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debunks the equation and demonstrates that the defense of Europe
actually means the defense of ideas and institutions that were born in
Europe and which have spread all over the world .
In the case of Mexico, as in other Latin American nations,
democratic principles were implanted first by the Spaniards : munic–
ipal governments, courts, occasional judges, critiques of public office
holders, and other forms of self-government and vehicles for criticiz–
ing central power. These elements of democracy were developed and
radicalized successively by the Latin American thinkers of the En–
lightenment, by (above all) the men who fought for the independence
of our nation, and by those who brought about in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries democratic political reform. In this sense , Mexi–
can democracy-or, to be precise, the always threatened pockets of
democracy in contemporary Mexico - has been an original recrea–
tion, frequently a heroic recreation, of principles discovered by Eu–
ropean intellectuals and nations in their struggle against the various
forms of domination mankind has known since its beginnings. In
Mexico, the defense of democracy is the defense of the heritage of
Hidalgo, Morelos, Juarez, and Madero . Thus it should not be con–
fused with a defense of United States imperialism or with the defense
of conservative military regimes in Latin America . Nor should it be
confused with complicity (active or passive) in the expansion of Rus–
sian totalitarianism in our continent.
The crisis of the capitalist system, which Marx and others pre–
dicted, was resolved in 1917, with the appearance of a new kind of
society . Contrary to the precepts of M arx and the Russian revolu–
tionaries , this new society is not and never has been socialist. Nor is
it , as some left-wing intellectuals persist in saying, a bureaucratic
degeneration of the Workers' State. And it is certainly not a society
moving toward socialism. It is a new form of material, political , and
economic domination, more cruel and much more absolute than oli–
garchic capitalism.
It
is a more complete, more savage despotism
than any traditional dictatorship . Capitalism has coexisted with de–
mocracy; it has deformed democracy, but it has never suppressed it.
Russian communism has rooted democracy out and has thus elimi–
nated itself as a vehicle whereby all mankind might achieve freedom .
Like democracy, totalitarianism was also born in Europe . It
was born twice, first in Germany and second in Russia. The Nazi
version was defeated , but in Russia totalitarianism took hold and
has now spread throughout the five continents.
It
is a genuine empire.
The most active and effective ap;ent in the expansion of Russian total-
