Last August and September, histo-
rian John Womack of Harvard Uni-
versity wrote a series of letters to the
editors of The New York Times, pro-
testing the coverage of Mexico pro-
vided by correspondents Larry Rohter
and Alan Riding. Not intended for
publication, the letters were circulated
among editors and passed on to the
correspondents themselves. Report on
the Americas is pleased to share with
its readers what the Times could not.
Following Womack’s letter to Times
executive editor Max Frankel are
Rohter’s and Riding’s replies.
Dear Mr. Frankel:
For at least a year The Times on
Mexico has been no more than a tour-
ist guide to the important political de-
velopments underway there. Your edi-
torialists and reporters have conveyed
the impression that something very
serious is going on in Mexican poli-
tics, but given no clear account of what
it is-much less an explanation. First,
your readers were continually in-
formed that opposition to the govern-
ment and the PRI [Institutional Revo-
lutionary Party] was mounting in the
form of increasing support for the PAN
[National Action Party], a relatively
old and in Mexican terms quite con-
servative party. Then suddenly they
were informed that the main opposi-
tion was actually a new left-wing coa-
lition, but with folkloric tendencies.
Then this opposition became a formi-
dable contender for power. And now
all your readers get is shallow descrip-
tion of intense conflict in the Mexican
Congress over the presidential
succession-again without explana-
tion.
One problem is your reporters’ ig-
norance of modem Mexican political
history (or indifference to it). It is of
much more than antiquarian or nit-
picking interest to get major questions
of modern Mexican history right, or at
least out in the open for discussion.
Larry Rohter and on occasion Alan
Riding seem to have taken for granted
that the PRI began in 1929, under an-
other name but already programmed
to grow without essential change. Thus
Rohter continually identifies the PRI
as founded in 1929 and victorious in
Cuauhtemoc Cardenas: the rise of the Left?
REPORT ON THE AMERICASvirtually all elections until this last
round. If I object that the party organ-
ized in 1929 was not the PRI but the
PNR (Partido Nacional Revolucion-
ario), that this PNR fell to pieces in
1935-36, that some of the pieces went
into lengthy exile, that other pieces
were subsumed with much more pow-
erful elements of different origins into
a new party-the PRM (Partido de la
Revoluci6n Mexicana) in 1938-and
that this PRM was itself reformed into
the PRI in 1946, then I may well seem
to you to be merely picking nits.
But this is not “ancient history,” in-
significant and boring. To write as both
Rohter and Riding have is to confuse
three substantially different parties. So
what? Well, you won’t understand ei-
ther the PRI or the emergence of the
Left now as an obviously powerful
force. What kind of picture would you
have of either the Democrats or the
Republicans if you thought that what
you had in 1929 was basically what
you have now, just bigger and older?
The PRM was really as close as
Mexico came to a popular front, and
its reform in 1946 was not merely acro-
nymic but deeply symptomatic and
significant: The purge of the Left from
all positions of national leadership, the
isolation or destruction of Leftist ele-
ments that continued to struggle for
popular front causes, and the indefi-
nite subordination of the Left that re-
mained in the new party. If anything
like this is the case, then the makings
of the PRI’s present crisis date from
1946-48; the rise of the Left is not
really a rise, but a resurgence.
Implicit in this reading of history
and current events is a sense of Mexi-
can politics quite different from that
conveyed by Mr. Rohter. A politics
where Republicans and Democrats are
all in the same party. A politics of
bitter internal conflict, private feuds,
public compromises; with bloody gun-
fights in the provinces, nothing much
under firm control, a chief executive
much less in command than any
“Western” president or prime minis-
ter, and issues that were alive in 1938
or 1946 [that are] still alive.
Both Rohter and Riding have re-
sorted again and again to the poor man
or woman in the street for their im-
pressions of what is underway. This is
a nice touch, and certainly the opin-
President Carlos Salinas de Gortari
I
ions of ordinary people are often more
wise and to the point than those of
professional pundits. But if foreign
readers need these opinions, they also
need more-some effort by the re-
porter to tell what is really going on,
not just impressions and opinions, but
real and important movements of
power.
Besides, both Rohter and Riding
often fail to explain anything about
Mexican intellectuals whom they
quote apparently as objective observ-
ers but who are actually declared par-
tisans of one or another current in or
outside the PRI. There is also the fail-
ure to determine who the insiders are
in any of the factions of the PRI, or the
PAN, or the Left, much less to get any
of the truth into the clear. Insiders in
politics never tell the whole truth, of-
ten they tell pure lies, but it is the duty
of a good journalist to get the truth out
of them anyway.
To assume that what Salinas did as
President de la Madrid’s interestedly
loyal minister for the last six years is
any guide to what he will do in the
next six is another example of incom-
petence or laziness. That is not how
politics works anywhere, certainly not
in Mexico, as Alan Riding learned
years ago and Larry Rohter should
have learned by now.
Like any professor, I could go on,
but you have better things to do than
suffer more of my lecturing. I hope
nevertheless that you have suffered so
far, because what is going on now in
Mexico and what will go on between
the United States and Mexico are ex-
traordinary questions, possibly danger-
VOLUME XXII, NO. 6 (M )
05
a
N
Uw
.r?
ous if misunderstood. U.S.-Mexican
relations are going to be considerably
different, much more unpredictable,
possibly subject to severe strain. The
United States-at least its most edu-
cated, wealthy, and influential citizens,
readers of The Times-can no longer
afford the ignorance and misconcep-
tions of the past.
John Womack
Cambridge, MA
Dear Dr. Womack:
I do not intend to respond to your
personal insults, but amidst all the
spleen you vented are some serious
issues that do merit an answer. You
argue that the PRI of today is not the
same as the party that was founded in
1929, a statement that seems to me to
be almost a tautology. Despite some
drastic shifts of position over the years,
the PRI is still the party of the Mexi-
can Revolution, whatever that means
in 1988. To use a phrase I once heard
from one of the men in the street you
do not like to see quoted in The New
York Times: a chameleon may change
colors, but it remains a chameleon; it
does not suddenly become an iguana
or a skunk.
It also appears to me that you have
seriously underestimated the intelli-
gence of readers of The New York
Times. I don’t for a second think that
anyone who reads my stories on Mex-
ico assumes that the PRI has remained
free of internal conflict for 60 years; I
know that interested readers are far
more sophisticated than that, though
you may not. I have every intention,
therefore, of continuing to describe the
PRI as I have in the past, since the
formulation I use is both a concise and
accurate summation of the party’s role
in modern Mexican history.
Furthermore, I find your own inter-
pretation of the evolution of the PRI to
be simplistic. To argue that the Left
has been out in the political wilderness
since the days of Alemin [president
1946-52] is an attractive proposition.
But it inconveniently leaves some
major questions unexplained, such as
the Echeverria [1970-76] a years in
particular and Mexican foreign policy
in general. And do you really believe
that the PRI of the last 40 years can be
characterized simply as a capitalist
party? I think the picture is a lot more
Scomplicated, as do most Mexicans.
You say that I naively assume that
Salinas’ performance over the last six
years is a guide to what he might do as
president. On the contrary, I have of-
ten included in my reporting the warn-
ing that Mexican presidents have a
habit of breaking with the policies of
their predecessors. For example, on
July 13, 1987, discussing the presiden-
tial selection process, I quoted Manuel
Moreno Sinchez as saying the succes-
sor to de la Madrid would be “he who
best disguises himself’ and “hides his
true intentions.”
Then, when Salinas was chosen as
the PRI candidate in October 1987,
my front page story on the announce-
ment included this paragraph: “Mexi-
can politicians and journalists cau-
tioned today that it was impossible to
predict which policies Mr. Salinas
would follow as a resident of Los Pi-
nos, the Mexican equivalent of the
White House. In the past, candidates
have pledged fealty to the man who
selected them, only to head off in en-
tirely different directions once they
took office.”
Your objection to my quoting “the
man in the street” makes no sense at
all, especially coming after an election
that was a watershed in Mexican his-
tory precisely because the average
Mexican confounded the expectations
of the political establishment. But your
complaint that I don’t talk to the “real
insiders” about what is going on in
Mexico is even more curious. As a
matter of fact, I talk regularly with the
people who are directly involved in
the political process. That does not
mean, however, that they will agree to
be quoted in my articles. What it does
mean is that I will take those views
into account when I write and that if
someone else expresses similar views
on the record, I will not hesitate to use
that quote instead.
As for the question of the people
whom I do quote, the academics and
political analysts to whom you object
so much, you’ve hit on another tautol-
ogy. I have yet to meet a Mexican who
does not have a point of view regard-
ing the crisis the country is experienc-
ing. Were I to disqualify sources sim-
ply because they have points of view,
it would hardly be worth my while to
do any reporting at all.
I think that the majority of the po-
litically involved Mexicans I talk to
are capable of distinguishing between
what they would like to see happen
and what is really happening; when
they do not I am quite capable of dis-
counting any wishful thinking myself.
I also trust that my readers are well
aware that no one in the current politi-
cally charged atmosphere can be truly
neutral or impartial.
You are yourself hardly an unbi-
ased observer of what is taking place.
Your own relationship with Salinas is
well known here. Your Manichean,
reductionist view of the world and of
Mexico is similarly no secret, and it
happens to be one that I do not find
persuasive. You are, of course, entitled
to your views. But I resent your efforts
to impose them on me and the audi-
ence for which I write.
Larry Rohter
Mexico City
Dear Jack:
For a historian, I understand that
journalism is a frustration. A country
is studiously ignored for long periods
and then, when it becomes “news,”
generations of events are telescoped
into a few paragraphs with all the risks
involved. Believe me, it is also frus-
trating for journalists, but that’s the
business. I would add (with a con-
fessed amount of self-interest) that, for
those with a continuing interest in
Mexico, The Times has provided fuller
coverage over many years than any
other newspaper.
My experience since 1971 was that,
while the PRI was never monolithic, it
remained remarkably disciplined until
money seriously began to run out in
the mid-1980s. There were, as you
know, serious succession crises in
1970, 1976 and 1982, but the 1988
crisis is clearly different.
I agree that the policies adopted by
Mexican presidents are shaped by their
personalities and by circumstances and
not by loyalty to their predecessors.
Therefore, I also agree that, while Sali-
nas might have been picked by de la
Madrid with the idea of perpetuating
the same economic policies, Salinas
will do his own thing. I happen to have
known both men for many years and
know Salinas to be more intelligent
(perhaps astute is a better word) and
politically imaginative than de la
Madrid. I do not underestimate him.
But I would dispute your interpre-
tation of the Cirdenas phenomenon as
“the rise of the Left.” It is true that
Cirdenas was nominated by four
vaguely Marxist, socialist or populist
parties, but three had been PRI satel-
lites and the fourth, the Mexican So-
cialist Party, did so only after it be-
came apparent that its own candidate,
Heberto Castillo, was going to win
only three or four percent of the vote. I
think it is an over-simplification to
suggest the huge support for Cdrdenas
meant significantly increased support
for the Left. Rather, voters were moved
by nostalgia, nationalism, a unique
form of Mexican fundamentalism, ac-
cumulated distaste for the PRI and in-
tense anger over the collapse of eco-
nomic hopes. But they did not choose
a radical option. Mexicans voted
against the PRI and not for the Left.
Salinas may in fact finish up doing
many of the things that the “Left” is
calling for, but would that make him a
leftist?
That said, we agree that Mexico is
entering a period of great uncertainty
and, more than ever, it is essential that
the politically literate north of the bor-
der understand what is going on-if
only to resist the temptation of med-
dling.
Warmest wishes.
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