ABSTRACT
Since the last years of the twentieth century, Mexico is living a deep crisis that is far from confined to economic issues. In The Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz repeatedly returns to cultural and psychological factors to explain Mexico's condition. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has run Mexico since 1929 as a one-party monopoly, is totally discredited and splits. The PRI dynasty ends in its sixty-sixth year. Mexico may be on the road to democracy. Mexico's history through the colonial period and independence displays many of the same patterns of authoritarianism and social injustice that have characterized most Latin American countries. Whatever the rhetoric of the wars of independence in Latin America and the constitutions of the new countries, the practical outcome was substantial continuity with the backward social structures—and injustices—of the colony. Some Mexican intellectuals, a small minority until recent years, have argued against national foreign and economic policies based on dependency, nationalism, and statism.
