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The Reinvention of Mexico

National Ideology in a Neoliberal Era
Gavin O'Toole
Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5949/UPO9781846316296
Online ISBN: 9781846316296
Hardback ISBN: 9781846314858

Chapter
Introduction: Salinas, the Unmentionable One pp. 3-22
Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5949/UPO9781846316296.002

Introduction
Salinas, the Unmentionable One

Reform was an ideology and conviction during my period in government

Carlos Salinas de Gortari

In Mexicos fiercely contested elections of July 2006, two battle-scarred ideas

confronted each other: nationalism and neoliberalism. In the nationalist camp
stood Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador, the candidate of the Partido de la
Revolucin Democrtica (PRD); in the economically liberal camp, Felipe
Caldern of the ruling Partido Accin Nacional (PAN), the continuity candidate. Caldern won by a whisker 35.89 per cent to 35.31 per cent
provoking an infuriated Lpez Obrador, the challenger riding the wave of
left-wing sentiment that has swept across Latin America since 2000, to
denounce the electoral outcome as fraudulent.
Yet, despite their differences, both men had much in common, for both
were champions of political traditions that have been locked in a fateful, and
perhaps even perpetual, struggle for supremacy that has been at the heart of
Mexican development since the nineteenth century yet has always been cut
in contemporaneous cloth. By a dramatic irony, the struggle between
Caldern and Lpez Obrador revived the atmosphere of an ideological
confrontation during elections in 1988 that had a remarkably similar
outcome. On that occasion, a forceful neoliberal technocrat, Carlos Salinas
de Gortari, had become president after the most closely fought elections in
Mexicos post-revolutionary history, the results of which favoured the then
ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) but were denounced as
fraudulent by the left-wing coalition draped in the colours of Mexican nationalism that was challenging it.
Salinas is a key figure in contemporary Mexican history because Caldern
and his party today are natural heirs to the radical economic liberalism articulated in the early 1990s by the PRI president, whose government overturned
nearly a century of rule in Mexico according to the precepts of a statist
ideology premised on revolutionary nationalism. The populistic and charismatic Lpez Obrador, in turn, is the natural heir to this latter doctrine,
originally associated with the PRI and endlessly restated by the party as the

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the reinvention of mexico

mantra of the bloated bureaucratic regime that would be thrown into disarray
by the reformists of the 1990s. Accordingly, Lpez Obrador pledges a return
to the redistributive and protectionist hearth of Mexican nationalism, and so
strident has been his antipathy to what Salinas stood for that he refuses to
name him, resorting instead to describing him as the Unmentionable One.1
Indeed, a key influence in the PRD candidates political formation was the
example of the former president Lzaro Crdenas (19341940) who, as
George W. Grayson (2007) points out, had been the first to invest real
meaning in the concept of revolutionary nationalism.2
Mexico under Salinas offers a rare and perhaps unique opportunity to
study one of the ruptures in twentieth-century political thought that came to
define an era and left a lasting imprint on debates throughout and beyond
Latin America, which, as the countrys most recent elections confirmed,
remain unresolved to this day.
From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s the conflict between an ageing
nationalism and a youthful and confident neoliberalism permeated the
writing and rhetoric of Mexican politicians, academics and newspaper
commentators. The prominence of the national idea in debates in this unique
period of transformation was the product of the dramatic economic and political reforms based on market principles and free trade pioneered by Salinas
that had been unfolding across the country since 1985. These reforms thrust
Mexico towards one of those key junctures of modernity periodically experienced by all societies, in which the dominant political ideas that had
coexisted in an uneasy developmental synthesis since Mexicos modern state
was forged from the revolutionary conflagration of 19101917 were finally
unleashed to do battle with each other in an ideological clash without precedent. As president from 1988 to 1994, Salinas undertook to substitute a statist
political economy wholly constructed upon revolutionary nationalism hitherto the dominant, official political doctrine in Mexico with one informed
by neoliberal ideas largely imported from the United States. To do so, and
with all the artifice of an inventor, he undertook a comprehensive and sophisticated programme to reconstruct Mexican nationalist ideas by articulating,
from a position of great symbolic power, a new nationalism that could be
reconciled with the liberal economic vision of his slick technocratic regime.
In short, Salinas endeavoured to reinvent Mexico in his own, liberal image.
The fact that more than a decade later, in 2006, Mexican political affiliations
were almost evenly divided between nationalist and neoliberal visions that
can be traced seamlessly to the Salinas era only serves to underline the degree
to which his monumental ambition succeeded and yet failed.
The case of Mexico during the 1990s has important implications for the
study of nationalism: it reveals that the construction of the national idea is
intimately related to the projects of political elites and how these are
contested; that this process of construction is given its most coherent form
and, most importantly, one that can be assessed, in the arena of political
discourse, regardless of other, everyday symbolic manifestations of the

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introduction: salinas, the unmentionable one

national idea; and that nationalism cannot be explored outside its uncomfortable, yet inevitable, relationship with liberalism. This book addresses
these three key themes and makes a case for an interpretive approach to the
study of nationalism as a discourse articulated against the broader background of liberalism.
The Discursive Approach to Nationalism
The study of nationalism has been riven by basic disagreements over definitions, terminology and the most appropriate theoretical approach scholars
should employ. This lack of consensus has extended to what constitutes the
nation and to the complex of ideas that support or advance this type of
community.3 These disagreements pose a significant obstacle to the definition of nationalism itself, rival approaches to which have taken their cues from
the various ways in which the nation is understood.4 The fact that the nation
is understood as both a political and a cultural unit gives rise to the argument
that there are, in fact, distinct forms of nationalism, each informed by these
different conceptions.5 The large variety of phenomena associated with
nationalism adds to these difficulties.6 Consequently, most scholars of nationalism have devoted considerable effort to seeking an acceptable definition of
the term.7 It has commonly been referred to as a political doctrine, ideology
or theory but has been used in other senses to refer to sentiments, consciousness, attitudes, aspirations, loyalties, programmes and the activities of
organizations and movements.8 There has also been widespread disagreement over the characteristics of nationalism as a system of ideas, although it
is most often considered to be a theory of legitimacy and, as such, associated
with the development of the state, state-building.9 This level of discord helps
to explain why nationalism stands in an ambivalent relationship with other
ideologies, belonging neither to the political left nor the right.10
Until the 1990s, the principal analytical schism that existed in the field
concerned the relationship of nationhood and nationalism with modernity,
the new era in social development generally held to have been inaugurated
by the Reformation, the scientific and industrial revolutions and the
Enlightenment that nurtured modern developments such as capitalism,
bureaucracy and secular utilitarianism. The main theoretical division was
between modernist perspectives, which situate the emergence of nations
and the rise of nationalism in the modern era, and those that argue that
nations reflect to varying degrees more enduring and pre-modern characteristics. Modernists differ over periodization, the models they employ and
the weight they attach to different causal factors but all share a belief in
modernization as a distinctive structural process.11 In analytical opposition
to the modernist approach are those termed either primordialist or perennialist, which argue that nationality is a natural and, as such, a universal trait
of humanity that displays ancient and immemorial properties deriving from
ethno-cultural phenomena such as kinship, language, territory, religion and

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the reinvention of mexico

myths of origin.12 Such positions reject the notion of a radical break with the
past giving rise to modernity as an end state opposed to another homologous system, tradition.13 While the modernist perspective came to represent
an orthodoxy in the study of nationalism, a sustained critique of it was
mounted by a third school, ethno-symbolism, and in particular by Anthony
Smith, who, while accepting some modernist criteria, also pointed to the
enduring role of ethnic symbols and forms in the nationalist complex.14
In the post-modern era, the modernist orthodoxy is neither outdated nor
redundant, for enshrined within it are two important implications. First, at
the heart of the modernist analysis is the need to explain the rupture between
the pre-modern and modern epochs, and so modernists identify discontinuities between nations and earlier communities.15 Implicit in this perspective
is the belief that human collectivities were subject to some fundamental transformation at some point in history that disrupted the established order and
forced them to find new ways of organizing social life under the impact of
changes in economic, political and social conditions.16 Modernism, therefore,
sees nations as contingent communities that are transient and not natural, and
assumes the eventual demise of the nation-state or at least the weakening of
nationalism.17 Second, modernists argue that it became possible and necessary for elites to imagine or invent new forms of community such as the
nation in response to changing economic, political or social conditions linked
to the most potent social forces of the era such as capitalism or new means
of communication.18 For example, the historian Eric Hobsbawm (1994)
depicted the nation in terms of invented traditions peculiar to modernity
and engineered to serve capitalism.19 This and similar perspectives have
drawn attention to the roles played by different social groups in nationalist
phenomena and, in particular, political and economic elites or intelligentsias.20
This academic debate remains of critical importance in a world increasingly characterized by the challenges to assumed and inherited national
identities, borders and economies posed by mass migration, regional integration and climate change. First, by shedding light on the modernity or
otherwise of the nation, the researcher is better able to understand whether
the qualities of national citizenship or membership, nationality, are inherent
or contingent.21 The nation is conceived of in broad terms as a political
community or as a cultural community, and each conception implies a
different principle of nationality.22 As a modern political community the
nation is equated with the people as a whole, and hence premised upon
notions of popular sovereignty; as such, it is held to be a unitary political
formation in which membership is unmediated and equal.23 By contrast, the
nation as a cultural community is seen as an historical and cultural individuality that must be preserved or revived; statehood, if desired, is incidental
or secondary, and membership is determined by cultural values and differentiae.24 Second, the debate that considers nationalisms relationship with
modernity addresses whether in the early twenty-first century one can hope

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introduction: salinas, the unmentionable one

to understand nationalism as specific to recent historical processes, or subject

to a longer cycle of history, the longue dure. The rivalry between advocates
of an inherent, historical nationality and a constructed, imagined nationality
can help us to determine the fate of the national idea in a globalized or regionally integrated world political economy. Smith (1995), for example, criticized
Hobsbawms work for predicting the demise of nationalism as optimistic
materialist evolutionism, a position not confined to Marxists and also found
among liberal modernists.25
In the early 1990s, scholarship on nationalism entered what has generally
been interpreted as a period of post-modern reassessment in which an important, but fragmented, new wave of approaches could be discerned.26 This
period witnessed the emergence of a plurality of ways to study national
phenomena that, by implication, saw the need to transcend the grand theories inherent in modernist, primordialist and ethno-symbolist approaches
while remaining broadly sympathetic to and building upon underlying
themes within the modernist orthodoxy. These new approaches did not seek
unitary or definitive explanations to the questions posed by national
phenomena but aimed to deconstruct the concepts that these generated.
They focused on the constructed and contested nature of national identity by
building upon the argument that modernity had, indeed, made it possible
and necessary for elites to imagine or invent new forms of community such
as the nation in response to changing conditions. Furthermore, they drew
attention to the all-important role of context in the way nationalism is shaped
in each nation, at one level further undermining the case for a unified global
theory and strengthening the need for interdisciplinary research.
This new wave of approaches to nationalism was influenced, in particular,
by new thinking that overturned classical notions of identity as an intrinsic
quality.27 A key theme that has recurred in post-modernist analysis is that
identities are produced constructed through culture, and the key to understanding the identities of social formations is how they are reproduced.28 One
area neglected by past scholarship that is addressed by these new approaches
in particular is the everyday way nationalism is reproduced constantly
through symbols and rhetoric.29 The British social psychologist Michael Billig
(1995) undertook an influential analysis of the mechanisms by which nationalism was reproduced in everyday life and coined the description banal
nationalism to refer to ideological habits by which the symbols of nationhood become part of our daily lives.30 In this process, some groups play key
roles: politicians, for example, are important to the reproduction of nationalism because they are so familiar and their words reach millions of people
every day, and because they claim to speak for the nation by evoking what
Benedict Anderson (1994) famously termed the imagined community as
their audience; social scientists also serve to reproduce nationalism, often
without realizing it; and newspapers take up the rhetoric of politicians and
academics in order to address the nation in a whole host of ways.31 Billig highlighted the importance of studying the production and reproduction of

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the reinvention of mexico

national identities through popular culture, not only by focusing on communication technologies but also by deconstructing the meanings these
promoted.32
Umut zkirimli (2000) has argued that what has united these new
approaches is the identification of the national idea as a distinctive form of
discourse.33 An important influence upon this and similar perspectives was
the work of Homi Bhabha (1994), who argued that nations should be viewed
as narrative constructions produced from within a range of discourses.34
Discourses are the socially conditioned formulation of ideas specific to a
given historical context that are implicated in the pursuit of power.35
Discourse and ideology have a related genealogy and are often used in
concert, although no single concept of either has commanded universal
agreement.36 Ideology is a contested term often used to refer to a comprehensive and coherent system of political, economic and social values, beliefs
or ideas shared or taken for granted by a social group. In terms of nationalism, discourse can be used to refer to the ideas, arguments, assumptions
and other positions that, taken together, give a certain content to nationhood
and the identity and sentiments that support or are generated by it, together
referred to here as national ideology.
More recent discursive approaches have tried to identify the factors that
lead to the continual reproduction of nationalism in the modern world.37
They argue that nationalism is a constantly restated discourse built upon the
belief in the existence of nationhood with a content whose meaningfulness is
determined largely by the context in which it is deployed.38 Amanda Machin
(2007), for example, has provided a contemporary example of such a discursive approach to national identity, arguing that the ideas of Wittgenstein
who suggested that we do not communicate through an abstract predetermined linguistic code but through interactive language-games can be
employed to develop a new approach to national identification that disputes
rationalism in much the same way that the nation appears to defy rational
definition.39 She writes:
This allows us to grasp the paradoxical nature of the nation. A national
identification does not exist primordially, but nor is it rationally chosen.
We are born into language games of the nation, and through participating
in them we re-imagine the nation. The nation is a burden with which we
encumber ourselves []. The multiple meanings of nation contradict
each other yet add weight to its existence. It is both nascent and ancient,
contingent yet solid. It is a puzzle that can never be solved but leads to new
questions.40
Approaching nationalism as a discourse avoids the need to accept the
concrete prior existence of the nation, a central tenet of the nationalist argument, which is advantageous in the study of countries where intellectual
development has been heavily distorted by nationalist historiography. In this
way, studying national ideology in discourse allows the researcher to step

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introduction: salinas, the unmentionable one

outside the restricted confines imposed upon so much intellectual production by nationalist sentiments themselves, and to examine the content of that
intellectual production in itself as part of the nationalist complex. It offers the
researcher a method of analysis without requiring him or her to take sides in
the inconclusive academic disputes over the origins, existence and meaning
of nationhood. In a related way, such a conceptual-methodological approach
has an advantage over quantitative or ethnographic forms of studying nationalism and accompanying phenomena by acknowledging the dynamic
construction of the nation in political culture. A consequence of this framework is that it requires analysis to be interpretive.41
After construction, a second recurrent theme within the post-modern
analysis of national phenomena has been that of contestation. Not only have
social and political developments the world over thrown into dramatic relief
the challenge to notions of intrinsic identity but scholars have also concluded
that these identifications are constantly besieged by other communities
wanting to absorb or dismantle them. Building upon the trajectory of postcolonial studies, Bhabhas work in particular pointed to contestation, arguing
that the dominant constructions of the nation are challenged by counternarratives that disturb the ideological manoeuvres by which imagined
communities are given essentialist qualities.42
Such approaches are not without their critics, most of whom argue that
post-modernists overstate the extent to which identity can be purely
constructed and relegate the importance of historical context in understanding particular nationalisms.43 Nonetheless, the disagreements within the
established body of theory concerned with the nations relationship with
modernity explain why approaches that examine nationalism as a discourse
have proliferated in an effort to transcend the inconclusive and polarized classical theoretical debates in the field.44 As we have seen, there are also
theoretical and methodological advantages to approaching nationalism as
discourse: a discursive approach avoids the need to agree on the objective
characteristics a community should possess to achieve the status of nation
and, consequently, challenges essentialism, which attributes disproportionate
influence to some criterion held to constitute a defining essence.45
Approaching nationalism as a discursive phenomenon, in which nationhood
and nationality are themes common to a diverse variety of cases and historical contexts, can also account for the dynamic construction of the national
idea and its highly contested nature.46 Thus, the discursive approach reflexively draws attention to the roles of those groups such as politicians,
academics and journalists in the reproduction of nationalism as highlighted
by Billig.47
While it is clear that at a theoretical level the ideas in which the nation is
imagined or invented have gained momentum, what studies have often lacked
and what classical modernism offers is an historically informed context in
which to position discourses of the nation and hence the very real power relations that exist behind their construction and contestation.48

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the reinvention of mexico

One of the principal phenomena of modernity is capitalism, and its relationship with nationalism is of particular relevance to the context in which
the national idea has evolved in Western tradition. Much of the analytical
debate about the relationship between nationalism and capitalism has come
from within Marxism, which has always had difficulties with nationalism at
both political and theoretical levels.49 The central theme of Marxist interpretations is a belief in the way nationhood and nationalism have been
functional to the economic projects of certain classes, imperialism or internal
colonialism.50 A recent examination of Mexicos political landscape by John
Gibler (2009) made a powerful argument for the continuation of a process
of internal colonialism and class struggle that has its origins in the Conquest,
well before the era of the nation-state. 51 Even one of the most influential nonMarxist approaches to nationalism, that of Ernest Gellner (1996), linked
what he regards as the formative process of modernity, industrialism, to a
capitalist spirit emanating from the Enlightenment.52 One of the explanations for the lack of a Marxist theory of nationalism and the weaknesses of
the class approach is the universalistic ambition at the heart of Marxs original analysis: to Marx, the ultimate objective of socialist revolution was a
single world community in which the liberation of people as human beings
was no longer obstructed by capitalist relations of production, nationality or
religion. This vision of human progress is sufficiently similar to that of the
other great ideological system of the modern era, liberalism, to explain why
both share similar difficulties over the relationship between national community and universal ideal. Both socialist and liberal evolutionist treatments of
nationalism, for example, argue that the nation as a vehicle of progress will
one day be superseded by more powerful units of human association.53
Within the modernist orthodoxy in the study of nationalism, insufficient
attention has been given to its relationship with this dominant source of political and economic beliefs underpinning modernization processes and, in
particular, liberalism. The nation represents a problem for liberalism in all
its forms, and that problematic reflects dilemmas in liberal thought
concerning the ways in which market freedom conflicts with the idea of
national economy; and concerning the difficulties of reconciling individual
liberty with the social or communitarian rights implied by nationalism.
Hobsbawm (1990) undertook one of the few Marxist analyses to examine
nationalism in relation to liberalism and drew attention to the problems
deriving from universalistic notions that the classical political economy of
liberalism had with the national idea.54 The two main sources of tension
between liberalism and conceptions of nationality that Hobsbawm drew
attention to, in particular, derive from the individualism and universalism
inherent in liberal theory. These deny abstract collectivities such as state,
society and nation and envisage criteria of citizenship different to those of
nationalism.55
On the one hand, liberalism championing the free play of market forces
would appear to challenge notions of national economic sovereignty.

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introduction: salinas, the unmentionable one

11

Hobsbawm pointed out that the difficulty for nineteenth-century liberal

economists was that they could only recognize the economic significance of
nations in practice, not in theory: the ideas of Adam Smith, for example, had
been formulated as a critique of the mercantilist system by which governments treated national economies as ensembles to be developed by state
effort.56 In his analysis of the New Right in the US and Britain that emerged
from the neoliberal revolution of the 1970s1980s, Desmond King (1987)
argued that commerce, as conceptualized by the classical liberal political
economy of Smith, is a universal activity not limited by national boundaries.57
In short, free trade and the free market are ideas directed against the concept
of national economic development and the free flow of capital across national
borders is important to the pursuit of progress.58 Such an ambivalence
towards nationhood was evident in the writing of economic thinkers identified with the Chicago School who were so influential in Mexico and the rest
of Latin America in this period, characteristic of whose work is a belief in
competitive capitalism by which the viability of an economy is a function
of its competitiveness, and the desire to abandon national capital or commercial controls.59
On the other hand, individualism challenges the sense of organic political
community inherent in the national idea, implicit in which is a single code of
rights and duties offering legal-political equality for all members.60 The
liberal nationalism of Jeremy Bentham that was influential on the European
continent, for example, regarded nationality as a device to assure every citizen
the broadest practicable exercise of individual liberty.61 To some later liberals,
including those of the Chicago School, the basis of individualism is the liberty
that derives from the absence of constraints upon action, and such freedom
is market-based rather than state-imposed because market relations serve to
maximize liberty as voluntary choice.62 It is the spontaneous working of
nature through the individual pursuit of self-interest within the market that
results in social order.63 Inequalities generated by the market and property
relations are seen as inevitable and, in this way, individualism based upon
economic freedom and property rights would appear to conflict with
Andersons horizontal comradeship, that is, with nationalist concepts such
as social inclusiveness and fraternity: economic liberalism obstructs the
creation of a unified or integrated national citizenry.64
The conflict between liberal individualist and nationalist conceptions of
citizenship has been a key theme in classical political thought, from Hobbes
to Berlin, and reflects a broader effort to delineate the respective realms of
individual and social rights.65 For this reason, there has been a relationship
between the evolution of capitalism and the genealogy of concepts of nationality. The challenge posed to citizenship by the inequalities generated by
capitalism remains at the heart of contemporary liberal debates: to its critics,
a key aspect of the resurgent economic liberalism of the 1980s, neoliberalism,
was that it endeavoured to redefine citizenship rights.66 Recent studies have
examined the conflict between liberal and nationalist conceptions of citizen-

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the reinvention of mexico

ship in terms of interactions between the realms of the individual and the
social or communitarian.67
Mexico in the early 1990s offers a valuable opportunity to study nationalism at a time when this theme was at its most prominent in the discourse
of politicians, academics and newspaper commentators and in a context that
threw into sharp relief the substrate of liberalism underpinning the countrys
development. The most important ideological issue of the six-year administration or sexenio of President Salinas from 1988 to 1994 was precisely the
need to attenuate this tension between nationalism and neoliberalism.
Mexicos post-revolutionary state had been founded upon an uneasy truce
between these political ideas. It is interesting to note that neoliberalism has,
itself, increasingly become understood, primarily, as a discourse shaping
reform processes that responded more broadly to the so-called Washington
Consensus.68
The forms nationalism has taken in Mexico since Independence in the
early nineteenth century shared the ambition of rival elites to fashion from a
diverse and divided society an integrated and stable citizenry a nationality
in support of their broader political projects aiming to construct a viable
modern state, state-building. The aim of forging a nationality from a divided
and heterogeneous population allows Mexican nationalism more broadly to
be characterized above all as a discourse on nation-building and helps to
explain the importance that has historically been placed upon the shared
cultural attributes of nationality. By contrast, despite the ambition of early
Mexican liberalism to fashion an integral society whose members enjoy full
political equality based upon universal principles, the pursuit of political
rights was, until the late 1990s, subordinated to the dominating ambition of
economic liberalism to establish a modern, capitalist economy based upon
individual market freedoms. The influence of economic liberalism explains
a persistent structural inequality in Mexico that challenges the nationalist
ideal of an integrated national society whose members enjoy full equality.
Following Mexicos 191017 Revolution, the nationalism predominant in
post-revolutionary political culture had a social character deriving from the
popular dimensions of the constitutional settlement, whereas the economic
liberalism that provided Salinas with the theoretical justification to conduct
reform restated aspects of classical liberal political economy premised upon
individualistic, free-market values hostile to the social state. The Salinas
reform process, therefore, exposed a tension between the liberal vision of a
market economy regulated by a minimalist state and partaking in free trade
and an official nationalism traditionally defined by a strong states sovereign
power to attenuate social division by circumscribing market forces in order
to foster the unity required, in theory, for the existence of nationhood.69
Given the above, Mexico in the Salinas era demonstrates the importance
of analysing national discourses against the background of the liberalism that
has been the dominant source of political ideas in this and other Western
countries. Liberalism, the main ideological source of the dramatic changes

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introduction: salinas, the unmentionable one

13

of the 1980s90s, provides the essential context in which the study of nationalism in discourse in Mexico must take place. As a result, Mexico in this
period also demonstrates why Hobsbawms analysis of nationalism within a
context of liberal ideas is of relevance to the contemporary era in Latin
America more generally a region that witnessed a revival of classical liberal
political economy in the 1980s, as the most identifiable symptom of a new
phase of globalization, attributing societys most intractable problems to
interventionist statism, and that has, in turn, since witnessed a revival of
nationalist sentiments.70 The 1980s90s was a period in which the liberal
political economy restated in the guise of monetarism under such thinkers as
Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek influenced technocratic perspectives
from Mexico to Argentina.71 Both thinkers had laid down the intellectual
foundations for neoliberalism at the University of Chicago in the 1950s and,
in Latin America, their ideas were seen as a counterattack against those that
had justified protectionist policies.72
The evolution of nationalist ideas in Latin America closely resembles that
of other regions to the extent that its socio-political systems have been fundamentally moulded by the development of capitalism within its most
important, transatlantic axis. Latin American nationalisms make cultural
claims similar to those found in nationalisms everywhere, and have the added
advantage as discourses of benefiting from rich and extant cultural resources
originating in both pre-Columbian and European societies. These can
provide a fertile fusion of millennial origins and a glorious antiquity with the
fervour of creole patriotism and subsequent indigenismo in its many forms to
offer cultural criteria with which to distinguish these countries, or the region
as a whole, from Europe and, more recently, the United States, and to unify
their diverse societies. Nonetheless, Latin American nationalisms are primarily political phenomena responding to the priorities of elite state-building
shaped within the prevailing political economy of the region whose complex
cultural mosaic, when seen from sufficient distance, reflects merely the way
in which the nation-state system has developed in an intimate and inseparable relationship with capitalism. That is not to say the need for discourses
that deploy cultural criteria to create plausible national ideologies is trivial,
indeed it may become more important than before in societies that experience new fractures as a result of restructuring.
An early proto-nationalism appeared in Latin America at the time of
Independence and, until the late nineteenth century, leaders in the region
copied the liberal nationalism of Europe, where nationalist ideas primarily
had political implications: popular sovereignty, individual rights and representative and constitutional government. However, Claudio Vliz (1980) has
argued that the republican nationalism of nineteenth-century Latin America
differed from the nationalism of Europe in an important respect: by being
outward-looking through a rejection of its own Hispanic past, combined with
attempts to imitate Britain and France.73 As a result, nationalist ideas were
not a natural development in Latin America as they had been in Europe,

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the reinvention of mexico

and large social sectors were not aware of their potential nationality. This
resulted in an anomaly: in Latin America, the creation of the state preceded a
generalized acceptance of the existence of the nation in ethnically diverse
republics. Independence created states without defined national identities or
borders based on pre-existing cultural divisions. This meant that awareness
of a national consciousness or identity was usually an elite, intellectual affair
long before it became a mass characteristic. Consequently, one objective of
the new states governed by elites became the creation of nations, and in Latin
America as a whole, as in Mexico, a key theme in nationalist thought has been
nation-building the forging of a unified nationality based on a discernible
national identity. Although this varied across Latin America, the process of
nation-building could often be associated with the consolidation of a strong
state in keeping with the centralist tradition.
The desire of elites to win or assert national control over resources and
economies has often found an expression as antiimperialism or taken the
form of a xenophobic anti-Americanism. In this way, expressions of nationalism in Latin America at the dawn of the twentieth century can, in part, be
seen as a product of the developing worlds encounter with the capitalism of
the developed world. Latin American thinkers began to take more idealistic
positions based on cultural arguments in the early decades of the twentieth
century amid a backlash against positivist ideas, partly in response to the
expansion in the region of capitalist development dominated by the US.
Simultaneously, an association between nationalism and economic and social
themes reflected the development of mass constituencies through the integration of new groups into a class structure fashioned by forms of state
capitalism. A nation could not be built without a popular constituency, so
nationalists had to take up the demands of other sectors. As nationalist values,
beliefs or ideas were often shared by social groups, this could allow dominant elites to shape politics and the growth of nationalism as a political tool
in Latin America fuelled the development of its cultural variants.
Since then, the varying emphases periodically placed upon cultural vis-vis economic criteria within Latin American nationalisms have largely obeyed
the vacillations of political economy. For example, the impact of the Great
Depression generated reactions that in countries such as Brazil and Argentina
empowered nationalists to propose programmes of state-led industrialization. By contrast, the bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes of the 1970s
advocated a form of autarkic nationalism founded on distinctive notions of
orderly societies the people that primarily served the interests of oligopolistic private capital in its increasingly close relationship with transnational
capital.74 With democratization in the 1980s, the armed forces were discredited and neoliberal ideas based on universal themes challenged nationalist
perspectives, yet in several Latin American countries in the 1990s, it was the
leaders of parties with a strong national-populist tradition such as the PRI
in Mexico and the Peronists in Argentina that became champions of neoliberalism and employed nationalism to overturn sacred revolutionary symbols.

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introduction: salinas, the unmentionable one

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Since the late 1990s, nationalism has again been recruited in the task of
further modifying the model of political economy that best suits the needs of
global capitalism. Far from reversing neoliberal reforms, for example, leftof-centre leaders who have come to power in the region since 1998 have
mostly re-emphasized resource nationalism and renewed statism policies
that, today, find considerable favour among the international financial institutions that regulate global capitalism and advocate second-generation
reforms to correct the excesses of the neoliberal period.75
To the extent that contemporary manifestations of globalization represent
a discernibly new phase in the development of capitalism distinguished,
above all, by transnationalization of the state that is, the process by which
local states adopt strictures required to create the conditions necessary for
the multinational functioning of capital national ideology in Latin America
has followed suit. As William Robinson (2008) points out, globalization
brings about not the end of the nation-state, but its transformation into the
neoliberal nation-state.76 There is much evidence to support this position: the
nation-state remained a central focus of national ideology in Latin America
during the neoliberal period regardless of the aforementioned quandary
posed to the cherished positions of economic liberalism by notions of national
economic sovereignty. This was because, as Robinson suggests, the
continued existence of the nation-state system is a central condition for the
power of transnational capital.
In Mexico, the intellectual atmosphere created by the restatement of liberal
political economy engendered a polarization between perspectives on the
countrys economic future in the late 1970s between advocates of neoKeynesian expansionism based upon nationalism, and monetarist
orthodoxy.77 This ideological conflict provided the backdrop to an important reorganization in economic decision-making, a key consequence of
which under President Miguel de la Madrid (19821988) would be the effective triumph of liberalism, the dismantling of statist policies and the revision
of prevailing rhetoric on economic sovereignty.78 Until this period, the
Mexican state had been the dominant protagonist in the economy, creating
an import-substituting and protectionist industrial structure that was mostly
uncompetitive in world markets.79 The accession to the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade in 1986 ended 40 years of protectionism. In this period
in Mexico there were more frequent references to liberalism and historical
analyses of it, and the policies of the Salinas administration were influenced
by the revival within the PRI of an interest in liberal ideas.80 The core tenet
of the liberalism of the 1980s was the superiority of market mechanisms and
the maximization of individual freedom at least discursively, if not in practice through the limiting of state intervention.81 Salinas was a key architect
of De la Madrids policy, and later as president he himself accelerated the
reversal of statism and deepened Mexicos unilateral apertura or commercial
liberalization. In 1990, Salinas initiated preliminary talks on a free trade treaty
with the US and agreement was eventually reached in October 1992. The

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the reinvention of mexico

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Mexico, the US

and Canada came into force in 1994.
Little attention has been given to the sophisticated ideological programme
undertaken by Salinas to justify his dramatic reforms. Moreover, there has
been little research into how he was both supported by other important actors
in Mexicos discursive universe social scientists and journalists and into
the opposition discourses that contested or debated his cherished themes. It
is hard to determine the extent to which Salinas was successful in his efforts:
he was blamed for allegedly ignoring economic problems that resulted in the
catastrophic peso crisis of 1994, which plunged Mexico into a deep recession, and is not held in high esteem in his homeland. He was further
discredited by his brother, Ral, who was jailed after being accused of masterminding the assassination of a PRI colleague (and later acquitted) and of
fraud.
Kathy Powell (1996) dwelt upon Salinass aspiration not long after this
controversial figures exhilarating presidency had ended, arguing that his
effort to redefine national consciousness in order to assert his legitimacy had
little success because of the anti-nationalist logic and ahistorical nature of
neoliberal economics and ideology and the strength of national consciousness derived from revolutionary mythology: As the logic of market
economy exacerbates an already critical degree of socio-economic polarization, there exists the evident possibility that [Benedict] Andersons
horizontal comradeship between unequal sectors of the national community could break down entirely.82
This book is based upon original doctoral research into the national idea
within Mexican political discourses from the period 198594. It can be
inserted in that body of theoretical studies addressing national phenomena
in terms of the discourse or narratives of key players such as politicians,
academics and journalists. It explores nationalism in Mexico at a decisive
moment that offered a key opportunity for empirical research into the
construction and contestation of the national idea, thereby providing data to
support the argument that valuable insights can be gained from studying
nationalism primarily in terms of discourse.
Mexico is well suited to the study of nationalism as discourse: until recently
intellectual development was overwhelmingly influenced by nationalist historiography assuming the concrete prior existence of the nation. At the same
time, however, the study of nationalism in Mexico traditionally has also
implicitly acknowledged its discursive dimension by drawing heavily upon
an interpretive reading of texts and letters written by political and intellectual figures.83 In the 1980s, Mexican scholars themselves, such as Roger
Bartra and Enrique Florescano, also began to make a case for the discursive
and contingent nature of national ideology.84
This book respects that tradition and takes as its primary empirical source
the writing and reproduced speeches of Mexican politicians, academics and
journalists in political documents and publications, and newspaper and

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introduction: salinas, the unmentionable one

17

magazine articles, from the period under study. It focuses on how they
deployed ideas relevant to the content of nationality, such as the individual,
state and sovereignty. In addition, interviews were conducted with key figures
from the period. A secondary source of material is Mexican academic writing
from after the period, and British and US research on Mexico. The primary
empirical data was collected during fieldwork conducted in Mexico City in
1998 and 1999 and comprised 5,459 separate party documents, published
articles or extracts from them with a bearing on key themes related to the
research topic such as nationalism, sovereignty, free trade, Article 27 of the
Constitution, globalization, liberalism and state reform. These were taken as
extracts from 25 different political party organs, newspapers and magazines
produced regularly during the period under study, from collections, the
Hemeroteca Nacional and the extensive newspaper cuttings archive maintained at the Fundacin Colosio of the then ruling PRI. Party political
material was gathered from publications and documents held by the PRI at
the Fundacin and by the PRD and PAN at their respective archives. Most
records were taken in the form of photocopies or entered by hand into a
computer database, although about 650 were taken from CD-ROM archives
of articles. Academic and official publications, reports and documents from
the period were also gathered. The sample was held to be representative of
material published about the themes under study.
This book also documents and explains the historically significant shift in
nationalist ideas that took place in Mexico in the 1980s in tandem with the
transformation of the countrys political economy. The explanation for this
shift can be found in the extent to which national ideology remained functionally valuable as a legitimizing force to elites steering that process. The
role nationalism has played in nurturing the stability required for capitalist
development in a country characterized by deep social inequality and division cannot be overstated. By challenging the constitutional provisions that
gave rise to the social state, the liberal perspective of salinismo challenged the
formula of nationhood providing the very foundations of post-revolutionary
political legitimacy. The Salinas period reveals the extent to which national
ideology is contingent upon the projects of a reformist elite. This book shows
how Salinas and the political opposition addressed the dilemma inherent in
the revival of liberal ideas between the pursuit of capitalist development based
upon individual rights, and nation-building seeking to restrict individual
rights in order to attenuate structural inequalities and nurture an integrated
national society. It examines the two principal areas in which liberalism and
nationalism conflict, at the level of the individual and over national sovereignty, by analysing constructions of the individual, the state and sovereignty
in the discourse of political actors from this period.
When the relationship between national ideology and liberalism during the
Salinas period is examined empirically, it reveals a continuing role for nationalism as a legitimizing factor within capitalist modernization. This book
addresses how and why Salinas himself resorted to nationalist discourse

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the reinvention of mexico

despite the apparent contradictions in his position. The underlying preoccupation of much nationalist discourse in this period was with the divisions
in the ostensibly unitary nation and the search for a united and inclusive
society free of the social contrast that has been a characteristic feature of
Mexican development. To the Salinas administration, nationalism continued
to offer a way of reconciling competing individual and social claims and in
so doing providing the basis for a stable, unified citizenry free of divisions
that might threaten social stability and hence pose a risk to capitalist development. This represented a continuity with the role of ideology in the
Mexican Revolution, which was crucial to the legitimation of the successor
regime, and with revolutionary nationalism, which was the key to providing
long-term stability.85
By exploring nationalism under the dazzling spotlight of rapid modernization premised upon liberal notions that challenge the national idea, this
book seeks to trace the direction these developments are taking Mexico within
the wider context of both globalization and North American economic integration. Indeed, an examination of the Salinas era provides an opportunity
to discuss the fate of Mexican national ideology itself as the country becomes
more comprehensively integrated into the world economy.
Notes
1
2
3
4
5

6
7

8
9
10
11
12
13

George W. Grayson, Mexican Messiah (Pennsylvania, 2007), p. 2.

Grayson, Mexican Messiah, see pp. 5560.
Max Weber, The Nation, in John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (eds.),
Nationalism, Oxford Readers (Oxford, 1994), p. 21; see also Eric J. Hobsbawm,
Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 5.
See Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (Oxford, 1960), p. 67.
Hans Kohn, Western and Eastern Nationalisms, in Hutchinson and Smith (eds.),
Nationalism, p. 164; John Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism
(London, 1987), pp. 1112; see also John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State
(Manchester, 1993), pp. 8, 62; Hugh Seton-Watson, Nationalism and Communism:
Essays, 194663 (London, 1964), p. 20.
John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (eds.), Nationalism, Oxford Readers
(Oxford, 1994), p. 3.
See Anthony D. Smith, Theories of Nationalism (London, 1983), p. 167; Kedourie,
Nationalism, p. 5; Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, p. 14; Seton-Watson,
Nationalism and Communism, p. 4; and Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures
(London, 1993), p. 257.
Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, p. 404; Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism
(Oxford, 1996), pp. 1; 124; Smith, Theories of Nationalism, p. 168.
Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, p. 9; Seton-Watson, Nationalism and
Communism, pp. 3, 20; Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, p. 1; Breuilly, Nationalism
and the State, pp. 6469; Smith, Theories of Nationalism, p. 171.
Kedourie, Nationalism, p. 84; Smith, Theories of Nationalism, p. 263.
See Umut zkirimli, Theories of Nationalism (London, 2000), p. 86.
Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism (London, 1998), pp. 22324.
Smith, Theories of Nationalism, pp. 13, 96.

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introduction: salinas, the unmentionable one

19

14 Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, 1995), p. 6; Anthony D.

Smith, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 2640; John
Hutchinson, Modern Nationalism (London, 1994), p. 7.
15 Hutchinson, Modern Nationalism, p. 4; Anthony Giddens, A Contemporary Critique
of Historical Materialism, Volume II (Cambridge, 1985), p. 119; see also Kedourie,
Nationalism, p. 7.
16 zkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, p. 218.
17 Smith, Nationalism and Modernism, p. 2.
18 zkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, p. 218; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities
(London, 1994), pp. 44, 63, 235; John Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism, in
Hutchinson and Smith (eds.), Nationalism (Oxford, 1994), p. 144; Gellner, Nations
and Nationalism, p. 33; Otto Bauer, The Nation, in Gopal Balakrishnan (ed.),
Mapping the Nation (London, 1996), pp. 5463; Daniel Lerner, Toward a
Communication Theory of Modernization, in Lucian W. Pye (ed.), Communications
and Political Development (Princeton, 1963), pp. 34, 341.
19 Hobsbawm, The Nation as Invented Tradition, in Hutchinson and Smith (eds.),
Nationalism (Oxford, 1994), p. 76.
20 Bauer, The Nation, pp. 62, 74; Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National
Revival in Europe (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 5, 133; Hobsbawm, Nations and
Nationalism, p. 12; Smith, Theories of Nationalism, p. 124.
21 Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, p. 6.
22 See Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, p. 20.
23 Hutchinson, Modern Nationalism, p. 13.
24 Hutchinson, Modern Nationalism, p. 17.
25 Smith, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era, pp. 1117.
26 Paul Lawrence, Nationalism. History and Theory (Harlow, 2005), p. 198; zkirimli,
Theories of Nationalism, p. 190.
27 See Stuart Hall, Ethnicity: Identity and Difference in G. Eley and R. G. Suny (eds.),
Becoming National. A Reader (Oxford, 1996), p. 339; Lawrence, Nationalism, p. 204.
28 zkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, pp. 19596; see also tienne Balibar, The Nation
Form: History and Ideology, in tienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race,
Nation, Class (London and New York, 1991), pp. 86106.
29 zkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, p. 195.
30 See Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London, 1995); see also Lawrence,
Nationalism, p. 205; zkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, pp. 199200.
31 Anderson, Imagined Communities; see also zkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, pp.
201202.
32 See zkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, pp. 199203.
33 zkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, pp. 199203; see also Lawrence, Nationalism, p.
206.
34 See Homi Bhabha, Narrating the Nation, in Hutchinson and Smith (eds.),
Nationalism; and Homi Bhabha, (ed.), Nation and Narration (London, 1990).
35 See Stuart Hall, (ed.), Representation (London, 1997), p. 44.
36 See for example Terry Eagleton (ed.), Ideology (Harlow, 1994), pp. 120.
37 zkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, pp. 56, 192.
38 zkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, p. 4; see for example Bhabha, Narrating the
Nation, p. 306; Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory (London, 1994), pp. 31017.
39 Amanda Machin, Language-Games of the Nation, The CSD Bulletin, 14.12
(2007), pp. 1214.
40 Machin, Language-Games of the Nation, p. 14.
41 See Peter Calvert, The Mexican Revolution: Theory or Fact?, JLAS, 1.1 (1969), p.

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the reinvention of mexico

53; Hall, Representation, p. 42.

42 See Bhabha, Nation and Narration; see also Anderson, Imagined Communities.
43 See Lawrence, Nationalism, p. 205; see also Breuilly, Nationalism and the State.
44 zkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, p. 56; see also Anthony D. Smith, National Identity
(London, 1991), p. 43.
45 zkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, p. 215.
46 Smith, Nationalism and Modernism, pp. 22123; Hutchinson and Smith (eds.),
Nationalism, p. 4; zkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, p. 229.
47 zkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, pp. 201202.
48 See Lawrence, Nationalism, p. 206.
49 zkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, p. 25; Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 3.
50 Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, p. 408; Tom Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain
(London, 1977), pp. 32948; Michael Hechter and Margaret Levi, Ethno-Regional
Movements in the West, in Hutchinson and Smith (eds.), Nationalism, pp. 18495.
51 John Gibler, Mexico Unconquered (San Francisco, 2009), p. 17.
52 Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, pp. 20, 4041.
53 Smith, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era, p. 16.
54 Hobsbawm, The Nation as Invented Tradition, pp. 7683; Hobsbawm, Nations and
Nationalism, pp. 2334.
55 Anthony Arblaster, The Rise and Decline of Western Liberalism (Oxford, 1984), p. 90;
Desmond S. King, The New Right (London, 1987), p. 40.
56 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, p. 23.
57 King, The New Right, p. 9.
58 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, p. 34.
59 Arblaster, The Rise and Decline, p. 341; Eliana Cardoso and Ann Helwege, Latin
Americas Economy (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), p. 181.
60 Smith, National Identity, p. 9.
61 zkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, p. 40.
62 King, The New Right, pp. 9, 14, 37; F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (London,
1960), p. 13.
63 King, The New Right, p. 10.
64 Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 7.
65 See Keith Faulks, Citizenship (London, 2000), pp. 533.
66 Faulks, Citizenship, pp. 2, 6, 28.
67 For a fuller discussion of the distinction between nationalist and liberal conceptions
of citizenship see, for example, Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton, 1993),
pp. 7, 1620, 130; and King, The New Right, pp. 35, 2869.
68 See, for example, Francisco Panizza, Contemporary Latin America (London, 2009),
p. 9.
69 Claudio Lomnitz-Adler, Hacia una antropologa de la nacionalidad mexicana,
Revista Mexicana de Sociologa, 55.2 (AprilJune 1993), p. 191.
70 See for example Roderic A. Camp, Los empresarios y la poltica en Mxico (Mxico,
1995), pp. 4748; Duncan Green, Silent Revolution (London, 1995), p. 2; John
Sheahan, Patterns of Development in Latin America (Princeton, 1987), p. 221.
71 Arblaster, The Rise and Decline, p. 340.
72 Victor Bulmer-Thomas, The Economic History of Latin America (Cambridge, 1994),
p. 276.
73 See Claudio Vliz, The Centralist Tradition of Latin America (Princeton, 1980).
74 Guillermo ODonnell, Bureaucratic Authoritarianism (Berkeley, 1988), pp. 3233.
75 Panizza, Contemporary Latin America, pp. 14267.
76 William Robinson, Latin America and Global Capitalism (Baltimore, 2008), p. 37.

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introduction: salinas, the unmentionable one

77
78
79
80
81
82
83

84
85

21

Erfani, The Paradox of the Mexican State (Boulder, 1995), p. 155.

Erfani, The Paradox, p. 153.
Sidney Weintraub, Financial Decision-Making in Mexico (London, 2000), p. 23.
See for example Adolfo Castaon and Otto Granados, El liberalismo mexicano en pocas
paginas (Mxico, 1985).
King, The New Right, p. 9.
Kathy Powell, Neoliberalism and Nationalism, in Rob Aitken et al. (eds.),
Dismantling the Mexican State? (London, 1996), pp. 5051. The reference is to
Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 7.
See for example David A. Brading, The Origins of Mexican Nationalism (Cambridge,
1985), pp. 4865; Guy P. C. Thomson, Bulwarks of Patriotic Liberalism, JLAS,
22.12 (1990), pp. 5051; Florencia Mallon, Peasant and Nation (Berkeley, 1995),
pp. 47.
See for example Roger Bartra, The Cage of Melancholy (New Brunswick, 1992), pp.
16376; originally published in Spanish as La jaula de la melancola (Mxico, 1987);
Enrique Florescano, Memory, Myth and Time in Mexico (Austin, 1994), pp. 184227.
Calvert, The Mexican Revolution, pp. 5253; Robert G. Newell and F. Luis Rubio,
Mexicos Dilemma (Boulder, 1984), p. 2.

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