In the run up to the 1988 presidential elections in Mexico, I used to open my front door each morning to be met by Cuauhtémoc Cardenas, or rather a mural of his image on the wall opposite. The jowly hang dog expression, the benevolent half smile, the striking yellow and red campaign colours have long endured in my mind's eye. Cardenas broke apart the safe boundaries of Mexican politics, leading mass demonstrations in Mexico City and fighting for media air-time to talk about corruption, inequality, trade union demagoguery. A few days after Cardenas's electoral defeat I sat in a restaurant with a ‘tired and emotional’ Manuel Clouthier, candidate for the Right-wing PAN. The soon to be dead Clouthier firmly believed that even though the PRI had held on to the presidency, Mexican politics had changed forever.
The seismic shift in political power relations marked by 1987–88 appeared to be confirmed in the run up to the 1994 elections. If Salinas had succeeded in the co-optation of many of the groups that opposed him in 1988, the Zapatista critique undermined his project for state aided private sector economic globalisation. Yet Cardenas never seemed at ease in 1994 and his second defeat damaged his credibility, while the PAN made inroads into the popular vote. At an election night rally in Morelia a small crowd of Cardenas supporters barely managed to fill a small park and few waited to listen to the speeches. What was a collection of social movements masquerading as a political party in 1988 had become, according to one senior official close to Cardenas, a small political party masquerading as a mass social movement in 1994. By 2000 the PRD had still not constructed an identity that was internally functional and a public vote winner, and Cardenas seemed like ‘old politics’, unable to mobilise grassroots support or grab sound-bites. The Right won.
What role did urban social movements play in this shift? Regarded by many academics as the most important actors in the transition to democracy and responsible for a greater plurality of political discourses encompassing rights, equality and inclusion, when I arrived in Puebla in 1988, I was hard pressed to find any social movements. The one significant movement, of street traders, was being repressed, quite successfully as it turned out and had difficulty developing a discourse to engage with its supposed members let alone a wider public. In coming years, working in Querétaro and Toluca, social movements hardly leapt to prominence. I have asked colleagues about movements in ‘their cities’, in Jalapa, Villahermosa, Tampico, but few come up with much. For every Mexico City, Guadalajara, Durango and Juárez one could be forgiven for thinking that movements constitute an enduring urban myth.
I had assumed then that a book entitled Power from Experience might prove me wrong, or at least unfairly pessimistic. Paul Haber's purpose is to examine the debates and actions of urban popular movements, considering the implications ‘in terms of power, material rewards, and identity for those who moved these movements forward, the rank-and-file members and sympathizers’ (p. 2). The book sets itself up as a corrective to readings of the democratic transition that disregard the urban poor. In so doing, Haber recognises an awkward methodological problem rarely encountered by political scientists; namely, the tendency to talk only with political leaders rather than movement participants. Haber proposes an approach that picks up the phenomenology of being in a movement, arguing that such a method ‘allows the phenomenon to speak in its varied voices and meanings, without undue disciplinary constraints. Methodological success depends more on close listening by the investigator than it does on sophisticated empirical methods’ (p. 18, emphasis in original). More directly, the book is based upon ‘hundreds of formal and informal interviews’ that constitute what the author describes as ‘ethnography’ (p. 20).
Inevitably, before we get to the detail, the analysis needs a theoretical frame. Haber draws from Antonio Gramsci and Manuel Castells, as well as an historical description that picks out cycles of protest and effect, and discusses the usual chestnuts of autonomy, organisation and pressure to deliver for members. This chapter is useful if not earth-shattering and I looked forward to the ethnography. The next chapter, Chapter Two, however, offers a general tour through the political highs and lows of Mexico over the past two centuries. The War of Independence gets less than a page, the Revolution just under two. This is political change lead by and written through institutions and political figures, with no use of ethnographic sources. Chapter Three introduces a political economy of 1988–2000 or, more accurately, 1988–1994 which is the main period of focus throughout. The thrust here is closer to the book's core purpose and a valuable outline is provided of relations between movements and the emergence of Cardenas as a presidential candidate, the eventual formation of the Partido de la Revolucíon Democrática (PRD) and President Salinas's strategies for co-optation.
Two chapters then deal separately with the Comité de Defensa Popular (CDP) in Durango and the Asamblea de Barrios in Mexico City. The emergence, organisation and ideology of both movements are outlined, how each has networked with other movements and discussed links to political parties. Leading actors in each movement come to the fore, usually as actual or aspirant figures in electoral politics. The CDP's decision to become involved with Salinas, and accept funds from the PRONASOL fund rather than risk support for Cardenas, is considered in some depth. The CDP was thoroughly co-opted through PRONASOL and the formation of the Partido del Trabajo, a party of convenience designed to draw dissenting groups away from Cardenas and better known as the ‘Partido de Salinas’, to which the CDP became linked. The demise of the CDP by the 1990s created difficulties for Cardenas in a state where the PRI had been weak.
The Asamblea emerged from organisations, representing victims of the 1985 earthquake, and which had managed to extract concessions from the de la Madrid government. These concessions were not only material (a mass housing construction programme undertaken largely in situ rather than at the city edge), but also permitted avoidance of co-optation into political structures. The Asamblea's mission was to continue the opposition, forcing the government to listen to popular demands on issues such as rent, tenancy contracts and evictions. Methods of organisation and communication were relatively novel, the best known being the figure of Superbarrio. The Asamblea developed close ties with Cardenas and was a key agent in the 1988 campaign. However, by the time of the 1994 elections, the Asamblea was divided, leaders spending time on their personal electoral careers, others trying to maintain a focus on local development projects or just disenchanted with politics generally.
A final chapter summarises where social movement activism has gotten participants and Mexican democracy. While Haber remains optimistic, the assessment can hardly hide the frustration among informants and the cited literature. Former movement leaders, some now in government, give the remnants of their former movements and others short shrift. The democratic opening has ushered in successive PAN governments as well as greater social polarisation (although this latter point is not noted). In two cities, two large social movements shone brightly, briefly, were abandoned by their leaders and then collapsed. This left me wondering what was the Power through Experience, especially as power was so rarely attained. Moreover, despite the promise of reading about the changes to ‘significant numbers of lives in significant ways’ the concept of phenomenology hardly appears and the book provides little account of daily experience. We get few indications of participant work, no extracts from notebooks from meetings or discussions with rank and file members. The few interviews presented in the text, the chapter dedicated to the CDP, uses three extended quotes in 48 pages with leaders and academics. This book asks pertinent questions but doesn't tie the material to the purpose and ethnographers will not recognise their craft but an opportunity missed.
