Power From Experience: Urban Popular Movements In Late Twentieth-century Mexico

When Vicente Fox was elected Mexicos president in 2000, the worlds most enduring twentieth-century authoritarian regime finally came to an end. In this book Paul Haber explains how urban popular movements contributed to such a historic transition. In the 1960s Mexicos urban poor, effectively incorporated into institutionalized forms of clientelism and cooptation, were perceived as passive and acquiescent. Their situation changed during the 1970s, Haber shows, as popular movementsled largely by young people inspired by the revolutionary ideals of Mexicos 1960s student movementtook the first steps toward mobilizing the urban poor in what would develop into the full-scale political protests of the 1980s. When Mexicos economic crisis came in the early 1980s, urban popular movements were in a position to play a major role in the growing democratic opposition.