CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

Oligarchs and Clans 147
effective, as noted, but the party had deeper sources of strength too. It was
heir to the nation’s nationalist-revolutionary tradition, commanding
important symbolic and ideological appeal. It faced few countervailing
forces: the revolutions that created the PRI also weakened the political
clout of the Catholic Church, landholding classes, and business. The
party’s presence in everyday life preempted the growth of an independent
civil society. One-party politics extended deep into the federal system; for
many years opposition wins in state and local elections were unusual, and
when the PRI lost the governorship of Baja California in 1989 it was big
news. It was thus able to channel visible benefits to many parts of the
country when doing so served party interests: in the run-up to an election
it was not unusual for poor villages to find that a long-awaited electrical
service was finally being installed – on poles painted in PRI colors.
Dissident and indigenous movements, by contrast, could and did find
themselves staring down the barrel of a gun.
1988: PRI outdoes itself
The 1988 presidential election, however, created a crisis (Levy and
Bruhn, 2001: 88–89, 97–98; Preston and Dillon, 2004). Economic troubles
and social fallout from liberalization left Carlos Salinas de Gortari,
the PRI candidate, vulnerable. Many citizens believed corruption –
particularly involving PEMEX – had become more rapacious, and there
were protests against vote fraud in states such as Oaxaca, Zacatecas, and
Durango (Morris, 1991). To make matters worse PRI elites had split over
the issue of the social consequences of economic liberalization:
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of a popular former President, and his
faction ran against Salinas as the Partido de la Revolución Democrática
(PRD). PRI pulled out all the stops to elect Salinas, arranging for votecounting
computers to break down, burning ballots, and forging ballot
totals (Levy and Bruhn, 2001: 89). Salinas thus took office under intense
suspicion and faced growing demands for reform.
The 1988 election was a strong indication that the PRI might be
vulnerable, a trend reinforced by events during the 1990s. International
investors became less tolerant of corruption, as did aid and lending
agencies – views that could not be ignored. United States officials
criticized Mexican political, human rights, and corruption abuses, after
having paid little attention to them in decades past. Most ominous, however,
were the continuing rise of the drug trade and the power of gangs
involved in production and shipping (Andreas, 1998;Toro,1998;Jordan,
1999: 84–88). Mexico is not Colombia, but as the last stop on many routes
to the American market it had become a strategic battleground. Drug