Several students and faculty members gathered in the McCord Auditorium of Dallas Hall on Monday to listen to Dr. Larissa Adler Lomnitz, guest speaker of the 11th annual Distinguished Lecture in Cultural Anthropology, discuss the cultural and political situation in Mexico.
Aa mother of four, Dr. Adler Lomnitz received her Bachelor of Science at the University of California at Berkeley and received a PhD in Social Anthropology at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.
“It was heroic of my part to do this,” said Dr. Adler Lomnitz in regards to the continuation of her college career even though she had four children.
Dr. Adler Lomnitz began her lecture with an explanation in regards to her book, Symbolism and Ritual in Mexican Politics. She said she had no intention of proving something in writing it; she had just gotten thrown into a shantytown filled with poverty and wanted to learn about her surroundings.
This led her to begin her research about migration and networks. She soon discovered that within these shantytowns there were clusters of immigrants from other states in Mexico. These different clusters had various jobs, but within the clusters, many of the individuals held the same occupation as one another.
Lomnitz said that one of the men she spoke to in the shantytown told her that a cousin influenced him to move and that that cousin had been motivated to move due to yet another cousin. Therefore, the clusters formed as a result of this migration pattern.
Lomnitz also discussed this migrational phenomenon from a political point of view. Through two guiding rules, she demonstrated how Mexico ended up where it is now.
One rule, the “formal rule,” she said was like the United States in which democracy existed. The “informal rule,” relates to the clusters in the shantytowns similar to what Mexico was going through.
As a case study, she spoke about the political party Institutional Revolutionary Party (IRP). The vertical manner in which they built their political party allowed them to keep control of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches.
The clientelism model triumphed and once the president held the power, he would then place an intimate circle of people in high positions. Therefore, even though no president could be reelected, the IRP was guaranteed the continuity of power.
“What was the point of campaigns then?” Lomnitz said.
In her research she found that campaigns were mainly for the reestablishment of political pacts and used symbolic mechanisms, such as a rite of passage, for the soon-to-be president. Through different campaign methods there was a reassurance of a strong IRP.
It wasn’t until the campaign of 1987 that the IRP weakened due to the new ideologies that caused friction with the traditional IRP viewpoints. This eventually caused them to lose power and in 2000, National Action Party (NAP) representative Vicente Fox moved into office.
In the future, Lomnitz said she believes the IRP will move back into office and return to a clientelistic form of action. As a strong party, she said they will make a comeback and return to an informal political practice during the elections of 2012.
James F. Hollyfield, Professor and Director of the Tower Center attended the lecture and says he feels he better understands Mexico’s political transition.
“I got a better sense of the cultrue and Mexico from the time of the revolution to the movement to democracy, however, I am still uncertain about the future and where it will go,” Hollyfield said. “Dr. Larissa Adler Lomnitz places a pessimistic view on Mexico and its future to return of clientelism.”
