PROJECT: “ CIVIL SOCIETY AND GOVERNANCE IN
MEXICO”
Dr. Alberto J. Olvera, National Coordinator
Case Study:
CIVIC ALLIANCE:
Pro-democratic social movements, civil society and the public sphere.
Alberto J.. Olvera Rivera.
Institute of Historical and Social Research
Universidad Veracruzana
March, 2000
INTRODUCTION
The politics of civil society is the politics of influence, that is, the indirect pressure placed on the political system by means of criticism, mobilization and massive campaigns (Cohen and Arato, Chap. X, 1992). This form of political action constructs multiple political spaces (Olvera, 1999), as many as the diversity of actors, topics and interests involved. The most important public spaces in terms of capacity for generating citizenship are those which constitute interfaces between civil society and the political system, that is, forms of contact between social and political actors, or between individuals exercising their rights and state institutions.
In the prolonged and inconclusive process of democratic transition taking place in Mexico, the role of pro-democratic social movements in constructing new public spaces and creating effective citizenship has been fundamental. These movements have contributed to the relative democratization of public life by bringing into play diverse forms of politics of influence. In fact, the social struggles resulting from electoral processes have become the main social-political conflict in the last decade in Mexico. Of these, those that were steered by opposition parties were the ones with the highest public involvement.[1] These mobilizations began in 1983 in Chihuahua, extending afterwards to Nuevo Leon, Sinaloa and Guanajuato. In 1988 the alleged electoral fraud against the nationalist and populist leader Cuauhtemoc Cardenas in the presidential elections provoked the greatest sequence of popular mobilizations in Mexico in several decades. The continuance of this tendency in the early nineties gradually forced the government to recognize the triumphs of the opposition parties in municipal and state elections.
The independent pro- democratic movements began to take place in 1991, when for the first time electoral observation was introduced in state elections in San Luis Potosi and in Michoacán. In 1994 Civic Alliance was formed as an articulation of different regional movements and of the main networks of NGOs in the country. Civic Alliance organized the biggest experiment in integrated electoral observation carried in the world to that date. The defense of political rights from without the political system was something totally new in the country.
The struggle for democracy in Mexico created new public spaces as much in the national and local media as in public forums. Its moral and legal basis was the concept of political rights linked to a wide concept of human rights, resulting from a normative learning of the NGOs specialized in this field. The practice of electoral observation introduced an additional cultural innovation, which was the practice of pluralism and political tolerance in social movements. Historically, in Mexico social movements have always been highly politicized by leaders linked to political parties and tendencies.
Besides, Civic Alliance created new forms of politics of influence in Mexico, among these are national public consultations on topics of national or local interest, and the vigilance or monitoring of government. The whole set of these innovations indicates that the Civic Alliance has not only placed itself in a democratic liberal perspective in defense of political rights but has also contributed to the creation of a modern civic culture by opening room for forms of citizen action which extended the concept of political rights in the perspective of reconstructing the relationship between citizens and governments.
The Civic Alliance has adopted a form of representation of civil society that distinguishes it from traditional forms of representation of interests. Multiple and even antagonistic forms of representation co-exist within civil society. The corporate components of civil society: Unions, business and professional associations, peasant farmers organizations, neighborhood and urban dwellers organizations, reclaim the defense of the economic interests of their members, but do not possess the legitimate right (in a markedly post corporatist era) to reclaim their political representation. Cultural, sports and recreational associations do not have the will to represent interests due to the fact that they are private organizations with private goals. Civil NGO-type associations cannot reclaim any representation, because, even though they are private associations with public aims, their opinions and proposals attempt to influence public opinion and formal politics from the standpoint of efficacy and justice and not departing from class rights. Human rights groups and social pro-democratic movements cannot reclaim representation either, but do appeal to the effective application of citizens’ rights in terms of public morality.
Because of this civil society as such is non-representative in conventional terms. Only in a highly symbolic sphere and in extraordinary situations can “civil society” reclaim a collective moral representation: campaigns against dictatorships, delinquency, violation of political rights, or impunity of a political group; against hunger, for free and fair elections, for indigenous peoples’ rights, for peace.
The case of Civic Alliance is the prototype example of this “symbolic representation” based on the defense of basic rights and the rescue of public morality. There is a correspondence between this model of representation and a form of collective action situated in the center of a conflict over political principles and concepts of justice, a symbolic terrain where the ties between legality and legitimacy are attempted to be re-established.
The potential and the limits of this model of action and citizen representation will be evaluated in this chapter, taking as a center the case of Civic Alliance. The text is divided in three parts. The first is a brief summary of the national political processes that created a suitable atmosphere for the development of social pro- democratic movements in Mexico. Among these, we will mention the political crisis of the ruling regime, its neo-liberal transformation, the widening of the public sphere, the constitution of a party system; the formation of the so-called Non-Governmental Organizations and of other civil organizations stemming from a common origin in the catholic social doctrine and the progressive sectors of the church, as well as in the collective experience of human rights groups; the emergence of new citizen groups; a process of coordination and subsequent formation of networks of civil organizations.
In the second part we will analyze the formation and composition of Civic Alliance, Mexico’s main pro-democratic movement. We concentrate in three arenas of action this organization has developed: electoral observation, agenda-setting campaigns and monitoring of government performance. We discuss Civic Alliance’s capacity of innovation in terms of political culture, creation of new public spaces and promotion of governance.
Finally we will study the limits of pro-democratic collective action in the national context of the “half –way transition to democracy” which the country is presently going through. We refer to the juridical, organizational, identity-formation and political culture problems that the pro-democratic movement faces.
We will also see how pro-democratic movements do not escape the contradictions of the political culture they intend to transform, and that their capacity of mobilization, while highly cyclical, diminishes dramatically as it passes from the struggle for free vote to new demands for the broadening of citizens’ rights. We will analyze the effects of the contradiction between movement and organization that have characterized the development of Civic Alliance from its beginnings and the subsequent difficulties for the institutionalization and permanence of this movement.
I. Political and cultural processes that facilitate the formation of a civil arena and pro-democratic social movements.
Three main political and cultural processes define the origin of pro-democratic movements in Mexico. Firstly, the evolution of the social discourse of the Catholic Church, given that the origins of the Non-Governmental Organizations in Mexico can be found in the institutions and processes promoted by the Second Vatican Council[2]. Secondly, the process of political radicalization of part of the Mexican youth as a result of the repression of the student movement of 1968, which led to a wave radical activism in popular social movements[3]. Finally, the slow but steady political liberalization during the seventies and the eighties helped in the formation of a party system and also to channel part of the social unrest generated in the period of neo-liberal adjustment towards the electoral ground.
The politics of political liberalization was carried out in the context of a prolonged economic crisis. From 1982 to 1988 the country experienced no growth, high inflation and the free fall of real wages. The objective separation State-Society brought about by the crisis of the development model led to the emergence of a small, weak and fragmented civil society based on associative models of the class-type that lacked stability and juridical security. The popular sectors did not propose a criticism of the rupture between legitimacy and legality through their collective actions, but symbolized a popular compliant against the practical rupture of the morality of the populist-authoritarian regime (the promise of substantive justice).
On the other hand, the urban conservative movements produced an undoubtedly important cultural mutation, by questioning the monopoly of politics by the official party and by accepting the possibility of directly governing their local areas through the electoral system (Tarres 1992). The influence of this movement is yet unfinished due to the fact that the middle-class and business sectors from other parts of the country are of late becoming involved in this tendency.[4] The middle classes of the north initiated an associate practice, which meant a break with the old tradition of privatism. This should be considered an important cultural change even though it has been produced in very conservative sectors and taking as a departing point the rescue of traditional norms and values.
The crisis of the eighties activated in this way all sectors of society. For the business and middle classes of the north it meant the necessity of openly acting in the political arena, and they saw in the historically marginal right-wing party, the PAN, the way to compete for the municipalities and state governments (Chihuahua, Sonora, Baja California, Guanajuato, Sinaloa, San Luis Potosí). The radical-leftist actors also tried to enter the electoral field although with very little success. The remaining civil organizations continued to be on the outside of the political electoral arena. Human rights groups, for example, were concerned about solidarity with Central American inmigrants.
One more factor of change was the internal division in the official party in 1987, caused by the withdrawal of the Corriente Democrática of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and Porfirio Muñoz Ledo[5], which led Mexican citizens to turn to elections as a posible outlet for the democratic transformation of the system. Indeed, in 1988 popular desperation expressed massively in the ballots leading to a very likely victory of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas (a massive fraud was denounced) and to an increased presence, country-wide, of the National Action Party (PAN).
From then on, gradually, and at a high social cost in terms of social and political mobilization, the political liberalization was extended to the electoral arena and an authentic electoral competition began to take place. A party system on a national scale was created, in which the National Action Party (PAN) was placed as a democratic right-wing party and the newly formed Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD) was the left-wing party. The PRD (1989) absorbed the populist currents of the PRI, the majority of the organized leftist party groups and numerous social movements leaders, especially those of popular urban movements, peasant organizations and students movements. The civil society represented by the non-governmental organizations chose not to join this process, keeping their political and organizational autonomy.
The period between 1988-1994 was characterized by the development of an ambitious, but failed, project of self-transformation of the ruling political system. In the economic arena, an accelerated process of economic opening culminated in the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993. The nationalized banks were privatized. The agrarian reform ended. The state-owned companies connected to agriculture were closed. The government attempted to administer the advance of the opposition parties in different regions by means of electoral fraud, increasing the political instability in the country.
In this context the non-govermental organizations flourished throughout the country. Their numbers increased, their action was diversified and their visibility amplified to such a level as to elevate the quality of their action and to create networks of national coordination, which allowed them to articulate actions and gain public presence and recognition. This growth is explained partly by the despair felt in the educated middle classes in the face of limited possibilities of independent electoral participation within the opposition parties. Two other factors intervened in this process: in the late eighties the increasing access of the NGOs to international financing, and in the nineties the gradual replacement of the old concept of service to popular movements by a growing professionalization and orientation towards the definition of alternative social policies. This conjunction of factors led to the multiplication of the number of non-govermental organizations[6], the formation of thematic networks of civil organizations as well as the birth of national networks such as Forum for Mutual Support (Foro de Apoyo Mutuo, 1992) and Convergence of Civic Organizations for Democracy (Convergencia de Organismos Civiles por la Democracia, 1991).
Meanwhile the popular movements for democracy expressed themselves basically as post electoral battles against fraud, headed by the political parties. Nevertheless, the idea of exerting social pressure against the government to stop the fraud before and during the electoral process begins to take form based on the experiences of different regional civic movements. Among this we can include the Family Civic Front (Frente Cívico Familiarde Yucatán, 1989) and the struggle for democracy and against fraud in San Luis Potosí in 1991, which led to the formation of the Citizen Movement for Democracy (Movimiento Ciudadano por la Democracia, 1992). This civil organization is in itself a front of NGOs and regional civil movements. Other civil groups (formed by intellectuals and journalists) were also created to promote the cause of democracy, such as the National Accord for Democracy (Acuerdo Nacional por la Democracia, 1990), and research organizations such as the Fundación Arturo Rosenbluth, which helped to give methodological consistency to the efforts of electoral observation.
Among NGOs an important symbolic change was produced when the human rights organizations extended this concept to the area of political rights (Concha Malo, 1995). This recognition justified the increased activism of the Academia de Derechos Humanos in this field and of numerous NGOs in general. This slant towards a democratic liberal imaginary was the recognition of the end of revolutionary utopias, an adaptation to people’s aspirations and the expression of a collective learning in the normative terrain. This imaginary also incorporated a republican perspective as a constitutive element: only the collective action of organized citizens would force the government to accept the democratization of public life. The increasing adoption by this sector of a collective identity as “civil society” reflected in a precise way a new conviction: The defense of individual political rights demands collective action and the presence of actors more or less permanently organized.
The emergence of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in January 1994 dramatically modified the panorama of the political transition. The indigenous uprising constituted a moral shock for society and led to the formation of a national movement in support of indigenous causes. Great spontaneous massive mobilizations of urban middle and popular classes were staged along 1994 and 1995. This process increased the urgency of a peaceful solution to the political crisis of the country, accentuated by the assassination of the presidential candidate of the PRI in March 1994.
One of the emergent measures the government implemented to avoid the total lack of credibility in the electoral process of 1994 was to accede to an old demand of the opposition parties and pro-democratic civil movements: The autonomy of the electoral agency, the Federal Electoral Institute, which in Mexico depended directly on the government. This process was known as “citizenization”. This process was more symbolical than real, due to the fact that the six new “Citizen Counselors” named in 1994 found that everything had been prepared for the August federal elections. There was little they could do to avoid the presidential elections being manipulated by government.
II. Civic Alliance: Citizens’ power and its limits.
- The power of electoral observation.
In April 1994, Civic Alliance was created as a coalition of civil groups: Convergencia de Organismos Civiles por la Democracia (a network of NGOs), Movimiento Ciudadano por la Democracia (a network of pro-democratic regional groups), Academia Mexicana de Derechos Humanos (a professional and stable NGO); Acuerdo Nacional por la Democracia, Instituto Superior de Cultura Democratica, Asamblea por el Sufragio Efectivo (small groups of members of the political and cultural elite of Mexico City), and Fundación Arturo Rosenbluth (professional research NGO). Alliance’s specific aim was to observe the presidential elections of 1994 as a means for citizens to force the government to abide by electoral laws. Through the network of existing NGOs and also through connections with local established democratic movements, a national social movement was quickly set up.
The very notion of electoral observation had a history of ten years in 1994. It had been originally an international effort to stop open violation of political rights in small countries around the world. The most relevant experiences in Latin America were the observation of the Pinochet referendum of 1988 in Chile, the 1990 presidential elections in Nicaragua in 1990, several elections in Haiti, Dominican Republic and Panama (Middlebrook, 1998). In such a big country like Mexico, which has a strong nationalist culture, foreign-led observation had no viability. Besides, both the United States and the international community have been comfortable with the PRI authoritarian regime, given that it had guaranteed the political stability of the country (Aguayo, 1998). Only an internal-led civil pr-democratic process could succeed in Mexico.