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Mexican Regionalism Reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Paul W. Drake
Paul W. Drake*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Extract

Mexico's present political organization bears the imprint of regional fragmentation, which has strong pre-Revolutionary antecedents. Early Revolutionary governments reduced the weight of regional loyalties and divisions in the political equation without totally removing them. By attacking latifundia, caudillos, infrastructural deficiencies, and other underpinnings of regionalism, they advanced toward national integration. Nevertheless, the political pattern set by ancient conditions persisted in a new context. When President Miguel Alemán (1946-1952) institutionalized the Revolution, he also sanctioned a form of institutionalized regionalism. The ruling party (Partido Revolucionario Institutional or PRI) adapted the traditional mode of political participation to a new governing style. As a result, the regional recruitment of national leaders still depends more on the historical status of the states from which they come than on such modern criteria as the state's economic power or population size.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , July 1970 , pp. 401 - 415
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1970

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References

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14 Data availability narrowed the base of this sample to the regional distribution of 96 PRI leadership posts and forced 82 of these positions to be from the cabinet instead of the party bureaucracy. No weighting was employed because only the president and the minister of the interior could be firmly established as more important than two participants. As a result, the state origins of the holders of these two offices are indicated separately in the text for added emphasis, and the number of presidents from each locale is included in the chart. Since it is based on a vast array of reference works, the chart will have to stand without an itemized breakdown of the biographical sources. One especially helpful work, however, was Gabriel Agraz García de Alba, Ofrenda a México I (Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, 1958). The population and federal expenditure statistics are from Wilkie, The Mexican Revolution, pp. 246-251.

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23 In the presidential elections of 1970, one of the two main contenders, Luis Echeverría Alvarez—candidate of PRI and also supported by PPS—came from Mexico City, and the other—Efraín González Luna Morfin, candidate of PAN— was born in Guadalajara. Both have been active political figures in the national government in Mexico: Echeverría most recently as minister of the interior in the cabinet of Gustavo Diaz Ordaz and Gonzalez Morfin as deputy in Congress from the Federal District.