MEXICO IN CRISIS

A critical account of the Mexican way of government, a distinctive one party system with a genius for co-opting all but its most intransigent opponents. Sympathetic to the revolutionary left which would like to overthrow the system, Hellman--on the faculty of York University in Ontario--sees little hope of that happening in the near future. Her analysis of the failings of the ruling party does not much differ from that of the main current of less radical scholarly opinion. Any mass action challenging the party would be violently put down--as the 1968 student insurrection was. It is no secret, moreover, that corruption is rampant in Mexico, and the poverty of the people is a scandal. Kenneth F. Johnson's 1971 book, Mexican Democracy, was aptly subtitled A Critical View. A person interested in an introduction to Mexican politics could start with either Hellman or Johnson, although Hellman, writing seven years later, has the advantage of having been able to bring her account up to the end of the Echeverria presidency, a blighted attempt at enlightened capitalism. A clear and coherent writer, she does not allow her vision of what ought to be obscure her vision of what now exists.