ENRIQUE KRAUZE
73
The government faces a "disturbing dilemma": should it reduce its
own role and open up the economy, risking perhaps political stability,
or should it, despite an acute lack of resources, cling to the old but
effective populist system of purchasing loyalties?
In
recent days,
de la Madrid has leaned firmly towards the former solution.
The outline of disaster was particularly obvious in the oil in–
dustry, to which Riding devotes considerable attention. Petroleos
Mexicanos (Pemex), the bright star of Mexico's industrial firmament,
a symbol of nationalism, has become one of the least efficient oil com–
panies in the world. Here again, 1976 marked the watershed. Cor–
ruption increased hand-in-hand with greater exports, and the sudden
and stunning increase in proven (90 billion barrels) and potential re–
serves (250 billion barrels).
In
addition to a chaotic, contaminative
and unproductive expansion (whose best symbol is the useless Pemex
tower, the largest "white elephant" in Mexico City) and a trade policy
that reached surrealistic extremes, the key to the problem has been
the extremely powerful Oil Workers' Union, whose leaders are "the
true Sheikhs of Mexican oil." Its assets exceed $670 million, and a
substantial part of Pemex's contracts were routinely awarded to com–
panies owned by the union. De la Madrid at first tried to dismantle
this and other mafias whose corruption and inefficiency are wrapped
in a union flag. All in all, he failed, but he did achieve one break–
through; the legal means to prevent new contracts between Pemex
and the union .
For several years in a pivotal position to observe the relationship
between Mexico and the United States, Riding is well aware of the
"psychological gulf" which separates the two nations: Mexico's pre–
dominant stance is one of defensive resentment, although this is one
more Mexican mask kept in place by politicians and intellectuals. The
truth, he adds, is that "there is no consensus: no single image captures
how Mexicans see the United States." The stance of the United States
also is, surely, ambiguous, but perhaps may be summed up in one
word: disdain. More than the economic and political differences, there
exists a cultural estrangement, an inability to interpret each other
without falling prey to ethnocentricity. Mexicans have a conspiratorial
idea of what goes on in Washington and project their centralist con–
cept of power on a system that, on the contrary, is decentralized .
This explains, for example, why Mexican lobbies do not exist. On
the
other hand, the United States has-if any-a paranoid idea of
what goes on in Mexico. Its greatest shortcoming with respect to
