Opening Mexico: The Making of a DemocracyThe Story of Mexico's political rebirth, by two pulitzer prize-winning reporters Opening Mexico is a narrative history of the citizens' movement which dismantled the kleptocratic one-party state that dominated Mexico in the twentieth century, and replaced it with a lively democracy. Told through the stories of Mexicans who helped make the transformation, the book gives new and gripping behind-the-scenes accounts of major episodes in Mexico's recent politics. Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, led by presidents who ruled like Mesoamerican monarchs, came to be called "the perfect dictatorship." But a 1968 massacre of student protesters by government snipers ignited the desire for democratic change in a generation of Mexicans. Opening Mexico recounts the democratic revolution that unfolded over the following three decades. It portrays clean-vote crusaders, labor organizers, human rights monitors, investigative journalists, Indian guerrillas, and dissident political leaders, such as President Ernesto Zedillo-Mexico's Gorbachev. It traces the rise of Vicente Fox, who toppled the authoritarian system in a peaceful election in July 2000. Opening Mexcio dramatizes how Mexican politics works in smoke-filled rooms, and profiles many leaders of the country's elite. It is the best book to date about the modern history of the United States' southern neighbor-and is a tale rich in implications for the spread of democracy worldwide. |
Contents
The Day of the Change | 3 |
From Disorder to Despotism | 31 |
Tlatelolco 1968 | 63 |
Earthquake 1985 | 95 |
Chihuahua 1986 | 117 |
1988 | 149 |
The Carlos Salinas Show | 181 |
Ernesto Zedillo the Outsider | 257 |
Testing Change 1997 | 353 |
The Earcutter | 385 |
Opening Minds | 405 |
Chiapas | 441 |
Democracy at Work | 461 |
Campaign for Change | 477 |
Epilogue | 503 |
Notes | 517 |
Other editions - View all
El Despertar de México: Episodios de Una Búsqueda de la Democracia Julia Preston,Sam Dillon Limited preview - 2004 |