Basanez, Miguel
(1991)
20 years of crisis in Mexico, 1968-1988.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
This thesis is devoted to analyzing the political transition that Mexico experienced from 1968 to 1988, through three sources of information; historical documents, economic and demographic statistics and public opinion. The first part of the work examines four particularly relevant historical processes concerning the relationship between State and society that can be identified by very precise symbolic events defined here as crisis: 1) the October 2, 1968, massacre that culminated the student uprising; 2) the August 31, 1976, peso devaluation that marked the climax of the confrontation between the Echeverrista government and the domestic business class; 3) the September 1, 1982, bank nationalization that symbolized the excesses of the oil boom and foreign indebtedness; 4) the October, 1987, stock market crash that ended unrealistic market euphoria of political origin. The second part of the thesis seeks to quantitatively outline these historical processes and establish a basis for comparing them one with another. To this end, several statistical series from 1940 to 1987 are used to measure the social, economic and political behavior of the period with the purpose of clarifying the relationship between the qualitative historical facts and the quantitative statistical figures. The third part is dedicated to examining the opinions of individuals or, more precisely, the different perceptions that for different reasons Mexicans held about the same events and circumstances, as well as the effect that such a heterogeneous mix of opinion can have on a nation's ability to persevere in the face of the four crises of the last 20 years.
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