The Mexico City Middle Class, 1940-1970
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THE MEXICO CITY MIDDLE CLASS , 1940-1970: BETWEEN TRADITION , THE STATE , AND THE UNITED STATES A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History By Emilio Mario Coral García M.A. Washington, DC May 16, 2011 Copyright 2011 by Emilio Mario Coral García All Rights Reserved ii THE MEXICO CITY MIDDLE CLASS , 1940-1970: BETWEEN TRADITION , THE STATE , AND THE UNITED STATES Emilio Mario Coral García Dissertation Advisor: John Tutino, Ph.D. ABSTRACT Between 1940 and 1970, the Mexican state led by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) undertook an economic project of unprecedented urban and industrial expansion that required strong social support and legitimacy to succeed. Urban and industrial growth demanded high levels of political stability, middle-class support, cheap labor and raw materials. The PRI´s revolutionary legacy became a matter of rhetoric, and by means of corporatism the party sought to exert major control upon workers and peasants. Meanwhile, the PRI-led state offered the Mexican middle class leadership in the party by means of the National Confederation of Popular Organizations (CNOP), where the middle class found a corporatist haven. However, as the state courted the middle class, it was forced to hold contradictory visions seeking to satisfy the very paradoxical middle class. The middle class integrated a diversity of cultural, political and economic visions ranging from liberalism to conservatism. During the period, the middle class received important benefits from social policies on education, health, economy and labor, implemented in the context of the state´s urban and industrial expansion policies. Nonetheless, this only added to the paradoxical trends shaping the middle class. While seeking to consolidate a leadership position from iii different political and economic fronts, the middle class reflected some of the most evident contradictions of the Mexican state. The middle class often contested the very state that was laying the ground for its development. During the 1960s such contestation became more evident than ever, as middle-class voices ranged from radicals and social reformers to conservatives and tradition-defenders. The paradox between modernization from above and outside, and the struggle to preserve tradition from within and below, is illustrated by the relationship between the Mexican state and the middle class. The symbiosis between the middle class and the state prompted both to seek the conciliation of their places amid profound contradictions in the Mexican political and economic system. This dissertation argues that as middle-class members throve, they developed an agency and dynamic of their own that often challenged the very foundations of the political system and U.S-influenced modernization. iv I acknowledge the strong cultural and educational legacy received from my parents, Flaviano and Elena, who provided me with the bases for this accomplishment. I thank to all those who gave me their invaluable support as I engaged in this journey of knowledge and expansion. SGMKJ Emilio Mario Coral García v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ………………………………………………………………................1 The Mexican Middle Class………………………………………………………....3 Chapter I The Mexican Middle Class Development .................................................................11 Middle Class and Politics: The Limits of Social Reform…………….…..………...13 Middle Class Expansion between 1940 and 1970………………………..………...23 Chapter II Middle Class and Religion in Mexico: The Limits of Institutional Political and Religious Control ………….……….29 The State´s Political Discourse and Religion………………………………..…….30 The Christian Family Movement…………………………………………….…....38 Chapter III University Education: a Tool for Social Change, or Change for the Social Tools?.................................57 Middle Class and Intellectuals………………………………………………….....58 Creating the Educational Paradigm……………………………………………….63 Education as the Essential Tool for Social Development………………………...88 vi Chapter IV Shaping the Mexican Dream: The U.S. Influence ………………………………………..………………………..93 The Bases of Economic Influence and Consumerism…...……………………...…..94 The U.S. Cultural Crusade………………………………………………………...116 Chapter V Adapting the Mexican Dream ……….……………………………………….….140 Reactions to Increasing U.S. Influence…………………………………………....141 The Countercultural Reactions…………………………………………………....160 Chapter VI The Politics of Middle Class Populism …………………………………….…...170 The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the National Confederation of Popular Organizations (CNOP): Consolidating the Branch while Building the Foundations of the New Political Regime…………………………………………………………………...173 The Popular Party (PP): Sharing the Branch, while Seeking a New Identity…………………………...…..201 The National Action Party (PAN): A Different Branch Converging in the Foundations of the Regime?.......................221 vii Chapter VII The Contradictions of Middle Class Populism ………………………….…….235 Political System Contradictions: The Roots of Middle Class Challenges to the State………………………….…..236 Middle Class Contestation to the State…………………………………….……..245 The 1968-Tlatelolco Massacre……………………………………………...……254 The Impact of 1968-Tlatelolco in the Mexican Middle Class…………………...269 Conclusions …………………………………………………………………..…..285 Bibliography ............................................................................................................297 Primary Sources……………………………….………………………………….307 viii INTRODUCTION In a twentieth-century world shaped by demographic growth and explosive urbanization, industrialization and national political consolidations, and by accelerating globalization, middle classes have expanded to become increasingly important social constituencies and political participants. In Mexico, from being a relatively small group of artisans and professionals, the middle class expanded in unprecedented way. In fact, the 1910 revolutionary process meant a profound transition where new middle-class political and social leaders replaced old elites and lay the bases for structural change. Between 1940 and 1970, the Mexican middle class grew more than ever before amidst a state-led process of intense industrial and urban development. In the process, the diverse families that expanded to occupy the space between the powerful and the poor lived at the vortex of multiple paradoxes. In large part, their middle-class roles and lives were called into being by the growth of a national state, the authoritarian-populist regime of the PRI that promoted industrial development and secular ways while it proclaimed nationalist distance from the United States. Yet the United States became pivotal since the Mexican society evolved under its continuous cultural influence, and the state relied on U.S. capital to consolidate its economic model. Meanwhile, the Mexican middle class looked to the U.S. for models of “modern” consumption, while holding close to long-established, deeply Catholic, values in daily lives and family ways. And to layer paradox onto paradox: while the regime promoted the interests of entrepreneurs and the middle class to facilitate industrialization, it proclaimed a primary commitment to labor and workers’ welfare; 1 while the regime focused on unprecedented urbanization, facilitating elite and middle class lives, it insisted that it was the legitimate heir of an agrarian revolution and most devoted to peasant welfare. Amid all those linked paradoxes, after 1940 the middle classes became ever more pivotal as a base of regime power, courted in policy, programs, and propaganda while workers and peasants faced growing controls—covered by rhetorical praise. Yet the turn to the middle classes could not resolve the deepening paradoxes of regime policy. The boom years of the “Mexican Miracle” from 1940 into the 1960s were replaced by economic instability and profound social inequality. As economic and urban expansion deepened, the state´s economic model entered a profound crisis where fewer middle-class members received the system´s benefits. Then, reduced state support to middle class- oriented policies and social polarization became the trend. By the 1960s the middle classes themselves divided: many among their youth led the university protests that culminated in deadly repression at Tlatelolco in 1968; others resisted the regime from a more traditional and classical middle-class standpoint characterizing the National Action Party (PAN). That dual, seemingly paradoxical opposition revealed its underlying coherence as a middle class project in the aftermath of Tlatelolco. Then leaders and intellectuals of the PAN voiced sharp public opposition to the killings of students at Tlatelolco. This presaged further political developments of the late-20 th century political transition from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to the PAN-led regime. 2 The Mexican Middle Class Defining the middle-sectors of Mexican society is challenging by nature. An income- based definition is not enough to capture the complex variables behind the definition of social class. On the other hand an approach based on properties is not enough to differentiate between middle, upper and lower classes either. 1 A combination of variables such as occupation, educational level, purchasing power, patterns of consumption, diet, and income, altogether, are to be considered in order to create