From Ben Domenech’s Transom today, to which you should be subscribing:
…in [Mexican history] there was the government and the individual, with no civil society in between. This creates and fuels a patronage society, with the attendant social ills of corruption, cartels, crime, and more…. As Tocqueville wrote of those citizens who have the attitudes of colonists: “They submit, it is true, to the whims of a clerk, but no sooner is force removed than they are glad to defy the law with the spirit of a defeated enemy. Thus one finds them ever wavering between servitude and license.†It’s possible that what we see in Mexico is the American future… as our own civil society is pushed from the public square and supplanted by the power and force of government….
The full item is below. Read the whole thing, it’s short and very thought-provoking.
CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE MEXICAN TRANSFORMATION:
There’s an interesting point made in Jorge Castañeda’s Mañana Forever, today’s book recommendation, on modern Mexican society and culture. One of the threads in his book which may have some unfortunate and concerning applications for the United States is that Mexico has struggled under what he describes as a “Hobbesian behemoth†of powerful government, which “simply never allowed civil society to flourish†as it persisted over the course of 500 years. Mexican society never developed anything like the “little platoons” of Burke, nor the network of associations that Alexis de Tocqueville credited with American democracy’s vitality – there was the government and the individual, with no civil society in between. This creates and fuels a patronage society, with the attendant social ills of corruption, cartels, crime, and more.
Castañeda gives a figure of the average American’s social memberships, and contrasts it with that of the average Mexican: “In the United States, there are approximately 2 million civil society organizations, or one for every 150 inhabitants; in Chile there are 35,000, or one for every 428 Chileans; in Mexico there are only 8,500, or one for every 12,000, according to Mexican public intellectual Federico Reyes Heroles. Eighty-five percent of all Americans belong to five or more organizations; in Mexico 85% belong to no organization and, according to Reyes Heroles, the largest type, by far, is religious. In the United States, one out of every ten jobs is located in the so-called third sector (or civil society); in Mexico the equivalent figure is one out of every 210 jobs. In polls taken in 2001, 2003, and 2005 on political culture in Mexico, a constant 82% of those surveyed stated they had never worked formally or informally with others to address their community’s problems. In another series of polls already quoted concerning Mexican and world values, a robust and inverse correlation was detected between Mexicans’ happiness (which grew remarkably between 1990 and 2003) and their belonging to any type of organizations. In the words of the survey in question, “the more a Mexican joins an organization or belongs to any type of association, the lower the probability of his or her feeling happy.… Studies regarding values have constantly concluded that Mexican society is extremely difficult to organize.â€
Mexicans simply do not form lateral social bonds, writes Castañeda: they only form bonds upward and downward. The ability of major questions to be democratically and peacefully adjudicated is severely constricted. As Tocqueville wrote of those citizens who have the attitudes of colonists: “They submit, it is true, to the whims of a clerk, but no sooner is force removed than they are glad to defy the law with the spirit of a defeated enemy. Thus one finds them ever wavering between servitude and license.†It’s possible that what we see in Mexico is the American future: that as our own civil society is pushed from the public square and supplanted by the power and force of government, it will replace organizations and communities in ways which impact the fundamental nature of the body politic. How big of an impact remains to be seen, but the religious liberty clashes in the wake of the upcoming Supreme Court decisions will likely lead to a greater test of this thesis.
–Ben Domenech
I own two timeshares in Mexico, and until recently, used them every year. There are some things about the Mexican semi-feudal system that work, and much that doesn’t.
Their three-tier health system works. Top tier is equal to US medicine, in fact, most of those services can be found at the “American Clinics” in the cities. Good diagnostics, excellent care, for top-tier prices and little in the way of health insurance. Mid-tier is what most Mexican middle-class folks use. Still pay-as-you-go, it works, but it’s no-frills. Lowest tier is government run, and usually reserved for government-protected classes. Sometimes the military doctors provide the care. You don’t GO to the doc, the doc or nurse or PA comes to your village and you line up and are seen.
We WILL get this type of health-care soon, because when Obamacare collapses, and IT IS DESIGNED TO FAIL, the Government will become the Single-payer, followed closely by a for-cash system, just like in Mexico.
La Revolucion is celebrated with holidays, feasts, and Orozoco murals, but in reality, nothing has changed since the days of the patron class running the country. The middle class got bigger, got more wealth, spends more money, but the patron is still the boss in his district. That leaves businesses under the protection of the patron freer of government meddling, which we have become used to here.
Mexico has embraced technology, and many places which didn’t even have a telephone in the village just bypassed that system and cell towers went up. Everyone has a satellite dish, and little shoebox cars have replaced the ubiquitous burro. You can even buy a car on credit now, something that you couldn’t do 20 years ago. Modern building systems have become the standard in the cities and for the many kilometers of tollways that supplant their horrible roads. Those tollways are designed and built by German engineers, in large part, and could be driven at 200 kph if the provinces allowed it. The Tepic-Guadalahara autorouta is a good example.
If the drug cartels could either be accommodated or defeated, Mexico could easily surpass the US in livability, because we’re headed downward with our culture, and theirs is vibrant and improving all the time.
Welcome to Mexifornia, the laboratory starts here.
We are “headed downward” because Progressives are in charge and Progressive ideals are held up as illuminating when they are actually endarkening.