Leticia Neria PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

undermining the image of a dictatorship or authoritarianism, 39 and other parties were
allowed to take part. These other parties did not receive a significant number of votes
and did not pose a real threat to the PRI; they were used as a means of claiming the
existence of democracy. 40 When they achieved an electoral victory, the PRI did not
recognise it, and if people insisted on defending the candidate, the army took control of
the cities and persecuted the leaders of the opposition. 41 Opposition candidates often
showed support and sympathy for the official candidate, or they opposed the candidate
‘as a means of bargaining with the government for patronage positions, loans, contracts,
and other favors’. 42
The PRI had also co-opted the unions and bureaucrats, organised campaigns of
fear among the population, and repressed those who called for political change or were
gaining popularity and sympathy, 43 for example, the rail workers movement in 1958 and
the student movement in 1968. It was not until 1977, after having survived state-
sponsored ostracism and repression, that the Partido Comunista Mexicano (PCM) 44
gained enough strength to force the state to institute reform in which the party could
legally participate in elections. 45 But this was not enough to consider that Mexico had
democratised. This state of affairs helps us understand why in the comic Los
Agachados, some of the characters discuss the absence of democracy, or why the
citizens of San Garabato had been ruled by the same man, Mayor Don Perpetuo del
39
Favela, Protesta y reforma en México…, p. 56.
40
Aziz Nassif, ‘La construcción de la democracia…’, pp. 372-373.
41
Ibid., p. 375.
42
Judith Adler Hellman, ‘Social control and the Mexican political system’, in Twentieth-century Mexico,
ed. by W.Dirk Raat and William H. Beezley (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press,1986),
pp. 243-256 (p. 248)
43
Ibid., p. 247.
44
PCM had been working underground since 1940, but in 1973 a new electoral law allowed them to
participate in official elections. Miguel Basañez, El pulso de los sexenios. 20 años de crisis en México,
4th ed. (Mexico: siglo veintiuno editores, 1999), p. 41.
45
Adler, ‘Social control...’, p. 247.
49