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Congressional Campaigning in Mexico: A View From the Provinces*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Karl M. Schmitt
Karl M. Schmitt*
Affiliation:
Department of Government, The University of Texas
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Extract

On July 2, 1967, Mexican voters elected representatives to the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the national legislature. By law the Chamber is completely renewed every three years, and members cannot succeed themselves. Throughout the country, the elections took place smoothly and without serious disturbances. The State of Yucatán, remote and isolated from the major political and economic centers of the country, quietly participated following an election campaign that was reserved and orderly.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Inter-American Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , January 1969 , pp. 93 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1969

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Footnotes

*

The research for this article was carried out under a grant from the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas. The author wishes to express his thanks both to the Institute and to Dr. John P. Harrison, who was at that time its Director.

References

1 The only reported trouble was in the town of Seye in the Second Congressional District, where the candidate and his party were greeted with hostility by the local people when he came to hold a rally. This opposition stemmed from a dispute of the previous year over agrarian credits extended to the campesinos by the national government. The candidate of the second district, a high-ranking state official at the time of the dispute, ordered the dispersal of the campesinos when they marched into Mérida.

2 Scott, Robert E., Mexican Government in Transition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1959), pp. 197-98.Google Scholar

3 Scott, op. cit., pp. 227-28.

4 Padgett, L. Vincent, The Mexican Political System (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966), pp. 85-6.Google Scholar

5 Charles O. Jones, “The Role of the Campaign in Congressional Politics,” in M. Kent Jennings and L. Harmon Ziegler (eds.), The Electoral Process (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966), pp. 23 and 26.

6 Gore, William J. and Peabody, Robert L., “The Functions of the Political Campaign: A Case Study,” The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. XI, No. 1, (March, 1958), p. 55.Google Scholar

7 Scott, Mexican Government in Transition, p. 173.

8 For the use of the terms “style” issues and “position” issues, see Lewis A. Froman, Jr., “A Realistic Approach to Campaign Strategies and Tactics,” in M. Kent Jennings and L. Harmon Ziegler, op. cit., p. 8.

9 Gore and Peabody, op. cit., pp. 56-58.

10 The alternate for the first district (Mérida) was a nephew of the current PAN deputy from Mérida.

11 There are only two newspapers of any substantial circulation in the whole peninsula, including the state of Campeche and the territory of Quintana Roo. Both of these (Novedades de Yucatán and Diario de Yucatán) are published in Mérida. A third newspaper of some importance, the Diario del Sureste, with a circulation of about one-sixth of the other two, is the official organ of the state government. Novedades reported a little pre-election campaign news and had a substantial amount of party advertising; Diario de Yucatán carried a few pre-election editorials, but virtually no advertising; and the Diario del Sureste concentrated on PRI announcements. As a result this survey of the use of newspapers is confined almost exclusively to Novedades.

12 I personally heard reports of these problems at PAN headquarters Sunday afternoon when party poll watchers came to report their difficulties.

13 There were 152 polling booths in the first district, of which 129 were in the city of Mérida proper; 271 in the second district, and 270 in the third district, according to Novedades de Yucantán July 2, 1967, p. 1.

14 On the first returns from 144 boxes Hadad was credited with 12,674 votes, See Novedades de Yucatán July 3, 1967, p. 1. No explanations were made about the downward revisions, and as far as is known the party did not seriously question the count.

15 See Padgett, The Mexican Political System, p. 78.

16 See Novedades de Yucatán, July 3, 1967, p. 1; July 5, 1967, p. 2; and July 10,1967, p. 2.

17 Diario de Yucatán, August 31, p. 1.

18 Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1965), pp. 310-12.Google Scholar