Building Mexican State

7/28/2019 Building Mexican State

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BUILDING TH E M EXICAN STATE: TH ENO TION OE CITIZENSHIP

An Interview with Claudio Lomnitz andPablo Piccato

The process of nation building in Latin American, seen through the historyof social, political, and cultural exchanges, can help explain the postcolo-nial making of modern states. The following feature is an exploration of theprocess of nation building in Mexico approached from two distinct perspectives.Anthropologist Claudio Lomnitz and historian Pablo Piccato each use their par-ticular analytical lens to show how the construction of a public sphere and thefunction of the state in Mexico have been complex, acrimonious, and sometimesbloody. As the nation attempted to transform itself from a decentralized agrarian-based economy in the hands of a few regional elites to a modern industrial actor,the state and society have played a vital task in constructing the idea of the"citizen" within the national Mexican project. With no countrywide infrastruc-ture in place, or even a common language with which to unite the new nation inits early years, the state aggressively promoted the notion of a collective citizenry.Was the "citizen" to become the ideal carrier of nationality, espousing progres-sive values to share with fellow citizens within a common public sphere? Has thisartificially-created social construct truly materialized? In the following interviewwith the Journal, Professor Lomnitz, and Professor Piccato, both from ColumbiaUniversity, address the role of the "citizen" in shaping the present realities of theMexican state.

Journa l of International Affairs: How wou ld you construct an idea of nation buildingand discourse of nationalities in Mexico through the lens of your profession?

Pablo Piccato: Historians have traditionally been entrusted with this since


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Interview with ClaudioLomnitz and PabloPiccato

years ago. The history that I find more dynamic, challenging, and socially useful, isnot the history of trying to reconstruct the building of the state or the nation, butthe history that is critical of that narrativethat looks at other things that werehappening on the side and have been neglected by the official history. There werealways other forces challenging the nation and the sense of state, which have great

relevance to our understanding of the past. Historiansi s a ^re increasingly moving in that directionlooking at

rmintrv where actors that have been neglected by historians in the ^ p a s t by the standard political history, such as women

indigenous groupS: as they became citizens, ora n d naS preferred not to become citizens, on their own terms.

r o o t s and. Scholars are increasingly paying more attention to the1 ^. development of nationalism as aresponse to trans-r e v e r b e r a t i o n s . . , , u .u u i u .

national forces. So rather than building a history ora narrative of the nation state, the most interesting

aspect of history in my opinion, is trying to show how that was not the onlyprocess going on and that there are many more interesting actors and forces at playboth within and beyond the nation.

The best indication that this is not just something happening at the level of theprofession but in fact is happening more generally, was what happened in Mexicowith the Bicentennial Celebration of Independence and the Centennial of theRevolution. It was a massive celebration of these two important dates in nationalhistory that, as far as I could see, was also a massive failure in terms of giving thestate aboost in its legitimacy and in recreating patriotism. Most evaluations ofthe great resources invested by the state, from publishing books to building monu-ments, saw it as excessive spending on things that had little relevance consideringthe problems the country faced.

So I think both in the profession and in the society, the way in which peoplelook at historythe centrality of the state and the nationis being challenged.More often, both in history and society, you will find people investigating theother histories that were not considered. These alternative histories are not onlyinteresting in themselves, but are also challenges to the history told by officialmonuments and celebratory books.

As a historian, I try to tell the stories that are relevant and help people under-stand their place in history but that also challenge the narratives we have received.


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Building the Mexican State: The Notion ofGitizenshipClaudio Lomnitz: The problem of nation building in Mexico, as in the whole ofSpanish America and probably in the United States as well, was the idea that thenation needed to be forged after, rather than prior to, independence. Contrary tonationalist ideology, which posits the formation of the republic as the result of thewill of a pre-existing nation, historical analysis suggests that the idea of the nationwas built during and after the wars of independence as a result and necessity of thenew political order. This does not mean that there were no significant collectiveidentities in New Spain prior to its transformation into the Mexican Republic, butthat these collective identities were not isomorphic with the population that wouldsoon be called upon to identify either as citizens of Mexico (males over the age ofeighteen), or as Mexican nationals (men, women, and children who had a right tothat form of identification).

The nation-building process in Mexico has been both long and intense. Long,because the Spanish American republics are amongst the oldest nation states inthe world; intense, because Mexico had to fight off several major foreign invasionsand civil wars in the course of the nineteenth century. Those warsthe fightagainst Spain's attempt to retake Mexico in 1829; the war against the UnitedStates from 1846 to 1848; and the war of the Erench Intervention from 1862 to1867undoubtedly helped to forge a sense of nation in a country. This was noteasy due to the substantive difficulties in transportation that existed in Mexicoup until the construction of the railroadsa process that was delayed because ofthese foreign and civil wars, and therefore were not seriously underway until the1880s. Mexico for most of the nineteenth century was, in short, a land that hadentrenched regional elites instead of a national-level ruling class; had a low literacyrate under 20 percent in 1895; and was multilingual with a significant proportionof the population that did not speak Spanish. In such a context, nation buildinginvolved brokering relationships with various local forces as well as the republicfantasy of synchronicity (i.e., having all citizens partake in a shared public sphere,in which they might jointly decide upon the definition and management of publicgoods), which was just that, a fantasy.

In the twentieth-century history of nation building in Mexico, there was anequally complex beginning with a major social revolution that had both state andnation building as one of its most fundamental axes and effects. In summary, dueto the enormous challenges that Mexico faced in the international and internalspheres, it is a country that has undergone a long and very intense process of nationbuilding and, as a result, is a country where nationalism is powerful and has deeproots and reverberations.


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Interview with Claudio Lomnitz and Pablo PiccatoJournal: How do the social, cultural, and political domains interact and exchange in the

public sphere to build the notion of modern citizenship?

Piccato: This is something that my work in particular has been very muchabout. When we ask about the public sphere, we are asking who can speak publicly,what kind of things can be said, and how those debates can influence what thestate does. The public sphere is something that we can use to delimit where civilsociety talks to the state. A lot of things happen there, it is not just petitions to thestate; it is where civil society constantly redefines itself, challenging collective andindividual identities. At first, for example, indigenous identity was not consideredto be politically relevant, but it was later rediscovered and reemphasized. Otherforms of identification and political action can change. The point is that theychange in a public way that other actors will recognize. In that sense, the historyfocuses on the public sphere that allows us to look not only at those emerging orchanging identities but also at citizenship in practice, namely, how people willinteract with the state and with institutions in general in a way that will be bothpragmatic, so that they v/ill. achieve goals defined by their interests, but that willalso transform the very conception of rights and obligations. For example, in thenineteenth century, you had very few people saying, "I am a citizen; therefore Ihave rights to the land." That changed after the revolution after long debates andlegislation about agrarian problems. By examining what people said in newspapers,speeches, letters, and books, we can understand what they expected from the stateand from themselves as political actors.

Lomnitz: The question is too broad to respond in any brief or succinctfashion. From my point of view, culture is not a "sphere," but rather a level ofanalysis. In other words, it is not identifiable as a discrete portion of the socialworld, but rather, suffuses it. Culture refers to the processes of representation andsignification, so it is an aspect of the social, the political, and the economic.

In a nutshell, the notion of modern citizenship emerged out of the experienceof sociability in modern cities, and in the chasm between the power of absolutiststates and those new forms of bourgeois sociability in the seventeenth century. Incountries like Mexico, you had social forms in New Spain's principal towns andcities emerging in the eighteenth century. Nonetheless, the consolidation of notionsof modern citizenship did not get going in earnest until the Napoleonic invasionof Spain and the forging of the constitution in Cadiz in 1812a document that


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Building the Mexican State: The Notion of CitizenshipWhat is interesting inthe history ofcitizenship inSpanish America is that

the notion of modern citizenship always has to battle with the realities of politicalsubjecthood, which have only rarely coincided with the ideal concept. This issomething that liberal ideologues and politicians were always conscious of, and itwas the ideological, not the economic, motivation behind changing nineteenth-century property laws (justified in order to makeprivate holders, as a way of breaking community TH e f o r e i ? nidentity amongst the "Indians"); education poli- ^C l V P x i rOcies; institution-building strategies; and various 'civi- ,hppomlizing' policies including thepromotion of modern L^^WXIdress (campaigns for wearing pants, shirts, and pragmatiC andshoes) andtheoutlawing of bull fights andcock- leSS deolOPCalfights. Citizenship has always been akind ofUtopian + U 1horizonconstantly invoked, but usually againsta world ofpolitical relations that "fall short" ofthe teW yearS.modern citizenship ideal. Inthis sense, the languageof modern citizenship has been a cherished collective ideal and avantage pointfrom which todiscriminate people and relationships that "fall short."

Journal: How do you perceive Mexico's role in Latin America today? What approach, ifany, do you believe will contribute to strengthening Latin America as a region?

Piccato: There are two ways toanswer this question. One isobviously whatthe new government needs todo, or issetting itself up to do inMexico. But theother refers more generally tothe relations that Mexico has had with other coun-tries in Latin America. That is a very interesting and long history. At times, Mexicohas had anindependent position with acertain leadership role ona multilateralfront. You can think about the 1960s and 1970s when the United States was tryingto isolate Cuba, and when Mexico was one of the countries that did not respond tothat call. But there were also other times when Mexico was becoming very close tothe United States and basically playing the same game interms of inter-Americanrelationssupporting anticommunism or isolating internal dissent and interna-tional revolutionary movements. And sometimes the Mexican regime was able todo these two things at the same time. That has clearly changed in the last decades.Mexican governments have found foreign policy leadership to be of less value. Theyhave had other things to deal with such as internal conflicts, economic instability,and fiscal and financial crises. Having aprominent voice inLatin America did not


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Interview with Claud io Lom nitz and Pablo Piccato

Looking to the next few years, there are two clear processes going on. Oneis that Mexico has to deal with the negative image it has as a violent country, inthe hands of narcotrafficking and impunity. It might be an exaggerated image inmuch of the media, but it has an impact on perceptions of Mexico, both insideand abroad. There is a real problem, indeed, in the violations of human rights thattake place in the context of the so-called War on Drugs. It is not the image thathas to be cleaned up so much as it is the operation of the state in this front. Inmy opinion, the most productive strategy for the Mexican state in this context isto address the issues of justice and human rights that have increasingly plaguedgovernment at both the federal and state level. The new government can choosenot to do anything meaningful, but that strategy would be very damaging in thelong term to the position of Mexico in front of other countries.

The second process that is taking place now and that, in spite of the bad image1 described above, can also be seen in the international media, is the apparentbeginning of a phase of growth based on industrialization in Mexico. Given theincreasing cost of labor and global transportation in China, Mexico is set to recovera privileged position vis--vis the U.S. market, which would allow it to developand continue transforming its use of technology. It is very clear that the currentgovernment is trying to boost this image in order to bring back investment andconfidence in the Mexicain economyeven as the justice and security systems stillneed much improvement. As we can see in the case of Brazil, having a prosperouseconomy that is not only producing more, but is also investing in other countriesor regions is probably the best way to gain inte rnatio nal influence.

Looking at the future of Mexico and Latin America, there will be a very dif-ficult process of negotiating and redefining the responsibilities of Latin Americanstates in societyparticularly around welfare, education, and security. Stable gov-ern m en ts would allow societies to grow, bu t not in terms t hat can be defined fromthe topas it happened in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of the expansion andliberalization of markets. There are reasons to be optimistic: populations are notgrowing that fast, there is continuing demand for Latin American products, andthere are trends in industrial growth that seemed unthinkable twenty years ago. Inmost of Latin America, with the exception of a few countries, you have democraticregimes that have solid, if not unanimous, legitimacy. That is something that youprobably cannot say about Latin America in most of its history. Current govern-ments in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and other countries are not simply revertingto a stronger state, but are recognizing that there are certain obligations for the


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Building the Mexican State: T he Notion of Citizenshipmost of its functions vis--vis society, reducing it to the minimum, selling whatever could be sold, and shrinking public institutions. In most cases, these strate-gies have had a very high social cost in terms of inequality, but also in terms ofthe strength of the economy. If inequality continues to be so extremenot justin terms of income, but also in terms of access to education, health, justice, andsecuritythe region and the countries within it are not going to become moredynamic in their social and economic development.

Lomnitz: Mexico has been a cultural center and reference point in LatinAmerica. In the twentieth century, during the Franco era in Spain, Mexico Gitywas, along with Buenos Aires, the center of Spanish language publishing in theworld. The Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1920 had an active cultural diplo-macy throughout Latin America that left an imprint on social relations. Duringthe 1940s and 1950s, Mexico's film industry had an important position in LatinAmerican culture; later, its major television conglomerate. Televisa, also had animportant presence in the region.

Mexico has a unique situation in Latin America. It is the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, and shares its border with the United States,which has meant that along with Guba and Nicaraguaperhaps even more thanGuba and Nicaraguait has had the oldest, deepest, and one of the most reactiverelationships with the United States on the continent. That is also important forthe rest of Latin America, because, between 1898 and the recent rise of Ghinaand Brazil, the United States was indisputably the relevant imperial power in theregion. Mexico has a richer, more complex, and diverse history of relations withthe United Statesdiplomatic, migratory, cultural, and economicthan any otherLatin American country. It has, in other words, the wherewithal to be a very influ-ential country in Latin America on the cultural plane.

Nonetheless, in recent decades, Mexico has not seemed all that interestedin actually stepping up to the plate with regard to this potential. It is possiblethat the shift in government from the National Action Party (PAN) back to theInstitutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 2012 may rekindle Mexico's interestin increasing its role as an intellectual and cultural center to the south, but thatremains to be seen. If it did decide to put energy into this project, it would, in alllikelihood, be in a position to make rapid strides. '^


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Building Mexican State