Winter of the Patriarch… Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas at 90

Like a Roosevelt or a Kennedy in the United States, being born a Cárdenas almost predestines one to a political career. Son and presumed dauphin to Lazaro Cárdenas …whose presidential term was marked by nationalizing the oil resources, expropriating the haciendas and returning the land to the communes, and lending moral moral (and in the case of Republican Spain, military) support to the anti-Fascists of Europe, … and incidentally born on May Day 1934… it should have been Cuauhtémoc who rose to the presidency to return Mexico to its Revolutionary roots.

Despite Cardenas pere’s post-presidential role as Minister of War during the “War Against Nazifascism” and globetrotting (with Cuauhtemoc in tow) to the post colonial outposts of cold war resistance… meeting and greeting everyone from Chairman Mao to Mexican peasant dissident leaders. However, despite his party having left his brand of revolution aside, settling for the rhetoric of revolution (Lazaro’s “National Revolutionary Party” became the “Institutional Revolutionary Party” — claiming modestly to preserve the “institutions” of the revolution — with a very different structure after he left office in December 1940), Lazaro would stay with the party, even when, at the end of his life (he died in 1970), the mass protests of 1968 exposed huge gulfs between the left and their governors

Not that Cuauhtémoc was entirely silent. At 20, he took a lead in organizing Mexican assistance to the Arbenz administration in Guatemala… the one soon to be undone by United Fruit and the Eisenhower Administration. And, in the early 1960s, joined the MLN,,, a “militant youth” wing of the party,

Although MLN (Movimiento de Liberación Nacional) was a movement within the PRI, it was not limited to PRI loyalists, but sought to recruit Marxists, peasant movements and independents into a viable renewal wing of the party. Even the rich kid, Carlos Salinas de Gotari was a member, although he’d develop a very, very different vision of Mexico than the others, While the MLN was short-lived, dissolving in 1965, several of its more notable leaders would play an important role in the 1968 student uprisings as “elders” (while relatively young, Cuautemoc was pushing 40 by this point) and would be jailed or forced from their jobs. Several would defect to other parties, or other movenets. Still others would find a niche within the party and government bureaucry, seeking change from within. Cuautemoc among the latter.

As a Senator, he supported the election of Lopez Portillo whose administation would come to grief seeking to expand the welfare state on oil revenue, only to face financial disaster as a result. What led to his break with the party was a break in the “Mexican miracle”… and literally shook the country: the 17 September 1986 Mexico City earthquake.

Given the devastation, and the seeming inability of the party to handle the immediate needs of the people, the people responded… not by rioting, or protesting, but by taking control of their needs into their own hands. Everything from emergency kitchens, to security crews, even media coverage was taken on by improptu committees and the small citizens groups and clubs of all kinds^..

It was obvious, and not just in the Capital, that the party no longer could, or would, respond to the people’s needs, and while there were those who simply sought to either shitewash the party’s image, or reform, there were enough of those who saw no future for themselves in the party, to consider alternatives.

For the fractious left the magic of the Cárdenas name gave them something to rally around in the 1988 elections… the one he most likely won, but was undone “thanks” to a still not explained computer breakdown followed by an “accidental” fire destroying the computer center. And, Cardenas would run for president twice more (in 1994 and 2000). Although he never won, he did become the first elected “mayor” of what was then the Federal District (today’s State of Mexico City) and the party he would come to lead… the PRD (Democratic Revolutionary Party) would, for a time, control not just Mexico City, but large part of the Mexican south. Although, the PRD would gradually lose its grip and “revolutionary” fervor filling its ranks with time servers and ambitious “grillos” (literally grasshoppers — professional politicians that will jump to whatever party will nominate them for office) and the less committed and has faded into irrelevance (now a junior partner in the conservative PRI/PAN/PRD coaltion, known as PRIAN, to its oppenent, not even rating mention within the enemy ranks.

What makes Cárdenas’ political failure remarkable though is those three presidential elections, including the stolen victory, to today’s replacement. IF AMLO is the “tropical messiah” as he was once labeled, then Cárdenas was his John the Baptist.

Consider what Cárdenas was proposing in his last campaign, as reported by Sergio Munoz in the 28 May 2000 Los Angeles Times:

We have to modify the Constitution to allow for . . . the referendum, the popular initiative, plebiscites. We have to define the tools for impeachment and accountability for public officials. We have to limit the power of the president to make real the balance of powers.

About what that upstart from Tabasco, who like other former PRI activists gave up on reform from within, the “tropical messiah” himself, has been working towards.

Although whatever prescriptions Cárdenas might have proposed in 2000 would probably differ from those offered today, and by the present candidate of the sucessor united left, the same concerns — povery reductions, honest adminstration, power to the people, remain the same. The patriarch can rest easy, in the winter of his content.

• The writer (and scion of European nobility) Elena Pontiatowska was leading a “ladies who lunch” writers’ group: wealthy women with time on their hands, and more importantly, having cars. Women would want to “do something”. And could… running around the city, getting information on what was available or needed where, and chauffering news crews for the media outlets.
• In Tlatelolco, an anonymous Boy Scout put on his uniform and served to coordinate the adult and teenage rescuers digging through collapesed apartment buildings.
• A seamstress’ union led the rescue efforts at a collapsed factory site, a snack vendor at a high school, and so on.