ABSTRACT
In this paper I survey the rise and apparent demise of the political machine that governed Mexico for the seventy-one years up to the presidential elections of 2000. Mexico’s political and social elites should not be regarded as coterminous, though I will explore some of the connections between social power and status, on the one hand, and political power, on the other.1 My analysis seeks to show how a national political elite was constructed in the course of the formation of the ‘modern’ national state, and how compromises were secured between contending elite factions in post-revolutionary Mexico. By highlighting the informal and less public aspects of this process, including their social etiquettes, I will also be able to illuminate less obvious causes of the ultimate disintegration of the old regime.
