Political Culture of Mexico

1172 words 5 pages
Mexican Political Culture

As once put by Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz, Mexico is a land of “super-imposed pasts” (McCormick, p.326). It continues to be and is seen as a melding pot of its European and Native American ideas about society, law and government. Its history has had a major influence on the political culture of Mexico, seen through years of revolution, violence and corruption. Mexico is a considered a new democracy, but there is a tension still seen between democracy and authoritarianism. The country we see today has impressive growth yet is still enduring poverty. It’s a geographically diverse country, with a population of approximately 106million people. Latin American political culture is seen as “elitist,
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As Mexico has become wealthier, we see now that their middle class is further expanding and there are greater chances and hopes for political modernization, hoping to permanently stray from the corruption seen in the past. Mexico is a federal republic, but power has been traditionally centralized within the ruling political party. Political power in Mexican politics revolves commonly around camarillas, which is a network of people with common political interests, who have specific ties to a particular leader. Each group of camarillas has a single leader and through this, you find that everyone relies on one another for political advancement. In a system like this, unfortunately personalities become more important than ideologies and policies in political matters and behavior. We see through this centralization how corruption in Mexican political history has been so common. Throughout the years of revolution and war, Mexican political culture has been hugely tarnished by seemingly credible evidence of corruption. There is a value of order over freedom. This is especially seen through the years of the PRI party regime, which held power for 71 years in Mexico. Corruption was rampant, and it has created an intense distrust of government within Mexico, to the point that it is now extremely hard to introduce and collect taxes. 50% of all Mexican people still

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