Worst and best presidents of Mexico.

[R_P_A_S]

Im reading this book in spanish "La Izquierda Mexicana en el siglo XX" in other words "The Mexican Left in the 20th century" and I was reading this chapter that said during mexican president LAZARO CARDENAS term of 1934 to 1940 that he was a supporter for the mexican communist party and that he order the release from prison to all mexican political prisoners and communist. he lifted all restrictions and allowed the press to left the communist publish their newspaper "La Voz" and he punished government branches for their violent persecution of the left. In Mexico he is best known for Nationalizing the Oil Industries.

what do you guys think of this guy? and also to me Salinas De Gortari was probably the biggest fuck!

[Cheung Mo]

PRI was Mexico's revolutionary party and initially implemented a lot of excellent reforms under Cardenas...

Then its members discovered corruption, authoritarianism, and neo-liberalism.

[BreadBros]

The thing about the PRI is that it was an inherently corporatist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatist) regime. That is to say, it continually attempted to incorporate every element of society as a part of it's base in order to minimize political opposition and stabilize the regime. Thats why the PRI has drifted from the traditional right to the left to the neoliberal right, etc. From what I've read Lazaro Cardenas was not really a supporter of the Communist Party as much as he saw the drift towards the left of the Mexican political world and incorporated leftist elements (particularly the CP and the Railroad Worker's Union) into his regime in order to stabilize the country and enact needed reforms. He nationalized oil, he was more or less tolerant of the leftist political presence, he was somewhat anti-clerical, he enacted one of the largest land re-distributions in Mexican history and he even welcomed Trotsky as an exile to Mexico, so yes, he was probably the most progressive/best president Mexico has had.

As for worst...well, theyre are quite a bit to choose from. If we include pre-revolution presidents, then Porfirio Diaz was an outright racist and tyrant, so he would probably be #1. Post-revolution/modern period is hard though. Diaz Ordaz violently repressed the 1968 student uprising that was more or less the continuation of the 1950s-60s union strikes, so hes up there. De Gortari and Zedillo suck, De Gortari was corrupt even by Mexican political standards. Zedillo was less corrupt and opened up the electoral process but he was a straight-up technocrat (in the sense that he was a beauracrat who rose through the ranks instead of being elected, not a technocrat in the NET/communist sense). However they were both products of de la Madrid who was more or less the first real neoliberal president of Mexico.

[Dimentio]

Sounds like the Social-democrats (http://www.sap.se) in Sweden.

[black magick hustla]

Porfirio Diaz was not the "worst" president.

He may have been brutal, he may have been a tyrant, but he did get shit done.

Mexico was so fragmented, and unstable that it needed someone with an iron fist to keep everything from torning appart.

Dismissing him just because he was an asshole is not historical materialism.