jorge volpi - intellectuals and power in 20th century

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The End of the Conspiracy: Intellectuals and Power in 20th-century Mexico Author(s): Jorge Volpi and Carl Good Source: Discourse, Vol. 23, No. 2, MEXICO IN TRANSITION: ART, CULTURE, POLITICS (Spring

2001), pp. 144-154Published by: Wayne State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41389609Accessed: 07-10-2015 20:27 UTC

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The End of the Conspiracy:

Intellectuals and Power in

20th-century Mexico1

Jorge Volpi

To Gabriel Zaid

The Conspirator and the Bootlicker

In Mexico intellectuals and the politically powerful have long been linked by mutual fascination, suspicion and even hatred. Dozens of historians have studied the bonds that have held this pair together in their complex symbiosis throughout the twentieth century and particularly over the last 70 years. Like a quarrelsome old married couple who after years of living together can no longer find reasons to separate, intellectuals and the powerful in Mexico remain joined by habit and custom. And also by their troubling ignorance of each other.

Although we would have to go back to viceregal times to find the origins of this relationship, it could be argued that the relation between intellectuals and power began to assume its contemporary character during the late nineteenth-century dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. The powerful have always held a certain fear and reverence for those strange figures who watch what they are doing, judge them, criticize them or, in the happiest of cases, justify them. However irrationally, the powerful seek out the opinions of intellectuals, convinced that the latter are the possessors of dangerous

Discourse, 23.2, Spring 2001, pp. 144-154. Copyright © 2001 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309.

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Spring 2001 145

influence and wisdom. As the powerful see it, however, intellectuals can be divided in two simple categories: if the ideas expressed by an intellectual are favorable to the powerful person's politics, then the intellectual is a bootlicker, a kind of officious employee whose services must be reimbursed through subsidies, honors or money (or all three). If, on the other hand, the intellectual questions, invalidates or even challenges the actions of the powerful one, the latter does not hesitate to consider the intellectual a conspirator, a potential delinquent in the service of obscure interests and who must therefore be seduced, intimidated, persecuted or, in extreme cases, eliminated (the cheapest of the options) .

For their part, intellectuals maintain an equally ambiguous position. Although some have managed to resist official pressures, opposing themselves to power or even falling victim to it in de- fense of their ideas, in most cases intellectuals have preferred to seek prosperity in the uneasy balance between criticizing power, on the one hand, and yielding to power's seductions, on the other. In a country built on the notion that a single party- or a single individual- should dominate the entirety of the social sphere, not many options remain for intellectuals. They can either exercise a no-holds-barred critique and thereby risk imprisonment (or worse) , or they can moderate their criticism in order to curry the favor and recognition that allows them to carry out their work with a certain freedom, under the condition that they not exceed the limits that have been imposed on them.

With their precarious exchange of suspicions and threats, intellectuals and the powerful in Mexico have thus parlayed through the twentieth century, waging a hidden war which has barely allowed them to know or understand each other. However, given the orderly transfer of power and the consolidation of democratic institutions during the recent elections, the time is ripe for a review of the role that intellectuals have played in the national life up to this point. If Mexican society has finally managed to complete its difficult divorce from the PRI party, then perhaps it is time for something similar to take place between Mexican intellectuals and political power. As with any separation process, the terms of the new relation must be clearly set forth in order to ensure that it is a more distant, healthy and advantageous one for Mexico.

The Resentful Opposer and the Decorated Sycophant

"Intellectuals are writers, artists or scientists who express opinions on matters of public interest with moral authority among the



1 46 Discourse 23. 2

elite," wrote historian Gabriel Zaid in a now-classic article ("Intelec- tuales" 21). By negative extension, they are not intellectuals who do not participate in public life or do so defending interests that contradict their own convictions. In his essay, "Cuatro estaciones de la cultura mexicana" (Four Seasons of Mexican Culture), Enrique Krauze suggests that twentieth-century Mexico has been marked by four successive intellectual generations. His classification is useful to our survey of twentieth-century intellectuals and power. The generation of 1915, whose members were born roughly between 1890 and 1905, took the programs of its immediate predecessors- the fin de siglo "modernistas" and the Ateneo de la Juventud (the Young Athenaeum, a loose association of artists and intellectuals immediately prior to the Revolution) - to their culmination. The members of the second generation, whom Krauze terms the generation of 1929, were born between 1906 and 1920; those of the third generation were born between 1921 and 1935 and are referred to by Krauze and others as the generation of the "mid-century" (named after ajournai of that title), while the members of the fourth were born between 1936 and 1950 and are commonly termed the generation of 1968, following the student massacre in Tlatelolco of that year. We could update Krauze's sequence with the addition of two more recent generations: a generation of 1985 or 1988, named after, respectively, the devastating Mexico City earthquake and the civic awakening of the Salinas elections; and perhaps an even more recent generation still in its incubation stage: that of intellectuals born since 1970.

The members of the Ateneo should be considered the initia- tors of the modern intellectual tradition in Mexico. If their critical drive led them to undermine the scientific rationality that marked the Porfirian dictatorship and led the way to the Revolution, they nonetheless resisted identification with the ideology emanating from the armed conflict. Without overlooking the importance and public service of such figures of this generation as critic-diplomat Alfonso Reyes and philosopher Antonio Caso, it was José Vasconce- los and Martín Luis Guzmán who not only exemplify the most direct link between this generation and power, but who also would thereby become paradigmatic of the behavior of intellectuals in Mexico. By the end of their careers, each had become the prototype of the conspirator and the bootlicker, that duo which would continue to make its appearance in Mexico over the subsequent decades.

The first of these two figures is unarguably one of the most powerful forces in twentieth-century Mexican intellectual life: Vascon- celos began his political career as a critic of the already-declining Porfirian regime. After joining with the first revolutionary leader,



Spring 2001 147

Francisco Madero, and subsequently serving as rector of the Na- tional University, he was appointed minister of education by Alvaro Obregon, one of the first revolutionary presidents. Unsurpassedly ambitious, Vasconcelos has the distinction of being the only Mexi- can intellectual who dared to seek power rather than merely collab- orate with it. Claude Fell and other scholars have demonstrated the wide scope of his political designs. But precisely when Vasconcelos laid plans to surpass his political protectors by launching into a campaign for the presidency, he reached the pinnacle of his ad- venture. During the elections of 1929, he would have the dubious honor of being the first intellectual to confront the state party that would later be named the PRI, the organism created by his oppo- nent, Plutarco Elias Calles, as a tool for establishing a power base in the elections. Vasconcelos would also be the first to experience the overwhelming force of Calles' state party when his campaign fell victim to a colossal fraud at the polls. After this, Vasconcelos' public career immediately went into decline. As a figure of political opposition, he would never achieve the triumphs of the years when he had been a mere collaborator with power.

In this chronicle of parallel lives, novelist Martín Luis Guzmán provides the contrasting story. Although he, too, felt the attraction of power as Vasconcelos did, Guzmán's fascination for the Revo- lutionary caudillos would end more abruptly. His first encounters with Pancho Villa and other generals disappointed him, turning him into one of the severest critics of the new revolutionary power, as he expressed in his works, La sombra del caudillo (The Shadow of the Cacique) and Memorias de Pancho Villa (Memories of Pancho Villa) . His later experiences in Republican Spain and his closeness with Manuel Azaña give him credit still today as a vigorous defender of freedom. However, as soon as he returned to Mexico he would increasingly feel the seduction exerted on him by the state. Tiempo , the journal he founded and directed, quickly became an instru- ment of the official line and Guzmán himself would eventually accept a post in the government. Sadly, he ended his career as an apologist for president Gustavo Diaz Ordaz following the 1968 massacre of the students in Tlatelolco.

The conspirator and the bootlicker. Or the resentful opposer and the decorated sycophant. The destinies of Vasconcelos and Guzmán would thus become the measure of many intellectuals who followed them. Both represent the decline of intelligence in the face of a power that destroys or corrupts. In their dealings with intellectuals, subsequent Mexican governments would not hesitate to repeat, time and again, the strategies that had been successfully used with Vasconcelos and Guzmán.



1 48 Discourse 23. 2

The Trapped Opposer and the Vanquished Objector

The generation of 1915 were the spiritual heirs of the Ateneo. In their respective political and literary arenas, the two nuclei of this generation- the Siete Sabios (the Seven Wise Men), a group of political critics, and the Contemporáneos , an association composed mainly of writers- are responsible for forging contemporary Mexi- can intellectual identity. Once again, we could isolate two emblematic figures from each group, although before doing so a brief acknowledgement should be made of a figure who holds an inter- mediate position between them, the atypical Daniel Cosío Villegas, who, after initially collaborating with power subsequently became one of its sharpest critics. In the first of the two groups Manuel Gómez Morín and Vicente Lombardo Toledano in many ways represent ideal models of public behavior, as Enrique Krauze demon- strates in his study, Caudillos culturales de la Revolución Mexicana (Cultural Heroes of the Mexican Revolution). In addition to their notable public service, these men share the distinction of being founders of the first opposition parties in Mexico. However, their successes were frustrated, albeit within opposing circumstances. Due to official hostility, the small liberal party formed by Gómez Morín, the PAN, would have very little symbolic weight during its first 40 years of existence. And the Partido Popular (Popular Party) which Lombardo Toledano formed after breaking ties with the Mexican Workers' Confederation (CTM), would suffer an even worse, although opposing, fate. His Partido Popular was quickly swallowed up into an alliance with the PRI and subsequently dis- appeared without having contributed to the creation of a tradition of leftist opposition in Mexico. Echoing the unfortunate example of Martín Luis Guzmán, Lombardo would die convinced that the student movement of 1968 was a conspiracy against Mexico rather than a real attempt at political transformation. He and Gómez Morín thus give us another variation on the intellectual duo: the trapped opposer and the vanquished objector. Likewise, two similar emblematic cases can be found among the members of the second of these two groups of the generation of 1915. While Con- temporáneo writer Jorge Cuesta articulated a radical criticism of the ideological dogmatism and vulgar nationalism of the governments of Calles and Cárdenas, consequently suffering persecution and disappointment, Jaime Torres Bodet became the prototype of the perfect government functionary, always active in office and always relegated to a decorous secondary position. The same prototypes, although perhaps with different names: the unredeemed critic and the organic intellectual.



Spring 2001 149

The Mystic Communist and the Intransigent Liberal

As if in counterpoint to the generation of 1915, their successors in the generation of 1929, often called the "Cachorros de la Rev- olución" (the Pups of the Revolution), mostly became government functionaries. Their will to consolidate the institutions created by their predecessors threatened them with a double sterility: neither literary creation nor notable intellectual activity. As Krauze himself observes, "They did not invent institutions, but consolidated them. They did not have a personal written legacy to speak of: their work was the Mexican political system. For this reason none of them wrote memoirs. To their disgrace, the system they created was not the legendary monarchy of the Hapsburgs: it was barely a paren- thesis in Mexican history. No one remembers them as intellectuals and few remember them as politicians" ( Caudillos 56) .

However, two of the most notable figures of the twentieth century in Mexico appear in the second wave of this group: José Revueltas and Octavio Paz. Educated in the revolutionary environ- ment of their youth, both were equally attracted to the ideological novelty of the century: revolutionary Marxism. But while Revueltas would take his conviction to extremes of mystical expiation, Paz, after his rediscovery of the liberal democratic tradition, gradually became disillusioned with Marxism and ended up producing the most articulate criticisms of totalitarian systems ever to be heard in Mexico. In both cases, the relation between the intellectual and political power was passionate: a choice of heterodoxy and a repul- sion for the inevitability of accommodation. Revueltas exemplifies perhaps better than anyone the role of the extreme opposer: he spent most of his life in prison, constantly hounded by power. In contrast, Paz preferred to formulate his sharp criticisms from a position of voluntary exile, but without distancing himself com- pletely from the system. In 1968, however, their apparently contrary destinies were reconciled. In one of the few glorious moments of Mexican intellectual history, Paz and Revueltas defied the absolute power of President Diaz Ordaz following the massacre of students in Tlatelolco. Revueltas accepted responsibility as instigator of the student movement and was put in prison, while Paz became the only Mexican government official to resign his position (as ambas- sador to India) in order to publicly express his condemnation of the massacre. The mystical communist and the intransigent liberal once again crossed paths in this key moment of Mexican history. Paz's path, however, would be the longer and more enduring one. After the end of Diaz Ordaz's regime, he activated the journals Plural and Vuelta , turning them into indispensable focal points of



150 Discourse 23. 2

Mexican intellectual life as venues of criticism against the excesses of power. His labor and legacy continue to inform political and cultural transformations in Mexico. But Paz's fascination for power also led him to enjoy a closeness to, and influence upon, Mexican governments which few intellectuals have matched in this century.

The ideologies of the generation following Paz and Revueltas, the generation of the mid-century have varied in accordance with the commotions of the times. If in the 1950s these intellectuals could be characterized by their common concern with forging a "third path" in political opposition to Cold War polarization, in the sixties they tended to pursue a leftist radicalism inspired by the Cuban Revolution. Starting in the 1970s their path branched variously into dissidence against, criticism of or collaboration with, the government. Among many other names, the most well known of this group include Carlos Fuentes, Juan Garcia Ponce, Carlos Monsiváis, Elena Poniatowska and José Emilio Pacheco, along with perhaps the most lucid and independent of Mexican intellectuals of the second half of the century, a critic of political power who has refused to succumb to its enchantments: Gabriel Zaid.

The members of the generation of 1968 were perhaps the last of the "politically committed" intellectuals or at least the last to have once believed in revolutionary utopianism. It fell to them to experience the Cold War of the sixties and seventies, to contemplate the end of real socialism in the nineties and see the defeat of the PRI in the year 2000. If we continued with our list of parallel lives, the best examples of the academic and literary trajectories of this group might be Enrique Krauze, assistant director of Paz' journal Vuelta and current editor of Letras Libres , as well as Héctor Aguilar Camin, who served many years as director of the magazine, Nexos , the other essential journal of Mexican cultural life.

Apathetic Intellectuals, Armed Intellectuals

To identify the moment in which relations between power and intellectuals in Mexico began to change, we must refer to some key dates. If 1968, the year of the repression of Tlatelolco, and 1976, when presidential power undercut the critical freedom of the newspaper Excelsior and the journal Plural, represent some of the worst episodes in the history of the opposition between intellectuals and power in Mexico, 1985 and 1988, by contrast, constitute the dawn of triumph against authoritarianism. The Mexico City earthquake of 1985 provoked a societal response that exceeded the government's own actions in both energy and effectiveness.



Spring 2001 151

To paraphrase Carlos Monsiváis, for the first time Mexican society organized itself, without government permission or guidance. In turn, the national elections of 1988, despite the electoral fraud commited that year, marked the end of the PRI hegemony thanks to the irruption into the political scene of a powerful left-wing coalition led by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and Porfirio Muñoz Ledo.

During the first few months of 1988, the presidency of Carlos Salinas was assaulted by a barrage of criticism and charges of il- legitimacy. Rediscovering liberties they had not enjoyed for years, intellectuals and the national press began to assert unprecedented criticisms of a government that found itself unable to contain them. Unfortunately, the experiment was quickly interrupted. Obsessed with reestablishing an absolute presidential power and employing all strategies within his means to do so, Salinas wasted no time in identifying a strategy to bring the wave of public criticism to an end. But rather than orchestrate a campaign of repression such as Diaz Ordaz would have conducted, Salinas sought to coopt his critics with more subtle tactics. For the first time in Mexican history a vast program of cultural fellowships and incentives was set up, organized through a new government agency, the CONACULTA (the National Council for Culture and the Arts), the objective of which was, if not to control intellectuals, at least to garner their sympathy. A notable example of the success of this government strategy was the response of a group associated with the journal Nexos , but in fact few Mexican intellectuals of this period escaped the government's seduction. By the middle of his presidential term, Salinas had managed to restore fascination for presidential power to such an extent that only those figures allied with the PRTs his- toric enemy, the PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution), dared to attack him. In the midst of a euphoria interrupted by only a few voices quickly dismissed as enemies of the state, Salinas was now poised to see the passage of his free-trade agreement with the United States, the keystone of his economic policy. The jubilation, however, would not last for long.

The year 1994 became one of the most turbulent in recent Mexican history. On the first of January, a guerrilla group took over several towns in the state of Chiapas, protesting against PRI authoritarianism and conditions of social inequality suffered by indigenous people. An unprecedented ideological war began. Three months later Luis Donaldo Colosio, the PRI candidate for the presidency, was assassinated. Shortly thereafter, the general secretary of the party fell to the same fate. Following national elections dominated by fear and uncertainty, the new president, Ernesto Zedillo, began to govern under the cloud of a grave economic crisis.



152 Discourse 23. 2

Relations between intellectuals and the political elite in this period likewise fell into turbulence. The Zapatista uprising produced a revival among the left just at the moment when leftists were feeling the greatest disappointment over the collapse of Mexican socialism. The leader of the guerrilla war, Subcommander Marcos, became one of the principal voices of the national political and cultural discussion. With unprecedented enthusiasm, the intellectual class rose in mass to denounce the ruling powers and scrutinize their excesses. Following the preceding period of calm that Salinas had achieved with his buy-out of the Mexican intelligentsia, the polariz- ing pattern of the beginning of the century would now be repeated: the Zedillo government would once again categorize intellectuals as either conspirators or bootlickers in accordance with their posi- tions on the Zapatista army, while on the left the political opposition heralded a guerrilla-warrior-now-become-moral-leader. The atmo- sphere of national uncertainy would only begin to clear toward the middle of Zedillo's six-year term. His government would only be a necessary interlude prior to the real transformation of the country.

In Search of an Independent Criticism

If Fox's political defeat of the PRI party on July 2, 2000 consti- tuted the ideal stage for a reinvention of the country, this was due not only to the much longed-for defeat of the PRI, but also to a redistribution of power in a country accustomed to forced consen- sus. What has happened with the Mexican government must now be taken as an example not only by many other sectors of society, but also by the nation's intellectuals. For the first time in more than 70 years, Mexico has a real distribution of power, a system of weights and counterweights capable of moderating presidential power. If Vicente Fox and the PAN won the presidency, his faction represents a minority in the Mexican Congress, outnumbered by the PRI, the PRD and other, smaller parties. Of the 31 states in the Republic, the PAN currently governs fewer than a third, and the Federal District is in the hands of the PRD party, although with a Legislative Assembly controlled by Fox's party. And judicial power enjoys a degree of independence it has never before possessed. However complicated this new correlation of forces, for the first time there is a guarantee of republican equilibrium in Mexico.

What, now, should be the function of intellectuals in Mexico? And how should they handle their relation to political power? In the first place, their real role in a democratic society must be acknowl- edged. Intellectuals should no longer be seen by the ruling powers



Spring 2001 153

as those admired enemies of yesterday. This means two things: that they should not be threatened or persecuted as they have been, and that the ruling powers must cease to adulate them as they once did. In a democratic regime that guarantees freedom of expression, intellectuals do not need the gracious protection of the powerful nor must they endure tactics of seduction. Intellectuals in Mexico must be seen for what they are: independent intellectuals like any others, whose mission is to give opinions on matters of public interest in order to aid or model general public opinion about topics of importance. That is all. This has nothing to do, of course, with the politics of cultural promotion of the new government. The government should continue to support thinkers and creators of all types, but only for the activity they carry out and not for the opinions they express about matters of public interest. This might involve simply redefining the task that CONACULTA has been carrying out in recent years.

For their part, intellectuals will also have to attend to their tasks without seeking out recognition from those in power. Their role will never again be evaluated only by the elite, but will now also be reviewed by an increasingly pluralistic society. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, it is time for the odious characters associated with the PR I regime to disappear along with their ghostly counter- parts: the conspirators, the bootlickers, the resentful opposers, the decorated sycophants, the trapped opposers and the vanquished objectors. It is time for all conspiracies to end.

If intellectuals and the powerful would concentrate on carrying out their tasks impartially, it would barely be necessary to see their faces. The intellectual's function is to serve as yet another of the counterweights that society exerts on its government. To carry out this function, intellectuals do not require prizes, recognitions or invitations. Mexican intellectuals must now comply with that ideal articulated by Gabriel Zaid: if an intellectual joins the government, takes up arms, or speaks defending the narrow interests of other parties, he or she should not be considered an intellectual. Only intellectuals who demonstrate their capacity to maintain independence from power at all costs will continue to hold public confidence.

Like a couple who has decided to seek a civil divorce, outright enmity between intellectuals and the politically powerful would be damaging. But not for that matter do the two groups require an excessive closeness. That would poison their relation and prevent them from carrying out their objectives. Starting now, transparency must be the dominant tone in the relation between intellectuals and political authority in Mexico. Only then will Mexico achieve



154 Discourse 23. 2

the democratic equilibrium it has so strongly demanded and which it now holds as a possibility in its grasp.

Translated by Carl Good

Note

1 This essay was originally commissioned for Discourse. The Spanish version was published in Letras Libres (vol. 2, no. 22, October 2000) . Dis- course holds rights to the English translation.

Works Cited

Fell, Claude. José Vasconcelos : los años del águila, 1 920-1 925. Educación, cultura e iberoamericanismo en el México postrevoludonario. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1989.

Krauze, Enrique. Caudillos culturales en laRevoluáón Mexicana. México: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1976.

. "Cuatro estaciones en la cultura mexicana." Vuelta 5 (November 1981): 27-42.

Zaid, Gabriel. "Intelectuales." Vuelta 14 (November 1990): 21-23.



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