Politics Corporatists vs. Merchandisers Six Different Campaign Styles José Buendía* Nicolás Alvarado** f the possibility of really alternating in office The road to quality democracy presupposes is one of the last chapters of a transition to changes in the behavior of the main political and Ia full democracy, Mexico’s transition —which social actors. One of those actors, the Mexican seems as long as a Dickens novel printed in media have gone through profound transforma - installments— has come to a definitive moment, tions, as did the Spanish and the Chilean media a kind of dramatic climax. From a virtual single- before them. party model in which elections, if anything, served In the previous order of things, the Mexican as plebiscites, we have moved to a sys tem of par - communications media followed what we could ties that allows for real competition (albeit, as we call a “closed” model: radio, television and print shall see later, in profoundly ine qui table terms), media owners carried on a kind of permanent, in which not knowing who will win is an encour - barely disguised flirtation with those in power. aging sign of a desire for change. More than a form of totalitarian state control à la Goebbels, the relationship between the hege - monic party-government and the communica - * Journalist and doctoral candidate at the University of Madrid. tions media looked like one of mutual conve - ** Communicator, writer and editor of El Huevo magazine. nience, with an absolutely necessary system of E V A / a v a N o i v a t c O Vicente Fox’s media campaign, simple and catchy, contrasted sharply with Labastida’s more traditional image. 7 Voices of Mexico • 52 illicit perks given the extent of government’s candidate, Manuel Clouthier, and the much-de - involvement in media activities. Electronic bated victory of Cuauhtémoc Cár de nas at the media licenses were granted in a totally arbitrary polls, the opposition parties still had to carry out and discretionary fashion. The state had a their campaigns in the streets and not in the monopoly over the paper industry: those were media, which were still held in check by the the “good old days” of the government-owned proverbial intimidating phone calls from govern - Paper Producer and Importer Corporation ment officials to city room editors and muzzled by (Pipsa), when “[if] the government wanted to the possibility of being hit in their pocket books. support a newspaper or magazine, it stopped The transition process would receive new charging it for paper, and likewise, when it want - impetus in 1991 when the electoral reforms that ed to exert pressure, the editors were simply pre - culminated in the creation of the Federal Electoral Institute ( IFE ) gave the political parties E V A / a v greater access to the media, guaranteeing their a N o i relative impartiality, even in the context of v a t c O marked general inequality like the case of the 1994 federal elections. The subsequent 1996 electoral reform, a key moment for understand - ing political campaigns in Mexico, deepened the media’s progress toward impartiality, even though it left a legacy of a kind of “political infla - tion”: expensive campaigns and restricted access of the emerging parties to the media. Open pay - ments gradually began to substitute the old hid - den complicities as relations between the com - munications media and political parties became more and more subject to the logic of the mar - ket. Although electoral competition was still very unequal (the electoral system, after all, had Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas used traditional forms been designed by the political parties to their of political persuasion. specifications and went from being a monolith sented with their back invoices.” 1 All this, plus of one to a monolith of three in which the oppor - favors granted in cash or in kind to select pens tunities for founding new political forces is lim - and voices among journalists guaranteed a ited from the outset) and absurdly long electoral resigned and sometimes happy obsequiousness processes made for disproportionately large bud - by the media, who had no qualms about pub - gets that perverted competition and have led the lishing press bulletins word for word or about media to be guided more by the logic of the cash having their columns or editorials dictated to register than by proposals, the government no them from government offices. lon ger controls absolutely all financial resources This kind of thing could not go on ad infini - for political campaigns. Now it is the parties who tum , however. The country’s political opening, can pay, and they have shot to the top of the me - timidly begun with the 1977 electoral reform, dia’s client lists. 2 favored pluralism and with it, a gradual but palpa - In this new atmosphere, the print media and ble distancing between the media and the pow - the radio made outstanding efforts to better ers-that-be. While the effects of that opening reflect the diversity of the political scene and would begin to be seen in 1988 with the popu - create a more serious, less officialist journalism. larity of the National Action Party’s presidential The reason behind this may be that both these 8 Politics fields of journalism are very competitive (in appropriately polled, sampled, classified and Mexico City alone there are more than 25 news - listed for marketing.” 4 Mexico set out on that papers and 20 morning radio newscasts), plus road with very little tradition and experience of external factors (the radio earned credibility with real political competition, not to mention com - its public spirited efforts after the 1985 earth - munications strategies and techniques vis-à-vis quake, and the Pipsa monopoly finally came to voters. Most of our parties and candidates trust - an end) and the financial difficulties they both ed their electoral activities to what they pre - face (television accounts for about 90 percent of sumed was the strength of their leaderships or Mexico’s advertising expenditures). Television, their supposedly charismatic figures. The corpo - until very recently marked by the Televisa mo - ratist political education of Mexican politicians nopoly and its owner Emilio Azcárraga Milmo’s political preferences, has advanced more slowly E V A / a v on the road to openness, which is extremely seri - a N o i ous given its importance in political campaigns. v a t c However, despite the lack of certainty in O electronic media licensing and the use of gov - ernment advertizing as a control mechanism by the ancien régime to keep some media alive arti - ficially despite low circulation or ratings and prac tically no real market, today’s government- media relationship is different. It is less charac - terized by the distribution of perks and privileges and more by payment for publicity campaigns. Mexico’s political and commercial opening has been accompanied by a cultural opening, the fruit of the much maligned globalization. Information about electoral experiences in other countries, together with the decline of corpo - ratism, should translate into a general but steady The PRI built its campaign around mass rallies and solemn publicity. trend toward making the communications media the political campaign arena par excel - translated into a reluctance to mold leadership lence. Today, in Mexico like in the rest of the to marketing, something that has only changed world, “at least half the time of a head of state little by little. and of a party is used for ‘communication.’ In his That is the backdrop for the campaigns of court, the ‘image consultant’ replaces the tech - Mexico’s six presidential hopefuls: Manuel nician, the ideologue and the literati as the Camacho, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Vicente Fox, favorite for the simple reason that the prince Francisco Labastida, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo and needs him all the time....The strategy of power Gilberto Rincón Gallardo. Clearly, the candi - has gone from arguments to sound bites.” 3 dates made big efforts to veer their campaigns While publicists entered the field of political away from what in Mexico is known as “plaza propaganda in the United States in the late politics,” or activities characterized by enthusi - 1940s, Mexico had to wait until the 1990s. In astic and supposedly spontaneous support by 1994, Régis Debray was already talking about a masses of human beings organized in a corpo - world in which political campaigns were “ana - ratist way, to make them into media campaigns, lyzed like a purchase [of time and space] in directed at the citizen taken as an individual, per - which you speak to the citizen as a consumer, ceived as more urbane and educated, and clear - 9 Voices of Mexico • 52 ly more representative of the real electorate. publicity and billboards presented him as mod - However, the inertia of Mexico’s electoral cus - estly triumphant, but gave no content or mean - toms and usage is difficult to overcome. One ing to his face. In fact, they made no attempt to example should suffice. Better yet, why not six? familiarize the public with his campaign slogan. His radio presence was nil, and his appearances in the printed media sporadic. His television MANUEL CAMACHO spots, a cornerstone of his publicity campaign, THE RISKS OF PERSONALISM were slightly more fortunate, seeking to exploit his anti- PRI stance and present him as a better Party of the Democratic Center ( PCD ) candidate alternative for change than the leading opposi - Manuel Camacho’s campaign was one of the tion candidate, Vicente Fox. However, once again, the messages did not offer the viewer concrete E V A / a v reasons to back up this supposedly better alter - a N o i native.