In an interview back in 1990, the Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa called Mexico the “perfect dictatorship.” It looked like a democracy, headed by a president who could not be re-elected, and was equipped with all the institutional bells and whistles usually found in democracies. But it was in fact not a democracy, but instead an oligarchy ran by a small, powerful elite.
So what are the trademarks of a “perfect dictatorship”? They are numerous, but the four main features are:
► There is the appearance of political competition, but in reality all political parties are financed by the same oligarchy. In the case of Mexico it was so blatant that at times the oposition parties received their funding directly from the dominant party (the PRI).
► The media is either owned outright by or bought off by the oligarchy. In Mexico’s case, instead of censoring the press, the oligarchy kept newspapers afloat- and loyal- with cheap newsprint, floods of government advertising, and generous gifts to journalists.
► Government operations, especially those dealing with the economy, are totally opaque. Open meetings are not required, there are few open records laws and those that exist are not enforced.
► There is no accountability. Nobody ever goes to prison. Nobody ever loses their ill-gotten gains. As the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes puts it: “Yet the deeper reason for the crisis has simply to do with democracy in Mexico. The secrecy surrounding our economic realities is related to the absence of something well know in Anglo-Saxon law for which ther is not even a proper term in Spanish: accountability, checks and balances.”
In other words, dictatorship is acheived through collaboration, and not coercion.
And what are the fruits of the “perfect dictatorship?”
► There is one economic crisis after another. Government degenerates into one big soap opera.
► When crisis strikes, there are always “emergency” measures, always ample talk of “reforms”.
► Despite all the flowery rhetoric, nothing ever changes. In each crisis the net effect of the “emergency measures” is the decimation of the middle class and a reconsolidation of the monopolies and stanglehold of the economy held by the oligarchy.
