Puebla, 1867. c Decorated along with Diaz for participation in the defense of Puebla, 1863. d Adjutant to Diaz in 1860 and his chief of staff in 1877. 'Diaz's chief of staff in 1862. /Chief of staff to Diaz in the ill-fated La Noria rebellion (1871) after serving on his staff from 1865 to 1867. s Served as early as 1863 under Diaz in Oaxaca and was promoted to first lieutenant September 1, 1863. h Also served under Diaz as commander of the First Division in 1867.

rected against the reelection of Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, Juarez's successor, was successful. Biographies of numerous collaborators reveal the risks they took in associating themselves with Diaz in one or both of these revolts. A list of Tuxtepec supporters whom Diaz selected for numerous regional and national posts, beginning with his 1884 administration, appears in Table 3.3. In addition to supporting Diaz's earlier rebellion, many of these individuals served under Diaz

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during the French conflict. The fact that several nearly lost their lives in 1871, one was sentenced to death, and several others were amnestied suggests the risks involved. During the Diaz reign, the imposition of political peace was the order of the day. This condition had several important consequences for the formation of future political generations. For those politicians who grew up during the Porfiriato, no significant political event acted as a socializing catalyst for a whole generation, nor did they share a historical experience that served as a focus for political recruitment. For the most part, Mexicans born in the 1860s and 1870s were associated only in a minor way with the three major nineteenth-century events, since each occurred before 1867. Diaz's government and his immediate Liberal predecessors set in motion some changes crucial to forming younger leadership generations. A slow but consistent movement within the ranks of the army took place: officers who earned their spurs on the battlefield, after beginning their careers as enlisted men, were gradually replaced by a new generation of National Military College graduates. 15 In his study of the Tomochic rebellion in Chihuahua (1891-1892), Paul Vanderwood found that Diaz remained loyal to his old companions in arms, even if they performed poorly in battle. Diaz, according to Vanderwood, "believed that an ole war buddy deserved another chance." 16 This younger group of officers never represented a whole political generation; rather, they were part of an age cohort forming a transitional bridge from the Porfiriato to the revolutionary leadership of the twentieth century. Their most prominent representative was General Victoriano Huerta, who graduated as a construction engineer in 1876. After ordering the murder of President Madero in 1913, Huerta's actions provoked the outburst of widespread and intense revolutionary violence. Most of his collaborators, especially governors, were career officers like himself; many companions from the Military College had spent much of their careers putting down Indian rebellions in the north and south. 17 As noted earlier, Victoriano Huerta represented a return of the influence of military men in national political office. Despite this military emphasis, military events were not a significant variable in national political recruitment. Instead, Huerta symbolized the transition between the self-made military on the nineteenth-century battlefields and the newly formed military in the professional academies. Some of these men knew each other in their battles against the Indians, but many of them met at the Military College. Some of these men included General Francisco H. Garcia, Huerta's governor of Sonora, an 1878 Military College graduate; General Francisco Romero, who

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graduated as a military engineer with Huerta and became governor of San Luis Potosi; and General Joaquin Maas, another military engineer with Huerta who married his sister and became governor of Puebla. These men, along with those who served in staff positions, used education and career contacts as their means of recruitment. It is these two forms of recruitment which characterize politically modernizing societies. During his brief, reactionary interlude, Huerta rewarded military cronies with promotions to the highest rank, that of division general, doubling their numbers to 50 percent of important political leaders, twice that of Diaz's last administration. Generationally, he reversed the increasing dominance of the 1860-1879 generation by reasserting the importance of the preceding age group (1840-1859). Ideologically, Huerta represented a reactionary movement, and generationally, in terms of political leadership, a misstep in time. As the nineteenth century came to a close, the predominance of battlefield experiences as a basis for political recruitment declined rapidly, even among military officers. Career military officers made their contacts through professional education and staff positions, a pattern that would be repeated more strongly later in the twentieth century. With the Revolution, the declining importance of major events, and violence specifically, as catalysts for political recruitment was temporarily halted. This civil war also impeded the ascent of institutionalized experiences both in socializing future political generations and in developing ties of personal trust necessary for political advancement. It did not, as will be demonstrated, eliminate institutionalized experiences; it simply reversed them temporarily. For the military, it shifted the emphasis away from the academy and the defense bureaucracy to large guerrilla armies. For civilians, it reduced their role in national politics as revolutionary figures took over their posts. THE ROLE OF THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION The Revolution of 1910 should be looked upon as a formative experience of a single generation and as an intervening agent in changing that generation's values, especially those linked to politics. 18 Rarely have such events, however, affected the institutional processes, such as education, that typically influence values over long periods. Major analysts of the Revolution, including John Womack Jr., Ramon E. Ruiz, John Hart, and Alan Knight, disagree on this point in the Mexican case. 19 In other words, the Revolution reduced the proportion of college graduates, individuals formed in an educational environment,

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among contemporary political generations. It opened u p access to political leadership to individuals based on their battlefield merits. The Revolution replicated the earlier recruitment patterns from the Liberal-Conservative conflict, the North American invasion, and the French intervention, but more extensively. Ironically, it can be argued, as Francois Guerra has, that changing recruitment practices brought about the Revolution. In short, Guerra suggests that Porfirian Liberals after 1904 altered the camarilla system at the local and regional level, creating a pool of displaced and disloyal local elites seeking power. 20 It is important to remember that Diaz's generation had already set in motion strong institutions in a period of relative peace, which for thirty years had far more importance than any single event in the formation of political generations. These educational systems, as will be demonstrated in the next chapter, were not destroyed by the Revolution. 21 For two generations, the Revolution had an overwhelming influence on political leaders, not through vicarious experience but direct personal involvement. Thus, half of the political leaders born from 1870 to 1900 were participants in the Mexican Revolution. According to the chief of staff to Venustiano Carranza, leader of the Constitutionalist Army, "My formation as a man really can be attributed to my participation in the Mexican Revolution, in which I was in close contact with all the great chiefs which made it possible, from Venustiano Carranza, with whom, I repeat, I was an intimate collaborator, to generals like Lucio Blanco, with whom I participated in the first division of lands produced by the Revolution in August 1913 in Los Borregos, Tamaulipas. . . ." 22 Like Diaz, Presidents Alvaro Obregon and Plutarco Elias Calles recruited many collaborators from their wartime experiences. 23 Even more important, the presidents who succeeded them, notably Pascual Ortiz Rubio, Abelardo Rodriguez, Lazaro Cardenas, and Manuel Avila Camacho, were themselves generals who had fought in these battles, often under these two mentors. Another parallel exists between Generals Alvaro Obregon and Plutarco Elias Calles and Porfirio Diaz and their collaborators. Diaz rebelled against a civilian-led government in his Plan of Tuxtepec, after which he defeated forces loyal to the president. Obregon, who became disenchanted with Venustiano Carranza, the civilian president of the victorious Constitutionalist forces, also rebelled, announcing his rebellion in a document known as the Plan of Agua Prieta. Some historians might argue that the parallel falters because Carranza was the chief or "general" of the Constitutionalist forces. But he no more led forces in battle than did Benito Juarez during the French inter-

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TABLE 3.4. Participation of First-Time National Officeholders in the Mexican Revolution

Experience Revolutionary Antirevolutionary Both Neither Total

Participants (%) 47 9 2 _42 100

vention. Among the creators of that plan were Calles, Adolfo de la Huerta, and Gilberto Valenzuela. Signatories included Francisco R. Serrano and Abelardo Rodriguez. Among its immediate advocates were Lazaro Cardenas, Antonio I. Villarreal, Pascual Ortiz Rubio, and Benjamin Hill. Five of these individuals held major positions in Obregon's administration. Indeed, every president from 1920 to 1940 signed or supported the plan.24 The impact of the Revolution on Mexican political recruitment after 1920, in spite of the parallels with earlier periods of violence, seems contradictory when comparing it with the impact of previous wartime experiences. For example, 58 percent of Mexico's national leadership from 1920 to 1935 participated in the Mexican Revolution (Table 3.4). Yet the French invasion was a more prevalent experience among a younger generation of politicians.25 This raises the question of why the Revolution, which encompassed a decade of civil unrest and violence, was less important in the backgrounds of national political leaders than the French invasion. Several possible answers emerge. First, the French invasion introduced, in a definitive manner, the issue of nationalism, thus attracting future political leaders to the fight.26 Second, except for Victoriano Huerta, the presidents after 1913 were not career military but rather self-made revolutionaries from other professions. They valued those professions and their civilian experiences more than did Porfirio Diaz, who had largely pursued a military career. Third, more generals were likely to enter public life after the intervention because fewer opportunities existed then than in the 1920s and 1930s, thus increasing their numbers among national political figures.27

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A fourth explanation can be found through reinterpreting the data.28 Age, as we noted earlier, becomes a crucial variable in understanding political leadership. In the late nineteenth-century administrations under Diaz, it is true that 83 percent of those eligible on the basis of their birth dates fought in the three major wars of their lifetimes. Among all of Diaz's collaborators, however, only 16 percent were old enough to have made such a choice in the first place. This means that four-fifths of his officeholders were not products of battlefield experiences. By contrast, although fewer postrevolutionary leaders among those eligible to fight actually participated in the Revolution (58 percent), all of those leaders, without a single exception, were eligible to participate. This simply means that more than three times as many political leaders in the postrevolutionary period were combat veterans compared with the prerevolutionary period. The difference is that Diaz's administrations spanned three generations (Table 2.1), while only one generation dominated politics from 1916 to 1935. That one generation, born between 1880 and 1899, was overwhelmingly formed in the context of revolutionary violence. This continuity can be seen in Table 3.5. The veterans account for over half of Mexico's politicians from 1914 through 1934. What is interesting is that Venustiano Carranza, among the regular, institutionalized administrations, has the TABLE 3.5. Revolutionary Experiences of National Politicians by Administration, 1911-1935 Experience (%)

Presidential Administration Madero (1911-1913) Huerta (1913-1914) Convention (1914-1915) Carranza (1914-1920) Obregon (1920-1924) Calles (1924-1928) Portes Gil (1928-1930) Ortiz Rubio (1930-1932) Rodriguez (1932-1934)

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AntiRevolu- revolutionary tionary 28 5 77 71 61 56 58 54 56

4 48 0 0 1 1 0 0 0

Both

Neither

Total

4 8 0 0 1 1 0 0 0

64 39 23 29 37 42 42 46 44

100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

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highest representation of revolutionaries, not Obregon, considered a "true" revolutionary and a battlefield leader. Yet noncombatants reasserted their influence in 1924; they accounted for two-fifths of the leadership, although their numbers remained relatively unchanged until 1934. It is equally important to point out that among those eligible to fight in the Revolution, 42 percent chose not to, compared with only 18 percent of those eligible for the nineteenth-century wars. In other words, it is remarkable that such a large proportion of Mexico's future political leadership did not choose to participate in an event of this magnitude, socially and politically, and still reached high political office, particularly since all presidents during this period were combat veterans.29 Nevertheless, revolutionary presidents and revolutionary politicians needed the skills and expertise of their civilian peers, and lack of combat experience in the major political event of their generation was not a deterrent in the appointment process. An example of a civilian who demonstrated those skills repeatedly through successive revolutionary and postrevolutionary governments is Alberto J. Pani, whom Calles considered to replace Pascual Ortiz Rubio as president in 1932. An engineering graduate from Aguascalientes, he founded a pro-Madero student group at the National School of Engineering in 1911, and Madero appointed him subsecretary of public education in that same year. Pani became Carranza's treasurer general in 1915, after which he served as secretary of industry and commerce. Pani ended his public career as secretary of the treasury, having served four times between 1923 and 1933. This civilian generation, which produced mentors to the next three age cohorts of political leaders and to the process of providing credentials, nevertheless identified attitudinally with the generation that fought in the Revolution. As the leading intellectual and civilian Daniel Cosio Villegas (b. 1898) put it, "Youth of today (I am speaking of those who were born after 1920), do not have the slightest idea of the difficult realities which the Revolution brought, and because of this they talk about it rhetorically."30 On the other hand, it has been suggested that the victors were more compatible, ideologically speaking, with the old elite than with the agrarians or workers.31 The dichotomy between those who chose to fight in the Revolution and later became political leaders and those who remained in their civilian occupations and achieved equally important political posts, excepting the presidency, is well illustrated by General Lazaro Cardenas's own camarilla. At least fourteen of his immediate supporters and appointees made contact with Cardenas through the Revolution. These included such men as General Francisco Castillo Najera, who

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served as his ambassador to the United States and whose nephew, Ignacio Castillo Mena, joined Cardenas's son Cuauhtemoc in bolting from the official party and opposing the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the 1988 presidential elections. Others included Generals Agustin Olachea Aviles, who supported Cardenas for the presidential nomination, Gabriel Leyva Velazquez, governor of Sinaloa, Benecio Lopez Padilla, who served in critical military commands during Cardenas's administration (including the Federal District), and Jose Siurob Ramirez, his secretary of health.32 A second group of leaders, most of whom were civilians, met Cardenas through institutional experiences, generally in public office. Many of them served with Cardenas during his years as governor of his home state. Others encountered the general when he served in several cabinet posts. Even Cardenas, however, was not immune to the influence of educational institutions on political recruitment. As governor, he recognized the importance of the intellectual community, and the political savvy of civilians teaching at his local university, the Colegio de San Nicolas, led him to hold weekly discussions with them at his home. From these contacts he recruited half a dozen important Michoacanos, the most prominent of whom was Gabino Vazquez Oseguerra, his secretary of agrarian reform. Vazquez worked as a stenographer for the general and became rector of the Colegio de San Nicolas, where he had graduated in 1929 with a law degree. Many of his student peers were appointed to political office by the president.33 Two groups of leaders emerged during the Revolution, with their recruitment divided along institutional instead of experiential lines— a result of the social impact of the Revolution. As Diaz began to rely increasingly on institutional foci for future political recruitment of his younger collaborators, the leadership's social composition began to alter. These educated civilians, often graduates of the National Preparatory School, were the products of provincial, middle-class families.34 The outbreak of the Revolution, while recruiting heavily from the lower-middle classes, also opened up opportunities to the working class, a social group that had also been important to Diaz's own generation and political peers.35 It is not surprising that a revolution of the magnitude of Mexico's reintroduced the importance of lower social classes among Mexico's leaders. Peter Smith's earlier study underestimates substantially the specific presence of peasant and labor backgrounds among the political elite, finding only 5 percent to have come from such occupations.36 My figures indicate that 16 percent of politicians had fathers in these occupations.

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TABLE 3.6. Relationship between Revolutionary Experience and Father's Occupation among Postrevolutionary Political Leaders Father's Occupation (%) Politician's Revolutionary Experience

Professional

Revolutionary Antirevolutionary Both Neither Total

36 4 0 60 100

Land- Peasant/ owner Laborer Politics Military Business Other 32 4 0 64 100

80 2 0 18 100

31 3 3 63 100

24 24 8 44 100

30 7 3 60 100

40 0 0 60 100

TABLE 3.7. Relationship between Revolutionary Experience and Social Class among Postrevolutionary Politicians Social Class (%) Experience Revolutionary Antirevolutionary Both Neither Total

Middle

Upper

Lower

39 7 3 53 102

27 5 2 67 101

64 7 1 27 99

Note: Totals do not add up to 100 percent due to rounding.

The relationship between class, the father's profession, and revolutionary experience can be clearly seen in Tables 3.6 and 3.7. Politicians who fought in the Revolution on the side of change were more likely to have fathers who were laborers, peasants, and small farmers. In fact, peasant and laboring families accounted for more than a third (38 percent) of all the politicians who actually fought in the Revolution. But of those politicians who remained aloof from actual combat, only 7 percent of their fathers shared these same occupations. If we look at the occupation of politicians' fathers according to participation

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and nonparticipation in the Revolution, the pattern is even more striking (Table 3.6). Four-fifths of the politicians whose fathers were in these manual occupations fought in the Revolution. Indeed, the children of laborers, peasants, and small farmers are the only individuals to have overwhelmingly fought for the revolutionaries. Only a minority of the children of the other occupational groups participated in the Revolution. In short, with the exception of military families, families from nonmanual occupations, while producing the majority of the politicians of the revolutionary generation who entered national political life, had relatively low representation in the Revolution. If politicians who fought in the Revolution are categorized by socioeconomic status, rather than solely by father's occupation, an equally definitive pattern emerges among combatants and noncombatants (Table 3.7). Among the politicians from upper-class backgrounds, only 34 percent chose to fight in the Revolution, four-fifths of them on the side of the revolutionaries. But among the politicians from working-class families, 72 percent chose to join the Revolution, ninetenths of them on the side of change. Future politicians with upperclass origins rarely fought on the opposing side; rather, they tended not to fight at all. Two-thirds of these politicians remained civilians throughout that violent decade. A representative of this group, Bernardo J. Gastelum, typifies the credentials of many upper- and upper-middle-class public servants. Born in Sinaloa in the 1880s, Gastelum's father, a successful lawyer, sent him to the National University, where he studied medicine. With family resources, he continued his studies abroad, attending Columbia University in New York City as well as programs in Paris, Rome, Montevideo, and Vienna. After a number of posts in secondary and higher education, he became General Obregon's secretary of public education in 1924. The data from Tables 3.6 and 3.7 make it clear that disproportionate numbers of future politicians from the middle and upper classes saw little advantage in participating in the fighting; or perhaps they were not as committed to the ideals or goals of the Revolution. This finding is all the more interesting given Jack Womack's characterization of the Revolution's leaders as opposing sectors of the middle class, leading him to categorize it as a "bourgeois civil war."37 These figures may also suggest that working-class frustrations with the Porfiriato's abuses and exploitation could be channeled only through violence, whereas the middle and upper classes, although dissatisfied with the excesses of the regime, found institutional channels, through education, much more open to them. In other words, they

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hoped to be beneficiaries of the changes wrought by the violence without risking their lives for the cause. Who were the revolutionaries, then? Contrary to popular myth, the political leadership of the Revolution—that is, those who emerged from the revolutionary battlefields to dominate the postrevolutionary period, were middle-class Mexicans.38 Half of the politicians from the revolutionary generation came from the middle class, while only 14 percent came from the upper class and 38 percent from the lower class. As Smith points out, these figures "lend empirical support to the notion that the Mexican Revolution, at least regarding leadership, was a bourgeois movement that sought to modernize, not overthrow, the country's capitalist system."39 It is significant, however, that the Revolution had a tremendous impact on the social status of politicians, allowing those from working-class backgrounds an opportunity to rise to the top of the political ladder. Thirty-eight percent is the highest figure for working-class backgrounds found among Mexican national politicians before or since. The working classes used violence to enhance their upward mobility in the political leadership, the only time in recent Mexican history when their representation in politics has come anywhere close to their representation in the general population. Among the civilian members of the revolutionary generation, fewer than half as many were from the working class (14 percent) as veterans who became politicians, a figure well below the average for all politicians from 1884 through 1934. In fact, in terms of social origins, the reactionaries, those who fought for Diaz or Huerta, had more in common socially with the revolutionary veterans than did their revolutionary civilian allies. The revolution not only made combat experiences more important to political recruitment, and thus increased the opportunities of individuals lacking social prestige, but it altered the career experiences and credentials of a generation of Mexican politicians. Revolutionaries who pursued political careers did not require a college education or civilian expertise earned through established, institutional channels. Of the revolutionary veterans who rose to political prominence, 37 percent obtained a college education, and 6 percent actually had some graduate training. Among their civilian counterparts, nearly twice as many, 67 percent, graduated from college, and 15 percent received graduate training. The Revolution also propelled a group of individuals with rural, provincial backgrounds into leadership positions. Those individuals in office in the 1920s and 1930s came from smaller cities, not from capitals. Of the politicians who fought in the Revolution, only a

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fourth came from capital cities. On the other hand, of the nearly equal number who did not fight, twice as many, 53 percent, were born in capital cities. These provincial, small-town, rural origins differentiated the revolutionary veteran from past politicians, from younger politicians, and from their civilian contemporaries. In other words, these qualities were exceptional among all the generations studied. Evidence also supports the views of historians that place of birth and residence were affected to varying degrees by the Revolution, and that individual states produced far fewer or more than their share of revolutionaries. Regionally, the Gulf contributed the fewest revolutionaries, and the north, the most. On a state-by-state basis, however, the levels vary widely (Table 3.8) Finally, Mexican politicians after the 1880s were often experienced on the local level before arriving on the national scene. In a certain sense, many of these figures were public servants and made a career out of political office. But the individuals who translated their revo-

TABLE 3.8. Geographic Origins of Politicians Who Participated in the Mexican Revolution State of Origin States with Lowest Levels Campeche Aguascalientes Yucatan Quintana Roo Federal District Zacatecas Veracruz

17 25 30 30 35 42 44

ate Average

58

States with Highest Levels Guerrero Mexico Morelos Colima Coahuila Sinaloa Nayarit

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Participants

83 79 75 75 71 71 71

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lutionary credentials into political credentials after 1920 did not have these experiences, in contrast to their civilian peers or older or younger generations. Indeed, of the groups immediately prior to or after the revolutionary generation, twice as many, 40 percent, held local office, as did combat veterans who followed political careers. These two prototypical politicians, the combat veteran and the civilian sympathizer of the Revolution, can be contrasted in the biographical sketches of two individuals, Joaquin Amaro and Moises Saenz. Amaro, the son of peasants, grew up on the Hacienda Corrales de Abrego and received a rudimentary education in his hometown of Sombrerete, Zacatecas. After working as an assistant bookkeeper in Durango, he joined the Revolution in 1911 as a private, participating in every phase of the decade of violence. He quickly rose up in the ranks, and by 1915 commanded the Fifth Division of the Army of the Northeast in Obregon's battle of Celaya against Francisco Villa. Amaro supported the Plan of Agua Prieta in 1920. Amaro remained in the postrevolutionary army and held many important field commands. Calles appointed him secretary of war during his administration. Moises Saenz, secretary of education in Calles's last cabinet, was born in 1888, a year earlier than Amaro, in the provincial community of Apodaca, Nuevo Leon. He was from a middle-class family. After completing his early education, he graduated as a teacher from the Jalapa Normal School in 1909. By 1915, Saenz had become director of education in the state of Guanajuato and remained in education throughout the conflict. In 1920 he traveled to New York City, where he obtained a Ph.D. in education at Columbia University, graduating magna cum laude. While Amaro worked his way up the military bureaucratic ladder, Saenz held academic and administrative posts that culminated in his cabinet office. As will be demonstrated, today's politicians share, three generations later, many similarities with Saenz, a civilian product of a revolutionary decade. The Revolutionary generation was a decisive one in that it changed the political rules of the game in terms of leadership composition and, more important, imposed a new set of values, reflected in the 1917 Constitution. Yet there is an important similarity shared by two decisive generations, that of Diaz and that of Obregon and Calles. After years of civil war, both groups placed heavy emphasis on peace. In the Diaz period, peace became part of the stated motto of the Mexican positivists, what Justo Sierra labeled the "religion of peace." As the secretary of education during the Porfiriato wrote, "The country's real desire, manifested everywhere, was peace. No one wanted a resumption of the war except those who thrived on anarchy, those who were

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misfits in any normal situation. Seldom in history has there been a people with a more unanimous, more anguished, more determined passion."40 Similarly, among the postrevolutionary leaders, the most striking universal belief was "an almost universal emphasis on peace and order."41 CONCLUSIONS A variety of experiences—familial, political, social, and military—can impact on generations of citizens, including the small number who pursue political careers as well as the vast majority who remain outside politics. Among the leaders who dominated Mexican politics from 1884 to 1934, battlefield experiences were influential on their formation and were the most important source of personal contacts leading to powerful political offices. The presence of these experiences in the backgrounds of the individuals who were recruited shows that the composition of political leadership with respect to background can be altered. Such individuals were not new to political leadership, but their numbers changed substantially, even drastically in the case of the revolutionary generation (1880-1899). The Revolution not only changed leadership composition but, by doing so, altered the means by which leadership was recruited. A symbiotic relationship exists between the recruiter and political recruitment. If violence determines who controls decision making, as it did for a succession of presidents from 1884 through the 1940s, then it will also determine the makeup of a system's officeholders. It is not true, however, that political leaders always select like types, even when a major civil war not only determines the vanquished and victors but also separates the victors according to those who fought from those who remained on the sidelines. Despite the decisive impact of violent experiences on political recruitment, their consequences on the makeup of political leadership were short-term. In effect, the institutional credentials, especially higher education, that began to characterize Porfirio Diaz's collaborators halfway through his administrations were the same characteristics that reemerged and eventually overwhelmed those introduced by veterans of violent episodes. More important, even the Revolution, which produced the extraordinary dominance of a single generation, did not create a homogeneous political leadership. The civilian component of leaders emerging in the aftermath of the terrible conflicts during the decade between 1910 and 1920 accounted for nearly half of all the major political figures.

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It is this group that fathered younger generations, setting forth the credentials that molded the post-io4os leaders, the politicians who will control Mexico's future into the twenty-first century. These individuals are the products of institutions formed in the nineteenth century and then evolved incrementally, not radically, through the early twentieth century. These leaders carry with them some of the credentials that characterized their nineteenth-century predecessors, while combining those features with other qualities introduced by selfmade products of the Revolution. Other experiences, mostly political in nature, affected successive generations, but these experiences are limited in scope, either geographically, such as the 1968 student massacre, or politically, such as the 1929 presidential campaign of Jose Vasconcelos. While a certain portion of a generation was affected in each case, mostly politically and intellectually, few of these experiences were of sufficient scope to have widespread influence at every level of society. Education, discussed in the next chapter, superceded political events as the most important factor in the formation of political leadership. Yet for the noncombatants in various eras prior to 1920, education was always instrumental in socializing and bringing together various generations of future leaders. Its importance increased as the influence of educated leaders expanded during the Revolution, strengthening their ability to appoint their peers to high political office.

NOTES 1. One of the most detailed analyses of experiential variables on the formation of a generation can be found in Peter Loewenberg's Decoding the Past: The Psychohistorical Approach (New York: Knopf, 1983), specifically his chapter entitled "The Psychohistorical Origins of the Nazi Youth Cohort." 2. Richard Centers, "Children of the New Deal: Social Stratification and Adolescent Attitudes," in Class, Status and Power, ed. Richard Bendix and Seymour Martin Lipset (New York: Free Press, 1953), 361. 3. The autobiographical literature from Vietnam veterans is replete with these feelings. 4. Roderic A. Camp, The Making of a Government: Political Leaders in Modern Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984), 64. 5. Samuel H. Barnes, "The Legacy of Fascism: Generational Differences in Italian Political Attitudes and Behavior," Comparative Political Studies 5 (April 1972): 54. 6. As Rigby states, the fact that few members of the 1971 politburo saw active service during World War II is rather more remarkable, since most of them were men of military age occupying relatively junior administrative posts—that is, obviously "officer material" (political or otherwise). Thomas

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H. Rigby, Political Elites in the USSR: Central Leaders and Local Cadres from Lenin to Gorbachev (Brookfield: Gower, 1990), 183. 7. See, for example, Harold D. Lasswell and Daniel Lerner, eds., World Revolutionary Elites: Studies in Coercive Ideological Movements (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1965). 8. For an excellent description of the importance of the National Guard, its evolution in the nineteenth century, and the ways in which individuals used their experiences to form "tight coteries of friendships," see Guy P. C. Thompson's excellent discussion, "Bulwarks of Patriotic Liberalism: The National Guard, Philharmonic Corps and Patriotic Juntas in Mexico," Journal of Latin American Studies 22, pt. 1 (February 1990): 48-51. He specifically discusses the career of Juan Nepomuceno Mendez, an important general and governor of Puebla w h o developed a network of supporters in his native state. 9. For details of his military career and the careers of many who fought with him, see Ignacio M. Escobedo, Historia militar del general Porfirio Diaz (Mexico City: Editorial Cosmos, 1975). 10. Alfonso Luis Velasco, Porfirio Diaz y su gabinete (Mexico City: n.p., 1889). 11. Revista de Ejercito y Fuerza Aerea, July 1968, 21-27. 12. Secretaria de Guerra, Memoria (Mexico City: Secretaria de Guerra, 1901), 19.

13. Jean-Pierre Rioux, "A Changing of the Guard? Old and New Elites at the Liberation," in Elites in France: Origins, Formation, and Continuity, ed. Jolyon Howorth and Philip G. Cerny (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982), 85-86. 14. Some observers suggest that unqualified politicians claim veteran status. Aware of those claims, I have tried to document their involvement from numerous sources, thus eliminating false credentials. Moreover, a Mexican public figure would have difficulty sustaining such a fraud in Mexico, given the pride other combat figures in public life had in their veteran status and their unwillingness to share it with false claimants. 15. Edwin Lieuwen, Mexican Militarism (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1968), 3. 16. Paul Vanderwood, letter to author, October 4, 1992. 17. Gabriel Cuevas, El glorioso Colegio Militar mexicano en un siglo 1824.-1924. (Mexico City: n.p., 1937), 349. 18. See Camp, The Making of a Government, 39. 19. As Alan Knight has argued, even those historians who believe that the Revolution did not result in a popular victory recognize that "from about 1915 onwards, a new state was forged which, in some respects, continued the work of the Porfirian old regime. To recognize this fact, and thus to depart from the more extreme, self-congratulatory myths of the official party, is not, however, to accept that the Revolution changed little, that the Revolution was just a 'blip' on the screen of history or that Mexico's distinctive historical trajectory since 1920 was not profoundly conditioned by that revolutionary experience." See "The Peculiarities of Mexican History: Mexico Compared to

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Latin America, 1821-1992/' Journal of Latin American Studies 24 (Quincentenary Supplement, 1992): 129. 20. See Paul Vanderwood's excellent interpretation of this thesis in "Resurveying the Mexican Revolution: Three Provocative Syntheses and Their Shortfalls," Mexican Studies 5 (Winter 1989): 159. 21. Alejandro Gomez Arias, one of Mexico's leading intellectuals and a dilettante in political opposition who began his education at the end of the 1910s, has suggested that "the principles of positivism were still alive. The professors of logic were teaching with the old text of Dr. Parra, without modifying it, and the history texts were commenting on the sociological ideas of Spencer. . . . " Letter to author, September 27, 1973. 22. General Juan Barragan, letter to author, April 3, 1974. 23. For a detailed account of the formation of the Calles and Obregon generation, see Hector Aguilar Camin's La frontera nomada: Sonora y la revolucion mexicana (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1977). 24. John W. R Dulles, A Chronicle of the Revolution, 1919-1936 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961), 33-34. 25. Henry Schmidt reflects a common view when he argues that the Revolution "remains the central organizing principle of the knowledge of 20thcentury Mexico." See "Hector Aguilar Camin and the Interpretation of the Mexican Revolution," New World 1, no. 1 (1986): 82. 26. Frederick C. Turner, The Dynamic of Mexican Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 50. Of course, John Hart and others have argued that the Revolution was nationalistic, in this case antiAmerican. But this latter surge of nationalism was more regional, especially in the north, and competed with many other issues. 27. I am indebted to Paul Vanderwood for this suggestion. 28. Another possible explanation is raised by Luis Gonzalez. As he notes in his important work on this period, the post-1867 civil leadership was from an older generation (1806-1822) than the comparable military group (18231839). For Gonzalez, this explains why the former were Juaristas and the latter Porfiristas. See "El liberalismo triunfante," Historia general de Mexico (Mexico City: Colegio de Mexico, 1976), 3: 170-172. I am indebted to Barbara Tennenbaum, Library of Congress, for pointing me to this interpretation. 29. Most historians might not count Emilio Portes Gil, who served as interim president from 1929 to 1930 and who did not become a career revolutionary officer. Nevertheless, he worked in the military justice department during the Revolution. Adolfo de la Huerta, briefly interim president in 1920, was also deeply involved in revolutionary politics as a signatory of the Plan of Agua Prieta, but not as an active officer. 30. Daniel Cosio Villegas, Memorias (Mexico City: Joaquin Mortiz, 1976), 57. 31. Mark Wasserman, "Strategies for Survival of the Porfirian Elite in Revolutionary Mexico: Chihuahua during the 1920s," Hispanic American Historical Review 67 (February 1987): 91. 32. Some observers seem to believe that Lazaro Cardenas was a staff officer, not a field officer with extensive combat experience. An examination of

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his diary, which details his extensive participation in combat from 1913 to 1920 and in later campaigns after 1920, can be found in Apuntes 1913-1940, vol. 1 of Obras (Mexico City: UNAM, 1972), 36-39; and Fernando Benitez, El Caudillismo, vol. 2 of Ldzaro Cardenas y la revolution mexicana (Mexico City: Tondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1977), 35-3733. These included Alberto Bremauntz Martinez, judge of the Superior Court of Justice of the Federal District, 1935-1963; Jose Maria Mendoza Pardo, appointed governor of Michoacan through Cardenas's influence, 1944-1949; Alberto Coria Cano, also a judge of the Superior Court of Justice of the Federal District, 1935; Antonio Mayes Navarro, federal deputy from Michoacan; and Jesus Diaz Barriga, assistant secretary of health, 1935-1940. For background, see Alberto Bremauntz's Setenta anos de mi vida (Mexico City: Ediciones Juridicas Sociales, 1968). 34. In his study of social generations, Luis Gonzalez discovered that the vast majority from every generation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were of middle-class parentage. Luis Gonzalez y Gonzalez, La ronda de las generaciones (Mexico City: SEP, 1984), 100. 35. Mark Wasserman's examination of Chihuahua concluded, "The Revolution produced a new political elite that displaced the old at the state level, if not immediately, certainly by 1940. Its members came from the middle and lower classes. The composition of the new elite changed over time. The transitional presidency of Francisco Madero included a preponderance of dissident elites in important political posts. They gave way by 1914. The most upwardly mobile period took place from 1914 to 1917, when Villa, Zapata, and their popular class followers held center stage. Thereafter, with crucial exceptions from above and below, the middle classes (which included small landowners) dominated Mexican politics." Persistent Oligarchs: The Political Economy of Chihuahua, Mexico, 1910-1940 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993)/ 7-8. 36. Peter H. Smith, Labyrinths of Power: Political Recruitment in TwentiethCentury Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 77. To his credit, Smith readily admits that his sample is small and not likely random, and, therefore, his figures may not be representative. 37. John Womack Jr., "The Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920," in Mexico since Independence, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 128. 38. Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, Triumphs and Tragedy: A History of the Mexican People (New York: Norton, 1992), 342. 39. Ibid., 79. 40. Justo Sierra, The Political Evolution of the Mexican People (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969), 359. 41. Camp, The Making of a Government, 134.

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4 Education and Politics: Formation and Recruitment of National Leaders As Mexico developed politically, civil wars as formative experiences for politicians declined in importance and were replaced by institutional forces. Among the earliest and most important of these institutional variables was education. Other types of events, such as divisive political campaigns, also affected various generations. Typically, however, after 1920 political confrontations and violence began to have less influence than moderate, institutional forces.1 Educational experiences are the most significant of these institutional contributions, and politicians have acknowledged that they were critical to their formation. More than 40 percent of the postrevolutionary politicians interviewed believed that either their former professors or their university experiences were most influential on their values.2 The impact of education does not necessarily lessen the importance of a major political event. In other words, companions who share educational experiences often share a political event.3 Their relationship may be symbiotic, reinforcing ties from both sources. Although many students had joined the Revolution as a group,4 just as Porfirio Diaz had volunteered to fight the North Americans with some student friends in 1846,5 student involvement in political events blossomed after the 1920s. As dissident politicians and intellectuals increasingly challenged the establishment leadership in the electoral arena as an alternative to military force, elections became more competitive and drew from the academic community, mostly students but professors too. During the presidential or prepresidential election contests of 1923, 1927, 1929, 1940, and 1952, many of these students were deeply involved in these activities, strongly cementing their academic ties to political experiences.6 These young people, especially in the 1920s, risked physical harm and even death. One such individual, Salvador Azuela Rivera, son of the novelist of the Mexican Revolution, was educated in the 1920s. As he recollected late in life, young people who distinguished themselves in the 1929

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presidential campaign "in favor of Jose Vasconcelos, were my companions and in that campaign, in which the same group who fought for [university] autonomy intervened intensely, I was a victim of persecution and jail."7 Intertwining recruiting and socializing influences enhanced each generation's educational and political experiences. I have demonstrated elsewhere the critical importance of university education on the recruitment and socialization of Mexican political leaders in the mid-twentieth century.8 It was no less important in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but intense competition existed from other sources, and greater diversity in these formative processes was apparent during this century. The use of educational networking extended well back to the colonial era, during which time "the old-boy network of the colegios mayores became notorious."9 The importance of higher education in the formation of political groups occurred elsewhere in Latin America. Michael Conniff notes that as early as 1831, a "secret society of Sao Paulo law school students and graduates, called the Bucha, formed a large network for politicians and professionals. Highly influential at critical moments, the Bucha also served as a model for groups in other states and in later times. Military academy graduates likewise identified with their turma, or class cohort, and used it for political and professional favors."10 In socialist countries in the twentieth century, occupations provided a major channel for upward political mobility, often for ideological reasons. However, education has been the other major route up the socialist political ladder.11 In most analyses of these political systems, one searches in vain for a connection between education as a credential for entrance into the political elite and education as a vehicle for enhancing political contacts leading to recruitment into this elite. This interrelationship must be understood to grasp political recruitment in Mexico. THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF EDUCATION Nineteenth-century institutionalization of Mexican military training (see Chapter 3) had its counterpart in the civilian world. In 1867, under the administration of Benito Juarez, victorious Liberals established the National Preparatory School.12 The purpose of that institution, and the previously established regional institutes of arts and sciences, was to educate a whole new generation of political leaders trained in the art of rational thinking; this generation would manage the affairs of Mexico after Benito Juarez's generation.13 Prior to the revolutionary decade, most preparatory and university

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education occurred in important regional schools, often located in the state capitals. These institutions typically drew students from many surrounding states, and some included professional schools in law or medicine. Later, most of these institutions became the basis for the public university system at the state level. The National Preparatory School was the only national school educating Mexicans at that level in Mexico City.14 A national university did not exist as such; rather, three important national professional schools—in law, medicine, and mining (engineering)—were located in Mexico City.15 The revival of the National University of Mexico (later the National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM) by the secretariat of public education involved combining the three national professional schools with the graduate school in humanities.16 Porfirio Diaz himself, it is often forgotten, was a product of the Institute of Arts and Sciences of Oaxaca when Benito Juarez directed the institute.17 Diaz actually completed his studies, except for his thesis, in law.18 Benito Juarez, like so many later politicians, used educational ties to recruit his promising students into politics. Matias Romero was one of Diaz's best friends from the institute and one of Juarez's most outstanding students. Juarez recommended Romero for his first public post in the secretariat of foreign relations in 1855. By 1862, he had become ambassador to the United States, returning home to become Diaz's chief of staff, after which he again returned to his ambassadorial post. Although he remained loyal to the government in 1876, having served as Juarez's treasury secretary, Diaz appointed him to the same post in 1877 and again in 1892. He served as ambassador to the United States until his death.19 Most of Diaz's collaborators, unlike Romero, cannot trace their ties to Diaz from his days at the Institute of Arts and Sciences. As an adult, Diaz never operated in the academic world or, for that matter, in the civilian professional world, where most college graduates moved.20 Although he briefly practiced law after Santa Anna shut down the institute in 1855, Diaz's entree into politics was through the military. As noted earlier, he recruited many college graduates, especially lawyers, to top political offices, but his contact with these men occurred during political conflicts, not in the academic world.21 Education as a recruiting agent can exercise influence over various generations only if future politicians pass through academic channels. Politicians' backgrounds include educational experiences only if the incumbent political leadership values higher education as a credential. As Heinz Eulau argued, "Any theory of political recruitment takes it as axiomatic, even if the axiom is not explicitly acknowledged, that elites seek to perpetuate themselves, their goals and their ways

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of doing things."22 Despite the fact that Porfirio Diaz selected many military cronies as collaborators in his cabinets and in regional positions of authority, large percentages of his collaborators were civilians. As Guerra suggests, the majority of Diaz's cabinet members were civilians, while military backgrounds accounted for the majority of governors.23 Regardless of the military's presence, many political figures—indeed the majority—were college educated at a time when most Mexicans were illiterate. Table 4.1 illustrates the value given to higher education by Mexican politicians. What is remarkable about the data is that they reveal an appreciation of education as early as the nineteenth century. In fact, only once during all the presidential administrations since 1884 have fewer than half of the new top-level officeholders lacked college degrees. More important, the Diaz administrations reflected higher education's growing importance from the early 1880s to the 1910s, during which time politicians without a college degree declined from 42 percent to only 20 percent. Miguel S. Macedo, who served as Diaz's last subsecretary of government, typifies this group of public figures. His father, Mariano Macedo, served as supreme court justice and secretary of foreign relations. Miguel and his brother Pablo were early graduates of the National Preparatory School in the 1870s, and Miguel completed his law degree from the National School of Law in 1879. He taught penal law at his alma mater from 1880 to 1910 and later served as dean of the law school, combining an academic and public career his entire life. He began writing criminal legislation, after which he became a city council member in Mexico City. Diaz chose him to serve in the Senate before joining the ranks of the executive branch. Even more surprising, in the 1901 administration over 90 percent of Diaz's first-time collaborators had earned college or graduate degrees, a figure not equaled again until 1988. These educational levels are more extraordinary considering that the general population's 1 percent literacy rate in the 1820s had changed little by the late 1800s.24 These figures demonstrate that by the turn of the century, Diaz was recruiting younger, highly educated professionals to his administration. The figures in Table 4.1 also illustrate the Revolution's significant impact on altering institutional patterns put in place under Diaz and continued by his moderate successor, Francisco I. Madero (19111913), the first revolutionary president. Madero, like most of his contemporaries, began his studies at a Catholic parochial school; he studied at Mount Saint Mary's, Baltimore, 1886-1888, the Liceo Versailles, Paris, 1889-1891, and the Technical Agricultural School, Berkeley,

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TABLE 4.1. Educational Background of First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 Level of Education (%) Presidential Administration Diaz

1884188918931897190119051910De la Barra Madero Huerta Carranza Obregon Calles Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas"

PreUniversity

University

Postprofessional

42 29 35 25 9 13 20 20 19 13 44 43 57 40 32 42 31 32 25 32 27 25 14 23 13 0

53 63 55 64 72 80 80 73 73 73 46 44 31 50 53 42 48 58 61 52 50 51 54 42 41 28

5 8 10 11 19 7 0 7 8 14 10 13 12 10 15 16 15 10 14 16 23 24 32 35 46 72

Note: The interim de la Huerta administration (1920) has been omitted because the sample size is too small to be statistically accurate. "The data for Salinas are not fully comparable since they do not cover a full six-year term.

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1893, His social background as a wealthy landowner made his educational achievements possible and brought him into contact with equally well educated individuals from similar circumstances. Madero's own generation (1860-1879) dominated Diaz's new appointees by 1905 (see Chapter 2). Consequently, it is not surprising that Madero's own choices mirrored the educational patterns that Diaz had introduced by the end of his administration. A significant change occurred, however, under Venustiano Carranza (1916-1920), who, it will be recalled, renovated Mexican political leadership entirely. This was not only a generational phenomenon (Table 2.1) but a social phenomenon as well. Many of his appointees were self-made men with no prior political experience and without a college education. Typical of these was Candido Aguilar Vargas, a milkman who joined the Antireelectionists in 1910 and signed the Plan of San Ricardo, the first rebel movement in Veracruz. An important figure at the Constitutional Convention of 1917, he governed his home state during this period before joining Carranza's cabinet in 1918. Aguilar enhanced his social position, marrying Carranza's daughter Virginia. Carranza himself, who personally represented the growing impact of the public education system, was the first Mexican president to have attended the Ateneo Fuente, a regional institute in Saltillo, and, even more significant, the National Preparatory School. Nevertheless, like most of his appointees, he too did not have a college education.25 Carranza, therefore, reversed all of the advances accomplished educationally among Mexico's political leadership through the 1900s, returning educational credentials to their initial levels of 1884, where they remained stable and then worsened considerably under Plutarco Elias Calles (1924-1928). Calles, who recruited many of his revolutionary companions as well as friends from his home state of Sonora, provided the greatest political opportunities for those who were not college graduates of any president in the last one hundred years. The Revolution, in effect, broadened the recruitment pool among Mexican leadership, a pattern that can be found in other postrevolutionary societies. As Robert North and Ithiel Sola Pool concluded in their examination of Chinese leadership, "the rise of the soldier broadened and democratized the recruitment of the Chinese elite."26 From 1917 to 1922 the Soviet politburo also recruited modestly educated leaders who were well educated compared with the general population.27 The 1924-1928 administration marked the low point of educational influence on the formation and recruitment of Mexican politicians and the high point of battlefield and other experiential variables as-

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sociated with self-made men. Smith argued that the Revolution "did not de-educate the elite."28 This is not quite the case. The shift from 9 percent to yj percent without college degrees among those recruited for the first time to high office is dramatic, to say the least—a fivefold increase among nondegreed politicians. Calles, who worked his way through a small school to obtain a teaching certificate at sixteen, had neither personal experience with higher education, nor any means of direct contact with college students.29 Presidential administrations maintained approximately the same balance between college-educated and nondegreed politicians from the late 1920s until 1946, when Miguel Aleman reached office. As I have argued elsewhere, Aleman is a decisive influence on the recruitment patterns of Mexican politicians in many respects, not the least important of which was their educational credentials.30 Aleman's emphasis on college-educated professionals not only highlighted the importance of advanced training but signaled the dominance of academic environments as the source of future Mexican leaders and the formation of their values. It is important to introduce the argument, however, that education was not only gaining ground among civilian recruits to public life, both as a socializer and recruiter, but among military politicians too. As Edwin Lieuwen argued, most officers at the end of the Porfiriato were nonprofessionals, having achieved their rank and stature on battlefield or political merits.31 In fact, Guerra has gone so far as to claim that of the 185 career officers he examined in his study of the Porfiriato, only nine, fewer than 5 percent, were military college graduates.32 I would argue, however, that Diaz did contribute to the institutionalization of the army during his administration and that an increasing number of officers received training at the Military College. It has been estimated that by 1900 nearly half of all career officers were graduates of this military institution. It is true that the level of education among military officers never equaled that among civilian politicians. Indeed, graduates of Mexico's military colleges were not equal academically to graduates of civilian, degree-granting institutions. Nevertheless, assuming graduates of the military colleges to be the military's only equivalent for purposes of comparison, we discover a much higher figure than Guerra reports. Among the most successful generals politically, 16 percent graduated from the Military College, and another 14 percent from other institutions, public, private, and foreign. In fact, among all politicians who held office from 1884 to 1934, the Military College accounted for 7 percent of all national figures, second only to the National University's professional

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schools. 33 If nondegreed politicians are excluded from the sample, the Military College accounts for 13 percent of all political figures. 34 After the Mexican Revolution, the importance of military education increased, just as civilian training became more important. This has also happened elsewhere, both in China and the Soviet Union. 35 Among Alvaro Obregon's and Calles's contemporaries who continued to hold important military posts after 1940, one-third received formal training. It was the next generation (1900-1919), comparable to the civilian generation under Miguel Aleman, which altered the educational pattern among career military officers, complementing the same trend among civilian leaders. The career of Juan Antonio de la Fuente Rodriguez, who graduated from the Heroic Military College as a second lieutenant of cavalry in 1935, exemplifies this generation. De la Fuente Rodriguez attended the National Preparatory School in the 1930s, after which he completed first the cavalry course at the Applied Military School and then the staff and command course at the Higher War College in the early 1940s. Like many leading officers of his generation, he traveled to the United States for advanced training, where he studied armored cars at Fort Knox. Although commanding various field units, de la Fuente Rodriguez later presided over the Higher War College and directed the secretariat of defense's department of military education before his appointment as subsecretary of defense in 1976. In my study of top-ranking general officers, only one of those born after 1900 did not attend a military academy or civilian university; 90 percent were military academy graduates. 36 What is remarkable about these changes is that such presidents as Calles and Cardenas, neither of whom was college educated, saw the value of professional education, both among the military and civilian political cohorts. Their strong emphasis on professionalization caused self-made officers from the Revolution, like themselves, to be replaced with men formally trained in military arts. When Aleman took office in 1946, he brought his own generation (1900-1919) into national prominence, giving them two-thirds of the important political posts. Members of this generation, whether of civilian or military origin, were products of publicly operated, national, civilian and military schools, all located in Mexico City. Generationally, Aleman's cohorts remained in control of the political elite until the end of President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz's administration (1964-1970). A break between Diaz Ordaz and Luis Echeverria is illustrated clearly in Table 4.1. There was a substantial decline (36 percent) in politicians without a college education (from 25 percent to only 14 percent), while the percentage of politicians with graduate training in-

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creased. Finally, the last significant alteration in educational patterns appeared under Miguel de la Madrid (1982-1988), who represented a transitional generation between Echeverria and Carlos Salinas. De la Madrid finally brought college-educated politicians back to levels achieved more than eighty years earlier under Porfirio Diaz. However, the selection of his collaborators was marked by an increasing emphasis on educational specialization, measured by graduate education. Nearly half of his appointees had obtained such an education, a figure that increased dramatically under Salinas, considered by many to be the technocratic president par excellence. Rising levels of education among politicians were complemented by location. Location is a critical variable in understanding the credential and recruitment process because it can widen or narrow the channels for political recruitment and it specifies the number of places where recruitment occurs. Those having access to the "chosen" locations for recruitment became the new recruits. Generally, such an emphasis created an environment conducive to self-perpetuation, in the same way that leading Ivy League institutions in the United States perpetuated their reputations among their own graduates in academia, public life, and the business world.37 The institutional pioneer in the trend toward centralization and nationalization of politicians' education was not a professional school or degree-granting institution but the National Preparatory School. The rolls of the National Preparatory School make clear the influence of this Mexico City institution on future political leaders.38 Out of a population of millions, only several hundred students had the opportunity to attend this institution in the last third of the nineteenth century. Of their numbers, a disproportionate percentage accounted for Mexico's future political and intellectual leadership.39 Initially, however, the National Preparatory School competed with regional institutes. Just two years after the school was founded, eighteen states "emulated its curriculum structured upon positivist principles."40 The data in Table 4.2 demonstrate the school's growing influence before and after the Revolution. If we specify new officeholders in order to emphasize the changing recruitment patterns among politicians, we again see a decisive pattern in the importance of this school. Its founders had hoped to form Mexico's future leadership groups, and what is extraordinary is that by Diaz's 1905 administration, more than a third of his newly appointed collaborators were graduates. This is all the more remarkable considering the school was not founded until 1867. Likewise, we see a changed pattern after the Revolution. Although Madero's appointees solidly represented National Preparatory School graduates, its graduates all but disappeared

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TABLE 4.2. National Preparatory School Graduates among First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991

Presidential Administration Diaz 1884188918931897190119051910De la Barra Madero Huerta Carranza Obreg6n Calles

National Preparatory School Graduates (%) 7 20 15 14 30 37 0 0 23 5 10 13 10

Presidential Administration

National Preparatory School Graduates (%)

Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas"

0 13 8 30 52 54 45 58 52 51 41 36 —

Note: The interim de la Huerta administration (1920) has been omitted because the sample size is too small to be statistically accurate. "Data on preparatory schools for first-time officeholders under Salinas are not sufficient to provide accurate, comparable data.

from 1916 through 1934. It is not until Cardenas's administration in 1934 that the National Preparatory School once again appeared regularly in the educational backgrounds of Mexican politicians. The preeminence in political and intellectual life of this generation, generally born in the mid- to late 1890s, accounted for this remarkable alteration in the importance of the National Preparatory School. Neither Generals Calles nor Cardenas had any contact whatsoever with the National Preparatory School, both having received their formal education in their home regions. Members of this generation, who graduated from the National Preparatory School in 1915, played a formative role in political and economic developments in Mexico's postrevolutionary modernization process. .This group included such notable figures as Narciso Bassols, secretary of the treasury, of public

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education, and of government; Manuel Gomez Morin, cofounder of the National Action Party; and Vicente Lombardo Toledano, secretary general of the Mexican Federation of Labor (CTM).41 Immediately after Cardenas's administration, the percentage of National Preparatory School graduates continued to increase, leveling off at approximately half of those with known preparatory school backgrounds among educated politicians. The high point of its influence proportionately in the backgrounds of national politicians occurred under Adolfo Lopez Mateos (1958-1964), who, although not a graduate himself, was deeply involved with peers at that institution in national student politics, developing ties with many future politicians.42 This institution's influence peaked during the 1960s, then continued to decline after 1970 as it was replaced by more diverse Mexico City private institutions, secular and parochial. The ability of a national educational environment to contribute to the formation of a unified political generation was prevented by the strong pattern of Mexican regionalism for many decades, although according to Frangois-Xavier Guerra, about 44 percent of Mexico's politicians during the Porfiriato studied in Mexico City. Differences in type of education between religious and public institutions posed an additional obstacle to unity.43 Nevertheless, it was only a matter of time before the centralization of public educational experiences took hold in Mexico. Although centralization was initiated by a single national preparatory environment, its most important contributor was the strengthening of professional schools in Mexico City, specifically the College of Mines (later the National School of Engineering), the National School of Law, and the National School of Medicine.44 The National School of Law, not surprisingly, was the choice of most future college-educated politicians.45 Among the first political generation to serve under Diaz (1820-1839), no more than one out of five leaders attended a national professional school. Yet the law school played a crucial role in the recruitment process even under Diaz. Jacqueline Rice notes that by 1900 only one hundred students were enrolled, instructed by fifteen professors. Her examination of prominent Union Liberal party members suggests that the law school provided a locus for personal networking. She cites the example of Alberto Lombardo, who wrote to his former classmate Jose Ives Limantour seeking assistance in becoming a candidate for federal deputy based on a long friendship originating at the law school. He also wrote a professor on his thesis committee, Manuel Romero Rubio, for help. His candidacy was successful in 1886.46 Second in importance was the Military College, graduating about

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TABLE 4.3. National University Graduates among Officeholders by Political Generation, 1820-1940

Generation Pre-1839 1840-1859 1860-1879 1880-1899 1900-1919 1920-1939 1940-

UNAM Graduates (%) 22 31 37 21 44 53 56

Increase (%) — 41 19 -43 110 20 6

Note: Figures for the 1880-1899 generation vary significantly if one looks at those holding posts in the revolutionary or immediate postrevolutionary period, as contrasted with those who collaborated with Cardenas and Avila Camacho (1934-1946). Among those members of this generation who served in the post1935 administrations, 28 percent attended UNAM. In contrast, only 14 percent of those in pre-1935 administrations attended this institution. This disparity suggests that, even intragenerationally, new leadership credentials were already apparent in the 1930s, one of which was higher education, especially at a national institution.

12 percent of Diaz's political generation. In succeeding generations, those with members born from 1840 to 1879, graduates of these national schools (lumped together under the National University) increased to one out of three political leaders (Table 4.3). What is remarkable is that in periods of violence or relative stability, college-educated politicians persistently accounted for the majority of all Mexican political generations except the 1880-1889 generation. The educational trend, as previously suggested, has been toward a shared experience among political generations at one institution. By the 1900 generation, 44 percent had attended the National University, a figure that increased to over half among the 1920-1939 generation and finally to 56 percent in the post-1940 group (Table 4-3).47 Mexico City schools and higher levels of education increased among state public figures too.48 However, hidden in these national statistics is a

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noticeable decline, for the first time among politicians born in the twentieth century, of those attending the National University. For those born after 1949, the figure drops back to 43 percent, comparable with the 1900-1919 generation. The increase in National University graduates between political leaders in the last two generations (6 percent) is the lowest in the twentieth century. A similar pattern existed among political generations attending the National Preparatory School. For Diaz's generation, largely too old to have attended a national institution, only 6 percent were graduates. By the 1840s and 1860s generations, those figures had increased threefold to 18 percent, overtaking the seminary graduates who had accounted for 20 percent of Diaz's age group. The division in educational background between public secular and religious was critical to the ideological divisions characterizing Benito Juarez's (1800-1819) and Diaz's generations. Figures show that the National Preparatory School experiences of the revolutionary generation dropped back to 13 percent, but rose dramatically among the Aleman generation, when its alumni accounted for one out of five politicians.49 Politician graduates increased to one out of four and to one out of three in the two succeeding generations of Echeverria and his successors (19201939). During the twenty-year period from 1920 to 1940, however, no increase occurred in the proportion of leaders attending this school; and beginning with the 1940 age cohort (Salinas's), the number declined to fewer than one out of four, and by 1950, to only one out of six, again indicating a rise in the diversity of educational preparation, divided among private secular, private parochial, and public schools, a pattern found among Diaz's generation. CENTRALIZING EDUCATION AND ENHANCING THE RECRUITMENT FUNCTION A university education has long been encouraged by each political generation in Mexico. What gradually changed about this formative experience from the nineteenth to the twentieth century is that it became centralized—that is, nationalized. Homogenization through the National Preparatory School (1867) and the reestablishment of a National University (the joining together of the major professional schools in 1910), both located in Mexico City, replaced the diversification engendered by multiple regional institutes. Interestingly, Justo Sierra, Diaz's education secretary, "warned against a 'scholarly caste' removed from 'mundane responsibility/ indifferent to a turbulent reality surrounding it," when he inaugurated the National University in 1910.^

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Once in power, the revolutionary generation attempted to institutionalize the rules of the political game.51 Like the moderate Liberals before them, these politicians instituted an educational process to form a national political elite, yet one more encompassing than existed in the previous century.52 According to Daniel Levy, they sought to control the National University after 1917 because it was "elitist in composition, insufficiently responsive to societal needs, and a divisive 'power within a power'/' 53 Their centralized formation of the post-1900 generation contributed heavily to a cohesive leadership, a necessity in order to achieve legitimacy for political institutions and the model that emerged in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Beginning with the 1900 cohort, leaders after 1920 used their educational system to pass down a set of values from one generation to the next, reducing the possibilities of a gap in values, one of the important potential generational divisions identified by Alan Spitzer.54 As Antonio Armendariz, a prominent member of the 1900 generation, argued: "The men of my generation cannot deny the decisive influence of the University [UNAM] in the public life of the country. . . . outstanding professors left us with a spiritual imprint, as much by their example as citizens as by their authority as professors."55 Teachers at these institutions made the transition possible. Since twentiethcentury politicians identified professors as their most important socializing force, and since most professors were also government officials, changes in their values were incremental. Enhancing this pattern was the fact that intellectuals-cum-professors were also servants of the state. The intellectual-politician professors not only recruited their best students to public life but influenced the political bent of most intellectuals. Many of these figures generated substantial groups of disciples, and several of them came from a single academic generation, that of 1915. Among the most influential of these were Manuel Gomez Morin, a formative influence on Antonio Armendariz as well as his entire generation who taught at the National University from 1918 to 1939, becoming dean of the National School of Law at age twentysix, and Narciso Bassols, a mentor to many distinguished students from his law courses at the National School of Law in the 1920s. Some of the disciples of both followed their mentors in founding the National Action Party and the Popular Socialist Party respectively.56 In other societies, as Putnam has noted, postrevolutionary leadership introduced a more "parochial leader," individuals without the urbanity and sophistication of the original intellectual political leaders such as Madero and Carranza.57 In the Mexican case, on the basis of higher education alone, this pattern seems apparent (Table 4.3). But

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whereas in the Soviet Union the cosmopolitan leader made only a brief appearance, in Mexico the parochial leader was a temporary aberration, whether one refers to class, regional background, education, or experience abroad. The revolutionary generations quickly recruited such cosmopolitan figures, institutionalizing the selection of these types in their recruitment practices. The centralization of education in Mexico City institutions also had implications for the regional backgrounds of future politicians. This consequence was recognized by advisers to President Cardenas. In a little-known recommendation, an advisory board suggested that Mexico be divided into six sections, each of which would contain a regional university supported by the federal government, thereby helping to eliminate UNAM's dominance. But given Cardenas's difficult political situation, it was never implemented.58 As educational levels rose, the importance of an educational institution's location increased. Moreover, one's place of birth, especially among earlier generations, altered one's access to educational opportunities. The data in Table 4.4 reveal an interesting pattern in both the level and specialization of Mexican politicians since 1884. It is dramatically clear that, for more than a century, politicians born in the capital were likely to have the opportunity to complete a college education. Only 8 percent of all national politicians born in the Federal District did not graduate from college. The highest figures for politicians without a college education were from the west and north, major regional sources of the self-made, revolutionary generation. TABLE 4.4. Educational Fields of Political Leaders by Region College Degree (%) Region of Birth Federal District East central West North South Gulf West central Foreign Total

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None 8 33 40 40 22 27 29 9 28

Law

Economics

Medicine

Engineering

Other

38 33 28 28 44 45 43 27 36

20 5 8 8 5 4 5 5 9

7 8 6 5 9 4 7 5 6

10 9 9 11 10 8 7 32 10

17 12 9 8 10 12 9 23 11

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Educational centralization did not confine itself to geography or to different institutions. The channels narrowed further in the twentieth century with an increasing focus on a small number of professional schools within a single institution. Specifically, politicians began to attend, in greater numbers, the National School of Law. Although the percentage of lawyers in twentieth-century administrations may not have been as high as it was under Porfirio Diaz, the figures for lawyers from one law school increased dramatically. Mexico's future politicians who were born and educated in the capital also had the advantage of coming into direct contact with the political leadership of the day, either through student political activities on and off campus, or through their professors. Students at regional campuses had similar experiences, but their contacts were less useful to the pursuit of national political careers. This in part was due to the shift away from presidential figures and leading politicians formed in a provincial environment to those who either had been born in the capital or had spent most of their formative years in Mexico City schools. Thus, whereas Porfirio Diaz owed part of his political rise to his days as a law student in Oaxaca and Lazaro Cardenas later drew on his intellectual contacts at the Colegio de San Nicolas in Morelia while governor of Michoacan, Mexico's recent presidents—beginning with Luis Echeverria (1970-1976)—had little personal experience in the provinces or their institutions.59 Higher education's impact on political recruitment can be measured by the relationship between a president and his student peers. Specific contacts between presidents and their student generations have been identified elsewhere, but the general importance of a student generation takes on added visibility when examined comparatively. If college-educated presidents since 1934 are compared on the basis of the student generation best represented among their collaborators, the influence is marked (Table 4.5). In every case where the president graduated from a Mexican institution, it is the generation of his student peers that is best represented in his administration. Again, it is clear that Aleman established a benchmark, recruiting a fourth of his appointees from his own student contemporaries, most from UNAM. This level of emphasis has again been revived in recent years, both under Miguel de la Madrid, who attended the UNAM law school, and Carlos Salinas, who graduated in economics from the same institution. UNAM and its antecedents have always been an important source of college-educated politicians. As revealed by an examination of institutions attended by politicians on the basis of presidential admin-

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TABLE 4.5. Student Peers among Appointees of College-Educated Presidents, 1935-1991 Appointees from Same University Generation President

(%)

Cardenas" Avila Camacho" Aleman Ruiz Cortines" Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portilloc De la Madrid Salinas

— 24 — 18 13 13 15 23 30

Generation among Appointees 1910-1920 1910-1920 1926-1930* 1936-1940 1931-1935* 1936-1940* 1941-1945* 1956-1960 1956-1960* 1966-1970*

"Not a graduate of a university. *Same as the president's generation. c Studied abroad.

istrations, UNAM's longevity is apparent, beginning with Diaz's 1884 term (Table 4.6). Over half of the college graduates from his administration came from the National University. While these figures reveal the distribution of institutions among college graduates, they do not indicate UNAM's importance among all politicians, college educated and nongraduates alike. In other words, although UN AM captures the same percentage of graduates under President Salinas as in Diaz's 1884 administration, nearly all of Salinas's collaborators are college educated. That means, of course, that half of his entire administration experienced the National University. Comparisons are often drawn with the influence of the important French ecoles—for example, the Ecole National d'Administration—but in i960 only 12 percent of top French bureaucrats had graduated from this institution. Their numbers had increased to over half by 1980, suggesting a compressed, recent development.60 In the United States no such centralizing pattern has ever existed. However, about the same percentage of top administrative officials (51 percent) were graduates of a select group of Ivy League and other high-quality institutions.61

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UNAM

Military Academy

Private

Other

Diaz 1884188918931897190119051910De la Barra Madero Huerta Carranza Obregon Calles Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas"

52 24 59 65 73 60 55 40 46 37 42 50 37 33 43 50 27 36 50 36 47 51 54 52 56 51

17 18 6 17 12 0 18 20 09 46 5 9 0 0 21 0 7 7 5 8 7 7 7 7 5 9

3 9 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 5 0 0 0 3 4 4 1 1 1 2 2 6 13

28 49 29 18 15 40 27 40 45 19 51 41 58 67 36 50 63 53 41 55 45 41 37 39 33 27

Note: The interim de la Huerta administration (1920) has been omitted because the sample size is too small to be statistically accurate. "The figure for military graduates under Salinas (9 percent) does not indicate an increase; rather, military appointees tend to be first-time officeholders who serve the full six years. Thus, as the number of Salinas's appointees increases, the percentage of military graduates will decrease.

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With the data side by side, the decline in the military college's importance from the 1880s through the 1920s is apparent, its proportion of graduates stabilizing after 1934, Rodriguez's administration (Table 4.6). The only period in recent Mexican history when the Military College exceeded the influence of the national professional schools is during Victoriano Huerta's brief tenure, explained by the fact that Huerta himself was a graduate and that he appointed large numbers of collaborators, fellow graduates, from the old federal army. The only competitor to the National School of Law was the Free Law School, which accounted for all of the graduates of private schools under Cardenas, Avila Camacho, and Aleman.62 It was established in 1912 and given an early impetus in political life through President Emilio Portes Gil, among its first graduates.63 After 1952 private and regional public school graduates among national politicians gradually declined. Private institutions offered little future for prospective politicians, accounting for a mere 1 or 2 percent of public figures from the 1950s through the 1970s. Then radical change occurred under Miguel de la Madrid, who presided over a 200 percent increase in private school graduates.64 For the first time, a group of students from the Jesuit-operated Ibero-American University entered Mexican politics. Prior to 1982, no more than one graduate from Ibero-American University had served in a high national post in any given administration. De la Madrid's administration also introduced a group from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM).65 Although the percentage increase is not as dramatic, the number of private college graduates increased even more significantly under the first three years of the Salinas administration, suggesting an important new trend. As private school graduates increased, public school regional graduates decreased. The introduction of the private school graduate has added increased diversity to the educational and experiential composition of Mexico's leadership. As one prescient author forecasted, the privatization of public power in Mexico would take place more through private university graduates from Ibero, ITAM, and Anahuac (another Mexico City institution) choosing political careers than through the private-sector elite placing their people in government posts.66 If the private school trend continues, it is likely to produce an increasingly homogeneous group of politicians from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. This pattern occurred in England. Although analysts expected the domination of the Oxbridge schools among public executives to decline as public universities expanded, these two institutions increased their share to j$ percent of the 1965-1986 cohort.67

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The relative social openness and ideological diversity of the National University made it possible for traditional and revolutionary views to be presented side by side, unlike institutions in more authoritarian, ideologically controlled postrevolutionary regimes elsewhere. 68 Some postrevolutionary administrations attempted to eliminate traditional values at UNAM, especially under Calles and Cardenas, but their efforts failed. Cardenas established the National Polytechnic Institute as a direct ideological rival, making "no effort to hide this fact." 69 In the long run, however, Mexican leadership valued the very qualities other postrevolutionary societies vehemently rejected—including the academic freedom that permitted ideological dissent from establishment political views. The transition from public to private school credentials among politicians has reduced the centralization of recruitment at the National University. On the other hand, since the primary private schools contributing to this trend are located in Mexico City, it has not altered geographic centralization of higher education in prominent politicians' backgrounds. 70 Educational diversity among politicians has also occurred within the National University. As suggested above, law dominated Mexican professional backgrounds, as it has in so many other political systems, including the United States. 71 For example, in Spain lawyers accounted for more than half of the membership in recent cabinets. 72 Law also supplied the greatest number of top officials in the United States. 73 Law dominates the backgrounds of state-employed professionals generally. 74 Since the 1960s, the most important competitor among Mexican college degree programs has been economics. The same is true in Brazil, where enrollments in economics and administration have increased and law has declined. 75 The majority of Mexican economics graduates attended the sister institution of the National School of Law, the National School of Economics. In the postrevolutionary civilian administrations, law school graduates reached their apex many years ago under Miguel Aleman, the first presidential alumnus of the National School of Law, when they accounted for 68 percent of all collegeeducated politicians (Table 4.7). From that high point, there has been a slow but steady erosion in the percentage of lawyers, who have been replaced by economists and other professional specializations. In 1992 (Salinas's administration), for the first time in Mexican history, economists and lawyers were equally represented in the leadership. Other specializations, excluding traditional engineering and medical professions, now represent more than a quarter of all collegeeducated politicians.

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TABLE 4.7. College Degrees of First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 Degree Field (%) Presidential Administration

Law

Diaz 188918931897190119051910De la Barra Madero Huerta Carranza Obregon Calles Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas"

72 76 70 64 60 81 75 77 60 48 58 69 46 20 46 72 63 67 68 52 46 48 45 41 39 23

EngiEconomics Medicine neering 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 5 0 0 0 3 1 4 4 7 13 17 19 26 23

8 7 15 13 17 8 8 5 12 10 17 17 14 20 8 14 12 6 6 7 15 13 8 8 3 6

20 14 15 23 23 11 17 18 25 35 23 8 18 40 27 14 12 12 16 19 10 14 14 11 14 19

Other 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 7 2 0 17 20 19 0 10 14 6 18 22 12 16 20 18 29

Note: The interim de la Huerta administration (1920) has been omitted because the sample size is too small to be statistically accurate. "The data for Salinas are not fully comparable since they do not cover a full six-year term.

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TABLE 4.8. Graduate Training of First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 Location of Graduate Training (%) Presidential Administration Diaz

1884188918931897190119051910De la Barra Madero Huerta Carranza Obregon Calles Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas"

U.S. 0 2 0 2 0 0 0 0 3 2 1 0 5 0 0 7 2 1 3 4 5 8 14 9 18 38

Europe Both Mexico 0 2 3 0 0 6 0 6 3 0 1 3 3 0 12 7 2 5 2 3 2 6 10 9 13 19

0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 2 2 3 2

0 2 3 2 3 0 0 0 0 8 2 0 0 6 0 0 4 4 10 3 10 3 6 9 10 11

None 100 94 94 96 94 94 100 94 94 90 96 96 92 94 88 86 91 89 85 89 82 82 68 71 56 30

Totals 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

Note: The interim de la Huerta administration (1920) has been omitted because the sample size is too small to be statistically accurate. "The data for Salinas are not fully comparable since they do not cover a full six-year term.

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The implication of these trends for recruitment is that other schools and professions, and potentially other institutions, may become future sources of politicians. Presidential leadership, as in so many aspects of the credential and recruitment process in Mexico, has been crucial. It is no accident that the percentages of lawyers declined under President Salinas, an economist and public administrator by academic training. From 1884 through 1929, however, fewer than 10 percent of Mexico's political leaders obtained postgraduate education (Table 4.8). Pascual Ortiz Rubio, an engineer, was the first president to take graduate work (at Columbia University in New York) and the first to study at that level abroad. During the next forty years, until 1970, the percentage of politicians who went beyond their initial professional education remained stable, between 12 and 18 percent. After 1970 and the Echeverria administration, a dramatic change in graduate training took place. This change was marked by both the numbers of individuals obtaining advanced work and, equally important, their choice of institution. The new patterns under Luis Echeverria were also generational. His administration (1970-1976) recruited primarily from those politicians born between 1920 and 1939, separating it from the four previous administrations, all of whom were recruited primarily from the Aleman generation, born immediately before and during the revolutionary decade. The 78 percent increase (from 18 to 32 percent) of politicians with graduate degrees indicated a significant emphasis in the educational credentials of Echeverria's, Jose Lopez Portillo's, and Miguel de la Madrid's generation (1920-1939). Both Lopez Portillo, who received a doctorate of law from the National University in 1950, and de la Madrid, who obtained a master's degree in public administration from Harvard University in 1965, completed graduate programs. Another dramatic increase took place under Carlos Salinas, who, like Echeverria, led a younger generation, his own, into national political prominence, those born after 1940. The increase from 46 to 70 percent in graduate education in politicians' backgrounds marked a 59 percent increase from the de la Madrid administration (Table 4.8). Graduate training was much more pronounced among Mexican than U.S. cabinet secretaries, as indicated by a comparison between de la Madrid and Ronald Reagan.76 Graduate education, never a formal prerequisite for a successful political career, began after 1988 to take on the characteristic of a requirement. The other striking characteristic about graduate-level training is the source of that education. Since Porfirio Diaz's 1889 administration, Mexicans have sought out advanced academic experiences abroad, in both Europe and the United States. Traditionally, Mexican politicians

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who were trained in Europe equaled those trained in the United States and in some cases exceeded them. But Mexican schools also attracted their fair share of graduates in the early years. By 1970, however, graduate training programs in Mexico took a back seat to those abroad. Under Echeverria, Mexican graduate students accounted for fewer than one out of seven politicians with that level of education. Even more noticeable was the dramatic increase in graduates from the United States; their number doubled from 1970 to 1988. The overwhelming percentage of graduate-educated politicians, and the fact that more than half studied in the United States, reflects the importance of this training in the minds of Mexico's recent presidents. This trend was emphasized by Miguel de la Madrid, who met both criteria personally, and was reinforced dramatically under President Salinas, who obtained three graduate degrees in the United States—all, like the degrees of his mentor, from Harvard University. Other countries, such as Spain, witnessed similar trends. About a fourth of Spain's civilian politicians also studied at prestigious U.S. and European institutions.77 Graduate experiences flavored the specific credentials of future politicians, contributing to their acquisition of specialized knowledge, which was increasingly important in the new fields highly valued in postmodern societies. While mentors who changed credentials were often themselves precursors in introducing new leadership characteristics, their choices could narrow or expand the pools from which future choices were made. With some recent exceptions, educational experiences, particularly those in higher education, have narrowed the pool from which political leaders are chosen. Graduate education abroad, however, reversed that tendency, instituting a source of diversity among those who did advanced work abroad. In other words, study abroad diversified the pool of applicants and shifted the focus away from Mexico City and from the small number of capital universities, notably the National University, the National Polytechnic Institute, the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, the Ibero-American University, and the Colegio de Mexico.78 From a recruitment point of view, education at a small number of selected U.S. universities (especially Harvard, Yale, and Stanford), English universities (particularly Oxford and the University of London), and the Sorbonne in France inaugurated new academic communities in the formation of future Mexican political pools. For example, twenty Mexicans have earned a master's degree in the International and Foreign Economic Administration Program at Yale since its inception in 1953, including seven top financial officials, of whom

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two became treasury secretaries, two became assistant secretaries, and one an early mentor to Salinas. 79 Mexicans attending these institutions often form close associations, thus socializing with each other. They also develop ties with other resident Mexicans in capital cities, especially those from the diplomatic corps. For example, Porfirio Munoz Ledo, a former president of PRI and later a leader of the Democratic Revolutionary Party, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Toulouse. In Paris he met and impressed Mexican ambassador Ignacio Morones Prieto, becoming his adviser. 80 Morones Prieto, who had completed three years of medical postgraduate work at the Sorbonne in the 1920s, had a distinguished political career that began in 1946.81 The president recalled him in 1966 to take over the cabinet-level directorship of the Mexican Institute of Social Security. Morones Prieto brought along Munoz Ledo as secretary general, the second-ranking position and the first of a series of successive high-level positions. Academia has played a critical role in the formation and recruitment of Mexican political leaders for over a century. The source of its influence and the changing patterns in the recruitment process are not solely affected by location, specialization, and level of education. As I have argued elsewhere, student peers have been important to politicians' careers. In recent administrations, presidential law classes under both de la Madrid and Lopez Portillo were significant sources of appointees. 82 As will be shown later, peer contact continued to be significant with Salinas's generation too. But students tended to follow the stars of other, older contacts at the university rather than their peers. These individuals were generally their former teachers, and many were prominent public figures and intellectuals. The interplay between intellectual and political life in Mexico and Latin America is in no small part the result of a shared playing field at the university, specifically the few capital-city institutions. The role of teaching in the political life of Mexican politicians has long influenced the outcome of incipient political careers. As mentioned above, Diaz's original mentor, Benito Juarez, whom he ultimately turned against, was an administrator at Diaz's alma mater. The importance of teaching and the location of one's teaching career for politicians was actually established by Porfirio Diaz, not by later twentieth-century presidents, as was believed originally. The importance of this credential in the backgrounds of successful politicians has been ignored in other elite literature for Mexico and elsewhere. 83 It is, in my opinion, a critical variable. College professors played a critical role for three reasons. First, they picked out the brightest and most capable students, attempting

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to stimulate their interest in public life. In short, they acted as a recruiter for the state, funneling much of Mexico's best talent into the public sector instead of the private sector. Second, teaching politicians augmented their own political clique through teaching. In fact, teaching often became the most influential source of individual recruitment pools. Third, teaching politicians were crucial in recommending their budding disciples for specific public posts, generally helping students obtain their first positions.84 As the data in Table 4.9 clearly illustrate, teaching was relatively unimportant when Diaz began his 1884 administration. Fewer than one out of five politicians had taught, although this figure doubles to two out of five if only college-educated politicians are considered. Nevertheless, in four short years, the number of Diaz's collaborators who had taught college classes increased 100 percent. He expanded them to over a third of his appointees, half of whom taught at three national professional schools: mining (engineering), medicine, and law. Remarkably, by 1900 more than half of Diaz's collaborators were university professors, an extraordinarily high figure. During his next administration, half of his collaborators had taught at national professional schools, an equally striking percentage. When Diaz left office in 1911, nearly six out of ten national political figures were classroom veterans, not battlefield veterans. What is remarkable about figures for college teaching in Diaz's administration is that the percentage of politicians with this experience in their backgrounds is not duplicated again until Luis Echeverria in 1970, six decades later. Even more striking is the fact that no presidential administration has come close to duplicating Diaz's 1905 administration in its percentage of college teachers who have taught at the National University. In my earlier work on educational recruitment, I argued that Miguel Aleman represented an important benchmark in the impact of professorial credentials in the background and recruitment of Mexican politicians, a statement I would continue to support. I was unaware earlier that Aleman not only reversed the trend of nonteachers begun by the revolutionary generations but, more important, helped to reestablish a pattern already set in place by Porfirio Diaz. The Revolution markedly altered and delayed for half a century the role of National University professors in political recruitment and the politicians they introduced on the national scene (Table 4.9). In contrast, studies of Chinese, Soviet, and other postrevolutionary leaders make no mention of this variable in the leaders' backgrounds.85 However, college teaching has been an important credential among Latin American politicians; among prominent Chileans, yj percent had

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TABLE 4.9. College Teaching Experience of First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 Teaching Experience (%) Presidential Administration Diaz

1884188918931897190119051910De la Barra Madero Huerta Carranza Obregon Calles Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas"

Never Taught UNAM Private Both 83 65 68 64 48 47 43 85 59 65 82 80 84 86 73 75 70 65 55 61 60 53 43 55 41 34

12 14 16 26 33 47 21 8 28 16 6 11 16 14 23 17 15 23 29 17 22 25 32 24 32 30

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 2 2 3 7 13

0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 3 2 3 2 3 3 5 4

Other

Totals

5 17 16 10 19 06 36 07 13 14 10 9 0 0 4 8 13 10 12 20 14 18 20 15 15 19

100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

Note: The interim de la Huerta administration (1920) has been omitted because the sample size is too small to be statistically accurate. "The data for Salinas are not fully comparable since they do not cover a full six-year term.

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taught, and among recent members of the Ecuadorian congress, a third were college educators.86 The emphasis on college teaching, especially at UNAM, is no better illustrated than in the credentials of the last four presidents, encompassing 1970 to the present. All four have taught at the National University.87 Salinas was an adjunct professor at the National School of Economics, and his three predecessors taught at the National School of Law. Salinas studied under many prominent political figures, including de la Madrid and Manuel Bartlett Diaz, who contested the 1988 PRI presidential nomination. De la Madrid was a student of Jose Lopez Portillo, whom he viewed as one of his most influential professors.88 Lopez Portillo and Echeverria studied together in secondary school and at the university, traveling to the University of Santiago in 1941. 89

Just as private colleges and universities increased dramatically in importance as the source of college education, so did their role as teaching sites for politicians. For the first time in Mexican history, private institutions came close to equaling all other state institutions (excluding UNAM) in the teaching experiences of politicians. In fact, the numbers of politicians who had taught at private universities reached 17 percent by 1992, more than half of those who taught only at the National University. Salinas became the first president to have taught at one of the leading private institutions, the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. CONCLUSIONS As political systems modernize, education becomes increasingly important in the credentials of political leaders. In most societies the increasing emphasis on education is a consequence of the importance of the technological and knowledge revolution sweeping the globe. Mexico is no more insulated from this trend than the next country. Yet Mexican leaders have given considerable emphasis to higher education for over a century, with administrations reaching educational levels that often exceeded those found in the United States.90 Why is this so? I would argue that one possible explanation is that education has always performed a dual function in Mexican politics: to train future leaders in the skills necessary to fulfill their responsibilities and to recruit the best and brightest into public office. It is this latter function that sets Mexico apart from the United States and many other countries, although among the major industrial powers England, France, and Japan have also relied on selective universities to perform this same function.91

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Mexico differs from these other countries, however, in that politicians themselves have played such an important role in the educational process, both in skill development and in recruitment. Politicians, through academia, performed a third function, socialization. All institutions of learning, as is evidenced from socialization studies, perform some role in the formation of values and attitudes that affect leadership generations, and consequently public policy. As Larissa Lomnitz argued, one role of the National University has been the creation of a new allegiance to the state through the creation of a political culture stressing the art of political infighting as skills to be utilized toward the preservation of the system.92 In Mexico politicians-cum-teachers exercised a special influence on disciples who replaced them. This does not imply that the state purposely, through a concerted effort on the part of politicians, offered a state-controlled agenda in the college classroom. Yet Mexico's political leadership, self-disciplined to a degree rarely found in comparatively open political systems, conveyed certain broad sets of principles about their political institutions, if not about their economic and social goals. As I have argued elsewhere, a high level of desire for peace and political order characterized the post-revolutionary generation of Miguel Aleman. Members of this generation served as political mentors and teachers to the next generation of politicians dominating the administrations in the 1970s and 1980s,93 who in turn fathered the succeeding generation (1940-1959), which took control under President Salinas in 1988. What is particularly striking about the data in this chapter is that they indisputably establish Porfirio Diaz's role in formulating many of the credentials of contemporary Mexican politicians, credentials that did not necessarily conform to his background. Like the major revolutionary presidents who succeeded him in the 1920s, Diaz acknowledged, indeed encouraged, the growth of institutions in Mexican society that produced Mexican leadership during the next five generations. Like his postrevolutionary successors, he had little fear in turning over the reins of power to capable civilians who, unlike himself, had avoided combat, had graduated from college, and had succeeded in a profession, typically law. Lawyers who entered public life were valued for their educational and legal skills and as generalists. The same could be said for U.S. politicians. As Allan Kornberg and Norman Thomas argued, "The embryo American legislative leader probably found himself in an environment in which politics and political process were salient topics of conversation. He soon realized, or was made to realize, the possibilities in combining a legal with a political career."94 They were

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individuals who were trained in sociology, economics, geography, language, and other disciplines, all of value to the public figures during these decades. As Mexico's public institutions grew in size and complexity, and as the economy accompanied this growth in the same direction, politicians perceived their needs shifting from the generalist to the specialist in economics. Ironically, economists grew in importance as the role of the state expanded into the private economic sphere, but increased even more dramatically as the state withdrew from the private sector in the mid-1980s and 1990s. In the early 1980s, several observant Mexicans argued that the shift from private to public university graduates was already well advanced among entry- and middle-level positions and that the public sector was competing intensely with the private sector for these students.95 Both sources thought this shift would be translated into public policy and reflected in politicians' attitudes toward the private sector, which have been rather startling under Salinas. The effects might even be more striking in the long run. If the population is being socialized through the public school system to believe the traditional rhetoric of the Mexican government (curriculum and teachers' values are slow to change) while leadership is absorbing values favorable to the private sector, the situation could contribute to dividing elites and masses. Furthermore, divisions within the political elite will blossom, as they did within the government leadership in 1987. The resiliency of established civil institutions—in this case, educational—to survive long periods of violence is evidenced by their continued importance during all periods of Mexican political leadership. The violent interludes reduced their influence and, in some cases, reversed the trend in educational credentials for many decades, delaying the increasingly elitist composition of Mexican political leadership. In these early periods, as will be seen, only certain social classes generally obtained such educational opportunities. What the Revolution also delayed was the centralization of politicians' sources of education. The centralization of Mexican political recruitment through education, equivalent to nationalizing versus regionalizing leadership, was slowed considerably by the Revolution. The battlefield drew on many Mexicans who otherwise would have remained aloof from politics or insulated from national political life. These events, both as socializing and recruiting experiences, opened up a floodgate of opportunities to relatively uneducated rural individuals to succeed in political life. Although it never stopped the institutional trends established by Diaz, it watered down their influence considerably, flavoring leadership composition for years to come.

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Nevertheless, the provinces sent their best students to Mexico City, where they studied, often in regional clans, at the National Preparatory School and the National University. Beginning with the 1900 generation, nearly all of them remained in Mexico City for the rest of their adult lives, thus adding to the magnetism of this urban melting pot for the rest of Mexico. Education, while narrowing the credentials of most politicians and providing in the 1990s limited diversification through new specializations, has consistently and increasingly led to the concentration of political talent from the capital, a phenomenon likely to have many repercussions in the future.

NOTES 1. The possible exception to this is the 1929 presidential campaign of Jose Vasconcelos, which formed an important generation surrounding Miguel Aleman. Nevertheless, most of those participating in this singular political event made contact with each other and were drawn into the campaign through student activities, the primary source of their involvement. See Roderic Ai Camp, "La campana presidencial de 1929 y el liderazgo politico en Mexico/' Historia Mexicana 27 (Fall 1977): 231-259. 2. Roderic Ai Camp, The Making of a Government: Political Leaders in Modern Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984), 84. 3. Dr. Ramiro Tamez, later secretary general of the government of Nuevo Leon and senator, wrote the following: "While still in my third year of medical school, I developed a great sympathy for the Revolution, and in conversations with my friends, who were also sympathetic, above all with Salvador Aguirre, cousin of General Eugenio Aguirre Benavides, an honest and courageous man in the Revolution, my friends Carlos Hidalgo y Teran, Hipolito Mesa, the above mentioned Salvador Aguirre and I agreed to join the medical service with General Aguirre Benavides. In these campaigns I met my friend and companion Dr. Francisco Castillo Najera, who later was a distinguished writer and diplomat, and he introduced me in the city of Torreon to General Francisco Villa, with whom I was friends . . . ." Letter to author, February 26, 1974. For numerous other examples of such contacts leading to revolutionary participation, see the illustrations from the National School of Agriculture, revealed in the biographical memoir of Marte R. Gomez, Biografias de agronomos (Mexico City: Escuela Nacional de Agricultura, 1976). 4. For extensive examples from the National School of Agriculture at the time of the Revolution, see Gomez, Biografias de agronomos. For the National Preparatory School, see Clementina Diaz y de Ovando and Elisa Garcia Barragan, eds., La Escuela Nacional Preparatoria: Los afanes y los dias, 2 vols. (Mexico City: UN AM, 1972). For an excellent overview, including student involvement in the Revolution, see Henry C. Schmidt, "Power and Sensibility: Toward a Typology of Mexican Intellectuals and Intellectual Life, 1910-1920," in Los intelectuales y el poder en Mexico, ed. Roderic Ai Camp, Charles A. Hale,

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and Josephina Vasquez (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center and El Colegio de Mexico, 1991), 173-188. 5. Diaz's battalion never actually fought the North Americans, but performed guard duty and patrols, replacing the local garrison. See Archivo del general Porfirio Diaz: Memorias y documentos (Mexico City: Editorial Elede, 1947), 1: 31. 6. Actually, the 1910 election, the most disputed under Porfirio Diaz's long reign, gave birth to heavy student political involvement in the capital and in the provinces. For example, the students at the Colegio de San Nicolas of Morelia, Michoacan, held a meeting attacking Diaz and the imposition of the local governor, Aristeo Mercado Salto. When the police were ordered to occupy the school, many resisted. Among the participants in this affair were Eduardo Villasenor ("el gordo"), Antonio Martinez Baez ("el chocho"), and Ignacio Chavez ("la changa"), all major figures in Mexican intellectual and political life. The role of this regional university during the Revolution is detailed in Alberto Bremauntz's memoirs, Setenta anos de mi vida (Mexico City: Ediciones Juridicas Sociales, 1968), 45-48. 7. Salvador Azuela Rivera, letter to author, July 10, 1974. Also see Mauricio Magdaleno, Las palabras perdidas (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1956). 8. See Roderic Ai Camp, Mexico's Leaders: Their Education and Recruitment (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1980). 9. Colin M. MacLachlan, Spain's Empire in the New World: The Role of Ideas in Institutional and Social Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 34. 10. Michael L. Conniff, "The National Elite," in Michael L. Conniff and Frank D. McCann, Modern Brazil: Elites and Masses in Historical Perspective (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 36. 11. For example, see the recent analysis of Hungarian Communist party leadership in Szonja Szelenyi, "Social Inequality and Party Membership: Patterns of Recruitment into the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party," American Sociological Review 52 (October 1987), 571. 12. Miguel Ceballos, La Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (Mexico City: Imprenta Mundial, 1933). 13. For the most complete insights into this educational formation, see Charles A. Hale's excellent "Positivism and the National Preparatory School," in The Transformation of Liberalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 139-145. 14. For background, see Diaz and Garcia Barragan, La Escuela Nacional Preparatoria. 15. For a history of the School of Law, see Lucio Mendieta Nunez, Historia de la Facultad de Derecho (Mexico City: UNAM, 1956); for engineering, see Jorge Tamayo, Breve resena sobre la Escuela Nacional de Ingenieria (Mexico City: UNAM, 1958); and for all the other schools, see Porfirio Munoz Ledo, "La educacion superior," in Mexico: Cincuenta anos de revolucion, vol. 2 (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1963). 16. For a history of its reestablishment, see Valdemar Rodriguez, "National

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University of Mexico: Rebirth and Role of the Universitarios, 1910-1957" (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, Austin, 1958). 17. Diaz, like many of his contemporaries as well as members of later generations, including the revolutionary generation, attended a seminary. He spent five years at the Conciliar Seminary of Oaxaca, leaving only immediately before being ordained. According to Diaz, he never took Juarez's civil law class because Juarez was governor at the time (1853), but they became friends nevertheless when a mutual acquaintance introduced them. See Archivo del general Porfirio Diaz, 33. 18. See Jorge Fernando Iturribarria, La generacion oaxaauena del $j (Oaxaca: Universidad Benito Juarez, 1956), 69; and Alfonso Luis Velasco, Porfirio Diaz y su gabinete: Estudios biogrdficos (Mexico City: n.p., 1889). 19. Alfonso Francisco Ramirez, Hombres notables y monumentos coloniales de Oaxaca (Mexico City: n.p., 1948). 20. The term "college educated" or "college graduate" is used interchangeably with "university educated" or "graduate" throughout the text, conforming to common usage in the United States. The term "college" (colegio) in Mexico typically refers to private secondary schools. A college graduate in this text refers to an individual with a university or professional degree. 21. Some of Diaz's most prominent collaborators recruited students to political careers. Among them were Rosendo Pineda, also a graduate of the Institute of Arts and Sciences, and Pablo and Miguel Macedo, graduates of the National School of Law. See Javier Garciadiego Dantan, "Movimientos estudiantiles durante la revolucion mexicana," in The Revolutionary Process in Mexico: Essays on Political and Social Change, 1880-194.0, ed. Jaime E. Rodriguez O. (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1990), 118-119.

22. Heinz Eulau, "Elite Analysis and Democratic Theory," in Elite Recruitment in Democratic Polities: Comparative Studies across Nations, ed. Heinz Eulau and Moshe Czudnowski (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1976), 25. 23. Frangois-Xavier Guerra, Mexico: Del antiguo regimen a la revolucion (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1988), 1: 64. 24. Daniel A. Morales-Gomez and Carlos Alberto Torres, The State, Corporatist Politics, and Educational Policy Making in Mexico (New York: Praeger, 1990), 13.

25. Carranza actually began medical studies at the National School of Medicine in Mexico City, but had to drop out because of a serious eye illness. See Guillermo Mellado, Tres etapas politicas de Don Venustiano (Mexico City: n.p., 1916), 17-18; and Alberto Morales Jimenez, Hombres de la revolucion mexicana (Mexico City: Talleres Graficos de la Nation, i960), 241-244. 26. Robert North and Ithiel Sola Pool, "Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Elites," in World Revolutionary Elites, ed. Harold D. Lasswell and Daniel Lerner (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966), 390. 27. Thomas H. Rigby, Political Elites in the USSR: Central Leaders and Local Cadres from Lenin to Gorbachev (Brookfield: Gower, 1990), 29. 28. Peter H. Smith, Labyrinths of Power: Political Recruitment in TwentiethCentury Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 82.

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29. For interesting insights into his background, see Hector Aguilar Camin, La frontera nomada: Sonora y la revolucion mexicana (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1977). 30. See Roderic Ai Camp, "Education and Political Recruitment in Mexico: The Aleman Generation/ 7 Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs 18 (August 1976): 295-322. 31. Edwin Lieu wen, Mexican Militarism (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1968), 4; see also Frederick M. Nunn, "On the Role of the Military in Twentieth-Century Latin America: The Mexican Case/' in The Modern Mexican Military: A Reassessment, ed. David Ronfeldt (La Jolla: Center for U.S.Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, 1984), 34. 32. Guerra, Mexico, 63-64. 33. Although the National University changed its official name to the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1929, most Mexicans refer to it as both UNAM and the National University. These two names will be used interchangeably throughout the manuscript in reference to either the period from 1910 to the present, or collectively to its professional antecedents before 1910, as distinct from provincial universities or professional schools in that era. 34. See Roderic Ai Camp, Generals in the Palacio: The Military in Modern Mexico (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 134-139. 35. This trend has been observed in other societies during revolutionary periods. For example, Robert North and Ithiel Sola Pool found that nearly all the members of the 1945 Chinese politburo and Communist central committee were college graduates. See "Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Elites/' 381. Likewise, Jerome Davis, in his study of the USSR, discovered that 60 percent of leading revolutionary figures had some college work. See "A Study of One Hundred and Sixty-three Outstanding Communist Leaders," in Political Leadership, ed. Glenn Paige (New York: Free Press, 1972), 267-268. 36. Camp, Generals in the Palacio, 136. 37. See Thomas Dye's statement that 44 percent of America's elite graduated from twelve prestigious universities. Who's Running America? 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1979), 154. 38. Official registration records, Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, Inscripciones, Universidad Nacional Autonomo de Mexico, UNAM Archives, Mexico City. 39. Universidad Nacional Autonomo de Mexico, Centro de Estudios Sobre la Universidad, Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, vols. 1, 2 (Mexico City: UNAM, 1983). 40. Jacqueline Rice, "Beyond the Cientificos: The Educational Background of the Porfirian Political Elite," Aztlan 14, no. 2 (Fall 1983): 296. 41. See Enrique Krauze, Caudillos culturales en la revolucion mexicana (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1976). 42. Among the ties he developed in the 1929 presidential campaign, in support of the opposition, were those with Manuel Moreno Sanchez, whom Lopez Mateos appointed president of the Senate. Moreno Sanchez returned

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to his opposition posture late in life, running on the ticket of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) in 1982. See Jorge Prieto Laurens, Cincuenta anos de politica mexicana: memorias politicas (Mexico City: n.p., 1968), 285. 43. Guerra, Mexico, 67. 44. The National University reunited the schools of law, medicine, mining, fine arts (architecture), and graduate studies with the National Preparatory School in 1910. See Juan Hernandez Luna, "Sobre la fundacion de la Universidad Nacional: Antonio Caso vs. Agustin Aragon," Historia Mexicana 16, no. 3 (January-March 1967): 368. 45. For evidence of this, I have examined the individual registrations, by year and class, of all the students at the National School of Law from 1867 through 1917. These data are now available, in usable form, in Escuela Nacional de Jurisprudencia, Libro de inscripciones (Mexico City: UNAM, 18671868, 1868-1869, 1880-1891, 1891-1896, 1896-1900, 1900-1906, 1906-1912, 1912-1916, 1917-1921). 46. Rice, "Beyond the Cientificos, ,, 298-299. Also see her "The Porfirian Elite" (Ph.D. diss., UCLA, 1979), the only other analysis of national Porfirian elites other than the works of Guerra and Smith. 47. Mexico isn't the only society where a single dominant public institution produces an overwhelming percentage of national politicians. See, for example, the case of Tokyo University in Japan, discussed in Peter Cheng, "The Japanese Cabinets, 1885-1973: An Elite Analysis," Asian Survey 14 (December 1974): 1063. 48. See Stuart Voss, "Northwest Mexico," in Diana Balmori, Stuart Voss, and Miles Wortman, Notable Family Networks in Latin America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 114-115. 49. Some scholars of Mexican education argue that "the Revolution did not succeed . . . in producing radical changes in the content of education, the curricular structures of the schools, or the actual access by the poorer sector of society, particularly the Indian population, to the educational system." Although this may have been true for the general population, it was not true, at least in the short term, for those with political ambitions. Morales-Gomez and Torres, The State, 12. 50. Henry C. Schmidt, The Roots ofLo Mexicano: Self and Society in Mexican Thought, 1900-1934 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1978), 62-63. 51. For evidence of this view, see John Coatsworth, "Los origenes del autoritarismo moderno en Mexico," Foro Internacional 16 (October-December 1975): 205-232; and Jose Luis Reyna, "Redefining the Established Authoritarian Regime: Perspectives of the Mexican Polity" (paper presented at the Center for Inter-American Relations, New York, February 1975). 52. For this early liberal influence on a regional institute, see Ralph Roeder, Juarez and His Mexico (New York: Viking, 1947), 49. 53. Daniel Levy, "Comparative Perspectives on Academic Governance in Mexico," Working Paper, Yale Higher Education Research Group, Yale University, July 1977, 3.

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54. Alan Spitzer, "The Historical Problem of Generations," American Historical Review 78 (December 1973): 1385. 55. Antonio Armendariz, letter to author, April 10, 1972. 56. For detailed background on these and other influential intellectual figures of this generation, see Krauze, Caudillos culturales. yj. Robert Putnam, The Comparative Study of Political Elites (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1976), 197-200. 58. Victor Manuel Villasenor, interview with author, Mexico City, October 27, 1976. Villasenor was a member of the group. 59. Cardenas reports in his diary entry of August 11, 1931, while governor of Michoacan, that he invited the rector of the university, Jesus Diaz Barriga, and sixty professors and students to his home for coffee. They joked, conversed, and debated serious themes. Lazaro Cardenas, Apuntes 1913-1940, vol. 1 of Obras (Mexico City: UN AM, 1972), 184. 60. Elia Searls, "Ministerial Cabinets and Elite Theory," in Elites in France, ed. Jolyon Howorth (London: Francis Pinter, 1981), 173. 61. Allen H. Barton, "Background, Attitudes, and Activities of American Elites," in Studies of the Structure of National Elite Groups, vol. 1 of Research in Politics and Society, ed. Gwen Moore (Greenwich: JAI Press, 1985), 189. 62. For background on the formation of the Free Law School, see Valdemar Rodriguez, "The National University of Mexico: Rebirth and Role of the Universitarios, 1910-1957" (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, Austin, 1968), 39. 63. Emilio Portes Gil, letter to author, October 20, 1972. 64. This change occurs about i960—precisely at the time of a shift in function of public universities from providing upward social mobility to only improving one's social status. Most of de la Madrid's generation graduated in the 1950s. This shift is identified by David E. Lorey, The Rise of the Professions in Twentieth-Century Mexico: University Graduates and Occupational Change since 1929 (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1992), 44; see also his insightful exploration in The University System and Economic Development in Mexico since 1929 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 107-114. 65. Cofounded by former treasury secretary Luis Montes de Oca, an early technocrat and a longtime family friend and political patron of Miguel Mancera's father. Mancera, who has headed the Bank of Mexico for all but six months since 1982, was a graduate. Antonio Carrillo Flores, another treasury secretary, served as rector in the early 1970s. For Mancera's decision to attend ITAM, see Juanita Darling's enlightening portrait, "Mexico's Main Pillar of Economic Stability," Los Angeles Times, July 13, 1993. 66. Francisco Suarez Farias, "Composicion y comportamiento de la elite politica de Mexico (1976-1984)" (Ciencias Politicos y Sociales, UNAM, 1984), 23. 67. Kevin Theakston and Geoffrey K. Fry, "Britain's Administrative Elite: Permanent Secretaries 1900-1986," Public Administration 67 (Summer 1989): 133. 68. Although there were brief attempts, especially under Cardenas, to control the ideological flavor of the university, graduates in the political lead-

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ership quickly responded to the anticensorship appeals, and the efforts to suppress critical currents were withdrawn. 69. John Britton, "Urban Education and Social Change in the Mexican Revolution, 1931-1940/' Journal of Latin American Studies 5 (November 1973): 238. 70. For the best discussion of these private institutions, see Lorey, The University System. For comparisons elsewhere in Latin America, see Daniel C. Levy, "Public-Private Distinctiveness: Mexico," in Higher Education and the State in Latin America: Private Challenges to Public Dominance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 114-136. 71. For example, bureaucratic personnel in Japan are recruited in substantial numbers from Tokyo University and "its prestigious Faculty of Law." Joel D. Aberbach, Ellis S. Krauss, and Michio Muramatsu, "Comparing Japanese and American Administrative Elites," British Journal of Political Science 20, no. 4 (October 1990): 463. 72. Salustiano del Campo, Jose Felix Tezanos, and Walter San tin, "The Spanish Political Elite: Permanency and Change," in Does Who Govern Matter? Elite Circulation in Contemporary Societies, ed. Moshe M. Czudnowski (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University, 1982), 144. 73. Thomas R. Dye, Who's Running America? The Bush Era, 5th ed. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1991), 221. For an interesting analysis of personnel recruitment, elite universities, merit credentials, and networking, see Thomas S. Langston, Ideologues and Presidents: From the New Deal to the Reagan Revolution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 35-39. 74. Peter Cleaves, Professions and the State: The Mexican Case (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987), 94. j$. Peter McDonough, Power and Ideology in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 68. Law has also declined among U.S. executivebranch officials from Hoover through Nixon. See Kenneth Prewitt and William McAllister, "Changes in the American Executive Elite, 1930-1970," Elite Recruitment in Democratic Polities, ed. Eulau and Czudnowski, 105-132. 76. Francisco Suarez Farias, "Los gabinetes presidenciales de Mexico y los Estados Unidos" (Universidad Autonomo Metropolitana—Xochimilco, Mexico City, August 1983). yy. Del Campo, Tezanos, and Santin, "The Spanish Political Elite," 144. 78. The Federal District accounted for 291 of 511 graduate programs, but 90 percent of all Mexican graduate students enrolled in Mexico City schools for their studies. Hispano Americano, May 5,1980, 12. 79. "Yale donde vive usted, una perspectiva de los enlaces entre Yale y Mexico" (mimeographed, n.p., April 1976), 2. 80. Excelsior, February 4, 1977, 6. 81. Hispano Americano, November 11, 1974, 11. 82. In de la Madrid's class, the 1952-1957 generation, fifteen became senators or deputies, and three served as governors during his administration. See Excelsior, March 11, 1982, 23; and Mario Ezcurdia, Miguel de la Madrid: Rasgos biogrdficos y pensamiento politico (Mexico City: Miguel Angel Porrua,

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1982), 22; among Jose Lopez Portillo's class of 1939-1944, eight of his companions served in top posts in his administration. Excelsior, March 6, 1979, 4. 83. For example, in his otherwise revealing article about Miguel de la Madrid's cabinet, Rogelio Hernandez Rodriguez ignores the importance of the president's professors, including Jesus Reyes Heroles, his secretary of public education. "Los hombres del presidente de la Madrid," Foro International 23, no. 2 (July-September 1987): 28. 84. The importance of this is illustrated by Miguel de la Madrid. Although he was the nephew of the director, he obtained his first post at the Bank of Mexico through his professor, Daniel Bello. Miguel de la Madrid, interview with author, Mexico City, February 22, 1991. 85. Daniel Lerner, "The Coercive Ideologists in Perspective," in World Revolutionary Elites, Studies in Coercive Ideological Movements, ed. Harold D. Lasswell and Daniel Lerner (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1965), 460. 86. Ignacio Walker, Perfil de la elite politica chilena (Santiago: CIEPLAN, 1988), 38; and Simon Pachano, Los diputados: Una elite politica (Quito: Corporation Editora Nacional, 1991), 124. 87. The National University has typically recruited its own graduates as professors, including those who enter the public sector. The same pattern can be found elsewhere in Latin America, even in the nineteenth century. See Gertrude M. Yeager, "Elite Education in Nineteenth-Century Chile," Hispanic American Historical Review 71, no. 1 (February 1991): 89. 88. Miguel de la Madrid, letter to author, April 15, 1975. 89. Jose Lopez Portillo, interview with author, Mexico City, February 19, 1991.

90. Sidney H. Aronson, Status and Kinship in the Higher Civil Service (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), 123-124, found half of each elite had attempted or completed college. Also see Thomas R. Dye and John W. Pickering, "Government and Corporate Elites: Convergence and Differentiation," Journal of Politics 36 (November 1974): 900-925. 91. For Oxford and Cambridge, see Ted Tapper, Political Education and Stability: Elite Responses to Political Conflict (New York: John Wiley, 1976), 88; for Tokyo University, see Peter Cheng, "The Japanese Cabinets, 1885-1973," 1063; and for Paris, see Michalina Vaughan, "The Grandes Ecoles," in Governing Elites: Studies in Training and Selection, ed. Rupert Wilkinson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 74-107. Dye's study of top government leaders in 1990 concluded that 42 percent graduated from twelve prestigious Ivy League schools. See Who's Running America? 5th ed., 193. 92. Larissa Lomnitz, "The Latin American University: Breeding Ground of the New State Elites" (paper presented at a meeting of the American Association of Anthropological Sciences, Houston, January 3-6, 1979), 8. 93. Seven professors of Salinas's generation, all major political figures, were members of the Aleman generation: Gabriel Garcia Rojas, Antonio Carrillo Flores, Salvador Azuela, Antonio Armendariz, Antonio Martinez Baez, Andres Serra Rojas, and Daniel J. Bello. Excelsior, March 6, 1979, 4. 94. Allan Kornberg and Norman Thomas, "The Political Socialization of

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National Legislative Elites in the United States and Canada/' Journal of Politics zy (November 1965): 770. 95. Pedro Daniel Martinez and Fernando Baqueiro, interviews with author, Mexico City, May 16, 1985, and June 2, 1982. The expansion of private university degrees among politicians is enhanced by the fact that between 1976 and 1989 the number of graduates of private universities grew 219 percent while those of public universities grew by only about half as much, 123 percent. These data are from Lorey, The Rise of the Professions, 185, Table 45.

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5 Experience and Leadership: The Influence of Careers In Chapter 3, we examined a single experiential variable influencing the composition, values, and recruitment practices of political leaders. Violence, as the analysis in that chapter illustrated, exercised considerable impact on the formation of Mexican politicians. However important, violence, unless it becomes permanently institutionalized in a society's behavior, interjects itself only temporarily on the lives of prominent figures, although it may exercise its influence for decades to come. Nevertheless, for most politicians, raised during periods of civil peace, experiential variables are typically confined to the educational institutions where they were teachers and students and to their careers, whether in the private sector, the military, or the public bureaucracy. Identifying politicians' career patterns over time is important for several reasons. In the first place, the degree to which political leadership maintains close ties with other elite groups is often determined by politicians' career interlocks with other groups, such as the officer corps and the business community. In fact, the level of interlock—that is, the percentage of politicians with a certain career background—suggests the potential for such linkages. A second rationale for identifying career paths is that they are very revealing about the ladders that most politicians must climb if they are to achieve political success. Changing career paths tell us a great deal about the leadership's philosophy concerning future politicians' credentials. Third, the direction of the exchange between any two leadership groups points to their comparative prestige in society. For example, have politicians abandoned public careers to join the private sector, or have business executives left companies for public service? Fourth, analysts who study the degree to which leadership groups overlap in the exercise of political influence are interested in many forms of linkages among various groups, including career contacts. Finally, it has been

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argued that different career tracks, even within the bureaucracy, affect leaders' policy preferences. 1 THE INTERLOCKING STRUCTURES— A POWER ELITE IN MEXICO? In Latin America, the Middle East, and the Third World generally, informal structures developed that facilitated and ensured an interlocking pattern of relationships among various sectoral groups. 2 One of the Latin American countries that has been carefully examined in this regard is Brazil, where personal networking is described as the panelinha. According to Michael Conniff and Frank McCann, the Brazilian version of the political team or group was usually a handful of men who had graduated from the same school or came from the same town and kept in touch throughout their careers. They regarded one another as homens de confianca, or trusted and discreet friends who could always be counted upon. The typical panelinha would have a politician, a financier, a real estate specialist, a journalist, and a businessman, all of whom could exchange favors for one another. . . . Such networks, though hard to discern, were widespread among professionals and remained intact for decades. The panelinha was obviously one way the political elite and other elites interacted with another.3 In Mexico the camarilla has evolved as a version of the -panelinha, but the features are different. Although a camarilla will occasionally include a nonpolitical professional, most figures belonging to such a group have political ambitions. Thus in Mexico this group is more homogeneous than the Brazilian one and is more likely to generate intergroup political linkages rather than intragroup ones. Because Mexican political cliques maintain fewer direct political ties with professionals in various sectors, their early career experiences outside public life become an essential vehicle for introducing them to worlds different from the political arena and, more important, to the decision makers in those nonpolitical settings. It is not the purpose of this work to examine the existence of a power elite in Mexico but rather to explore linkages, informal and formal, and their effects on political recruitment. Nevertheless, because my data are the most comprehensive available on Mexican leadership across sectors, they do shed considerable light on this issue. Furthermore, whether a small, overlapping group of individuals controls entry into its own ranks determines to some degree the open-

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ness of the recruitment system, especially given the specific characteristics of Mexico's incumbent sponsorship. 4 Typically students of power elite theory have attempted to empirically test the degree to which influential sectors of society share similar social origins, educational backgrounds, and career experiences. It has been argued that the existence of a power elite in less competitive political systems deserves even more attention. In Spain, for example, during the authoritarian Franco years a group of only 300 individuals functioned as a super elite. 5 What constitutes a power elite is difficult to conceptualize. 6 Most studies in the United States have borrowed from the ideas of C. Wright Mills, who suggested that individuals who make decisions involving the allocation of resources at the national level can be counted as members in a ruling elite. 7 Recent studies of the United States have concluded that considerable integration exists among elites in all major sectors of American society, 8 and that the patterns of interlocks and the degree to which certain groups are overrepresented in major decision-making posts cast serious doubt on the pluralist view of power in America. 9 While the degree of elite integration and overlap varies from one society to the next, considerable movement and differentiation occur within each elite sector. Moreover, still other recent work demonstrates that no one group of elites (business, military, etc.) dominates these interlocking positions. 10 Given the structure of power in the United States and the relationship between the state and various groups, most efforts examining influential leadership focus on linkages between the private and public sector.11 Some scholars have furthered this line of inquiry, focusing on linkages within the economic sector. 12 In fact, the only explicit attempts to examine this issue in Mexico have similarly focused on linkages between business leaders and politicians. Peter Smith, who approached the subject using a study by Flavia Derossi, concluded, on the basis of a very narrow case study of Mexican industrialists, that much overlap did not occur between leading business executives and politicians. 13 C. Wright Mills considered another group worthy of analysis, the officer corps. This group, given its tendency toward direct, political involvement in Latin America, does require inclusion in the theoretical framework. However, along with business leaders and military officers I would add two additional groups: intellectuals and clergy. Intellectuals have been the most neglected group in studies of Latin American and Mexican collective biography. 14 Higher clergy have been carefully examined in some Latin American countries, excluding Mexico, but little effort has been made to link clergy to politicians

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among Latin American elites. In Mexico the formal separation of church and state, and the extreme constitutional restrictions from 1917 to 1992 severely limited any role the church might exercise in participating in national decision making, or sharing power with nonclerical decision makers. My recent research demonstrates without a doubt that Mexican clergy do not have the same social origins as Mexican politicians; when they do, like PANista opposition leaders, they represent a different sector of the middle classes—typically a provincial, middle-class sector in which religion is taken seriously. Furthermore, unlike some other groups in Mexican society, the clergy is largely educated within its own schools at a young age, and those who rise up the hierarchy, exercising decision-making authority within the Catholic Church, typically complete their training in Rome in church-operated institutions. Finally, their entire careers are spent within the church bureaucracy, typically in regional dioceses; this allows little contact between clergy and politicians, especially in the early phases of their careers. Elsewhere I have illustrated the degree of overlap present in the relationship between politicians and entrepreneurs, the military, and intellectuals, whether one examines social background, education, or career experiences. These studies demonstrate that only in the case of Mexican intellectuals can one find the basis for strong linkages, whether focusing on family, educational, or career variables. Intellectuals and politicians have engaged in a symbiotic relationship throughout much of the twentieth century, sharing careers intertwined in academia and politics. Because educators are critical as political recruiters, the role of intellectuals has been enhanced in Mexico. Politician-intellectuals were exceedingly important in the recruitment and formation of leading Mexican politicians in both centuries.15 Various intellectuals held political offices in which they contributed to or actually implemented public policy. However, many of these intellectuals lost their status within the intellectual community, thus complicating the conceptualization of political-intellectual linkages. In other words, intellectuals who share two occupational cloaks, that of politician and intellectual, tend to lose their identity among other leading figures, raising the question as to whether they can actually be identified as representing the intellectual community. It is also apparent in terms of recent leadership trends that more and more Mexican intellectuals are remaining directly outside the halls of power, although many individual intellectuals continue to become identified with presidential administrations. In the case of Mexican business executives, linkages in their career backgrounds are carefully discussed in the following sections. Mexi-

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can business leaders represent the upper-middle and upper classes because influential entrepreneurs are often the children and grandchildren of successful members of the business community. Thus, although an occasional leading entrepreneur is related to a prominent politician, such kinship ties are exceptional and have been so for many decades. In the early part of the century, many politicians and business leaders were educated together at the National University and National Preparatory School. These educational contacts were important in establishing adolescent friendships and future contacts. But as the private sector grew in strength, and sought out managers with different skills, it supported the growth of private institutions to mold future generations of business leaders. Consequently, education further separated business executives from future politicians. Recently, as politicians have moved away from public universities to private institutions, the potential for future linkages has grown. The Mexican military, at various historical junctures, has had the strongest direct linkages with political leadership. Similarly, civilian politicians and military officers often came from shared social backgrounds and educational experiences. However, with the advent of professionalization, the importance of military education increased. Military officers are now educated almost exclusively in military academies, which rarely produce future politicians. Education does not serve as a means of contact between these two groups. Socially, the military shares certain similarities with Catholic priests. They tend to come from the middle and lower-middle classes, often from smaller cities. They do not typically come from the same middle-class groups as politicians. Mexico by no means has a pluralistic leadership, since working-class, provincial, and lesser-educated Mexicans are not represented among each of the leadership groups. On the other hand, no empirical evidence available on the variables examined, whether they are formal or informal linkages, suggests that Mexico has a power elite, especially in relation to military, business, and clerical groups. THE MILITARY Historically, strong linkages have existed between political and military careers. Although the military was not professionalized in any precise fashion in the early years of the republic, local and regional national guard units did provide a supplemental and, in many cases, alternative career for officers. In the early years of the American republic, most politicians served in the military, the majority as officers during the Revolutionary War. By the time of the Jackson administra-

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tion, their numbers had declined substantially, although they still accounted for more than a third of all national figures.16 Nevertheless, in the early days of the American republic and in nineteenth-century Mexico, there was a difference between those who served in the military in response to major national events and those who chose to make the military their career. The politics of the day, of course, both nationally and internationally, deeply involved newly formed, postindependence armies recruited from the populace. In this sense, therefore, it is somewhat difficult to separate the experiential influence of violence from the more institutionalized experience of a military career. To make a more refined distinction between the two, we must examine those individuals who chose to pursue the army as their life's career. Mexican politicians were classified as career military officers only if they reached the rank of lieutenant colonel or higher, and only if they served in the officer ranks for at least twenty years or more. Thus, although many Mexicans between the 1850s and 1920s entered the military in response to political events associated with violence, many chose to make the national guard, the federal army, or the revolutionary army their profession. An excellent example of such a figure from the nineteenth century is Jose Ceballos, who served as governor of the Federal District and senator from Durango for nearly ten years under Diaz. A Durango native, Ceballos graduated in 1852 from the National Military College as a second lieutenant in the artillery, having distinguished himself as corporal, then sergeant of cadets. He slowly rose in rank during the 1850s, but the intense Liberal-Conservative conflicts suddenly promoted his career, and by 1870 he had risen to the rank of brigadier general. He served under Diaz during the assault on Mexico City, June 21, 1867. Although he did not support Diaz's uprising, Diaz brought him back from exile in California to become a senator from Sonora, after which he joined his cabinet.17 Three presidents in the last century have relied primarily on the use of force to come to power: Porfirio Diaz in the Tuxtepec rebellion, 1876; Victoriano Huerta in his 1913 coup d'etat; and Venustiano Carranza after his defeat of Huerta's reactionary forces, 1914. As the data in Table 5.1 illustrate, career military officers who reached high national office for the first time between 1884 and 1991 were most strongly represented initially in those three presidents' administrations. In all three cases, half or more of their collaborators were career military officers, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to separate military and political careers. During the period of political leadership examined here, Porfirio

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TABLE 5.1. First-Time Officeholders Who Were Career Military Officers by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991

Presidential Administration Diaz 1884188918931897190119051910De la Barra Madero Huerta Carranza Obregon Calles

Military Officers (%) 54 46 32 16 11 9 35 27 26 61 49 40 30

Presidential Administration

Military Officers (%)

Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas

14 41 33 27 19 8 14 15 7 11 6 4 6

Note: Data are based on information for 2,612 politicians.

Diaz was responsible for legitimizing military figures as politicians. He himself, of course, was one of the most prominent military figures from the Liberal-Conservative conflicts. As suggested in Chapter 3, it would be only natural for Diaz to have recruited his confidants from the ranks of his fellow officers.18 The data in Table 5.1, however, reveal a pattern emulated by later presidents after the Revolution. Although Diaz's administrations inextricably link civil and military politicians together, Diaz was responsible for a steady and precipitous decline in the percentage of career officers who graced the ranks of Mexican politicians, from 54 percent in 1884 to only 9 percent by 1909. Interestingly, Diaz reversed this pattern only once—in his brief 1910 administration shortly before the Revolution erupted. What explains this reversal? A careful analysis of the composition of the leadership in 1910 suggests that Diaz did not change, for the most part, his appointees at the state level. Governors remained relatively stable. Therefore, the increase in military officers occurred among his collaborators in the executive and, to a lesser extent, legislative branches. No answer can be given with assurance, but it is not unreasonable to

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conjecture that Diaz, given the conflicts of the 1910 presidential campaign compared with the previous elections, felt more reassured in bringing new blood from military rather than from civilian ranks. When Francisco Madero defeated Diaz's forces after some brief engagements and Diaz abandoned the presidency in 1911 for a peaceful exile in Paris, Madero implemented free elections, as he had promised during the 1910 campaign. Madero, a civilian, stamped his regime with a civilian imprint despite his initial reliance on popular forces and some loyal federal army officers. His nemesis, Victoriano Huerta, inserted the military directly into political leadership in 1913, making it responsible for the murder and overthrow of Madero and his vice-president and recruiting high-ranking officers (the highest percentage ever) to political posts, especially as governors. The majority of Huerta's appointees, like Jos£ Ceballos, were Military College graduates. Generally born in the 1850s, they were young officers, or not yet out of training, when the Tuxtepec rebellion occurred. But unlike the earlier generation, they did not rapidly advance in their careers as a result of major political events involving competing armies. Instead, these officers advanced slowly in the rank structure. An example is Eduardo M. Cauz, the son of wealthy Spanish immigrants and a graduate in the early 1870s. After spending more than thirty years in the army before reaching the rank of brigadier general in 1909, he directed the department of cavalry in the secretariat of war. He served briefly as Huerta's governor and military commander of Veracruz, 1913-1914. 19 Huerta, through his personal actions, did more to destroy the federal army and to force the reestablishment of new military institutions after the Revolution than any other figure. It would also be fair to say that the military's involvement in Madero's assassination tainted the military's political involvement for decades to come, despite the fact that the revolutionary army made Huerta's overthrow possible. In other words, the legitimacy of any linkage between the military on one hand and civilian leadership on the other was more questionable after 1913 than before 1913 among politicians and society generally. Under Carranza, who came to power on the shoulders of powerful military forces recruited from the populace, it was only natural that half of his collaborators would be from their ranks. Indeed, it would have been impossible for him to have remained in office without recruiting heavily from his military allies. Under Carranza, however, the generals who reached high-level political offices were not products of an institutionalized, military career but were self-made men, promoted rapidly on the battlefield. Typical of these men is Alfredo Breceda Mercado, who joined the

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Antireelectionist movement in 1908, later supporting Madero. In 1910 he fought against federal troops in Rio Yaqui, Sonora, as a second captain in Madero's cavalry. Breceda signed the Plan of Guadalupe, the declaration rejecting Victoriano Huerta and establishing the Constitutionalists. He joined the Constitutionalists in 1913, fighting in numerous battles, after which he reached the rank of major. He served in the forces of Alvaro Obregon in 1914, and a year later, commanded troops in Yucatan. In 1917 Breceda was promoted to brigadier general. He represented Carranza in the United States and became military commander of the president's home state. Carranza brought him into his cabinet as governor of the Federal District. This same generation of military officers replaced Carranza, however, reconstructing a new military institution during the administration of Alvaro Obregon (1920-1924). Although it took nearly two decades to develop a young cadre of professionally trained officers who took leadership roles in the military in the 1950s, both Obregon and his successor, Plutarco Elias Calles, realized the importance of weening the military away from political offices.20 Like Diaz before him, Calles recognized the importance of professionalizing the military (through the reestablishment of military academies), reducing their size as well as their direct political role. He emphasized this posture in his public statements and, more important, decreased the actual number of new national political figures with military backgrounds in his administration to fewer than onethird (Table 5.1). It was president Calles, not Cardenas, who set this pattern in motion. Presidential recruitment of military politicians reached a new low under Manuel Avila Camacho, the last general to serve as Mexico's president. Avila Camacho, unlike his predecessors (with the exception of interim president Emilio Portes Gil), was not a high-ranking officer during the Mexican Revolution. A veteran who joined in 1913, he did not reach the rank of colonel until 1920, when he served as Cardenas's chief of staff. Although not a product of officer formation schools, he served in staff and command positions from 1920 until he resigned to run for president on January 17, 1939. According to Jose Pineyro, he personified the "military bureaucrat." 21 Avila Camacho insisted on further separating the military from political activity; reversing Cardenas's controversial decision to incorporate the military as a fourth sector in the Mexican Revolutionary Party, he eliminated it altogether. 22 Avila Camacho sent an open message to future politicians. Although military officers could take a leave of absence to participate in politics, at least in support of government candidates, and hold na-

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TABLE 5.2. Military and Civilian Careers among Politicians by Generation Politician's Date of Birth (%) Career Background

18201839

18401859

18601879

18801899

19001919

19201939

1940-

Military Civilian Total

64 36 100

29 71 100

30 70 100

37 63 100

9 91 100

4 96 100

0 100 100

tional office, his decision made it clear to ambitious officers that a military career was not a likely path to political success. 23 A reflection of the impact of this message among Mexican politicians is even more marked generationally than by administration alone. The data in Table 5.2 demonstrate conclusively for national politicians after 1884 that once Aleman's age cohort (1900-1919) reached power, politicians with military careers accounted for fewer than 10 percent, compared with a third or more prior to 1900. The possibility of a military career leading to political success was further truncated after 1930, when only 1 percent of the youngest generation had a background in such careers. An important group of officers continued to serve as a bridge between military and civilian political leadership in the 1950s and 1960s, mostly as governors or in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, even though military interlocks with civilian politicians rapidly declined after 1940. These men, political-military officers, served as significant channels of communication between the military and civilians, facilitating the military's successful withdrawal from active political leadership. 24 General Gabriel Leyva Velazquez's career illustrates the important role played by this group during the transitional period after Miguel Aleman became president. Leyva, who came from a large family of revolutionaries, fought under Obregon, reaching the rank of brigadier general in 1934. In the 1920s and 1930s he commanded many infantry units and served as garrison commander of Mexicali, Baja California. He held his first political office as provisional governor of his home state in 1935 and then became senator in 1940. Ruiz Cortines became president in 1952, when Leyva was commander of the strate-

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TABLE 5.3., Mexican Generals with Political Careers by Generation Generals Date of Birth (%) Officer Type

1880

1890

1900

1910

2920

1930

1940

Regular Political

14 86

28 72

48 52

71 29

90 10

94 6

100 0

Total

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

Note: Data include only generals who held command and staff posts after 1946.

gic first military zone (Federal District); he appointed the general president of PRI, a post he served in until becoming governor of Sinaloa in 1957. Leyva continued on active duty, commanding the eighteenth military zone in Hidalgo from 1964 to 1970. Leyva returned to the senate in 1970, thirty-five years after initiating his political career.25 Like Leyva, most prominent generals born before 1910 were likely to have been politically active, suggesting the politicized nature of the Mexican military and its interlocks with Mexican political leadership after the Revolution. The data in Table 5.3, based on a study of topranking Mexican generals who held command and staff posts after 1946, illustrate the early frequency of the interlock between military and political careers. It is clear from the data presented in each of these tables that becoming a military officer was not a likely means to political success in recent decades. This has several implications for the recruitment process. In the first place, politicians who came from military backgrounds represented a different social stratum than that of politicians generally. Politicians who were career military were much more likely to have had working-class or lower-middle-class origins and peasant backgrounds than their civilian peers. For example, General Leyva was the son of a rural schoolteacher. This feature of military political elites can be found elsewhere. As Robert C. North and Ithiel de Sola Pool concluded about China, "The rise of the soldier broadened and democratized the recruitment of the Chinese elite."26 Thus, cutting off the military from successful political careers further narrowed the recruitment pool when measured by other socioeconomic and geographic variables. Eliminating individuals who had come up through military ranks

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from national politics also increased the homogeneity in national politicians' public careers. Politicians whose initial careers were in the officer corps generally entered public life at the state and local level. In fact, of the officers who achieved national political posts prior to 1935, 68 percent held positions at the state level and over half were governors. The emphasis on local and regional careers, as will be demonstrated in Chapter 6, declined substantially in recent administrations. A contributing factor to this decline was the elimination of career officers from political leadership, for they, more than civilian politicians, had state and local political experience. BUSINESS LEADERS AS POLITICIANS Given the direct intervention of the military in politics in Third World countries, particularly in Latin America, the exchange of leadership between the military and the public sector has long been of interest to analysts. In the United States, however, the groups with the closest and most influential ties to public life have been the legal and business communities. At least four out of ten cabinet members in the United States come from the private sector. In fact, roughly one-fifth of all cabinet members had business careers before reaching the cabinet, and 10 percent entered business after leaving the cabinet.27 Excluding the cabinet, most top political figures have been lawyers, and fewer than 10 percent, corporate executives.28 In Spain, which has many more cultural and historic similarities to Mexico than the United States has, most cabinet figures have personal and family ties with the business world, and at least two-thirds were corporate executives before holding their cabinet posts.29 In Mexico some of the political economy literature covering the post-i92os era has alleged a strong connection between the public and private sectors.30 But more sophisticated analysts in this vein have argued that a stronger relationship existed among politicians who later joined the private sector than it did among business executives who abandoned the corporate world for successful political careers.31 In other words, to understand completely the relationship between the two sectors, the fluidity of the linkages must be examined from both directions.32 Having ex-politicians among its midst gives the business community certain advantages in representing its interests to the public sector. The thrust of this chapter, however, is on changing recruitment patterns and their consequences. Ties between the business community and the public sector demonstrate the importance of the relationship in public-sector recruitment during the late nineteenth century. As some historians have al-

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TABLE 5.4. First-Time Officeholders Who Were Business Leaders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991

Presidential Administration Diaz 1884188918931897190119051910De la Barra Madero Huerta Carranza Obregon Calles

Business Leaders (%)

21 18 20 27 17 17 18 18 14 4 4 5 7

Presidential Administration

Business Leaders (%)

Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas

0 12 7 2 1 6 6 4 5 7 7 5 11

leged, close ties existed between some political and economic families during the Porfiriato—not just at the regional level but also nationally.33 The classic case is represented by Jose Yves Limantour Marquez, Diaz's treasury secretary and leader of the cientifico group. His parents were from a large landholding family, and he and his brother, a banker, owned a 10,000-hectare hacienda in Veracruz. Limantour was a founding member and stockholder of the Jockey Club, the most important social institution in the 1880s for the entrepreneurial class. Although approximately a fifth of all national politicians from 1884 through 1910 were business leaders, they were less important than military officers in providing future political leaders (Table 5.4). What is apparent, however, is that during the first three of Diaz's administrations (1884 to 1896), military officers and business executives combined accounted for one-half to three-quarters of all politicians. All other careers, including the public bureaucracy, provided the other one-fourth to one-half of Mexico's politicians. Perhaps even more important, given figures for Spain, is the fact that so few Mexicans have come from this sector, especially since the Mexican Revolution. To some authors, the separation of recruitment channels between the private and public sectors was beneficial to the

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political leadership. Julio Labastida, for example, argued that it gave politicians more flexibility to negotiate with entrepreneurs.34 The Revolution marked the decline of the private sector in Mexican political leadership. From 1913 until the present, the business community has provided a minuscule portion of politicians. Moreover, as the data in Chapter 6 will illustrate, few political leaders are related to prominent entrepreneurial families. The argument can be made that a strong separation between business and political leadership has existed in Mexico for nearly eighty years.35 It can also be argued that the small percentage of Mexican politicians who became prominent in business after leaving political life contributed little to the interlocking relationship, similar to those who were in business before entering politics. The argument that politicians whose economic interests motivate them to enter the business world after long careers in the public sector will think like business executives is flawed. Mexico's business community is heterogeneous. One of its divisions is between those who have done business with the state, developing a symbiotic relationship with it, and those who have prospered in spite of the state, maintaining their distance from it. Most successful business executives, raised in business-oriented families and nurtured in a precapitalist environment different from that found in the public sector, have little in common with public-sector leaders. Furthermore, as Dale Story has carefully demonstrated, the values of business elites vary within the private-sector culture, and their behavior is often independent of public-sector interests.36 Those politicians leaving public service for the private sector were much more likely to share values with those business executives who had had a long marriage with, not a divorce from, the state.37 Although a background in business applies to only a small percentage of contemporary politicians, the sudden increase of this group under President Salinas is remarkable, reaching a double-digit figure for the first time since the 1930s. This reversal, although not likely to increase equally dramatically in the next few administrations, may suggest the importance of other trends occurring in the recruitment and policy arenas. Salinas's well-developed economic program—largely a probusiness, capitalist development strategy—would make him more sympathetic to recruiting politically interested business leaders as collaborators. Simultaneously, however, as suggested in Chapter 7, certain business groups have become increasingly drawn to the ranks of the National Action Party, which provides an additional channel through which the business community can participate politically.38 In terms of recruitment trends, changing educational patterns rein-

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troduced more contact between younger politicians and business leaders, increasing the potential for politicians to recruit friends from the private sector. THE PUBLIC SECTOR AND THE PROFESSIONS As argued in Chapter 4, the education of Mexican politicians points to the overwhelming dominance of the professions. Professionals such as lawyers, economists, physicians, and engineers have three career choices in Mexico. They can become self-employed, they can work for the private sector, or they can join the public sector. In recent years, most Mexican politicians who were professionals made their life careers in the public bureaucracy, although they were often self-employed at the beginning of or during their public service. Only a tiny percentage of these professionals worked for major corporations or private firms for any length of time. Mexican politicians have not served in private-sector management posts, and throughout their lives they have had little actual experience in or with the private sector. This not only influences their values but also limits their personal contact with successful entrepreneurs. As a former cabinet secretary argued, "To become a better politician, you need to have more experience in the private sector. It would be very useful for all public servants to have some basic experience in the private sector. I also believe it would serve both sectors because the private sector would have some contact with government officials. The conflict between the two is partly the fault of the lack of reciprocal or mutual experiences. The public officials I know who have had private-sector experiences are often better for it/' 39 The Mexican public sector, as I have noted in prior research on education in public life, recruited the majority of prospective politicians at a young age, generally while they were still in college, especially if they attended Mexico City institutions. Within the public sector, future national leaders pursued three broad career strategies. First, the most successful politicians could be found in the federal bureaucracy. These were men and women who held a variety of bureaucratic posts in various federal agencies, sometimes in several interrelated agencies. According to some scholars, Mexico's bureaucracy replaced the revolutionary elite that emerged from the decade of violence in the 1920s.40 Second, another group of politicians made their way through the party bureaucracy and into the electoral arena, generally assisting the party in political campaigns and serving as candidates for national elective office. A third group of politicians, even smaller than the second, started their ca-

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reers at the grassroots level as local or party functionaries, and were later recruited to positions of national prominence. In a political system where regionalism was once the norm, it would be expected that politicians would have strong regional roots and that their careers would have begun in their native constituencies. Regional origin is an important recruitment variable in that it suggests some connection on a personal level between national leadership and the provinces. It also suggests that local talent is recognized and coopted by national figures, where it becomes part of that leadership. The careers of most Mexican presidents, including that of Porfirio Diaz, have been based on local reputations. Many of Diaz's collaborators were council members, mayors, or local bosses. Although their numbers declined somewhat near the end of his last administration, their representation overall remained relatively high throughout his regime, amounting to over a third of all national officeholders. As Mexico City grew and as the recruitment of future politicians shifted to this national base, one would expect some decline in politicians whose career experiences were rooted locally. A decline did occur after the Mexican Revolution, but over a fourth of the politicians from 1914 through 1934 still began their careers at the local level. These figures suggest that the Revolution continued to emphasize Mexico's regional basis of power but did not strengthen it as a recruitment variable compared with the Porfiriato. Indeed, the Diaz administration never responded to complaints of centralized decision making by increasing the importance of local political experience in the backgrounds of its appointees. However, after Lazaro Cardenas came to office in 1934, national political leadership witnessed a sharp and permanent decline in local political experience. With the exception of Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (1964-1970), fewer than 9 percent of presidential collaborators had local experience. Diaz Ordaz was the last president to have graduated from a regional college and to have held a series of judicial and administrative positions at the local and state level; he held his first national post ten years after entering public life. In his recent work on the presidency George Philip presents the interesting thesis that Diaz Ordaz, a product of provincial Mexico, felt insecure among this new breed of sophisticated Mexico City politician.41 Since the 1970s fewer than one in twenty national politicians has held such an office, and under president Salinas, local experiences all but disappeared (Table 5.5). The declining importance of experience at the local level in the career backgrounds of national political leaders appears in other coun-

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TABLE 5.5. First-Time National Officeholders Who Previously Held Local Office by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991

Presidential Administration Diaz 1884188918931897190119051910De la Barra Madero Huerta Carranza Obregon Calles

Former Local Officeholders (%)

40 42 42 38 42 36 29 25 16 6 27 26 31

Presidential Administration Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas

Former Local Officeholders (%) 36 23 27 9 6 9 4 9 13 5 6 5 2

tries.42 In the United States at the beginning of the republic, nearly nine out of ten political leaders had such experiences. By the 1920s it was still true of two-thirds of American politicians, and by the 1950s over half had such experiences in their backgrounds.43 The competitive, grassroots nature of the American party system, in contrast to the centralized one-party system in Mexico, explains the differences in figures between the two countries. The same can be said for India; although India shares more similarities with Mexico than the United States, a third of its cabinet-level leaders had local government experiences.44 In Canada, however, the pattern is quite similar to Mexico's in that the two career tracks are separate. As two specialists explain, "Canadian politicians follow a bifurcated rather than integrated career path with provincial office serving as an alternative to rather than a stepping-stone towards national office/'45 An examination of mayors from Mexico's leading cities reveals the extent to which important elective offices at the local level have influenced the careers of successful Mexican politicians. For example, Mexico's third-largest city, Monterrey, located in the important north-

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ern state of Nuevo Leon, produced only one mayor from 1935 through the mid-1970s who reached national office: Leopoldo Gonzalez Saenz. Gonzalez Saenz, whose family roots in Nuevo Leon extended back to the 1700s, typifies the career of a small number of national politicians emphasizing local and state politics. A graduate of the University of Nuevo Leon in Monterrey, he involved himself in student politics in the 1940s and held a number of legal, appointive, and union posts in Nuevo Leon before his election as mayor in 1961. A three-time congressman from his home state, he served as subsecretary of public works under Lopez Portillo.46 Local job experience within the public sector is interrelated to the geographic and educational background of contemporary Mexican politicians. As the centralization of educational credentials in Mexico City continued, the opportunities for politicians to involve themselves in local political activities declined. Local positions can generally be found early in national politicians' careers, often when they are fresh out of college, or sometimes while they are still university students, especially in party or party youth posts. It has been rare for a politician to leave one of the Mexico City universities and return to his or her home town or state to engage in local politics immediately after graduating. Most politicians who began their careers at the local level, like Leopoldo Gonzalez Saenz, generally pursued a series of political posts that took them up through national party ranks and elective office. Although the official party, which began in 1929, never functioned as a primary source of political recruitment, in the early years it brought important future politicians in contact with political mentors, often as students, and thus complemented patterns developed within the universities. Two notable products of this process are Presidents Adolfo Lopez Mateos, who attached himself to Carlos Riva Palacio, president of the National Revolutionary Party, after addressing him as a student orator at the Institute of Science and Literature of Mexico, and Luis Echeverria, who became assistant secretary to Rodolfo Sanchez Taboada, head of PRI in the Federal District during Miguel Aleman's presidential campaign in 1946 and party president a year later. The public-sector career pattern stressing party and electoral offices had a well-established tradition in Mexico extending back to 1884. Ironically, under Porfirio Diaz, who contributed to the centralization of authority, electoral offices were almost essential in the backgrounds of most national politicians (see Table 5.6). Diaz recognized the importance of elective office in not only maintaining a semblance of contact with the politician's home region but also achieving a regional balance in his national leadership. During his administration

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TABLE 5.6. Elective Officeholders among First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1934

Presidential Administration

Diaz 1884188918931897190119051910De la Barra

Elective Officeholders (%) 87 92 74 92 95 89 65 39

Presidential Administration Madero Huerta Carranza Obregon Calles Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez

Elective Officeholders (%) 64 31 80 75 78 63 52 50

more than 8o percent of top national officeholders had held elective posts at some time during their careers. Even though elections under Diaz were notable for their uncompetitiveness and fraud, these positions were important in the backgrounds of national political figures. The brief administrations of Leon de la Barra and Victoriano Huerta can be discounted for their failure to fit the overall pattern since the first was an interim presidency and the second, the product of a military coup led by a professional military officer. The fact that little difference existed between Venustiano Carranza's administration, which witnessed a wholesale change in revolutionary leadership, and Porfirio Diaz's points to how important it was for nineteenth-century politicians to start locally, often through electoral offices, and work their way up the political ladder in terms of geographical location and prestige. Although electoral office remained important after 1920, the share of politicians with this background had declined to only 50 percent by 1934, and continued to decrease. This decline in electoral experience reflected a deemphasis on electoral offices as a vehicle for political success within the system. The importance of electoral careers took on a new level of significance politically, as analysts identified it as a variable critical to the technocrat-politico separation allegedly characterizing Mexican politics in the 1990s.47 Other than governor, deputy and senator were the most prestigious elective offices in the backgrounds of national politicians. Politicians on their way up to the cabinet level have served

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most frequently in the Chamber of Deputies (Table 5.7). They used this institution to make contacts with other politicians, furthering their political ambitions. The data in Table 5.7 illustrate three patterns in the electoral experiences of Mexican politicians. In the first place, elective office is more important for all national political figures than for those who reach the cabinet, the apex of decision-making authority. Although not true of each and every cabinet, new cabinet officers were, on the whole, especially since the Revolution, less likely to have served in the lower chamber than prominent politicians generally. Second, a deputyship was far more important than the post of senator in the backgrounds of Mexican politicians. This has always been the case—not because there are fewer senatorial positions or because it is a more prestigious position, as in the United States, but because most individuals serve in this position at the end, not the beginning, of their careers; thus it plays a lesser role in the recruitment process. In fact, even though both chambers exercise very little influence over Mexican policymaking, the lower chamber is much more important than the Senate. Finally, a noteworthy trend can be detected following the administration of Adolfo Lopez Mateos. Since 1958 a much smaller percentage of cabinet officials has held elective office. Although generally 40 percent of Mexican politicians continued to pass through the lower chamber as late as 1991, only half that many can be found in cabinet circles. In fact, under de la Madrid, only 5 percent of new cabinetlevel politicians were federal deputies. Although it is still too soon to judge the final trends under Salinas, they are likely to continue with lower figures too. In Mexican politics the semicorporatist structure has been best represented in the party organization and in the Chamber of Deputies. Many of the deputies represent sectoral organizations or unions, which in turn have a home in one of the three party umbrella sectors: labor, peasant, and popular. Some members of the National Executive Committee hold dual posts in the party and the Chamber of Deputies. 48 The decline among top national political figures of electoral experience generally, and deputyships specifically indicates a changing emphasis in both the recruitment channels and the traditional corporatist institutions. The decline in national electoral experience is complemented by a recent decline in the importance of national party careers in politicians' backgrounds. As the data in Table 5.8 illustrate, only a small percentage of new officeholders, about one in ten, have used the National Revolutionary Party, the Mexican Revolutionary Party (both PRI antecedents), or PRI to achieve national political prominence.

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All First-Time Officials (%)

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Cabinet Officials Only (%)

Presidential Administration

Senator

Deputy

Deputy

Diaz 1884188918931897190119051910De la Barra Madero Huerta Carranza Obregon Calles Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas

46 32 14 22 43 20 24 11 16 10 20 20 27 13 14 7 17 16 19 25 28 20 15 13 8 13

41 67 46 62 68 63 35 17 38 23 66 54 60 56 32 29 44 44 45 52 46 49 39 49 40 13

33 66 66 20 83 56 20 0 41 33 50 31 38 33 0 0 32 43 57 35 17 22 11 21 5 20

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TABLE 5.8. National Party Experience of First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1935-1991

Presidential Administration

National Executive Committee Memfa (%)

Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas

13 10 9 13 6 11 14 13 5 2

Contrary to general expectations about recruitment in the United States, where parties play a much more significant role politically, politicians are not commonly recruited by either the Democratic or Republican parties. For example, a comparison of the Reagan and de la Madrid cabinets revealed that only a third of U.S. secretaries had even state or local party experience. No Mexican secretaries had comparable party backgrounds. In fact, most U.S. candidates for elective office at the local, state, or national level described themselves as selfstarters. 49 Except for the cabinet officials under Aleman and Lopez Mateos, party experience remained remarkably stable from Cardenas through Lopez Portillo. But since 1982 the declining importance of top party posts in politicians' backgrounds has persisted for two administrations, reaching its lowest levels ever. Although de la Madrid and Salinas both attempted to revive the importance of the party by appointing many future collaborators to top party posts during their presidential campaigns, most of these figures had already held a national political office. Thus, these party positions did not serve to enhance politicians' career opportunities or to bring them into contact with individuals who would further promote their careers; rather they served a symbolic and practical function of tying the party apparatus to the presi-

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dential campaign process.50 Even if Salinas were to double the percentage of new appointees with experience on the National Executive Committee of PRI, the proportion would still be only a third of those in the 1976-1982 administration. The future is not bright for leading politicians coming from PRI. As Francisco Javier Morales Camarena demonstrates, among younger public officials mostly lawyers (73 percent) seek positions in PRI, compared with only 29 percent for economists. As economists increase in top-level posts, the presence of PRI in career backgrounds further decreases.51 The professions—not organized labor, peasant confederations, business leaders, or the military—were best represented in the leadership, but they no longer use the vehicle of the Chamber of Deputies to institutionalize their representation. Although Peter Cleaves argues convincingly that the individual professions are carefully and intentionally represented within the political leadership,52 they tended to be directly and informally selected, and placed within the federal bureaucracy. In fact, I would argue that their representation is rarely intentional; rather, the selection of professionals has evolved through the incumbent recruitment process, whereby top figures, including all recent presidents, have selected individuals who mirror their own career patterns. Since those who have not served in the Chamber of Deputies increasingly dominate these posts, they have selected fellow bureaucrats without such experiences. It does not take long for the recruitment channels to adjust to the direction of leadership. Like the shift from public to private schools, from local to national careers, and from lawyers to economists, politicians have moved away from elective to appointive bureaucratic experiences. Young budding politicians with national ambitions have recognized that the key to their political success was to join the federal bureaucracy after graduating from college and to rise up the administrative ladder. The 1988 presidential election and the increasingly competitive state and local elections since 1989 may very well reverse this trend. In other words, if the leadership perceives elective experiences as increasingly important to the skills of national leadership and to the survival of the present elite, it will redirect the emphasis back to these experiences. The selection of Luis Donaldo Colosio as the PRI presidential nominee suggests such a trend. Colosio is the first official party candidate since Cardenas to have presided over the party, and the first federal deputy since Echeverria. The most significant career experience for successful national politicians and the locus of most political recruitment except for higher education is the federal bureaucracy. Mexico's professional politicians, those individuals whose lifetime careers have been mostly in

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the public sector, have largely emerged from a series of bureaucratic posts in federal agencies located in Mexico City. Similarly, most U.S. public figures are "professional politicians/' and the federal bureaucracy is "an independent channel of recruitment to positions of government power in America." 53 The dominating presence of these agencies in Mexico City has also contributed indirectly to the emphasis on individuals born and raised in Mexico City. As pointed out in the discussion of class background in Chapter 6, those born in Mexico City are most likely to attend school there and to have opportunities through their professors, friends, or relatives to obtain a post in the government bureaucracy. The influential position of the federal bureaucracy in the career experiences of national politicians is not peculiar to Mexico.54 Typically, in a dominant one-party state, the party itself serves as the most important vehicle for rising political stars. 55 However, it is important to remember that in Mexico bureaucratic leadership has controlled the party, not the reverse, as in the Soviet Union. The party in Mexico served very specific functions, but as an adjunct institution of the state administrative apparatus it never became a primary locus of political recruitment. Under Porfirio Diaz and during the early 1920s, no well-organized national party bureaucracy existed that might have competed with the state bureaucracy in recruitment. In political systems with intense party competition and tough electoral competition, the bureaucracy still exercised a dominant role. In the United States even as late as the 1950s, only little more than a fourth of top political figures came largely from elective careers; nearly two-thirds rose u p the ladder primarily from appointive positions. 56 According to one scholar, one-half of U.S. cabinet members "advanced from lesser posts within the federal bureaucracy." 57 In Mexico the figures for cabinet members were even more exaggerated. In Mexico, as in the United States, the president made these appointments. Elected officials in both countries chose their most important collaborators. However, in the United States the parties' nominees for president and vice-president were predominantly from major elective offices (governors and members of Congress), whereas in Mexico presidents came exclusively from their predecessor's cabinet. Since Mexico relies on an incumbent selection process in which the electorate has yet to play a decisive role, the degree to which the incumbents' experiences and values affect their choice of colleagues takes on added importance. All presidents since the 1920s have come from the cabinet; thus it is not surprising that most top decision makers also come from these agencies, if not from the cabinet itself.58

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Most cabinet members are former assistant secretaries, department heads, and division heads. Unlike officials in many other national bureaucracies, the most successful public officials in Mexico rarely remain within the confines of a single agency.59 Within the federal bureaucracy one of the most important career positions leading to upward mobility is that of private secretary. It has been a position common to the backgrounds of national officeholders for many years. It has added importance because of the camarilla system and the significance of personal confidence and trust in one's immediate collaborators. Since 1935, at least one out of ten top politicians has been a private secretary at some point. Private secretaries in Mexico, like chiefs of staff in the United States, exercise considerable power because of their control over access to the boss. 60 By controlling a schedule, private secretaries have control over not only who sees their boss but what information reaches their superior's ears, information crucial to the boss's success in office. This power alone cannot guarantee an individual's rise to the top of the political ladder, but it does give an individual considerable experience in bureaucratic politics, bringing him or her into contact with prominent political figures. For example, Emilio Gamboa Patron, who was private secretary to Miguel de la Madrid as president, became director of the Workers Housing Institute under President Salinas, who then promoted him to a cabinet-level post in 1991. The disadvantage of being a private secretary is that of becoming closely identified with a single political figure whose career may be blocked at some point. A remarkable increase in the importance of private secretaries can be seen between the de la Madrid and Salinas administrations (Table 5.9). In fact, more first-time officeholders reaching high political office under Salinas had been private secretaries than at any other time since the mid-1950s. Among Salinas's original cabinet appointees, only Manuel Camacho, the head of the Federal District, had served in that capacity. Why the dramatic increase in this particular bureaucratic post? One explanation may be that under Salinas, with his strong ideological emphasis on economic liberalism, successful camarillas have become more ideologically closed and narrow. Given a more competitive ambience within the elite, close personal ties may have become increasingly valued. A second explanation is that bureaucratic careers have generally increased in importance, and private secretaries are only one of several positions reflecting that change. Under Porfirio Diaz the potential of bureaucratic careers was restricted by outside competition. In the first place, as noted above, the majority of top politicians came from the military or the private sec-

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TABLE 5.9. First-Time Officeholders Who Were Private Secretaries by Presidential Administration, 1935-1991

Presidential Administration Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas

Former Private

Secreta) (%) 10 8 8 9 12 11 10 8 9 19

tor, followed by independent professions. Second, embryonic professional politicians under Diaz combined extensive careers as federal deputies and senators with several appointive positions in the federal government. One explanation for the discrepancy is that few important bureaucratic positions were available in this era compared with the legislative posts. In the 1930s and 1940s an expanding bureaucracy provided many new opportunities for patronage. The earliest forerunner of the bureaucratic politician in the nineteenth century combined elective office, an intellectual career in publishing, newspapers, and higher education, and bureaucratic posts. For example, Federico Gamboa Iglesias, who became subsecretary of foreign relations under Diaz and secretary under Victoriano Huerta in 1913, joined the Foreign Service in 1888, holding a succession of diplomatic posts abroad. Nevertheless, he also served twice as an alternate federal deputy and in 1908 as deputy from a district in Chihuahua. A lawyer by profession, he taught many years at the National University, the National Preparatory School, and the Free Law School. Gamboa edited numerous journals, wrote newspaper articles, and authored several plays.61 The revolutionary generation modified this nineteenth-century version of the professional politician, shifting career experiences away from elective political office to appointive posts. A classic illustration

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of this shift can be found in the career background of Genaro Estrada, who held the same post as Gamboa twenty-five years later. Estrada, a member of the revolutionary generation, was a journalist and editor before joining the academic bureaucracy as secretary of the National Preparatory School in 1913. Later he taught literature and history at UNAM and became a professor in the graduate program. He held his first public office as an employee in the publications department of the secretariat of industry and commerce in 1917, then became head the following year. Two years later Estrada directed the administrative department of the same federal agency and in 1921 was appointed oficial mayor, the third-ranked post in the foreign relations ministry. From 1923 to 1932 he served as either subsecretary or secretary of foreign relations. 62 He used his position to recruit a large group of intellectual and political disciples, many of whom followed in his footsteps, representing the postrevolutionary generation of federal bureaucrats. 63 The succeeding generation, that of Miguel Aleman, ensured the dominance of the professional politician. Although these individuals acted as a transitional force in the evolution of this new type of politician, they eliminated military and business careers from politicians' backgrounds and substituted the importance of the party for one group of budding politicians, represented in the career of President Adolfo Lopez Mateos. Lopez Mateos became the first president to use the National Revolutionary Party as a stepladder to high political office. Luis Echeverria was the last president to do so. When presidents alone are used as a measure of this influence on recruitment, the span of years dominated by this transitional generation was relatively short, approximately two decades. This same generation (1900-1919) emphasized student political activities more heavily. Beginning in the 1920s students actively joined in political campaigning, which involved them directly with the government party—either as supporters or opponents—after 1928. Especially noteworthy were the 1923, 1927, 1929, 1940, and 1952 contests. 64 As the state increasingly employed large numbers of professors from such principal institutions as UNAM and the National Preparatory School, they further strengthened the bridge between educational and bureaucratic experiences. I have demonstrated elsewhere that these part-time professors, often leading intellectuals, used their positions to recruit talented students to public office and to their personal political camarillas.65 Since members of the transitional generation increasingly remained in Mexico City and did not compete for

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electoral offices in the provinces, their disciples imitated their political careers in academia and the federal bureaucracy. CONCLUSIONS In Latin America four career experiences have influenced the careers of national politicans: business, the military, the professions, and public life. But Mexico, unlike most of the countries in the Third World and Latin America, created one of the most homogeneous political elites in terms of both career experiences and recruitment practices associated with those careers. In countries using socialist models, the revolutionary army and the party apparatus produced the lion's share of political leadership. As time passed, the socialist bureaucracies shared career experiences with the party. In nonsocialist models, authoritarian and democratic alike, political leadership typically gave greater emphasis to military and business careers, and in competitive systems, to electoral offices. Mexico's version of a successful politician, however, took on special features. The political system constructed a process and product reflecting Mexico's political peculiarities. Most successful Mexican politicians pursued their ambitions full time. Unlike many North American political figures, they did not run for political office, win, and then go back to their former profession. Instead, Mexican politicians generally started out at an early age, often in preparatory school or college, holding public office or becoming orators or candidates in school elections. The development of political skills in school is an indicator of a student's future political potential. It is no accident, for example, that many members of Miguel de la Madrid's cabinet were student leaders and in fact had competed against each other for student office.66 For example, de la Madrid was oratory champion of all secondary schools in Mexico City in 1949 as well as vice-president of the law student society with Porfirio Murioz Ledo, who left PRI in 1987 to become a prominent figure in the Democratic Revolutionary Party. Humberto A. Lugo Gil, who attended the La Salle School with de la Madrid, was a student leader at the National Preparatory School and the National School of Law, becoming the president's congressional majority leader in 1982. Luis Donaldo Colosio, the PRI presidential candidate, led a 1967 protest strike as president of the Magdaleno preparatory students at the University of Sonora in Hermosillo. 67 Most politicians since the 1940s have interned or held part-time jobs in government agencies while still in school; they have usually

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obtained these positions through a university professor and mentor. Therefore, even before they graduated, they were already part of the federal bureaucracy in the same way that a military cadet, while still a student, was incorporated formally within the military structure. Although some politicians started their careers with these same credentials, they graduated and entered private practice. An extraordinary example is Jose Lopez Portillo. Lopez Portillo attended the National School of Law and during his freshman year became involved with the Almazan Student Vanguard, a group supporting General Juan Andreu Almazan, a dissident elite who battled General Manuel Avila Camacho in 1940 for the presidency. Instead of joining the public sector, Lopez Portillo completed advanced studies in law, studied abroad, and returned to teach at the National University and to practice law. Although he wrote some legislation in 1959 and authored several position papers during the Lopez Mateos presidential campaign in 1957, he did not hold a public office until i960, when he became a cabinet agency division head. It is well to remember, however, that this pattern was exceptional, not typical, and most of his classmates who pursued successful political careers, like Luis Echeverria, his boyhood companion, involved themselves in national politics immediately after graduation. Most national political figures are products of years of experience in the federal bureaucracy, often with ties to Mexico City universities, where they have attended school and often taught as professors. The specificity of these career experiences in Mexico generate many consequences. The importance of the federal bureaucracy's dominance over the career experiences of the majority of Mexico's prominent political figures is threefold. First, bureaucratic careers contributed to the increasing homogeneity of the leadership. Individuals from diverse career experiences and, in many cases, different social backgrounds are not present in large numbers among Mexican politicians. This is not to suggest that the Mexican bureaucracy lacks fluidity but rather that it tends to recruit and promote certain types of individuals to the top. The fewer experiences those individuals have elsewhere, the less informed they are about the concerns of those sectors or professions and the less likely they are to value their attitudes and beliefs. In short, the longer one remains within the bureaucratic ambience, the more one's views are flavored by that ambience, in the same way that U.S. politicians who have lived and worked in Washington, D.C., often lose touch with realities elsewhere. Second, while the lack of diversity may have important implications for decision making and equally significant influences on politi-

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cal skills, it also increases the potential for disenfranchised groups to feel unrepresented by their leadership. Many members of the business community in Mexico believe this political elite views them as inferior and unimportant to the political process. They attribute this perceived attitude not only to their lack of formal representation as a sector within the governing party but also to two different sets of values. Some business leaders have described this pattern as almost castelike, in which two separate professions, public and private, have developed alongside one another, offering little opportunity for the two groups to exchange viewpoints early in their careers. Finally, the only countervailing trend resisting the increased homogenization is the changing pattern in middle and higher education. As politicians shift their educational experiences from national public universities to private parochial preparatory and university institutions, they foster new connections between the private and the public sectors. The potential for greater diversity in the future exists if these educational contacts are translated into an exchange of career experiences between the two sectors. On the other hand, it can also lead to greater homogenization in leadership, especially if private university graduates continue to enter public life in larger numbers, because only a much narrower social class has access to private education. These career patterns have produced a new type of public figure; one who is employed full time by the state. Expressed differently, the state itself joins the professions as another profession, and lawyers, doctors, economists, engineers, and others who make state employment their career subsume their technical, professional training under a new profession, that of the bureaucratic politician. The second feature of the new public figure is a movement away from the generalist to that of a technocrat, not the authoritarian version of South America, but one whose range of educational, professional, and political experiences are narrow. The rise of this political technocrat, as the analysis of Carlos Salinas and his collaborators will make clear in Chapter 9, has implications for Mexican decision making, for Mexican leadership, and for future patterns of political recruitment. NOTES 1. For some of the most imaginative work in this area, see Ben Ross Schneider's study of Brazil in which he examines career tracks within the bureaucracy and its effects on policy preferences. He develops some interesting hypotheses about the implications of institutional loyalties and policy de-

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cisions. See "Careers in the State: Preferences and Politics in the Brazilian Bureaucracy" (paper presented at a meeting of the National Latin American Studies Association, Washington, D.C., April 1991), 3; see also his Politics within the State: Elite Bureaucrats and Industrial Policy in Authoritarian Brazil (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991). 2. For an excellent description of these relationships in the Middle East, see James Bill, "The Plasticity of Informal Politics: The Case of Iran," Middle East Journal 27, no. 2 (Spring 1973): 131-151. For the best discussion comparing Mexico with Brazil, see Luis Roniger, Hierarchy and Trust in Modern Mexico and Brazil (New York: Praeger, 1990). The most comprehensive general analysis is James Bill and Robert L. Hardgrave Jr., Comparative Politics: The Quest for Theory (Washington, D.C., University Press of America, 1981), 117. 3. Michael Conniff, "The National Elites," in Modern Brazil, Elite and Masses in Historical Perspective, ed. Michael Conniff and Frank McCann (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 36. For the best development of this argument as applied to Brazil, see Anthony Leeds, "Brazilian Careers and Social Structure," American Anthropologist 66 (December 1964): 1337. For Mexico, see Merilee S. Grindle, "Patrons and Clients in the Bureaucracy: Career Networks in Mexico," Latin American Research Review 22, no. 1 (1977): 37-66. 4. Peter Y. Medding, "Ruling Elite Models: A Critique and an Alternative," Political Studies 30, no. 3 (1982): 405. 5. Mariano Baena del Alcazar and Narciso Pizano, "The Spanish Political Elite," in Studies of the Structure of National Elite Groups, vol. 1 of Research in Politics and Society, ed. Gwen Moore (Greenwich: JAI Press, 1985), 169. 6. See John Hoffman, "The Problem of the Ruling Class in Classical Marxist Theory: Some Conceptual Preliminaries," Science and Society 50, no. 3 (Fall 1986): 342-363. 7. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), 18-24. 8. Gwen Moore, "The Structure of a National Elite Network," American Sociological Review 44 (October 1979): 689. 9. Harold R. Kerbo and L. Richard Delia Fave, "The Empirical Side of the Power Elite Debate: An Assessment and Critique of Recent Research," Sociological Quarterly 20 (Winter 1979): 19. 10. John Higley and Desley Deacon, "The Australian National Elite," in Studies of the Structure of National Elite Groups, vol. 1 of Research in Politics and Society, ed. Gwen Moore (Greenwich: JAI Press, 1985). 11. Some studies have found that business leaders are more central in national elite power structures than other groups. Ibid., 109. 12. See Thomas R. Dye, Who's Running America? The Bush Era, 5th ed. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1990), 185, for evidence of a corporate interlock. 13. Peter H. Smith, Labyrinths of Power: Political Recruitment in TwentiethCentury Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 191-216. 14. For further discussion of this point, see Roderic Ai Camp, "Mexican Intellectuals and Collective Biography in the Twentieth Century," in Unity

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in Variety: The Hispanic and Francophone Caribbean, vol. 2 of Intellectuals in the Twentieth-Century Caribbean, ed. Alistair Hennessy (London: Macmillan, 1992), 211-224. 15. For a detailed discussion of these relationships and their consequences for intellectual life, see Roderic Ai Camp, Intellectuals and the State in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985). 16. Sidney Aronson, Status and Kinship in the Higher Civil Service (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), 108. 17. Amado Gonzalez Davila, Diccionario geogrdfico, historico, biogrdfico y estadistico del estado de Sinaloa (Culiacan: n.p., 1959), 107-108; Gabriel Cuevas, El glorioso Colegio Militar mexicano en un siglo, 1824-1924 (Mexico City: n.p., 1937), 382; and Lazaro Pavia, Los estados y sus gobernantes (Mexico City: Tipografia de la Escalerillas, 1890), 141-142. 18. Franc,ois-Xavier Guerra argues, for example, that Diaz needed his friendship with military officers in order to seize power ten years after leaving his last command, and rewarded them accordingly. Mexico: Del antiguo regimen a la revolucion (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1988). 19. Leonardo Pasquel, Xalapenos distinguidos (Jalapa: Editorial Citlaltepetl, 1975), 119-120; Miguel Angel Peral, Diccionario biogrdfico mexicano, suplemento (Mexico City: Editorial PAC, 1947), 81; and Manuel Mestre Ghigliazza, Efemerides biogrdficos (Mexico City: Antigua Libreria Robredo, 1945), 293. 20. See Gordon C. Schloming, "Civil-Military Relations in Mexico, 19101940: A Case Study" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1974), 225-241. 21. Jose Luis Pineyro, "The Mexican Army and the State: Historical and Political Perspective," Revue Internationale de Sociologie 14, nos. 1-2 (AprilAugust 1978): 121. 22. Jorge Alberto Lozoya, El ejercito mexicano (1911-1965) (Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 1970), 64. 23. Phyllis Greene Walker, "The Modern Mexican Military: Political Influence and Institutional Interests in the 1980s" (M. A. thesis, American University, 1987), 25. 24. Roderic Ai Camp, Generals in the Palacio: The Military in Modern Mexico (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 104-109. 25. Revista del Ejercito y Fuerza Aerea, May 1976, 143-144; Excelsior, March 20, 1985, 1, 9. 26. Robert C. North and Ithiel de Sola Pool, "Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Elites," in World Revolutionary Elites, ed. Harold D. Lass well and Daniel Lerner (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1965), 390. 27. Peter J. Freitag, "The Cabinet and Big Business: A Study of Interlocks," Social Problems 23 (December 1975): 148. 28. Dye, Who's Running America? 67. 29. Salustiano del Campo, Jose Felix Tezanos, and Walter Santin, "The Spanish Political Elite: Permanency and Change," in Does Who Govern Matter? Elite Circulation in Contemporary Societies, ed. Moshe M. Czudnowski (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University, 1982), 144. 30. Nora Hamilton, "The State and the National Bourgeoisie in Post-

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revolutionary Mexico: 1920-1940," Latin American Perspectives 9, no. 4 (Fall 1982): 51. 31. Alonso Aguilar Monteverde, "El estado y la burguesia," Estrategia, no. 27 (May-June 1979): 20-61. 32. This conclusion was reached by Van Whiting Jr. in his review of Labyrinths of Power by Peter H. Smith, Foro Internacional 22 (July-September 1981): 112, where he points to Smith's evidence that few private-sector leaders become politicians while ignoring politicians' involvement in the private sector. Smith's general conclusion, however, remains valid, even when considering the reverse exchange. An early analysis of entrepreneurs with political backgrounds is James Maddox, "Economic Growth and Revolution in Mexico," Land Economics 36 (August i960): 272. 33. For example, in his study of Coahuila, William S. Langston asserts that "the political and economic hierarchies interlocked in a complex web of personal relations, kinship networks, and informal and formal decision-making processes." See his "Coahuila in the Porfiriato, 1893-1911: A Study of Political Elites" (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1980), 61. 34. Julio Labastida del Campo, "Grupo dominantes frente a las alternativas de cambio," El perfil de Mexico en 1980 (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1980): 3:138. 35. Evidence of this from earlier studies includes Peter H. Smith, Labyrinths of Power: Political Recruitment in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 191-196. Smith used the data from Flavia Derossi, The Mexican Entrepreneur (Paris: OECD, 1971), which examined only industrialists. As Derossi argued, the best statistical chance of becoming a member of the business elite was to be born into it (162). 36. Dale Story, "Industrial Elites in Mexico: Political Ideology and Influence," Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs 25 (August 1983): 373. 37. Alonso Aguilar Monteverde warns that the number of business leaders who involve themselves in the private sector after leaving politics is much larger than is apparent, largely because these individuals are investors, not chief executive officers of major firms. I believe his argument is correct, and it raises another point. Investors, although interested in profit from their holdings, will have motivations different from those of capitalists and entrepreneurs. Interview with author, Mexico City, July 20, 1984. 38. See Yemile Mizrahi, "Entrepreneurs in the Opposition: Form of Organization and Modes of Participation in Chihuahua," in Opposition Governments in Mexico: Past Experiences and Future Opportunities, ed. Peter Ward and Victoria Rodriguez (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994). 39. Antonio Martinez Baez, secretary of industry and commerce under Miguel Aleman, quoted in Roderic Ai Camp, Entrepreneurs and Politics in Twentieth-Century Mexico (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 99. 40. Roberto Newell and Luis Rubio, Mexico's Dilemma: The Political Origins of Economic Crisis (Boulder: Westview, 1984), 85. 41. George Philip, The Presidency in Mexican Politics (New York: St. Martin's, 1992), 63. If the PRI nominee, Luis Donaldo Colosio, wins the presi-

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dency, he will revive the importance of regional origins. He spent his entire youth in Magdaleno, Sonora, and graduated from the most important northern university, the Monterrey Technological Institute of Higher Studies (ITESM) in Nuevo Leon. 42. China, on the other hand, witnessed a flowering of "localism" among its provincial elite—that is, an increase of leaders who were products of their own regions. This is a special form of decentralizing recruitment at the local level. Xiaohei Zang, "Provincial Elite in Post-Mao China," Asian Survey 31 (June 1991): 524. 43. Mills, The Power Elite, 229. 44. Norman K. Nicholson, "Integrative Strategies of a National Elite: Career Patterns in the Indian Council of Ministers," Comparative Politics 7 (July 1975): 545. The same is true for Japan, at least at the cabinet level; although the bureaucracy itself provides the largest percentage of future ministers, one in four is a local politician. Hiromitsu Kataoka, "The Making of a Japanese Cabinet," in Pathways to Power: Selecting Rulers in Pluralist Democracies, ed. Mattei Dogan (Boulder: Westview, 1989), 173. One contradictory example is that of the Soviet Union, where politburo members in the 1970s obtained the majority of their experiences—party and bureaucratic—at the local or regional level, in contrast to their peers in the 1950s. See Thomas H. Rigby, Political Elites in the USSR: Central Leaders and Local Cadres from Lenin to Gorbachev (London: Gower, 1990), 181. 45. Doreen Barrie and Roger Gibbins, "Parliamentary Careers in the Canadian Federal State," Canadian Journal of Political Science 22 (March 1989): 138. 46. Enciclopedia de Mexico (Mexico City: n.p., 1977), 9: 169; Hispano Americano, November 20, 1973, 13; Excelsior, July 27, 1984, 20; and Rodolfo de la Garza, Mil familias de Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila y Texas (Mexico City: n.p., 1980), 1: 349-35147. See for example, Guillermo Kelley, "Politics and Administration in Mexico: Recruitment and Promotion of the Politico-Administrative Class," Technical Paper Series, Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1981; and Peter H. Smith, "Leadership and Change, Intellectuals and Technocrats in Mexico," in Mexico's Political Stability: The Next Five Years, ed. Roderic Ai Camp (Boulder: Westview, 1986), 103. 48. See Dale Story, The Mexican Ruling Party: Stability and Authority (New York: Praeger, 1986), 19-23. 49. Thomas A. Kazee and Mary C. Thornberry, "Where's the Party? Congressional Candidate Recruitment and American Party Organizations," Western Political Quarterly 43 (March 1990): j$. The authors go on to say that "as a party function, recruitment has not been institutionalized in most of these [electoral] districts" (75). 50. The best analysis of the party's recruitment role is still David Schers, "The Popular Sector of the Mexican PRI" (Ph.D. diss., University of New Mexico, 1972). 51. Francisco Javier Morales Camarena, "La tecnocracia en Mexico: Las actitudes de los funcionarios publicos" (thesis, Colegio de Mexico, 1991), 155.

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52. Peter S. Cleaves, Professions and the State: The Mexican Case (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987), 84. 53. Dye, Who's Running America? 100. 54. The growth of the bureaucracy in Mexican politics began with Presidents Benito Juarez and Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada and was carried to fruition by Porfirio Diaz. As Stuart Voss argues, "Politics were increasingly bureaucratized; public offices proliferated. National political presence in the states, and that of the state in the localities, was greatly amplified." "Northwest Mexico," in Diana Balmori, Stuart Voss, and Miles Wortman, Notable Family Networks in Latin America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 108. 33. Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel P. Huntington, Political Power: USA/ USSR (New York: Viking Press, 1964), 143-144. 56. Mills, The Power Elite, 230. yj. Joseph A. Schlesinger, Ambition and Politics: Political Careers in the United States (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966), 33-34. Other top leaders in the bureaucracy were career bureaucrats. David T. Stanley, Dean E. Mann, and Jameson W. Doig, Men Who Govern (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1967), 21. 58. Other studies have also discovered the importance of common promotion mechanisms on the selection of similar types of individuals. Jack Wasilewski, "The Patterns of Bureaucratic Elite Recruitment in Poland in the 1970s and 1980s," Soviet Studies 42, no. 4 (October 1990): 753. 59. For example, once an official is in a ministry in Japan, he or she is likely to remain there for life, developing a strong loyalty and identification with that agency. Joel D. Aberbach, Ellis S. Krauss, and Michio Muramatsu, "Comparing Japanese and American Administrative Elites," British Journal of Political Science 20, no. 4 (October 1990): 464. 60. Jose Ignacio Rodriguez Reyna, "El poder del picaporte," Este Pais, (August 1992), 2-12. 61. Enciclopedia de Mexico, 5: 101. 62. Alberto Maria Carreno, La academia mexicana correspondiente de la espanola, 1875-1945 (Mexico City: Secretaria de Education Publica, 1946), 351-352. 63. The most notable example was Jaime Torres Bodet, who served in several cabinet posts in foreign relations and public education in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. 64. This is not to suggest that students from earlier generations were not politically active. In fact, a number of students participated in the XochimilcoXochimingas plot against Victoriano Huerta and, failing, joined the Revolution; they later became prominent figures in the 1920s. They included Jorge Prieto Laurens, Rafael Cal y Mayor, Alfonso Breceda Mercado, Jesus M. Garza, and Aaron Saenz. See Jorge Prieto Laurens, Cincuenta anos de politica mexicana: Memorias politicas (Mexico City: n.p., 1968). 65. Roderic Ai Camp, Mexico's Leaders: Their Education and Recruitment (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1980). 66. For a recent testimonial to the importance of student leadership experience, see the frank political memoirs of Luis M. Farias, Asi lo recuerdo: Testimonio politico (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1992), 30. Farias is former majority leader of the Chamber of Deputies.

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67. Student leadership is an experience common to prominent Latin American political leaders. In Ecuador, for example, a recent study found that over half of the members of congress were former student leaders. See Simon Pachano, Los diputados: Una elite politica (Quito: Corporacion Editora Nacional, 1991), 168.

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6 Gender, Place, and Family in Leadership Credentials Throughout this book I have argued that experiential variables— notably events, education, and careers—have played significant roles in the evolution of Mexican political leaders and in their abilities to rise to the top of the political ladder. However, there are other variables, similar to age, over which the individual has little control. The most important of these nonexperiential variables, significantly intertwined with experiential characteristics, are gender, place of birth and residence, and socioeconomic origins, parental occupation and kinship linkages. THE ROLE OF GENDER The least studied variable in Mexican political recruitment is gender. Peter Smith, for example, makes no mention of female politicians in his comprehensive work. 1 One could make a case that, in political analyses of earlier periods—like the studies of Frangois-X. Guerra— women should be ignored by virtue of their omission from political leadership. 2 The same claim, however, cannot be sustained for the twentieth century. Although women do not appear among national political leaders in Mexico until 1940, during the administration of Manuel Avila Camacho (1940-1946), and even though only one out of fourteen politicians since 1934 has been female, the growth of women in national political offices doubled from 1946 to 1952, from 1958 to 1970, and from 1970 to 1982 (Table 6.1). From 1954 through the mid-1980s, 229 women served in nationally important offices.3 Studies have claimed that a lower level of ambition among women explains their underrepresentation of women in high political office. However, a recent examination of female officeholders in the United States does not support this assumption, suggesting instead that access, not desire, is the decisive variable. 4 As the data in Table 6.1 illustrate, female representation in the na-

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TABLE 6.1. Female First-Time National Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1934-1991 Presidential Administration Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas

Female

Officehol (%) 0 1 2 3 4 7 7 18 17 11

tional political elite increased considerably beginning with Jose Lopez Portillo's administration. Most of these women were either in the least influential branches of government or at lower levels within the national executive leadership. The majority of them can be found among senators and deputies. From 1953 to 1991, 251 women held national legislative office as candidates of PRI, while 79 were elected under the auspices of nine different opposition parties. In the 1991 elections, 15 percent of candidates for federal deputy were women, as were 24 percent of the alternates.5 Women, too, have been well represented in the judicial branch, including the Supreme Court, in numbers and percentages exceeding those for comparable women in the United States. This is true elsewhere in Latin America. Elsa Chaney believes a judicial career is a special case in Chile with respect to women because it is less financially rewarding (and thus less competitive) than private law practice.61 would offer a different explanation for the heavy representation of women in this branch. Appointments in the judicial branch in Mexico, compared with the legislative and executive branches, is the least competitive politically and requires the fewest political skills. Individuals are more likely to rise on their professional merits. In Mexico it is likely that comparable political influence, not salaries, has determined female political careers in one branch rather than another. During the early 1980s women held positions on the National Ex-

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ecutive Committee of PRI for the first time. Silvia Hernandez Enriquez, the youngest senator elected from her home state of Queretaro, became the secretary of organization in 1981. At the same time, women began to reach higher administrative ranks, but only at the level of oficial mayor and subsecretary. However, in Lopez Portillo's administration a woman was appointed to a cabinet-level position— another first for women. Rosa Luz Alegria, who had become subsecretary of the secretariat of the presidency in 1976, took over the position of secretary of tourism in 1980. Tourism, however, was one of the least influential positions. Both women share another characteristic: they come from politically active families, and kinship was an important factor in their political careers. In the U.S. Congress prior to 1964, kinship was a significant determinant of whether a woman reached that office.7 According to a recent study, female politicians are relying less often on kinship ties.8 Alegria, who was influenced by the labor leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano, married Luis Vicente Echeverria, son of the former president.9 After divorcing her husband, she also developed an intimate relationship with President Lopez Portillo. Hernandez is the sister of a former senator from Queretaro, who preceded her in that position, but her career has been far more distinguished than her brother's.10 Although the data in Table 6.1 seem to imply a drop in important female politicians under Salinas, this is not likely to be the trend, at least in the long run. The data for Salinas are not fully comparable because they do not incorporate trends in the second half of his term, after 1991. Patterns among women in national politics and their potential as future political leaders can be more readily discerned with complementary data based on generational percentages (Table 6.2). Consequently, if we analyze the number of women holding national political office on the basis of birth date, shifts from one presidential administration to another are elucidated. The generational data illustrate why few women held national political office before 1946. As the data in Chapter 2 demonstrated, the revolutionary generation (1880-1899) accounted for nearly four-fifths of Mexico's leading politicians from 1920 through Avila Camacho's administration (1940-1946). Both Cardenas and Avila Camacho were from this same generation, but fewer than 1 percent of politicians born during these two decades were female. Thus, there would be no opportunity for women to make the necessary contacts with the leadership of those administrations. Aleman provided women with a small foothold, but it was tenuous at best. Without positions in the executive branch, women would never be able to promote the careers of other women or, for that matter, men.

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TABLE 6.2. Female National Political Officeholders by Generation, 1880-1950

Generation

Female Officeholders (%)

1880-1889 1890-1899 1900-1909 1910-1919 1920-1929 1930-1939 1940-1949 1950-

1 0 2 4 10 12 21 25

Although the criteria for recruitment are different, studies of women in the British parliamentary system suggest a similar pattern—that is, once women were part of the political process, little prejudice existed against their obtaining office. Instead, they were denied initial access. 11 In short, opportunities for creating a political group do not exist in either the legislative or judicial branches. The successful politician has to have a base in the executive branch, the source of job patronage and economic resources in Mexico. As indicated in Table 6.2, Echeverria's own generation (1920-1939) gave much better representation to women. Of course, his administration, while dominated by his generation, did not achieve the generational dominance (56 percent) over positions at levels typical of the earlier, revolutionary generation, which explains why a lag exists between generational and administrative representation. The post-i940S generation illustrates a major increase in female politicians. Some feminists charge that this representation is purely tokenism since "they hold these positions because of their loyalty and subservience to the PRI leadership, not because of their commitment to women's rights." 12 Nevertheless, while politicians born after 1950 achieve the highest offices in Mexico, women may account for up to a fourth of all national political figures, a percentage unprecedented in most industrial nations, including the United States. Credentials exercise an important role in the recruitment process because they determine whether a successful politician is likely to come into contact with a female disciple. Perhaps the single most im-

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portant variable affecting the potential leadership role of women in Mexican politics is education. In the 1910,1920, and 1930 generations, only half had obtained a college education, a credential that had already become far more common among men. The same pattern was true among U.S. politicians: Kent Jennings and Norman Thomas discovered that twice as many men as women politicians had obtained college degrees.13 By the 1940 generation, only 17 percent of Mexican female politicians were without college degrees. A woman who tried to reach the highest echelons of Mexican politics without attending college would, just like a man, find it a nearly insurmountable task in the 1980s and 1990s. This was equally true, if not more so, among younger female politicians in the United States.14 Even more important, executive-branch leaders obtained higher levels of education than prominent politicians generally. Thus, lesser-educated Mexicans, who were disproportionately women, typically ended up in the legislative, not the executive, branch. Women politicians, like their male counterparts, must be in the right place at the right time to achieve success. They must associate in institutions where the future political elite gathers. It is important, therefore, that they attend the same educational institutions and reach the same levels of education as men, or those opportunities will be limited. The first woman in Mexico to achieve the position of oficial mayor in a cabinet-level agency was Maria Emilia Tellez Benoit, a school companion of Luis Echeverria at the National University. She also shared a student political experience with President Lopez Portillo, having participated in a student march with the president against the U.S. embassy.15 Echeverria appointed her as oficial mayor, and Lopez Portillo as subsecretary of foreign relations. The credentials of a group of individuals not only indicate the leadership values of the institution that employs them but also the source of future contacts. The comparative data in Table 6.3 illustrate those qualities important to successful political careers. Education, as suggested above, distinguishes men and women. Women have operated at a disadvantage because they did not attend the universities where future male politicians received their education and, more important, where incumbent politicians taught. Women, not surprisingly, were less educated than men, a reflection of their educational status generally; moreover, of those without university educations, half attended normal institutions, noncollege training programs for teachers.16 This extremely high figure, accounting for more than a fourth of all women, explains the importance of labor unions to women as a channel to higher political office. Guadalupe Lopez Breton, the first female senator from the state of Puebla, ex-

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TABLE 6.3. Credentials of First-Time Officeholders by Gender, 1934--1991 Credential Education Primary, secondary, preparatory only Normal only University Graduate Degree Earned None Law Economics Medicine Engineering Other Political Office Private secretary Union leader Kinship Ties Relative in public office Father in politics Party Office President of PRI Secretary of PRI Federal District director State director Other post All PRI posts combined

Women (%) Men (%)

22 22 32 26

19 5 51 25

43 38 19 6 5 32

27 51 12 9 14 15

3 13

9 13

15 8

28 9

0 6 0 8 43 50

1 8 1 4 17 22

emplifies this pattern. After obtaining a teaching certificate in Puebla, she taught at various schools, becoming active in the local of the National Teachers Union. Later she became secretary of education of the National Federation of Popular Organizations of PRI. After serving as senator (1973-1976), she represented her home state in the Chamber of Deputies. Many female politicians in Mexico have used teachers unions as a stepladder to success. Their education and careers as teachers emphasized this tendency. On the other hand, labor unions have not served as primary pathways to national political offices. Women, of course, have not in the past been professionals, especially lawyers, engineers, and doctors; they have entered the fields of

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teaching and social work in much larger numbers. Women politicians were only reflecting the career patterns of women generally. As Ward Morton indicated in his pioneer study of women in Mexico, women accounted for only 1 percent of all professionals in 1950, the occupational determinant to political success.17 It might be argued, therefore, that proportionately more women came from higher-status professions than men, considering their insignificant representation among all Mexican professionals. In Chapter 4, I indicated many consequences related to changing patterns in educational and professional disciplines pursued by future politicians. In the past, women were at a disadvantage because they usually obtained no higher education; among those who did graduate from college, fewer chose law and engineering, the dominant disciplines for future politicians.18 In recent years, however, women, like their male counterparts, are choosing economics. The data are misleading in Table 6.3. Women are not obtaining economics degrees in percentages higher than men, even though proportionately more women politicians have graduated in economics since 1934 than men politicians. Rather, women, because they did not enter political life in large numbers until later years, are much younger as a group; thus, characteristics from recent years are disproportionately represented. Careers, especially in the federal bureaucracy, enhance the ability of individuals to make their talents known and to come into contact with future political mentors. As the data in Table 6.3 illustrate, women have used unions in their careers as often as men. Women, on the other hand, have rarely served as private secretaries in the executive branch, Mexico's version of the U.S. presidential chief of staff. This person, who has the total confidence of his or her superior, is in a position to meet hundreds of prominent political figures, since he or she acts as the gatekeeper to the superior's schedule. Only onethird as many Mexican women as men have had such an opportunity in their political careers. Perhaps the most striking difference in the career experiences between men and women, indicative of a broader pattern generally, is the level of activism within the ranks of the party, PRI and its predecessors. Among state and national candidates in the United States, political parties account for half of all women recruited.19 Mexican women who have attained national political office have been far more involved in the party bureaucracy than men. Indeed, twice as many women as men, half of all female national politicians, held one or more posts in PRI. The career experiences of women in general are

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interrelated. Politicians who have legislative experience, and who are actively involved in unions are often active in party affairs. These findings are quite interesting in a comparative context. The most recent research on the recruitment of North American female politicians to cabinet and subcabinet posts suggests some striking similarities.20 Among these are the fact that growing numbers of women use interest groups and political action committees as vehicles for achieving visibility in Washington, in the same way Mexican women use labor unions and PRI-associated organizations to make national political contacts. American women also use civic organizations as a vehicle for entry into the political arena, a common pattern for Mexican women.21 Finally, those few women who reach cabinetlevel positions in the United States "have rarely been positioned to become part of a president's inner circle, either by personal friendship or by appointive position."22 It may take larger numbers of women in top executive-branch positions in both countries before the pattern of recruitment origins follows that of men. Moreover, successful women politicians in the United States tend to be generalists, similar to the Mexican male politician of the 1950s and 1960s. Mexican female politicians, comparatively speaking, have also been generalists, avoiding narrow bureaucratic careers until recently. These collaborative findings suggest that women politicians often establish different institutional channels to further their own ambitions, even if these channels are less successful than those of men. Like union careers, positions achieved within the party bureaucracy are not typically a successful ticket to the top of the political system for women. In fact, the importance of party posts, like that of union careers, has declined in recent years. This suggests that women have typically pursued career strategies that are on the decline or were never mainstream career paths to influential political posts. Although some men used these paths to rise to the top, they were generally the least successful of their male colleagues. Thus women who used these routes, in far larger numbers than men, were condemned almost automatically to less successful careers. The new female politician who reaches the cabinet or subcabinet has most of the characteristics of the contemporary male politician. This individual, similar to her male counterpart, comes from an urban center, typically the Federal District, has middle- or upper-middleclass family origins, has attended the National University, and has obtained a graduate degree abroad. President Salinas's controller, Maria Elena Vazquez Nava, typifies many of these characteristics. The daughter of a surgeon and teacher, she was raised in Mexico City,

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where she attended the National University and obtained two professional degrees, one in sociology and the other in economics from the president's school, the National School of Economics. She also studied finance at the International Monetary Fund in the United States, following a career in the secretariats of the treasury and planning and budgeting. THE INFLUENCE OF PLACE One of the issues that plagued Mexican political development in the nineteenth century, as elsewhere in Latin America, was regionalism. Regionalism is not only a conflictual policy issue in many societies, focusing on the distribution of power and the representation of leadership factions, but also a factor in political recruitment and the composition of leadership over time. It has been suggested that in the nineteenth century individual communities acquired Liberal and Conservative allegiances and reputations, which were sometimes the product of wars, revolutions, coups, and vendettas. 23 Some scholars would go so far as to argue that people's backgrounds, including their place of birth, predispose them to behave in certain ways, including how they might select their disciples. 24 It has been suggested that Gustavo Diaz Ordaz's lower social and provincial origins affected his sense of insecurity and accentuated his emphasis on order and power. 25 One of the issues that has intrigued students of political leaders universally is their urbanity. Elites generally, and political elites specifically, have come from urban areas in percentages disproportionate to the general population. The Mexican pattern is remarkable in that its leadership was more urban before the turn of the century than it was one hundred years later.26 As the data in Table 6.4 suggest, the percentage of Porfirio Diaz's collaborators born in small towns and cities is striking, considering that more than 90 percent of the population grew u p in tiny rural communities with fewer than 5,000 people. In absolute figures, urban birthplaces among politicians were most numerous in 1893, not to be matched until 1982 with the administration of Jose Lopez Portillo. In fact, Diaz's collaborators were much more urban in their backgrounds than those of any president through Salinas because the percentage of all Mexicans who were from urban backgrounds was so small, whereas the figures for urban Mexicans had grown substantially by the 1950 census. As Frangois-Xavier Guerra notes, 72 percent of Mexico's population as late as 1900 came from villages with fewer than 2,500 people. 27 The Mexican Revolution again determined a significant if brief

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TABLE 6.4. First-Time National Officeholders with Urban Origins by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991

Presidential Administration Diaz 188918931897190119051910De la Barra Madero Huerta Convention Carranza Obregon Calles

Politicians with Urban Birthplace (%) 58 61 77 67 77 68 68 50 62 61 37 45 50 53

Presidential Administration

Politicians with Urban Birthplace (%)

Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas

57 36 42 44 57 66 63 62 75 75 79 90 94

change in the geographic backgrounds of Mexican leadership. The number of politicians with urban birthplaces is lowest under the Convention government representing the major revolutionary generals, which existed briefly alongside Carranza's government (1914-1915), and under Pascual Ortiz Rubio's administration (1930-1932). The Convention government, of course, never represented the institutional forces or the politicians who pursued careers in the established bureaucracy. It better represented the leaders who fought against the Revolution, not the leaders who were victorious in the Revolution. Nevertheless, even Venustiano Carranza, in the leadership generation he brought to power, strongly reversed the trend begun by Diaz, a pattern sustained through the end of Lazaro Cardenas's administration, during which time half or fewer of Mexico's national politicians were from urban backgrounds. As in so many other changes occurring among Mexican political leaders, Miguel Aleman played a significant role, reemphasizing the importance of an urban background among his collaborators. The urbanity of his appointees was not based on presidential criteria that

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purposefully separated rural and urban colleagues but rather on other credentials that Aleman valued and that were related to urban birthplace. These two variables were associated with his desire to increase the number of civilians, like himself, in his administration and to appoint professionals, notably lawyers, to many such posts. By giving preference to civilians over military officers, Aleman halved the percentage of politicians who had been career military, automatically reducing the percentage of rural-born politicians. Military politicians more often had rural backgrounds than did their civilian contemporaries.28 Aleutian's choice of professionals like himself meant he valued higher education. Thus, in selecting many of his colleagues from the National University, teachers and students alike, he inadvertently increased the bias in urban backgrounds. Typical of collaborators representing this background is Fernando Casas Aleman, who, like Aleman, was born in Veracruz, but in the town of Cordoba. He graduated in 1926 and taught Miguel Aleman's generation at the National School of Law. He became an intimate friend of Aleman's, practicing law with him before both became politicians. He joined the president's cabinet as head of the Federal District. As the analysis below suggests, a strong relationship exists between place of birth and educational achievement. What is most disconcerting about the trends represented in Table 6.4 is that since 1982 few opportunities have existed for rural Mexicans to hold national office, even though they still accounted for more than half of the population in 1950. When only 6 percent of the leadership comes from the rural population, birthplace influences recruitment channels whether or not it affects policy. Urban birthplaces are one more variable that have considerably narrowed the pool from which Mexican politicians emerge. No single variable better represents the impact of geography on the origins of Mexican politicians than Mexico City. The rise of the capital city reaches a significant benchmark, compatible with urbanization generally, under Porfirio Diaz. Unlike his contemporary successors since the 1970s, Diaz himself came from the provinces, although a capital city. Nevertheless, Mexico City is disproportionately represented in the birthplaces of his appointees.29 Even though fewer than 5 percent of Mexicans were born in the capital prior to 1900, by the year of Diaz's last administration nearly one out of four of his collaborators was a native (see Table 6.5). Again, this figure remains unmatched by any of his successors until Luis Echeverria (1970-1976). However, it is also true that the same figure under Diaz is far more

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TABLE 6.5. Region of Birth of First-Time National Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 Region of Birth (%) Presidential Administration

Federal East District Central

West

North

South

Gulf

West Central Foreign

Diaz 188918931897190119051910De la Barra Madero Huerta Convention Carranza Obregon Calles Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas Total

15 7 12 13 22 14 23 6 13 16 5 4 6 3 0 8 0 6 10 11 3 9 8 24 26 39 45 16

13 10 24 11 5 9 6 22 13 10 11 17 14 15 21 8 15 20 20 15 18 19 11 15 12 13 6 14

15 19 6 11 5 11 0 28 20 16 19 16 19 18 14 12 0 15 15 12 20 16 23 14 13 11 11 15

15 16 15 16 24 29 35 28 18 24 32 26 19 20 29 28 46 13 16 20 16 17 15 13 13 11 15 15

12 19 15 4 8 11 0 6 6 8 5 10 13 13 0 4 17 13 10 9 12 10 7 9 8 8 2 9

18 19 9 31 22 17 24 0 20 12 5 13 21 12 29 12 0 13 11 16 17 11 15 12 13 6 13 14

11 10 18 13 11 9 6 11 9 16 22 12 8 18 7 28 8 20 25 15 17 15 12 13 12 10 4 13

1910 Census" 1950 Census"

5 12

22 18

16 14

11 15

14 13

12 12

21 17

1 0 0 0 3 0 6 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 3 1 4 1

"Percentage of general population from each region.

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meaningful than under Echeverria since the general population living in Mexico City rose dramatically too. What is equally striking about the data in Table 6.5 is the influence of the north in the birthplaces of Mexican politicians. The revolutionary events reinforced the north's dominance but did not introduce their dominance over Mexican political leadership. As suggested in the discussion of the Revolution in Chapter 3, contrary to common belief, it was Diaz, not the violent events of that decade, who introduced the importance of the north among Mexican politicians. It is extraordinary that one out of three politicians by the end of the Diaz administration came from the north, a figure higher than those of successive revolutionary administrations, with the exception of the small number of new politicians recruited under Abelardo Rodriguez (1932-1934). It was President Cardenas who changed geographical representation among Mexican politicians. Of all Mexico's presidents, he alone achieved a relatively close geographic approximation of the general population among his appointees. Certain geographic patterns have existed over long periods regardless of president. The east central region has generally never been well represented, and neither have the west central and southern regions. Two regions receiving their fair share over time have been the west, and the Gulf. Since the 1950s, the north has lost its overrepresentation, stabilizing at a figure relatively close to its share of the general population. The most important trend in representation of prominent politicians' birthplaces is the dominance of the capital. Although the capital has always been overrepresented, the figures were not substantial in the post-i920s, except under Avila Camacho and Aleman. It was Luis Echeverria and his generation who dramatically increased the percentage, by 200 percent, of national politicians who were born in the capital. That figure doubled again from 1970 to 1988, when nearly half of President Salinas's appointees came from Mexico City. This is extraordinary considering that in 1950 only 12 percent of Mexico's population were Mexico City natives. This pattern will likely increase given the fact that 50 percent of younger politicians in the federal bureaucracy, down to the director general level, now come from Mexico City. Birthplace also wields an influence over other credentials in the recruitment process, not the least of which is education. As Arthur Liebman, Kenneth Walker, and Myron Glazer argued, "One major determinant of whether a Latin American reaches the university is place of residence. Latin Americans who reside in rural zones are less likely to attend a university than their counterparts in the urban areas of the same country. In fact, urban youth are more likely to attend a

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school at any level." 30 This is true of Mexicans generally. By the sixth grade, five times as many Mexicans living in cities complete primary school as those living in rural areas. 31 Among Mexican elites, the relationship is equally pronounced. For example, among industrialists, three-quarters born in cities attended college whereas fewer than half who grew up in rural communities did so. 32 The data in Table 6.6 illustrate the percentage of new officeholders in each administration who obtained only a pre-university level of TABLE 6.6. Rural and Urban First-Time Officeholders without a College Education by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 Presidential Administration Diaz 188918931897190119051910De la Barra Madero Huerta Convention Carranza Obregon Calles Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas

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All (%)

Rural (%)

Urban (%)

42 29 35 25 9 13 20 20 19 13

>55 29 >50 >30 >Y7 10 >50 13 17 >33 >69 >46 >53 36 >66 18 >57 >50 >39 >35 >54 >40 >41 >25 >44 >28 0

31 31 32 25 9 15 10 33 20 4 33 42 37 57 40 50 25 20 24 18 18 21 20 11 17 8 0

44 43 57 40 32 42 31 32 25 32 27 25 14 23 13 0

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education. These figures demonstrate that only on six occasions have urban-born politicians received less education than rural-born politicians, all before 1932 (Rodriguez's administration). After the 1930s, urban-born politicians were twice as likely as their rural-born counterparts to go beyond the preparatory-school level. By 1982, only 8 percent of urban politicians failed to attend college. Urbanity itself is not the only variable involved in the impact of geography on education, formal and informal. Rafael Segovia, in his study of schoolchildren in the Federal District, identified another significant influence; the economic development of a state or region is reflected in children's qualitative and quantitative knowledge about politics. Children in the Federal District knew more about politics than children from any other region. Moreover, a greater possibility of participating in politics existed among more knowledgeable children.33 It can be argued that teenagers who enter politics at a younger age know about politics sooner. Thus, where a child's parents live may explain both their knowledge about politics and their ability to involve themselves sooner in institutions flavored by political activity. The formalized impact of being born in Mexico City on access to education is due to institutional centralization in Mexico. As suggested earlier, Mexico City is the site of a large number of the country's institutions of higher education.34 This pattern is equally true throughout Latin America.35 According to Charles Myers, the Federal District probably increased its dominance over resources and middle and higher education from 1920 through 1940, and most graduates settled in the Mexico City region.36 The impact of Mexico City among politicians can be demonstrated empirically with the data in Table 6.7. The north and west produced politicians with the lowest levels of university education since these regions offered few major institutions.37 The Federal District produced the greatest percentage of college graduates. Not only does proximity to education play a role in increasing the number of individuals who actually obtain a college education, but generally it will affect the type of education an individual chooses. Peter McDonough concluded in his study of Brazilian leaders that "the experience of growing up in the interior may limit their educational horizons, with the result that their choice of university specialization turns out to be traditional in comparison with the paths followed by their peers from Rio and Sao Paulo."38 McDonough found that Brazilians from the two major cities pursued economics and business administration degrees. The same is true for Mexican politicians. Federal District birthplaces are disproportionately represented among graduates in economics and other disciplines. Those politicians who were born abroad, gen-

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TABLE 6.7. College Degrees of First-Time Officeholders by Region of Birth, 1884-1991 Degree Field (%)

Region Federal District East central West North South Gulf West central Foreign Total

None 8 33 40 40 22 27 29 9 28

Law

Economics

Medicine

Engineering

Other

38 33 28 28 44 45 43 27 36

20 5 8 8 5 4 5 5 6

7 8 6 5 9 4 7 5 7

10 9 9 11 10 8 7 32 10

17 12 9 8 10 12 9 22 13

ally those of a higher socioeconomic status, also obtained degrees different from the norm—in other specializations and, interestingly, engineering. Geography also affects a third background variable deserving consideration: social class. One of the curious patterns in political recruitment is the interrelationship between urbanization and social background. Increasing urbanization favors middle and upper classes. As rural backgrounds decreased after 1940, so did lower socioeconomic circumstances. Politicians whose parents were peasants and laborers came from disproportionately rural backgrounds; thus, as fewer and fewer politicians came from rural areas, fewer and fewer were from such socioeconomic circumstances. From 1884 through 1934, 38 percent of rural-born politicians were working class compared with only 15 percent of urban-born politicians. Only a fourth of all politicians since 1884 came from working-class families. The increasing dominance of the capital as the birthplace of politicians only further accentuated this pattern. From 1884 to 1934, 91 percent of the politicians who came from that region were middle and upper class. The 9 percent from the Federal District w h o were working class ranked about one-third the normal representation. The only other region in which working-class politicians have been underrepresented over time is the Gulf. This explains why the Gulf has one of the highest percentages of college-educated politicians (Table 6.7).

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Interestingly, the west central region produced the largest proportion of working-class politicians, with more than a third coming from those social origins. SOCIOECONOMIC ORIGINS The influence of social origins on political and other leadership groups has been debated for many decades. Social origins affect, or potentially exercise influence over, leadership in three ways. In the first place, some social scientists have argued that an individual's social origin affects his or her values and attitudes and consequently that individual's policy decisions. Although Nelson Polsby suggested that social background was alone insufficient for predicting a politician's policy positions, most analysts believe social origin influences those positions.39 For example, Richard Centers discovered that a parent's occupation affected certain political-economic attitudes.40 James Cockcroft discovered that, among intellectual elites, dissidents from upper-class families had more moderate views than their middle-class counterparts.41 Most students of the officer corps believe social origins have a "special relevance for their behavior."42 Other scholars have argued that the behavior of leading entrepreneurs has also been critically affected by their social origins.43 Social origins also influence leadership composition. Leadership groups dominated by a single social origin, especially if it is middle class, tend to attract and absorb people from lower social classes. In other words, if working-class people in leadership positions lack a critical mass with which to identify, they tend to forget their origins and identify with the dominant social group. Mexican politicians themselves have described the impact of this phenomenon on their own lives.44 It takes on added importance if the incumbent leadership group selects the next generation of leaders. There is evidence in some societies, for example, of lower socioeconomic groups requiring more time to rise to the top of the political ladder.45 In Mexico, among some military groups, officers with lower socioeconomic origins tend to wash out of advanced educational programs essential to higher rank, thus reinforcing the control of middle-class officers over the military.46 Finally, the distribution of leadership groups across various socioeconomic divisions in society suggests not only elite representation in relation to the masses but, more important, elite influence in recruitment practices. The most careful analysis of elites in America and their influence on political leadership suggests that class is a critical variable in attaining elite status but not in moving on to more influ-

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ential posts. 47 The pool from which leaders are chosen can be constricted or expanded based on the representativeness of their social origins. For example, a situation in which the majority of individuals in a society have working-class origins but only one in ten from the working class can be found among political leaders suggests that political leaders have informally prescribed credentials. These credentials—in this case, class—provide them with the more formal criteria necessary to political success. The most important of these, of course, is education, both because it enhances technical skills and because it introduces the individual into an environment where actual recruitment into Mexican public life occurs. Scholars have demonstrated empirically not only that there is a relationship between income and type of school attended, but that socioeconomic and sociocultural variables function interactively on children's education and that Mexican schools tend to reinforce the social and cultural traits of particular social groups. 48 Even in socialistic societies, one's chances of recruitment into the higher echelons of the party and government leadership were markedly better if the individual came from a family with higher social status. 49 Mexican political leaders since the early 1880s have overwhelmingly come from the middle and upper classes (Table 6.8).50 The conclusiveness of this statement is tempered only somewhat by the fact that information about the occupation of an individual's parent is more readily available for nonmanual occupations. 51 In his examination of this phenomenon for leaders in the post-igoos era, Smith discovered a similar middle-class pattern, although his data were based on very few cases. 52 A larger sample, over a longer period, suggests important internal trends unrevealed by earlier studies. In the first place, Diaz initially gave much greater representation to individuals from working-class backgrounds, especially from his own generation. In the early administrations, one-fourth to one-fifth of his collaborators were from these backgrounds compared with 90 percent of the population. 53 By 1897, however, fewer than one in ten of Mexico's politicians came from the working class. What Smith's figures do not reveal is the sudden drop in middle- and upper-class backgrounds during the administration immediately prior to the Revolution. Revolutionary theory has made much of the issue of upward social mobility as a variable in political violence. 54 We have seen the implications of this theory on generational fluidity in political leadership, and the same rationale can be applied to social origins. It is often asserted that as Mexico's political leadership narrowed its own social base, it lost touch with ordinary Mexicans and, more important, eliminated most Mexicans from consideration for successful political

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TABLE 6.8. Socioeconomic Background of First-Time Officeholders by Presidential Administration, 1884-1991 Social Origins {%)

Presidential Administration

Middle and Upper Classes Combined

Upper Class Only

Diaz 1884188918931897190119051910De la Barra Madero Huerta Carranza Obregon Calles Portes Gil Ortiz Rubio Rodriguez Cardenas Avila Camacho Aleman Ruiz Cortines Lopez Mateos Diaz Ordaz Echeverria Lopez Portillo De la Madrid Salinas

77 82 82 90 95 90 67 70 93 69 64 96 70 71 75 86 53 65 68 59 58 65 80 76 85 85

29 39 41 53 36 65 17 40 33 19 15 3 15 14 13 29