70
PARTISAN REVIEW
tion of oral literature: the product of hundreds of after-dinner con–
versations, confessions, and even chitchat, a mixture of revelation
and trivia. The work might more aptly have been subtitled: "A Por–
trait of the Mexican Elite."
Riding's portrait of Mexico's political elite has all the critical
virtues of good reporting, but also its flaws. He shows a taste for
"marketable news" (corruption, oil, the foreign debt), rather than a
deeper analysis of historical and structural changes. In a portrait of
the United States, one would not refer exclusively to drug addiction,
urban crime, and the Vietnam War. Reality is not always scandalous.
There are more valleys than volcanoes. Another problem lies in the
imbalance of Riding's temporal perspective: the greatest emphasis is
placed on the period from 1970 onwards, exactly coinciding with his
own stay in Mexico. Whole passages are irrelevant, as if a portrait of
United States politics dwelled heavily on Spiro Agnew's political ac–
complishments, Bert Lance's financial transactions, or Gerald Ford
tripping over. Anyone who reads this book in a few years' time will
need a
Who's Who.
It may stand the test of
Time,
but not of time.
While Riding's work does not go into the history and structure
of the driving forces of the Mexican political system, it does reflect
aspects of its inner functioning, rituals and present situation. The
president, as always, stands atop the system. Despite appearances
and popular beliefs, his power is not absolute. In reality, he simply
forms part of a complicated network of political interests, traditions,
and superstitions. His job is to reconcile them. None of the last three
presidents - Diaz Ordaz, Echeverria, Lopez Portillo - were success–
ful in this: the first was responsible for the killing of hundreds of stu–
dents in 1968; the second, with a populist rhetoric, undermined the
confidence of the private sector; the third managed the economy with
notorious irresponsibility and provoked the enmity of vast sectors of
the upper and middle classes . Thus, the myth of the almighty presi–
dent is stumbling in Mexico. The other basic element in the system
is the Institutional Revolutionary Party. The PRI, made up almost
corporatively of organizations of workers, peasants and bureaucrats,
forms a pyramid ofloyalties, inseparable from the state as in Eastern
nations, though almost free of ideological dogmatism. Up until the
seventies, the PRI's hegemony permitted notable political movement
and the consequent division among its affiliates of positions, sinecures
and all types of material advantages. Riding describes this patronage
with precision. On the other hand, his idea of the PRI's present crisis
