Constitutional framework
Mexico is a federal republic composed of 31 states and the Federal District. Governmental powers are divided constitutionally between executive, legislative, and judicial branches, but, when Mexico was under one-party rule in the 20th century, the president had strong control over the entire system. The constitution of 1917, which has been amended several times, guarantees personal freedoms and civil liberties and also establishes economic and political principles for the country.
The legislative branch is divided into an upper house, the Senate, and a lower house, the Chamber of Deputies. Senators serve six-year terms and deputies three-year terms; members of the legislature cannot be reelected for the immediately succeeding term. Three-fifths of the deputies are elected directly by popular vote, while the remainder are selected in proportion to the votes received by political parties in each of five large electoral regions.
Popularly elected and limited to one six-year term, the president is empowered to select a cabinet, the attorney general, diplomats, high-ranking military officers, and Supreme Court justices (who serve life terms). The president also has the right to issue reglamentos (executive decrees) that have the effect of law. Because there is no vice president, in the event of the death or incapacity of the president, the legislature designates a provisional successor. The executive branch has historically dominated the other two branches of government, although the Congress has gained a larger share of power since the late 20th century.
Local government
The federal constitution relegates several powers to the 31 states and the Federal District (Mexico City), including the ability to raise local taxes. Moreover, state constitutions follow the model of the federal constitution in providing for three independent branches of government—legislative, executive, and judicial. Most states have a unicameral legislature called the Chamber of Deputies, whose members serve three-year terms. Governors are popularly elected to six-year terms and may not be reelected. Because of Mexico’s tradition of highly centralized government, state and local budgets are largely dependent on federally allocated funds. Under PRI rule, Mexican presidents influenced or decided many state and local matters, including elections. Although such centralized control is no longer generally accepted, Mexico’s principal political parties maintain locally dominant power bases in various states and cities.
At its most basic level, local government is administered by more than 2,000 units called municipios (“municipalities”), which may be entirely urban or consist of a town or central village as well as its hinterland. Members of municipio governments are typically elected for three-year terms.
Justice
The judicial system consists of several courts, including the Supreme Court of Justice, whose 11 members are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Congress; the Electoral Tribunal, which is sworn to oversee elections; the Federal Judicial Council; and numerous circuit and district courts. Although Mexico has both federal and state courts, most serious cases are heard in federal courts by judges without the assistance of juries.
According to law, defendants have several rights to assure fair trials and humane treatment; in practice, however, the system is overburdened and riddled with problems. In spite of determined efforts by some authorities to fight theft, fraud, and violent crime, few Mexicans have strong confidence in the police or the judicial system, and therefore a large percentage of crimes go unreported. On the other hand, poor and indigenous defendants suffer an inordinate share of arbitrary arrests and detentions, and many are held for long periods prior to trials or sentencing. Mexico’s prisons, like most of those in Latin America, are generally overcrowded and notorious for unhealthful conditions, corruption, and abuses of various kinds. The vast majority of Mexican prisoners are held in hundreds of state and local facilities, although smaller numbers are in federal prisons.
Political process
Mexico’s political system revolves around a limited number of large political parties, while on its fringes are a group of smaller parties. The most powerful political party in the 20th century was the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional; PRI), which ran Mexico as an effective one-party state from 1929 until the late 20th century. During this period the PRI never lost a presidential election—though often there were allegations of vote rigging—and the vast majority of its gubernatorial candidates were similarly successful. Typically, the sitting president, as leader of the party, selected its next presidential candidate—thus effectively choosing a successor. Ernesto Zedillo, the president from 1994 to 2000, broke from that tradition in 1999, prompting the PRI to hold a primary election to choose a candidate; Zedillo also instituted other electoral reforms. As a result, in 2000 the PRI’s presidential candidate was defeated by Vicente Fox Quesada of the conservative National Action Party(Partido de Acción Popular; PAN), who led an opposition coalition, the “Alliance for Change,” to victory, marking the end of 71 years of continuous rule by the PRI. (The party had already lost control of the Chamber of Deputies in 1997.) The election, which was monitored by tens of thousands of Mexican and international observers, was considered to be the fairest and most democratic in Mexico’s troubled electoral history.
In subsequent elections PAN, the PRI, and the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Democrática; PRD), which had also emerged as a major political party in the 1990s, continued to win a large number of congressional seats and to vie for control of the Federal District, several states, and the national government. Among the lesser parties are the Mexican Ecological Green Party (Partido Verde Ecologista Mexicano; PVEM), the leftist Labour Party (Partido del Trabajo; PT), and the Democratic Convergence Party (PCD). Mexico also has several small communist parties.
A woman suffrage movement began in Mexico in the 1880s and gained momentum during the Mexican Revolution (1910–20). Women were first allowed to vote in the Yucatán in 1917. Elsewhere in Mexico, however, women could not vote in local elections or hold local office until 1947. A constitutional amendment in 1953 extended those rights to national elections and offices. By the early 21st century women occupied about one-fifth of the seats in the Senate and more than one-fourth in the Chamber of Deputies, as well as a small number of ministerial and Supreme Court positions. Many states require that no more than 70 to 80 percent of candidates be of one gender. Although all Mexican citizens age 18 and older are required by law to vote, enforcement is lax. Mexicans living outside the country, including millions in the United States, are now allowed to vote by absentee ballot.
Security
Several types of police operate within Mexico at federal, state, and local levels. However, there is a general perception that police and political corruption is endemic at all levels, with the mordida (“bite”), which can alternatively be seen as a bribe or as unofficial, informal payment for official service, remaining a mainstay.
Mexico’s armed forces include an air force, a navy with about one-fifth of the military’s total personnel, and an army constituting nearly three-fourths of the total. Military service is mandatory at age 18 for a period of one year. The military has not openly interfered with elections or governance since the 1920s, in marked contrast with civil-military relations elsewhere in Latin America.
Sometimes the military takes part in law enforcement, particularly in counternarcotics operations, and it has often focused its efforts on perceived threats to internal security, including groups suspected of insurgency or terrorism. For example, many military and police units were deployed in southern Mexico in the late 20th century to combat the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN; also called the Zapatistas), which launched an open rebellion in 1994 in Chiapas (and remained active more than a decade later). Although the government respects the human rightsof most citizens, serious abuses of power have been reported as part of the security operations in southern Mexico and in the policing of indigenous communities and poor urban neighbourhoods.
Health and welfare
There are pronounced differences in health conditions from region to region within Mexico. In general, rural areas have much higher mortality and morbidity levels than do urban areas. Regions with large indigenous populations, such as Chiapas, Oaxaca, and portions of Guerrero, as well as isolated mountainous sections of the Mesa Central, have especially low health standards and high death rates. There also are great differences in health conditions among social classes in cities. Poor and indigenous Mexicans tend to suffer from an inordinate share of illness associated with unsafe water supplies, infections, and respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis, as well as with physical violence. Generally speaking, the leading causes of death in Mexico are diseases of the circulatory system, diabetes mellitus, cancers, accidents and violence, and diseases of the digestive and respiratory systems.
Federally subsidized medical and hospital care is available to all Mexican citizens. Several government institutions, including the Mexican Social Security Institute and the Security and Social Services Institute for Government Workers, operate hospitals. Public medicine, like public education, is considered inferior to private care, however, and those who can afford it avail themselves of private physicians and hospitals.
Clinics, though sometimes attended only by a nurse, are found throughout the country. Anything more than the most basic medical needs, however, must be handled in the cities. The quality of medical service varies throughout the country, with Mexico City by far the principal centre for specialized treatment. The overall quality of medical care in Mexico lags behind that available in the United States and Europe, and many Mexicans travel outside the country for more-sophisticated surgical procedures or treatments.
In spite of government efforts to extend health care to disadvantaged citizens, in rural areas and among poorer families, modern medicine is often considered too expensive or difficult to obtain, or it is not trusted. In many cases curanderos (traditional healers) or shamans are sought for their knowledge of curative herbs and other folk remedies. Hot springs and saunalike sweat baths are used in some indigenous communities.
Housing
A lack of adequate housing is one of Mexico’s most serious problems. Within the cities the federal government has built multiunit housing projects, but urban populations have increased more rapidly than new units can be constructed, and economic difficulties have reduced the funds available for new construction. Although substandard housing is more visible in urban areas, living conditions are also unhealthful in some rural areas. In virtually all urban areas, peripheral squatter settlements are a major feature of the landscape. Rural migrants, as well as members of the urban underclass, build makeshift housing, often of used or discarded materials, on unoccupied lands at the edges of cities. These colonias initially lack the most basic urban services (water, electricity, sewerage), but most evolve over time into very modest but livable communities.
Education
Mexico has made significant efforts to improve educational opportunities for its people. School attendance is required for children ages 6 to 18, and since 2004 preschool has been mandatory as well. In addition to increasing the number of schools for children, adult literacy programs have been promoted vigorously since the 1970s. By the turn of the 21st century it was estimated that about nine-tenths of Mexicans were literate, up nearly 20 percent since 1970.
Public schools in Mexico are funded by the federal government. Although nearly three-fourths of all primary public schools are located in rural areas, such schools are the poorest in the country and often do not cover the primary cycle. Many internal migrants move to cities because of the availability of better schools for their children and the social opportunities that derive from an education. In rural areas as well as in many low-income urban areas, teachers need only a secondary education to be certified to teach. Despite increases in the numbers of schoolrooms, teachers, and educational supplies, about one-seventh of all school-age children do not attend school, and almost one-third of adults have not completed primary school.
Nevertheless, nearly half of the Mexican population has completed a secondary (high school) degree, though secondary schools are virtually nonexistent in rural areas. As with primary education, private secondary schools are considered vastly superior to public ones, and families who can afford it send their children to private schools. This contributes to the socioeconomic imbalance that greatly favours the middle and upper classes.
Universities are found only in the largest cities. Moreover, of the more than 50 universities in the country, one-fifth are located in Mexico City, and a high proportion of all university students study there. The National Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; UNAM), the College of Mexico, and the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education are among the most prestigious institutions of higher education in the country. Although two million university students are enrolled in courses every year, less than one-eighth of the population has a tertiary degree.
