A Mexican Milestone

Sergio Aguayo Quezada

In March 1994, seven Mexican nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that had spent years working to promote democracy and free and fair elections organized a national coalition to conduct a comprehensive observation of the August 21 presidential election. Known as the Civic Alliance, the coalition quickly grew to embrace hundreds of NGOs, labor unions, and social movements, and mobilized nearly 20,000 citizens throughout the country. The observation carried out by the Alliance, which provided an accurate picture of the electoral process that resulted in the victory of Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, marked a milestone in the history of citizen movements in Mexico.

The Mexican Revolution of 1910 gave rise to a regime that was presidentialist, authoritarian, centralized, and closed to the world. Beginning in the 1960s, the failure of the regime's favored economic model forced the country to come out of its isolation, and authoritarianism began to wane; simultaneously, the number and the [End Page 157] importance of social movements and NGOs increased, and the links among them grew stronger. Most of these independent organizations, while supporting democracy and human rights, viewed the electoral process with indifference or even suspicion. In general, elections were seen as a meaningless ritual whereby the ruling party gave a gloss of legitimacy to its reshufflings of personnel.

This began to change during the 1980s, when elections became more competitive. Epitomizing the shift was the presidential contest of 1988. Although Carlos Salinas de Gortari was the official winner, there was enough evidence to substantiate the claim that his victory had been the result of fraudulent practices. There thus began a reassessment of elections, which eventually came to be seen as a tool that could help put an end to the authoritarianism that still suffocates Mexican society.

As part of that process of reevaluation, various NGOs began to give more emphasis to the promotion of democracy and of free and fair elections. It was by chance that their attention was drawn to election monitoring. In 1990, I was invited by the Council of Freely Elected Heads of Government, a group chaired by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and composed of former and current heads of state from throughout the Western Hemisphere, to join a delegation of international observers about to set off for Haiti. Monitoring by outside observers seemed to me an effective way to promote fair elections, but I found that exercise expensive, and not enough in any case to consolidate a culture of democracy. The logical alternative for Mexico was electoral observation by the country's own citizens.

Following that reasoning, the Mexican Academy of Human Rights and the Potosino Center for Human Rights mobilized three hundred Mexicans to observe the 18 August 1991 gubernatorial election in San Luis Potosí. That same day, the Arturo Rosenblueth Foundation and the Council for Democracy organized a "quick count" for the Federal District election in Mexico City. Deploying hundreds of volunteers, they managed to project the results the very night of the election. The San Luis Potosí and Federal District experiments were critical to the development of a civic movement in Mexico. Both experiences revealed the enormous complexity of elections geared in many ways to favor the candidates of the PRI. It became evident that participation in public affairs held great interest for Mexicans, and that there was considerable receptiveness to the idea that political rights are human rights.

The events of August 1991 also revealed the difficulty of detecting all the mechanisms that had been created to distort the will of the citizens. The most important lesson was the inadequacy of limiting observation to election day itself; in order to construct an accurate picture of what went on, it was necessary to monitor events before, during, and after the day on which the ballots were cast. Hence the proposal that the observation of the 1994 presidential election be [End Page 158] "comprehensive." Also in 1991, the two pillars of the Mexican civic movement emerged: NGOs and groups of prominent citizens. The cooperative interaction of activists and academics would become one of the most distinctive features of the Civic Alliance.

Finally, 1991 saw the discreet involvement of an international community that had always maintained a careful distance from violations of human and political rights in Mexico. Canada's International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development provided a grant to the Mexican Academy of Human Rights to develop a pilot project to promote political rights in Mexico; the grant facilitated the observation in San Luis Potosí. And the National Democratic Institute of Washington, D.C., provided equipment to the Council for Democracy and the Arturo Rosenblueth Foundation for the quick count conducted in the Federal District.

Gestation and Birth

The experiences in San Luis Potosí and the Federal District led to a rapid expansion of the practice of election monitoring. Between 1991 and 1993, a variety of organizations--including those mentioned above--observed 15 local elections, performed four quick counts, and held (in March 1993) a "citizens' plebiscite" in the Federal District. These activities helped to construct bridges of communication linking hundreds of NGOs, civic organizations, and social movements that had previously acted in a more isolated manner and--owing to the heterogeneity of their origins, objectives, and positions--harbored a mutual distrust.

These years also saw advances in understanding of the Mexican electoral process and its inherent flaws. Gradually, the scope of electoral studies grew, and the methodology improved. The progress was evident in the Yucatán election of 28 November 1993, which served as a "dress rehearsal" for 1994. The observation in Yucatán was organized by the Family Civic Front and the human rights group Indignation and also involved other groups from outside Yucatán. There they tested methodologies that would undergird the observation of the 1994 presidential election.

It should be said that the Yucatán project was not free of the tensions that have characterized the Mexican civic movement as a whole. In addition to the traditional regional differences (manifested, for example, by the distrust that many Mexicans from outlying states exhibit toward those from the capital), conflict arose over questions of impartiality and of rigor. These difficulties were eventually overcome, but disagreement remained concerning how to interpret irregularities and find the appropriate tone for public statements. This was to be expected given the enormous heterogeneity of the organizations involved. Despite [End Page 159] their weaknesses and tensions, the various citizen organizations had matured sufficiently to take steps toward the creation of a national movement.

In December of 1993, seven NGOs that since 1991 had worked to promote clean and fair elections began to meet informally: the Mexican Academy of Human Rights (AMDH), the National Accord for Democracy (ACUDE), the Council for Democracy, the Convergence of Civil Organizations for Democracy, the Arturo Rosenblueth Foundation, the Higher Institute of Democratic Culture (ISCD), and the Citizens' Movement for Democracy (MCD).

With their different origins, memberships, and mandates, these seven organizations illustrate the pluralism that would characterize the Civic Alliance. For example, the ISCD occupies a center-right position on the ideological map, whereas the Convergence is center-left; the ACUDE draws many of its members from the social sciences, while the Rosenblueth Foundation has more natural scientists. It is true that this diversity was the source of difficulties, but it also lent an undeniable richness to the Mexican civic movement. Even stronger than the differences that divided these groups was a common desire to help make the 1994 presidential election as clean and fair as possible and thereby accelerate the transition to democracy.

At their initial meetings, the seven NGOs explored the possibility of coordinating the plans and programs that they had developed separately for 1994. The idea was to approach "comprehensiveness" (that is, to cover the greatest possible number of electoral variables). They viewed their alliance as temporary, and it was agreed that the coalition's existence would not be formally announced. Still, the group proceeded to adopt or reiterate basic principles such as professionalism, pluralism, and independence from political parties and government. It gradually took on the shape of a circle of peers that made decisions by consensus in regularly scheduled meetings.

As the political system deteriorated and the country's transformation accelerated, the objectives of the group changed; as a result, what began as an informal cooperative became the nucleus of a formal organization. Early in 1994, the seven NGOs decided to jointly undertake a project of "comprehensive observation" in which they would invite other organizations to participate. On March 25 (two days after the assassination of Luis Donaldo Colosio, the original presidential candidate of the PRI), the Civic Alliance was born, although it was not legally constituted until April.

The project of "comprehensive observation" was extremely ambitious but technically viable in light of the gestation period that the members of the Alliance had undergone. The principal limitation was not a lack of "know-how," but insufficient financial resources. Some of the NGOs had received grants from foundations in Canada, the United States, and [End Page 160] Europe, but these funds were insufficient for a program of the scope envisioned. In spite of these initial stumbling blocks, the Civic Alliance was able to carry out most of the activities that it had planned and ultimately grew larger and more important than anyone had anticipated. It is worth the effort to explain some of the factors that made such extraordinary growth possible.

A New Reality

In reflecting on the past, historians always find it difficult to determine what "would have happened" if one or another event had not taken place. In Mexico, there is no doubt that the armed uprising that began on 1 January 1994 in the far-southern state of Chiapas shook the political system to its roots. Previously, the Salinas administration had always exhibited contempt for the idea of political reform. Because the opinion polls indicated widespread support for the government and it appeared that the PRI candidate at the time, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was headed for an easy victory, democratization seemed unnecessary. Those who pointed out injustices, structural weaknesses of the political system, or the need for political liberalization were ignored, criticized, or ridiculed by the government or its allies.

The Chiapas uprising revealed the intensity of the frustration and anger felt by the millions of Mexicans who had not benefited from economic development and found themselves marginalized from political life. The violence sparked a marked increase in interest in the elections, which began to be widely seen as the best way to bring about change. The subsequent assassination of Colosio generated still more interest, for the defeat of the PRI suddenly seemed possible.

Also important was the high-level shake-up that the insurrection provoked within the PRI regime itself. In early January 1994, several officials were dismissed, including interior minister Patrocinio González Garrido, who was known for his heavy-handedness. Replacing him was Jorge Carpizo, a strong promoter of human rights, who took office determined to play a role in making the election peaceful and clean. A new electoral reform was carried out (the Salinas regime had also implemented reforms in 1990 and 1993) that, without being definitive, improved the chances of fairness.

As the events of 1994 unfolded, international interest in the upcoming Mexican election grew exponentially. Promoting respect for human rights and democracy was high on the international agenda, and there began a series of international missions to Mexico designed to convince the Mexican government of the desirability of admitting international electoral observers. The rulers began to yield, and on 6 March 1994 Colosio expressed his receptiveness to the arrival in Mexico of foreign "visitors." [End Page 161]

Behind this sudden flexibility was a new reality: While the Salinas regime remained determined to win the election at all costs, recent events and the international interest required that the voting be relatively peaceful and clean. Yet the government lacked sufficient credibility to lend legitimacy to the proceedings, and it came to realize that it needed a certificate of "good democratic conduct" from the outside world. There was no shortage of foreign governments and international organizations willing to oblige. Prominent among these were the government of the United States and some members of the Electoral Assistance Unit of the United Nations. The UN members arrived very late in Mexico; moreover, their primary interest was always in imposing their own model of electoral monitoring. They were ultimately more concerned with the peacefulness of the elections than with whether they were free and fair.

Other international groups were committed to the development of democracy in Mexico and supported, in one way or another, the work being carried out by the Civic Alliance. Among these were NOVIB of Belgium, Interpares and the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development of Canada, and the MacArthur Foundation, the Carter Center, the National Endowment for Democracy, Global Exchange, and the National Democratic Institute of the United States. Some had been supporting the Mexican citizen movement for years.

Some commentators have highlighted the financial resources that foreign organizations provided to the Civic Alliance (the donations to the Alliance totalled $2 million, with $300,000 coming from Mexican sources, although we estimate the cost of the observation to have been in the tens of millions). This financial support was clearly important, but the greatest contribution of the outside world was the recognition that it granted to the Civic Alliance as a legitimate representative of Mexican society. Half of the officially registered foreign "visitors" in Mexico were willing to become a part of the Civic Alliance's observation effort. Thus it can be said that a model of electoral observation was established in which the efforts of the international community complement and enhance those of local organizations.

This external recognition was due to a number of factors: First, the organizations that made up the Civic Alliance were characterized by high levels of credibility, diversity, and professionalism. Second, the Alliance's observation effort was an especially comprehensive one. Finally, the Alliance was the primary nonpartisan civic group involved in election monitoring. Some governmental sectors, considering the reports of the Civic Alliance to be biased, encouraged--and even financed--the creation of other organizations of observers in order to balance out the record. Still other groups of observers had more legitimate origins and objectives and helped make up an impressive coalition of observers. [End Page 162]

In sum, the importance that the Civic Alliance ultimately acquired owed much to contextual factors and to variables that no one foresaw at the end of 1993. Yet no one would deny that the Alliance had the merit of being in the right place at the right time. This was a result not of opportunism but of the commitment that the Alliance's constituent organizations have always had to democracy and human rights.

Activities and Findings

The observation carried out by the Civic Alliance consisted of activities prior to election day as well as those carried out on August 21. What follows is a brief summary of the Alliance's principal activities and findings (the reports and studies that the Civic Alliance prepared on the 1994 voting would easily fill a couple of volumes).

1) Opinion polls. In order to determine the attitudes of Mexico's citizens toward the electoral process, as well as to test out the logistics for its election-day observation, the Civic Alliance conducted three national polls in the three months preceding the election. These broadly based surveys revealed the ambivalence with which Mexican citizens viewed the upcoming election. Doubts and suspicions were mixed with hope. The reasons for such contradictory attitudes will become clear when I describe what we were discovering about the process even before the election.

2) Legal reform. The Civic Alliance conducted a study of Mexican electoral laws. Its conclusion, which appeared in an August 19 report on preliminary conditions, was that the record is uneven. Although the three electoral reforms carried out in 1990, 1993, and 1994 constituted advances, the reforms were "insufficient owing to incompleteness, lack of enthusiasm, and delays." ¹ Not surprisingly, this conclusion was not well received by sectors close to the PRI and the Salinas administration. The best proof of the accuracy of our diagnosis is the Zedillo administration's acknowledgment that "definitive" electoral reform remains to be accomplished.

3) Electoral authorities. The first item on the electoral-reform agenda for 1995 is the autonomy of the authorities charged with organizing elections. A fundamental rule of free elections is that such authorities must be impartial, professional, and independent of parties and governments. The 1994 election showed some advances along these lines, but the Civic Alliance maintains a skeptical stance toward the Federal Electoral Institute. We have offered examples of the many ways in which--before, during, and after election day--candidates of the ruling party were favored, Alliance observers' requests for information were met with resistance, and, in general, the achievement of an absolutely fair election was blocked. It is no wonder that the autonomy of the electoral authorities continues to be a central issue. [End Page 163]

4) Voter-registration lists. One of the most debated aspects of the election was the integrity of voter-registration lists. These lists had been manipulated in previous elections to such an extent that there was a widespread lack of confidence in them. In an attempt to address the problem, 40 external audits were carried out in 1994. The Civic Alliance conducted a field study of the final voter lists for six major cities. The irregularities detected were few, confirming that this area has seen significant advances. These gains will be solidified when those who prepare the voter registry and the lists become truly autonomous from the government and the parties.

5) Media coverage. Without denying the importance of freedom of expression, it is crucial that the media provide objective information on parties and candidates. There is no doubt that there were a number of newspapers, magazines, and radio stations that tried to report on the 1994 election in a professional manner. Nevertheless, the Civic Alliance's monitoring of 70 different media outlets (television, print, and radio) in 20 states revealed a clear bias in favor of the PRI. The best-documented cases were those of Mexico's main television news programs (24 Horas on Televisa and Hechos on Televisión Azteca), which were monitored beginning on 1 January 1994. Their commitment to the victory of the PRI was evident from both the content of their broadcasts and the total time devoted to each candidate.

6) Financing and campaign expenditures. Another sign of the unfairness of the electoral process was the lack of equality and transparency in the financing of the various parties' campaigns. Here again, the 1994 election showed that some progress had been made, but there were still no independent mechanisms for determining how much each party spent.

A study by the Civic Alliance illustrated the magnitude of the problem. The Alliance kept track of the television spots carried by the two main television channels during a three-week period. If commercial rates were charged for this publicity, the candidate of the Labor Party (PT) would have paid almost 1 million "new pesos"; the candidate of the National Action Party (PAN), over 4 million; and the candidate of the PRI, over 18 million. This means that in three weeks of television spots Ernesto Zedillo spent 13 percent of the amount that he was legally allowed to spend on his entire campaign.

When the Civic Alliance published this information, Zedillo's camp responded that the amount spent was lower because the PRI had "agreements" with the television stations. Government officials were asked to make these agreements public, but they never responded. Nor was it possible to gain access to the information by any other means, because transparency is not required by law. Campaign expenditures and the origins of these funds are subjects about which we know little--and suspect much. [End Page 164]

7) Vote buying and coercion. One of the greatest affronts to human dignity and to the civil rights of Mexicans is the practice of manipulating the will of the citizenry with promises or pressure. The Civic Alliance was able to document 506 different cases of vote buying and coercion qualifying as crimes under the law. We proceeded to present 19 of these cases before a special prosecutor for electoral crimes in the office of the attorney-general. Throughout 1994, that official showed neither enthusiasm nor efficiency in the investigation of the cases presented and the prosecution of those presumed responsible. It was not until new president Ernesto Zedillo named as attorney-general a member of the National Action Party (PAN) that the investigations began to get under way.

The central conclusion of the Civic Alliance's August 19 report was that there was an absence of "conditions that would permit the assessment of the electoral process of 1994 as clean and fair." Two days after the report was issued, the election took place. Civic Alliance observers were present at 10,100 polling stations (almost 11 percent of the total), of which 457 figured in a random sample, 1,938 figured in a stratified sample, 6,348 were selected by the local groups, and 2,100 were located in remote rural areas. Actively participating were 18,280 Mexican citizens and 450 registered foreign visitors, who were dispatched to areas that the Alliance considered particularly difficult. Together, they provided a very precise picture of what took place on election day, and confirmed the professionalism and seriousness with which the Civic Alliance had prepared for the election. For example, the results of the quick count (announced at 1:30 a.m. on August 22) were extraordinarily accurate; moreover, unlike other counts, the Alliance's count showed the results state by state.

On election night, reports flowing in from all over the country allowed the Civic Alliance to conclude, on the basis of the random sample, that the "quality of the election was in question." The processing of data from 1,810 detailed polling-station reports from the stratified sample provided confirmation of the initial conclusion and further elaboration. These data were presented and analyzed in a September 19 report. ²

In that report we acknowledge that millions of citizens voted freely and under relatively normal conditions, that there was broad participation, and that in many regions the process was peaceful and calm. Yet we also documented a large number of irregularities, which followed clearly distinguishable patterns. For example, both the number [End Page 165] and seriousness of the irregularities were greater in the rural zones and southern states (Chiapas was the worst case). We were also able to demonstrate that PRI supporters used government money and sometimes outright threats to induce people--especially the poorest segments of society--to vote for the PRI candidate.

All this led us to an unsettling conclusion: "The quantitative impact of [the documented irregularities] cannot be calculated with certainty and precision. It is likely that they did not alter the outcome of the presidential election. Nevertheless, they did alter the correlation of electoral forces at the national, regional, and local levels, the composition of the Chamber of Deputies, and possibly that of the Senate, generating an overall impression of governing-party predominance."

The September 19 report became the target of heated criticism from several quarters. Some close to the PRI condemned the Civic Alliance for seeking to cloud Zedillo's victory. These groups maintained that the election had been clean. At the opposite extreme, some groups allied with the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) criticized the Alliance for failing to denounce what they perceived as widespread fraud that had robbed their candidate of victory. A segment of the international community chose to underline the peacefulness of the election and ignore the reports issued by the Alliance.

Notwithstanding these criticisms, the studies and reports presented by the Civic Alliance continue to be the best source of information for those who want to understand what really transpired throughout the electoral process. Taken as a whole, they constitute an accurate picture, rendered with care and professionalism by thousands of citizens dedicated to the struggle for democracy. The country's continued immersion in electoral conflicts and the new administration's acknowledgment of the need for definitive electoral reform constitute a vindication of the Alliance's work.

For many of us who had worked so hard to promote free and fair elections in Mexico, the experience of evaluating the electoral process of 1994 was an especially bitter one. It is clear that the process was not satisfactory, and that Mexico falls far short of meeting the criteria for a modern democracy.

After the Election

If one compares the Civic Alliance's initial objectives with what it ultimately accomplished, the result is generally satisfactory. The Alliance's efforts produced a "democratization" of technology and information, a fairly good understanding of the Mexican electoral process and of the poverty of our democratic culture, and a reaffirmation in the public mind of the idea that political rights are human rights that must be won. [End Page 166]

On another level, it does not seem an exaggeration to assert that the Alliance established a "Mexican model" of electoral observation, one that consists of adapting the efforts of the international community to the rhythms and requirements of indigenous monitoring organizations. Compared to other prevailing models, the Mexican model is more attractive, in that it transfers the bulk of the responsibility to local groups; more thoroughgoing, in that it is implemented by those who are most intimately acquainted with the communities involved; and more economical, in that it relies on volunteers who live in the communities. An added benefit is that when the elections are over, a solid base remains on which to construct democratic institutions.

The Civic Alliance was initially conceived as a temporary organization that would self-destruct after the end of the 1994 electoral process. Weeks after the election, however, its constituent organizations in each of the 32 Mexican states decided to keep the Alliance alive. The last few months of 1994 were difficult, as the group sought to deal with a great number of internal tensions resulting from its own heterogeneity, and to lay the foundations for a new national organization.

The obstacles have been overcome one by one, and at the time of this writing (February 1995) the Alliance was making progress on five fronts: its own development as an efficient, capable, and democratic institution; the observation of state elections (on 12 February 1995, 700 observers at 411 polling places witnessed an unusually clean election in Jalisco, won by the PAN); the monitoring of the behavior of elected officials with the aim of increasing their accountability (this program is called "Adopt an Official"); the organization of "citizens' plebiscites" that would allow citizens to express themselves; and the analysis of the content of the media.

These and other programs reveal our determination to construct a democratic culture from within and from below. We want to continue to lay the foundation for a sound democracy in which elections will be routine events that pass unnoticed, allowing us to direct our energies toward the defense of other rights. That kind of democracy is the objective, the challenge, the dream; it is the Mexican Civic Alliance's reason for being.

Sergio Aguayo Quezada is full professor at the Center for International Studies at the College of Mexico, president of the Mexican Academy of Human Rights, and a member of the Coordinating Committee of the Civic Alliance. He holds a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and has written extensively on security issues, human rights, and U.S.-Mexican relations. This essay was translated from the Spanish by Kimberli Brown.

Notes

1. Civic Alliance/Observation 1994, "The Presidential Elections of August 1994: Between Skepticism and Hope. A Report on Preliminary Conditions" (Civic Alliance/Observation 1994, Mexico City, 19 August 1994).

2. Civic Alliance/Observation 1994, "The Quality of the Election Day Process of 21 August 1994" (Civic Alliance/Observation 1994, Mexico City, 19 September 1994).

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