Statism, Its Recurring Cycles in Mexico and Romania

Olga Magdalena Lazin

• Publisher: Dr Olga Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781638489887
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Nationalism & Patriotism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

history, Statism, Anti-Statism, Active State, State Capitalism, Genaro García Luna, mexico, USMCA, SRI, amparo, românia, Mexico, general genario luna, USMCA, NAFTA 2.0, SRI, ceausescu, civil society, civic engagement, AMLO, Sinaloa cartel, Lydia Cacho, civil society, military, human rights

II.

CYCLES: FOR ANALYZING TYPES OF STATISM

(Like any scheme, there are exceptions to the following stylization.

In each period new problems and obstacles to development were identified in their own time but either ignored or only partly resolved, often because they were only partly resolved and because new generations did not follow through on the “old” when new ones were being identified.

Thus, Mexico continues to face a series of accumulating, misunderstood and/or partially “resolved” problems and obstacles that are “rediscovered” again and again.

This outline offers the framework into which lectures will fit many historical aspects and persons not listed here.)¹³

THE CYCLES

1. “Statist” Aztec Conquest and Government prior to 1521. In Nahua times, the Aztecs set up a system wherein THE leader ruled without any questions and certainly without any democracy. But, communities had local caciques (bosses) to carry out orders and also moderate demands and/or inflict the caciques own demands. Population of Central Mexico reached 25 million by 1519, a total not reached again until early 1950.

(Data on population given here represent estimates, depending on sampling by different agencies except for censuses which are sometimes more inclusive, and vary by methods, including periods of years, seasons of year, and population living/working in the USA—often many millions since 1910).¹⁴

(All population data presented here are from: James Wilkie, Booklet of Charts on Mexican History; James Wilkie, ed. Statistical Abstract of Latin America (SALA), Vol. 38, Table 513 (2002); and U.N. population series. Compare the preceding to research by Robert McCaa, who examines differing views of population statistics for Mexico and delves into data by race/ethnicity and by region. ¹⁵ )

2. “Statist” Spanish Conquest (1519-1521) and Government after 1521. During the Colonial Period (1521-1821), the Spanish substituted their Statist System on top of the defunct system of “Aztec Statism,” and the Spanish did so under a series of Viceroys, who ruled as the “alter ego” of the far away King of Spain.

New Spain administered for the Spanish State all land (and everything under the surface) as well as all economic production, but granted rights and licenses to a favored view to exploit those rights. Local officers moderated demands made by the Crown and Viceroys by promising to obey without complying (“Obedezco pero no cumplo”), and the latter often inflicted demands of their own. Town Councils existed but (in contrast to the 13 American Colonies), the Councils were not democratic and did not represent or allow citizen input beyond the key elite.

Population disastrous decline caused by introduction of European diseases, wars, and “enslavement” of much of the Indigenous population saw the total fall to 17 million by 1532 and to 1.1 million in 1608—the low point.¹⁶ The population then regained impetus to reach 6.1 million by 1810.

3. Failed Anti-State Revolutions (1810-1820), which sought Independence from Spain. Independence was defeated by the Spaniards living in Mexico who successfully saved themselves from having their property and wealth seized in the anti-Spanish fervor. Although the Spaniards (who dominated politics, economics, and society) temporarily “won,” they had to live in a decade of chaotic years.

4. Statist Independence from Spain, 1821-1824 to Maintain Status Quo. Independence was achieved from Spain in 1821 when conservatives, who had fought against independence from Spain (1810 to 1820), turned in favor of Independence to save the Statist system, which was under attack in Spain itself.

When Napoleon I had taken control of Spain and placed his elder brother Joseph Bonaparte on that country’s throne (1808-1813), as his armies passed through to invade Portugal, the Spanish town councils of Spain and the New World finally had gained real importance when, ironically, they had refused to pledge allegiance to a French king. By 1812 the town councils of Spain had formulated a new Anti-Statist Constitution, and when they sought to implement it in 1821, the Spaniards in Mexico (who also controlled Central America) realized that they themselves had to declare Independence from Spain in order to save their power based on Statism.

The population of Mexico in 1823 stood at 6.8 million.¹⁷

5. Chaotic Anti-Statism versus Statism, 1825-1855. Period is characterized by:

Anti-Statists seeking Decentralization of power to the Provinces versus Statists in Mexico City seeking Centralization of power in the capital city.

Both groups successfully drove most of the educated and technically skilled Spaniards out of Mexico, leaving it by 1829 without the expertise necessary to keep the country as a functioning economic system.

The result effectively brought about chaos as the Statist system collapsed in continuing on-going battles between generals who sought to become the Napoleon of Mexico, each attempting without success to install a Napoleonic Statist system of a highly centralized government, which seemed stronger than it turned out to be in fact.

[FLASH TO 19^th-Century FRANCE,¹⁸ about which Michel Gurfinkiel writes that from 1830 … to 1905, France passed through no less than four different constitutions; three dynasties (the Bourbons, the Orléans and the Bonapartes); two republics; three revolutions (1830, 1848 and 1870); one coup that worked (Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte’s in 1851) and two that were either merely attempted (in 1877) or fantasized (in 1889); two civil wars (the June crisis in 1848 and the Commune in 1871); one disastrous defeat to a nascent Germany (1870) that led to the momentary occupation of more than one-third of the country; two major financial scandals, in 1873 and 1892, that swept away most upper- and middle-class savings; and, finally, a turn-of-the-century judicial scandal … that prompted a far-reaching law in 1905 mandating the separation of church and state.]

Hopes to stop anarchy by imposing order were dashed by two facts a) the new Republic of Mexico assumed all the debts of New Spain and the country started out in unstable poverty; and b) the Presidency changed hands 36 times between 1833 and 1855, the average term lasting about 7.5 months. To survive, Presidents had to re-impose import taxes that had been abandoned at Independence, establish sales taxes, and sell monopolies to the private sector (as the Crown had done). Import taxes caused the expansion of smuggling and bribery, sales taxes were circumvented, and monopolies could not generate profits to share with the government in the form of income taxes.

This struggle was especially influenced by Statist Antonio López de Santa Anna, who occupied the Presidency eleven times between 1833 and 1855. As a general of the army, he had led Mexican troops (a) to victory at Tampico in 1829 where he defeated Spain’s attempt to force Mexico back into colonial status; and (b) to defeat in the War with Texas (1835-1836).

Santa Anna restored State power over all lands and subsoil rights in 1853, but lost half of Mexico in his war with the USA, 1845-1848. He was in and out of power so often during his 22 years a major influence in Mexico that he could not establish any long-term stability or Central Government Power.

Nevertheless, Santa Anna’s Recentralization of land rights under the power of Mexico City marks the:

First of Three “Legal”:¹⁹ Land Reforms. Santa Anna’s First Legal Land Reform would provide the major rationale for regulation of land in the Constitution of 1857 and the re-interpretation of that Constitution of 1857 by the dictator Porfirio Díaz. Porfirio transferred 32% of Mexico’s land surface into huge haciendas.

The Second Legal Land Reform would take place with the writing of the Constitution of 1917, which reiterated Santa Anna’s argument that the State controls all land rights (including those above and below ground) and clarified the land regulations as adopted by Juárez in the Constitution of 1857 to prevent the rise of new haciendas—Juárez had failed to “outlaw” the rise of new haciendas to replace the ones he broke up. The Constitution of 1917 required distribution of land to communities, not individuals. Land collectively held cannot be put up for collateral to obtain loans, thus was dependent for credit on the government, which had little or no money for agricultural credit.

The Third Legal Land Reform would take place in 1992, when Salinas won revision of the Constitution of 1917 to provide for granting ownership of title to the land currently being worked by a family, thus ending complete control over the land that had been held by Community Councils. Further, this new law stated that although land distribution to Ejidos could continue, it did not require it.

6. Active-State Legal Revolution, 1856-1866, established by Benito Juárez and his Chief Minister Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada was undertaken to develop the Reform Laws that were then written into the Constitution of 1857.

Here are the provisions of the Constitution of 1857:

• establish civil power to take registration of birth, marriage, and death from the Church (including taking over the Church’s hospitals and orphanages, but without the funds to do so, led to the closure of many and health/social disaster for the poor),

• establish a sound market economy based on weights and measures consistent throughout Mexico,

• break up the Indigenous Communal Farms (Ejidos, many held trust by the Church) as well as large haciendas/latifundia controlled by the Church and absentee private-land owners) to distribute it to Small- and Medium-Size Property Owners.

Latifundia/Haciendas are defined as

a. huge estates larger than 2,500 acres or

b. estates not used “productively”—that is not used at all, especially prior to the mid-twentieth century.

Problems not foreseen by the Juárez Land Laws: Productivity requires the normal practice of letting land “rest” in order to prevent depletion of soil health and to recover from heavy use or failure to rotate crops. Often if is difficult to know if land is not being used or “resting”. Many persons see such land being “wasted” unless it is divided and distributed to the poor, failing to understand that the consequence tends to create minifundia.

Minifundia are undersized plots of land that barely provide subsistence agriculture and largely force inhabitants to exist outside the marker economy. They are farmed continually because, if the land is allowed to “rest”, the occupants, cannot survive. The method of farming is slash and burn agriculture, cutting and burning of forests or woodlands to create fields for agriculture or pasture for livestock. The burning ruins the root structure and eventually renders soils incapable of further yields—sometimes for generations. Slash and burn “farming” has caused soil erosion for centuries in Mexico, wasting the land. Because fertilizers are prohibitively expensive, vegetables are too often grown in “night soil” (human manure, which tends to cause dangerous intestinal infections unless the vegetables are well cooked.)

Small holdings may also engage in slash and burn agriculture because holdings have been too small to take advantage of change in technology such the advent of tractors as well as plant nutrition—either organic or inorganic.²⁰

Juárez effectively broke the power of the Church and private haciendas (b...