In a paper I am currently writing for a course in Mexican history, I am trying to argue that the saecular pattern is active in Mexico. Specifically I'm arguing that the Mexican Revolution was a Crisis era that lasted from 1910 to 1938. Given the very Awakening-like upheaval that took place in the 60's and 70's in Mexico, it's pretty clear that the saeculum is running in Mexico. it then becomes a question of trying to define eras and generations. I haven't even really begun to try to define generations, but I have made an effort to tentatively identify eras. And even then I don't have enough info yet to label them.

Unraveling 1876(?)-1910
Mexican Revolution Crisis 1910-1938
Mexican Miracle/Renaissance 1938-1965
Awakening 1965-1986
Unraveling 1986-present

The first eras seem a bit long, but could this be the lingering inertia of tradition? The shortening of more recent eras could be a sign of saecular synching due to increasing globalization and the simple fact that Mexico's history is becoming more intertwined with that of the US. Obviously there's still a lot of research left to do. I would welcome and appreciate any comments, thoughts, and input.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: dbookwoym on 2001-12-01 23:27 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: dbookwoym on 2001-12-08 17:27 ]</font>

Mexico and indeed Latin Americia as a whole has been in a 4T for the last decade, The PRI regime in Mexico has been overthrown and a new political order is being built south of the border. The recent events in Mexico rivral the Mexican revoultion of 90 years ago.

Was there something special about the Mexican Miracle/Renaissance, or was it just another High?

On 2001-12-08 01:47, Tristan Jones wrote:
Mexico and indeed Latin Americia as a whole has been in a 4T for the last decade, The PRI regime in Mexico has been overthrown and a new political order is being built south of the border. The recent events in Mexico rivral the Mexican revoultion of 90 years ago.

I'm not so sure about that. I can't comment on the rest of Latin America, but events in Mexico have much more of a 3T feel to me. Yes, the breaking of the PRI's hold on electoral politics and the turmoil in Chiapas are both dramatic developments, but I see them as 3T warning rumblings. The PRI's loss strikes me as a 3T dealignment, not the affirming of a new order. The unrest in Chiapas has not been marked by secession or a similar political break. And as far as a comparison to the Mexican Revolution, until armies start tramping across Mexico or until there is a total economic meltdown (not just a monetary crisis), such a comparison is unwarranted.

On 2001-12-08 12:02, Tim Walker wrote:
Was there something special about the Mexican Miracle/Renaissance, or was it just another High?

To the best of my knowledge, it was just another High. It is commonly referred to the Mexican Miracle in the same way people speak of the postwar 'Japanese miracle.' However, I have also seen the term 'renaissance' used, and as I said, I'm still searching for concensus names for eras.

I'm not the only one to compare Osama Bin Laden to Pancho Villa.

Mexico was like a dress rehearsal for Afghanistan.

As I understand it, Pancho Villa was accorded the status of a revolutionary hero.

(~*~)

I agree that Mexico is definitely in a 3T situation not a Crisis. The PRIs political crisis began in 1968 at Tlatelolco and has thus unraveled since the end of that period. I like how you put 1986 as the marker of the beginning of the Unravelling with the devastating earthquake of that year.

The PRI collapse has not resulted in a revolutionary transformation of Mexican society and politics.

The breakdown is about right I think.

Porfiriato Unraveling 1876(?)-1910
Mexican Revolution Crisis 1910-1938
Mexican Miracle/Renaissance 1938-1965
Awakening 1965-1986
Unraveling 1986-present

Tristan suggested that I come post my own research on this topic.

I refer several times to Enrique Krauze who wrote the excellent "Mexico: Biography of Power - A History of Modern Mexico." Krauze himself refers to eras and generations, especially in this century.

I've also included comments that Mike Alexander made after reading through what I had so far.

Lis: Late 1790s - 1821 Liberal Era (from the first stirrings of dissent to the declaration of independence from Spain, this reads like a Crisis)

Mike: Upwave (social moment)


Lis: 1822 - 1847 Conservative Era. This is the antithesis of what we think of as a High. It started off as an Order and Building Era, but was badly managed. Krauze describes it as a time of permanent disruption and poverty, when the country endured fifty regimes (several of them Santa Anna's), territory losses (Texas, the Yucatan, California), and invasion. It seems to me that what they missed was a period of Nomad generation governance. They apparently went straight from the Prophet visionaries of their Independence from Spain to election of their youthful Hero, Santa Anna, who was only 39 when he took power in 1833 and subsequently shredded the Constitution of 1824.

Mike: Downwave (non-social moment)


Lis: 1854 - 1875 Liberal Era (probably an Awakening Era) when the young Juaristas tossed out the ridiculous Santa Anna for the last time, wrote a new liberal Constitution of 1857, and came the closest Mexico ever has to true democracy with their "Restored Republic."

Mike: Upwave (social moment)


Lis: 1876-1895 Conservative Era dominated by the imperial personality and pan or palo (bread or the club) policies of Don Porfirio Diaz.

Mike: Downwave (non-social moment)


Lis: 1896 - 1919 Liberal Era (almost has to be a Crisis Era), begins with dissatisfaction with Diaz, radical regeneration, anarchy, and finally revolution.

Mike: Upwave (social moment)


Lis: 1920 - 1940 Conservative Era (the consolidation of the 1910 Revolution) According to Krauze, this was an era in which "the country had reestablished order, centered around a political system controlled by a 'Revolutionary Family' rather than a single person." The ruling PRI party was established in this period.

Mike: Downwave ran from 1920 to 1946/50. It sould be a non-social moment. But the conservative era/non-social moment ended early. This shows the impact of the US saeculum as it aligns the worlds saecula to its own.


Lis: 1941 - 1963/68 Liberal Era (most likely an Awakening Era) characterized by land and education reforms, women's rights, and toward the end, labor and leftist student unrest at odds with an institutionalized government.

Mike: Here we see the US saeculum now entraining the Mexican one except the senses are reversed, a US social moment is a Mexican non-social moment and vise-versa
1941 - 1963 or 68 --> 1946-1964


Lis: 1964 or 69 - 1981 Conservative Era (the stark left vs. right divisions in Mexican society indicate a Chaos Era. I'm not sure that the massacre in the Zocalo during the 1968 Olympics could have been so easily covered up during an Awakening) though Krauze calls 1968 "both the highest point of authoritarian power and the real beginning of its collapse."

Mike: 1963/68 - 1981 --> 1964-1982


Lis: 1982 - 2000 Crisis Era, catalyzed by the devaluation of the peso, the 1985 earthquake (during which the civil population, according to Krauze, especially young people and women, showed courageous strength and resolution. Virtually all of the supplies, services, and emergency communication was organized by students.), the 1986 election in Chihuahua of National Action Party (PAN) candidate, the EZLN uprising in Chiapas and the Yucatan, and the economic collapse in 1995. It ends in 2000 with the overthrow of the PRI and the election of PAN's candidate, Vicente Fox.

Mike: 1982-2000 --> 1982-2001.

Mike: Mexico appears to follow the pre-1700 model until WW II. (Here I am using the European K-cycle)

Steve Ryan posted:

"...I always heard Victorian associated with reactionary, and now I know why. One thing I will toss out, when I went through Mexican history a while ago, I encountered a similar reactionary, suffocating Unraveling. So, this must be a sub-category of Unraveling.

"...I believe with most countries, during an Awakening, the country throws up a reactionary leader. This is in response to the people's (or ruling class's) fear that the Awakening will over-throw the entire social order. In the 60s America had Nixon, and in the 70s Britain had Thatcher. In some cases, though this reactionary leader is actually able to get a strangle-hold on the culture, and freeze it. Porfirio Diaz froze Mexico, and the outside world thought that Mexico was some sort of model for the rest of Latin America. The whole thing finally ended in a revolutionary Crisis that tore everything apart. I guess that the Brits were too civilized for a revolution."

From print-out derived from paleo 4T web site, Western Europe thread, Nov. 3 '97 post.

If I was to make a judgement on the very little I know about Mexican politics and popular culture at the moment. I would say Mexico was currently in a Unravelling. However I could be convinced otherwise by people who know more about Mexican history, society and politics fairly well.

John Xenakis has commented that Mexico is about due for a Crisis.

Quoting The Next American Nation by Michael Lind:

"...Successive liberal and socialist revolutions in Mexico have scarcely altered the underlying mentality inherited from the days of Spanish colonial rule..."

Lind refers to a nation's underlying mentality as that culture's grammar. Further quoting...

"The real continuity of a national culture ...must be sought in its 'grammar,'... the national grammar changes, but...slowly-over centuries, rather than decades or generations. The ultimate source of the grammar in most countries is found in centuries-old premodern political and religious mentalities that are passed down from parents to children, outside of the official lines of transmission like public schools and the quasi-official mass media. Mere political revolutions, even radical social revolutions, often leave the underlying national grammar relatively unchanged.

"Every national grammar contains within it an understanding of how revolutions are made. In Mexico, you put on a bandana and issue an ephemeral manifesto named after a particular town (the Plan de Whatever)."

Lind comments that revolutinary ideologies tend to end up imitating what they have displaced. "...a hortatory, neo-Baroque public art in revolutionary Mexico, whith nationalist murals painted on the walls of colonial churches."

Originally Posted by Tim Walker

John Xenakis has commented that Mexico is about due for a Crisis.

Quoting The Next American Nation by Michael Lind:


. . . "Every national grammar contains within it an understanding of how revolutions are made. In Mexico, you put on a bandana and issue an ephemeral manifesto named after a particular town (the Plan de Whatever)."

Lind comments that revolutinary ideologies tend to end up imitating what they have displaced. "...a hortatory, neo-Baroque public art in revolutionary Mexico, with nationalist murals painted on the walls of colonial churches."

I can't find my copy of Lind's book. What again was the "grammar" he observed for the American nation? I think it was something about a 17th century minister and instead of murals we had cannons. I really liked that analysis.

Originally Posted by Sabinus Invictus

IRT Prof. Quigley's Theory concerning the evolution of civilizations, in which a civilization (meaning a producing society possessing an instrument of expansion) goes through seven stages during the course of it's lifetime (though it can repeat certain stages), the question of where Latin America's own distinct civilization might be on that 'life cycle' might be of interest, especially IRT Western Civilization.

To recapitulate, the stages are as follows:

1. Mixture - a new civilization comes about through the mixture together of various component parts.

2. Gestation - the new civilization develops it's 'intrument of expansion', in an environment of apparent social stagnation.

3. Expansion - the following things begin to occur at a noticeable rate: increased production of goods, increase in population, increase in geographic extent, and increase of knowledge. This continues until the 'instrument of expansion' becomes a self-serving social institution controlled by powerful vested interests, at which point the civilization enters an...

4. Age of Conflict - which is characterized by a noticeable decrease in the rate of expansion, increased class conflict, more wars of conquest, and a rise in irrationalism. This can lead either back to another expansion, or else usually (but not always) to a...

5. Universal Empire - one state within the civilization (usually peripheral to the civilization) defeats all the others, and unites the civilization under it's rule, leading to an apparent 'golden age' of peace and relative prosperity. This 'golden age' is actually the glow of overripeness, and thus won't last much longer than a single lifetime, before the onset of...

6. Decay - a period of declining quality of life, increasing disorder, and growing delegitimation of the civilization, which leads to a growing reluctance to fight for the society, or even to support it by paying taxes. This downward spiral leads inevitably to...

7. Invasion - once the civilization is so unwilling to defend itself that it has become unable to do so, it is invaded by an outside society, and destroyed. Often, the invader is a younger and thus more powerful civilization.

Of the above, Stage 5 seems to be the least inevitable, as it is at least possible for a civilization to move from Stage 4 straight to Stage 6, as I now believe Western Civilization is doing.

Back to the question at hand (Which stage is Latin America in?), I personally believe that Latin America is a late Stage 2 Civilization. To move on to Stage 3, Latin America, like the Western World of 1100 years ago, must successfully carry out three tasks first.

1. Fashion a distinctive civilization from the components provided (In this case, Western, Native American, and African). This I believe has been successfully completed.

2. Repel or absorb outside invasion. (In this case, by the most powerful peripheral state of the Western World - the US. As the West is, IMO, an early Stage 6 civilization, my gut here leans more towards absorption.)

3. The accumulation of surplus wealth, and it's investment in new and improved ways of doing things, must reach the point of setting the 'Instrument of Expansion' into motion.

IMO, Task Two has proven to be such a monumental task that it is delaying the achievement of Task Three. How long that will remain the case will depend on the course of the coming 4T, though a Stage 2 Civilization could be expected to have much more staying power than a Stage 6 one, and thus a greater likelihood of eventually winning any such competition.

Again, depending on the course of the coming 4T, a Latin America by then (mid to late 21st cent.?) in early Stage 3 may have to see off a Chinese invasion. As China II, I believe, will also be in Stage 3 (though by then further along in Stage 3 - they're in early Stage 3 now), victory should go to the 'home court advantage'.

Where does Mexico fit into all of this? Personally, I could see Mexico becoming the dominant core state of Latin America, as the successful completion of 'Task Two' would, IMO, inevitably propel said country into that role.

@

@

The United States of America Polarization, Fracturing, and Our Future by Juan Enriquez

6. DEMOCRACY + OPEN BORDERS = FOUR MEXICOS?

The author discusses regionalism in Mexico. Their are four culturally prominent regions listed:

1. North, "NAFTA country."

2. Central Mexico, capital and heartland.

3. Indigenous Mexico

4. The New Maya

Regions 1, 3, and 4 are at odds with 2, the politcally dominant region.

On the map it stretches from Baja California to Texas. Quoting Juan Enriquez:

"A transition state between the U.S. and Mexico.

"A realm where pesos and dollars are interchangeable,

"Foreign focused, competitive, powered by agriculture and manufacturing.

"A different planet, one with different values and aspirations than southern Mexico."

Originally Posted by Tim Walker

@

Having crunched the projected numbers for as early as 2025, I see no reason why, if that is the plan, and they can pull it off, a Mexican Reconquista should stop at the old 1824 border, or at any point short of the Mississippi ( Nuevo Orleans? San Luis del Norte? Minneapolis/San Pablo? A shoreline on Lago Superior?).

However, the same set of numbers I was crunching from did indicate that any serious attempt to cross the Mississippi and swallow the rest of the US whole before, say, 2100, would be biting off more than they could chew, even in a (for Mexico) best case scenario.

Further quoting Enriquez:

"Central Mexico, capital and heartland.

"Home of the not-always-admired Chilango.

"(Mexico's equivalent of a New Yorker.)"

"A region used to centralizing, and ruling.

"A region which continues to govern as if it were the old Aztec empire, extracting tribute and expecting its wishes and demands to be catered to..."

Stretches inland from the southern Pacific coast, down near Central America.

Further quoting Juan Enriquez:

"Then Mexico narrows, mountains crash into each other, forming many isolated pockets. Just within the knot of the Isthmus, where Mexioc is narrowist, over twelve different groups, including Zapotecas, Popolucas, Nahuas, Huaves, Zoques, Mixes, Chontales, Tzotziles, Chinantecos, Maztecos, and Cholos, live in extreme poverty. In 1997, about 40% lived without electricity and 65% without piped water, 81% lacked drainage.

"Indigenous Mexico, beautiful, culturally rich, economically destitute.

"Brutal contrasts with an area that produces great wealth.

"(Start with much of Mexico's oil and 80% of its petrochemicals.)

"A Divided, angry, proud people.

"People used to violence."

Originally Posted by Tim Walker

Stretches inland from the southern Pacific coast, down near Central America.

Wow. That's almost as deep a post as Mr. Gs.

Further quoting Juan Enriquez:

"The New Maya

"Once one of the poorest regions in Mexico.

"It modernized at a record pace.

"Yet despite massive immigration

"The Yucatan remains distinctly Mayan

"The Maya have rarely agreed with the tast and views

"Of Central Mexico's Aztec-Nahua.

"They have a history of rebelling early and often.

"In 1842, General Santa Anna declared Mexico at war
against Yucatan for seceding and aiding rebel Texans.

"Today the Yucatan is a melange of oil-rich Campeche,

"White, colonial cities like Merida,
"Desperately poor jungle Mayans,
"and nouveau riche Cancuns."

Further quoting Juan Enriquez:

"While northern and sourthern Mexico often disagree on many things, both tend to agree that Mexico City holds way too much power. Each region sees itself as the the center of its universe, not as an appendage to the capital.

"Much of the territory-cultures of Mexico have been around over a couple of millenia...

"The 'modern' United Mexican States have existed as such only since 1810.

"Mexico was a Spanish colony for longer than it has been a country. Mexico's strong culture and history have kept it partly together for a hundred and ninety-odd years, despite a series of crises and, at times, extreme governmental incompetence.

"Although many would argue the country only really came together in the bloodbath of the 1910 revolution.

"(And some superstitious folk say that given 1810 and 1910, some interesting things could happen circa 2010).

"Existing conflicts are not yet, in and of themselves, enough to drive Mexico apart.

"But they are symptomatic of increasing cleavages and polarization.

"Northern political campaigns constantly reinforce the stereotype of a hardworking North, a meddling center, and a subsidized and dangerous South."

Further quoting Juan Enriquez:

"...the region that generates the most centrifugal tensions. Mexico City. Everything, including the flag, centers around Mexico City and its needs. The central symbol of Mexico's flag...a small island on a lake...a cactus...an eagle devouring a snake...

"...Is a myth designed to unify the whole of the country around a now defunct lake."

Enriquez wrote of Mexico City being flooded. Then Mexico's money was used to drain the lake.

"A 'clever' decision that left Mexico City the world's only large metropolis far from any major body of water.

"Then the capital began extracting a growing water tribute from all its neighbors.

"Massive aqueducts took water from surrounding states in an attempt to soothe the capital's growing thirst.

"Much of Mexico feels it has been feeding the capital and its voracious governments for centuries.

"Indigenous groups, conservatives, and regional secessionists continue to nurture a shared enmity of Mexico City.

"An enmity and resentment that is centuries old. Otherwise it is hard to imagine how 1,519 Spanish conquerors could have taken control over Tenochtitlan...

"The Spanish were aided by indigenous groups like the Tlaxcaltecas, who were sick of Aztec oppression and having to pay tribute to the capital.

"Regional discontent with Mexico City and its centralized government also contributed to the loss of half the territory in the mid-1800s.

"In 1825, even traditional enemies like the Yaqui Indians, the Californios, and the New Mexicans created an uneasy alliance between local caudillos and indigenous tribes against the capital. Something akin then occurred in parts of Texas (1835-1836)."

Further quoting Juan Enriquez:

"Because much of Mexico's government and business headquarters are centralized within the capital, and live off of the periphery, this is likely the one region with the most to lose from a breakup. And thus it is the region most likely to fight tooth and nail for one country, one border."