Ramblings on Mexican Underdevelopment

I

Let me spell out why I believe Mexico is underdeveloped. But first, permit me to digress just a bit. Some pundits, fixated on the banal details of human idiosyncrasies, tend to think that we are the authors of our own fate, but life is surely more complicated. To that truism I can only say amen. I know that the millions of rich, and often arrogant, residents of this planet are the perfect historical refutation that the meek shall inherit the earth. Just the same, I do not believe that only the poor will pass through the eye of a needle on their way to salvation. So how to explain why inhabitants of certain countries, specifically the United States and Western Europe, and now Japan, are wealthy, while others, peripheral countries such as Mexico, are poor? I leave the first question to others far more knowledgeable; I can try to explain only Mexico's plight.

One apocryphal story portrays Mexico as a beggar sitting on a cornucopia of plenty. Mexico may be a beggar, but it is hardly well heeled, rich in neither rainfall nor land for the plow and harrow. Across the centuries, Mexicans have not lived high on the hog; instead poverty and sundry inequities have plagued Mexico, and not just because Mexicans wasted resources. Even presidents of the Republic, not always known for their candor, have conceded that their country is no Garden of Eden. José López Portillo, a leader prone to extravagant displays of emotions but at times speaking brutal truths, asserted time and time again in his gigantic autobiography, Mis tiempos, that Mexico "es un país subdesarrollado" (is an underdeveloped country). True, that aphorism is complicated, and is as hotly debated in Mexico now as it was when López Portillo's tome was published. Underdevelopment—or, as some Mexicans, made skittish and fearful by what they refuse to acknowledge, claim is a "distorted economy"—has long been a controversial topic of study for economists, historians, poets, and writers. A popular descriptor favored by mainstream economists is "developing nation," which sounds more palatable, implying that it is only a question of time before Mexico will reach the promised land, that is, join the circle of the rich.

What exactly is underdevelopment, that pernicious malady I have ascribed to Mexico? Definitions abound, but what all of them have in common is that, more than anything else, an underdeveloped country is poor. Poverty is widespread and chronic, not some temporary misfortune. It has always been there. The lost, the damned, and the dispossessed live in poverty, and have always done so. That, unfortunately, describes Mexico to a T.

But underdevelopment is a complex illness. Underdevelopment means an extremely unequal distribution of wealth and income. A few are very rich; millions are very poor. Mexico, according to one United Nations report, ranks near the top of the list of countries with the most glaring inequalities of wealth and income. These inequalities take on territorial dimensions: the south is poorest, and the north, comparatively speaking, the richest. In the countryside, except for a favored few, Mexicans are poor, while Indians, constituting perhaps 12 percent of the Republic's inhabitants, are wretchedly poor. At the top of the list of the poorest regions stands Chiapas, where 76 percent of the inhabitants, largely Indian, are as poor as the proverbial church mouse. In Santiago del Pinar, one of its Indian communities, according to a United Nations report, lamentable conditions resemble those of villages in the Congo of Africa. Not far behind come the states of Guerrero, Oaxaca, Tabasco, and Veracruz, where, with Chiapas, nearly 19 million Mexicans live. In contrast, in Baja California, Nuevo León, Distrito Federal, Coahuila, and Chihuahua, only minorities struggle to obtain their canasta alimentaria (basic needs). In Baja California, to give an example, only 9.2 percent of the people are poor. But, before we jump to the conclusion that all is well there, bear in mind that 78 percent of urban dwellers across the country know poverty.

At the other extreme one finds the wealthy. One Mexican, Carlos Slim, the telephone magnate, is one of the richest men in the world, and a dozen or so Mexicans lag not far behind him. Slim's bankroll totals almost 7 percent of the country's output of goods and services, one out of every fourteen dollars Mexicans earn. Every twenty-four hours of every month of every year, his income grows at the rate of 27 million dollars, yet one out of five Mexicans survives on just two dollars a day. Like the legendary King Midas, Slim turns everything he touches to gold. A fastidious collector of art, he takes special pleasure in two sculptures by Auguste Rodin he owns that grace the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City, which he helps fund. Slim also collects old editions, particularly those dealing with Mexican history. Inequality, which Slim symbolizes, is found in many important areas, such as schooling, health care, housing, and child care. Equality of opportunity simply does not exist.

Narciso Bassols, a respected economist, insists that underdevelopment refers to a country that is not just poor but bereft of the technology required for economic growth. As López Portillo pointed out, one distressing aspect of the malady, given the usually adverse commercial picture, is the inability to develop local resources for lack of funds. One sure sign of underdevelopment is the flight of campesinos from the countryside to the city, a seemingly irreversible tide in Mexico. Those who leave behind their small plots of land, when they have them, seldom, if ever, find the road back to the village.

But poverty implies more than simply the absence of material things. Poverty breeds alienation, an internalized feeling of deprivation and hopelessness, at times even feelings of inferiority, a belief that improving one's life lies beyond human capacity. One is born poor and will die poor. It is psychological, as Fidel Castro, a flamboyant apostle of social change, acknowledged. People, he explained, who for centuries lived "without the hope and the resources and the education that make optimism possible, feel paralyzed by the challenges before them, the tasks required to build a nation." The psychological aspects of poverty, he avowed, can be just as important as the material. It is the "filosofía de que no se puede," the belief that nothing can be done.

Underdevelopment is a historical phenomenon; it has deep roots in the past. Much time has gone by and much water has flowed under the bridge since underdevelopment first took root in Mexico. It is a logical result of a special historical circumstance not shared by the nations of the First World, the industrialized, technically advanced countries of Western Europe, the United States, and Japan. André Gunder Frank, the political...