Molly Ivins July 8

AUSTIN — Ole! Bravo! Andale! Viva Mexico! Which is sort of Spanish for, "You go, girl!" The neighbors have just given the boot to PRI, the longtime ruling party of Mexico, and what a righteous, satisfying outcome it was.

Actually, Mexico would have booted the Institutional Revolutionary Party some time ago if honest elections had been permitted, and PRI President Ernesto Zedillo does deserve some of the credit for allowing them this time. With 80 percent of the vote counted, PRI is down to 38 percent in the national congress. PAN, the right-wing opposition party, has 27.4 percent, and PRD, the left-wing opposition, has 25.9 percent, with five smaller parties splitting the remainder.

The big winner is Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the Democratic Revolution Party, the first elected mayor of Mexico City since 1928. Cardenas is the guy who really won the presidential election in 1988 against Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the big crook, but was gypped out of it. Cardenas, who is famous for never smiling, had a smile on election night bright enough to light up the whole country.

Since South Texas and Northern Mexico are increasingly integrated into one economy and one culture, the neighbors' election results are almost as important to Texas as our own. And this was a ding-hummer. Seventy years of one-party rule brought to an end.

The only thing to fear now is inflated expectations. One jubilant citizen exclaimed, "No more hunger! No more corruption!" Of course, it won't be that simple or that immediate. But there's a good chance that Cardenas, who now holds what is probably the second-most powerful post in Mexico, can start building some real democratic institutions. By using some of the citizen-involvement techniques that have been so successful in our own more progressive cities, like Burlington, Vt., Cardenas could become a lot more than just another caudillo (strongman).

It is an observable fact — and one that puzzles many political commentators — that Texicans like Mexicans. Despite some bad border history (sorry about that), Texans and Mexicans just get along with each other. Could be so much shared history, could be the long, mostly open border, could be that both Texans and Northern Mexicans are closer to each other than to their own capitals.

Texans rarely get into nativist snits, like California with that silly Prop. 187.

Even our right-wing politicians don't bash Mexico — and we do have right-wing politicians. Silly stuff like English-only doesn't make much of a wave here. Texas may seem unlikely to be more progressive than other states (not our normal reputation), but there it is. Besides, Texas is due to become majority-minority sometime early in the next century, and our biggest minority is brown. The blood ties alone will tell.

San Antonio and Monterrey face each other across what could become one of the largest economies on Earth all on its own. A Mexican friend of mine observed recently that a good chunk of the Mexican middle class is already in Texas — professionals, business people and (here's an interesting sub-group) educated, divorced women, who are still not socially accepted in Mexico.

As Texans who visit Mexico regularly know, the country is plagued by corruption: The mordida is standard operating procedure south of the border. One reason is quite simply that PRI has been in power for 70 years. Leave any party unchallenged that long and it will go to rot on you. You notice that the cleaner elections of recent years are the direct consequence of serious challenges from National Action Party and PRD: PRI was being forced to clean up its act even before this election.

Another cause of corruption is that Mexican civil servants are underpaid, and all of that goes back in a direct, unbroken line to the original cause of Mexican corruption — the kings and queens of Spain.

For two centuries, from the Spanish conquest in 1521 to Mexican independence in 1821, 63 viceroys sent from Spain ruled Mexico. They weren't paid. Their deal was that they got to keep whatever they could soak out of the country. And ditto for all their little sub-viceroys. So governance in Mexico was pretty much the art of official theft. Enrique Krauze, author of a fine new book, "Mexico: Biography of Power," notes another dual legacy of pre-colonial and colonial days. The Aztec emperors were considered almost gods. The Spanish viceroys, who were administrators, judges and commanding generals combined, were called "fathers to their people."

"From both these sources came a tradition of centralized, divinely sanctioned power that has lasted — under different forms — almost to the present day," writes Krauze.

So, even after independence and the revolution, Mexico continued to be ruled by caudillos. In some ways, it is a brand-new democracy, which is why this election is so exciting.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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