Cárdenas won in 1988: A Mexican ATL

Hello there. This is my first attempt at making an ATL. I await your comments and anything you may say about it.

I decided to make this to stray away from the usual timelines that cover the U.S. or Europe or some other country in Asia, and focus on my home country, with a little flavour added in between: A few idiomatic phrases, curses, and titles will be in Spanish, just to give this some sort of local flavour. Translations will be placed between brackets and underlined in some cases.

The divergence point was too easy: Miguel de la Madrid's incompetence as a President is legendary, and even though in its defense, he had inherited the complete clusterf... that was Mexico in that time (but still instead of actually working it out, he just sat down with a thumb up his arse). Just make one of his blunders even more evident and the rest will fall by its own weight (In this case, the 1985 earthquake should do). Either way, if not for the Zapatista uprising, we would have switched of ruling parties as soon as 1994, as the whole electoral fraud debacle killed any credibility that the PRI had.

There will be several repercussions that will impact many aspects of the national life, and also the U.S.-Mexico relations. I won't spoil on what it is, as you'll figure that out yourselves.

--------
September 1985

42tkn.jpg
"PRI’s mismanagement of the government reached its boiling point during the earthquake in Mexico City in September 18, 1985. De La Madrid wasted too much time trying to figure out what to do while the population was left to fend off the aftershocks by themselves. Mexico City showed for the first time that it didn’t needed the PRI to reorganize itself. People who owned food stands set them up on the streets to feed the brigades. Volunteers from all over the world flew into the country from Tijuana to Toluca and Puebla to help in the search and rescue efforts. The Mexican Army, the Federal Police and the Mexico City Police helped on keeping in line the population, discouraging any looting attempts. However, De La Madrid, the upper echleons of PRI and the labour unions were nowhere to be seen, and in the case of the government, they hoarded the much needed resources that were supposed to be delivered to Red Cross and other similar organisations."
Krauze, Enrique. “Transición”. Clío. México City, 2005.

"El 19 de septiembre de 1985, la ciudad de México se vino abajo vencida por el peso de la corrupción. ¿Cómo era posible que el presidente de la República, Miguel de la Madrid, dijera: ''México tiene los suficientes recursos y unidos, pueblo y gobierno, saldremos adelante". ''Estamos preparados para atender esta situación y no necesitamos recurrir a la ayuda externa"? En todo momento, el gobierno se mostró hostil a quienes pretendían ayudar. ''Vuelta a la normalidad", ''Vuelta a la normalidad" era la consigna gubernamental, y mientras tanto los trascabos y bulldozers se llevaban en camiones miembros de cuerpos cercenados entre los escombros que iban a vaciar a los tiraderos de basura. ƑEn dónde quedó la respuesta de Plácido Domingo a Jacobo Zabludowsky cuando éste le preguntó si no temía que el polvo y el cascajo le arruinaran la voz: ''Lo que me importa es que los cuerpos se rescaten con dignidad?"
{"On September 19, 1985, Mexico City was brought down by the weight of its own corruption. ¿How was it possible that the President of the Republic, Miguel de la Madrid, said "México has enough resources, and together, the people and the government, will pull this through." "We are prepared to take care of this situation and we do not need any external help"? In each moment, the government showed itself to be hostile to those who wanted to help. "Return to the way it was", "Return to the way it was", "Return to the way it was" was the government's motto, and while the excavators and the bulldozers took onto tracks body parts chopped off from the piles of rubble that they would throw away to the landfills. ¿Where did Placido Domingo's response to Jacobo Zabludowsky's question when he asked him if he wasn't afraid that the dust and the rubble would ruin his voice? "What matters now is that the bodies get rescued with dignity".}
Poniatowska, Elena. "Nada, Nadie: Las voces del Temblor". Excerpt.


que te encontraré en estas ruinas,
ya no tendremos que hablar y hablar del temblor.
Te besaré en el templo (lo sé), será un buen momento.
El temblor... despiértame cuando pase el temblor...
{ know
That I'll find you in those ruins,
We would not need to talk and talk about the 'quake.
I'll kiss you at the temple (I know), it will be a good moment.
The 'quake... wake me up when the quake goes away...}

Excerpt from the song "Cuando Pase el Temblor" by Soda Stereo. The song itself makes allusions to the 1985 earthquake, and the socioeconomical changes in Latin America during the 80's.
---------------

September 1988

BOSS (obvious pastiche of Manuel Bartlett): -Here are the ballot results of the campaign. You must put them in the system. The computer’s already rigged to allow the victory of Lic. Salinas. There should not be any kind of screw-ups, or I’ll make sure you and your family get sent to La Chingada. [1]
[SCREEN FADES TO BLACK]
PRI MOOK 1: Uh, sir… officially, we have counted all votes, but…
BOSS: ¿But what?
PRI MOOK 1: Sir… Cárdenas won, in spite of how we rigged the system.
BOSS: ¡Turn that thing off, you imbecile! ¡TURN IT OFF! ¡TURN IT OFF NOW! [2]
PRI MOOK 2: Sir... I think I just pressed the wrong button…
BOSS: ¡Go burn the whole evidence, and change the numbers!
PRI MOOK 2: It’s impossible to do; there are a lot of people camping outside the building, waiting for the results. Doing so will draw more suspicion. There’s nothing we can do.
Excerpt from the screenplay for the series “Historia Cómica de México” [3], produced by IMER Canal 4. 2008. [4]

ePPsG.jpg
"There was no way of hiding it. Salinas’ defeat in the 1988 elections was too evident to try to cover up. The only thing that they had to do was to admit defeat, and allow Cárdenas his victory, or they would have faced one of the worst socio-political crises since the 1970 elections.”
Krauze, Enrique. “Transición” [5]. Clío. México City, 2005.

CUAUHTÉMOC CÁRDENAS GANÓ
Con el 40% del voto popular, Cárdenas será el nuevo presidente.
{Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas won}
{With a total of 40% of popular vote, Cárdenas will become the new President}

Headline from the newspaper “Reforma”. September 7, 1988.

“Congratulate Mr. Cárdenas for his victory. At last there's democracy in Mexico.”
Cable to the U.S. embassy in Mexico City.

Comrades, time to run the presses. Cárdenas has won, and we must support him with all we got. If there’s anything we can do to further demolish those PRI cheats, just send it in.
Carlos Payán (Editor in chief of “La Jornada” newspaper). Said this to his colleagues at the La Jornada newspaper on the morning after the elections.

K6tfT.jpg
“Workers affiliated to SNTE, PEMEX, and CTM have started marches in protest against Cárdenas victory in the recent elections, and have clogged the main avenues of Mexico City.”
“Syndicates protest against the election results” El Sol de México. September 19 [6]

Those sinvergüenzas from the syndicates are there only for the bread and circus the PRI provides them. ¡Shame on them!
A testimony from the article mentioned above.

“It is true that I did not won the elections. However, I am still proud that Mexico managed to pull its act together and ousted the PRI out of power.”
Clouthier, Manuel J. “Maquio”. “Mis memorias”. Alfaguara. México 2009 [7]

"You know, my brother used to work on the Hotel Regis. He saved himself because that day he was going to have a medical check-up, which gave him a good reason not go go there. Now, everytime he goes near this place[8], he remembers how there was a hotel. Mexico City has passed through a lot during these three years, more than we give it credit for: We rebuilt most of the city for the 1986 world cup, we booed off De La Madrid during the opening ceremony, and then proceeded to oust the PRI out. God knows what will happen afterwards"
Juan García, a man from Mexico City narrating a few things from his point of view.

----------
[1] The PRI did rig the elections. Several opposition leaders IOTL found out that there were already preset results on the computers, which trying to modify them caused them to crash the system, and also, several state governors eventually claimed that Cárdenas won indeed the elections. However, in this one, they tried to reprogram the computers so the PRI votes counted more. They bungled it somehow. Also, OTL, PRI destroyed all of the evidence of the elections so they could not be disputed (I still wonder why there wasn't an uprising about this).
[2] Problem, Bartlett? :trollface:
[3] Educational-Comical series which explains several events in Mexican history in a more satirical way. Imagine "Mexico: Nuevo Siglo" meets "Chespirito".
[4] OTL Azteca 13.
[5] TTL work by Enrique Krauze (One of Mexico's top historians), in which he retells the downfall of the PRI.
[6] PRI used (and still uses from time to time) a lot of astroturfing tactics to tilt results on his favor or to get the results they want if they fail to do the first. The other parties have used turfing tactics at some point OTL, but (with the exception of AMLO's protests in the 90's and the 2000's) they aren't as blatant as the ones made by the PRI.
[7] Manuel J. Clouthier is still alive by 2011 TTL. He retired from politics, though.
[8] Parque Solidaridad, which was built in the place where Hotel Regis standed.
[9] It did happen.
 
Last edited:
¡¡¡Si Si Si Si Si Si Si Si Si Si Si!!! :D

I've had this idea in my head for quite a long time, and I'm so happy someone is turning it unto an actual TL. Subscribed! I look forward to more future updates! :)

Saludos desde Alta California. ;)
 

Thande

Donor
Mexico deserves more timelines really.

Good start, if I can offer one suggestion I think it would be better to show the English translations with italics rather than underlining, as underlining can make it a bit harder to read when it's big blockss of text.
 

Hendryk

Banned
Cardenas' "defeat" in 1988 was one of the most shameless instances of vote-rigging in modern history, so I'm interested to see where you will go with this.
 
Update time!
I apologize for the delay. I noticed a few screw-ups in the first post, so I did a few adjustments due to the fact I didn't checked up right a few dates. Anyway, thanks for the comments, and I'll leave you with this:

October 1988​
“2 de Octubre: ¡No se olvida!”
“October the 2nd: ¡Never forget!”
Slogan in remembrance of the Massacre at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas.

"A march in remembrance of the Student Massacre was done in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas. The crowd was dispersed by the Distrito Federal security forces, citing them as 'a source of insubordination against the government'."
"Marcha silenciada por el Gobierno" Milenio, October 2, 1988.

“I was involved in one of those student organizations back in those days. There’s even a picture of myself being harassed by the security forces somewhere in the National Archives. And there’s also one with Diego Fernández de Ceballos. Many of the politicians of this generation came from there.
“It’s ironical, the next year I was working for the PRI trying to get a decent post on a later date. The ironies of life at work, ¿Don’t you think?”

“Twenty years, and the government still wanted those events to go unmentioned. It was kind of hypocritical of them to allow their followers to do as they pleased in the Reforma avenue, while the crowds remembering their dead at the Tres Culturas plaza were being dispersed.”
Ernesto Zedillo (Minister of Economy 1994-2000); Interview for the magazine “Proceso”

So, my mom told my dad by the end of September that her cousin could help her immigrate to the USA if she wanted to work as a maid over there, in which she would receive payment in U.S. Dollars. My father refused her to let her go, since he didn’t wanted to leave the country; my father had the belief that regardless of any kind of political allegiances, we should support Mexico through thick and thin. And then she blew a gasket over the issue that she didn’t want to live in a Socialist Mexico, and how she wanted to live in the U.S. and provide me with the great pleasures that living in the U.S. would give us. [1]
My testimony.

November 1988​
“Saquen a ese pendejo de ahí.”
"Get that jerkoff out of here."
Grafitti found in a wall on the Balderas metro station. The phrase alluded to Miguel de la Madrid, as it contained a crude portrait of him near the writing. The phrase would become a meme for years to come.

“Televisa announces they will restart production of the second part of Senda de Gloria. The story will pick up from the end of the Maximato, and will tell the story about the Cristero conflict, the expulsion of Calles, and the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas; also there will be a few chapters about one of the characters leaving to serve as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War.”
Blurb at the Entertainment section of Reforma. August 16. [2]


Mr. Fernández de Ceballos. I know you don't like me at all, but we have an issue here, which is Mexico. If what is happening in the streets is any indication, the PRI will try to sabotage the ceremony. We would like it if at least you could help us on disallowing them access to the tribune, so that they don't try to seize it during the inauguration ceremony.
Correspondence between Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and Diego Fernández de Ceballos (National leader of PAN).

"Dear nephew,
It's good to see you alive. I'm going back to Tijuana in November 20. I'm too old and too tired of being herded by those imbeciles. I can't wait to meet your son.
Hugs.
Carmen.
Letter from my grand-aunt to my dad. [3]

December 1988​
The inauguration act of Mexico’s new president, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, was done smoothly after the Federal Police evicted the labor union protesters from the main avenues. In spite of the efforts done by the former ruling party to force out Cardenas from the Chamber of Deputies by attempting to block the entrance to the pulpit, members from the PAN and the coalition that brought Cárdenas into power helped into allowing access to the new president of Mexico.
New York Post. December 1

Mexicans, as your new president, it is my duty to help our fellow countrymen into raising up this country to what my father wanted it to be. I will not be able to do all that by myself. It is your duty to help me in this task that the people of this country has entrusted me with it. People of Mexico, you are with me in this, regardless of any kind of political difference, and if you don't like it, there's the door. I prefer that if you don't want to help, resign your post and leave this place at once. You're with me, or against me, and there shall be no middle ground.
Fragment of the inaugural speech by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano. December 1, 1988.

Now that the PRI has been ousted from the government for the first time in almost six decades in ruling the country, people may end up wondering for whom Televisa will tell them to vote next, or if Imevisión will tell them to vote for PRD in the next elections.
Pedro Ferriz de Con, on a critique to Televisa's involvement in being the government's lapdog.

The manifestation of the syndical authorities defending our voting rights was brutally repressed by Cárdenas’ cronies in Mexico City.
"¡Repression to the syndicates!" El Mexicano. December 3, 1988 [4]

What we got here is a complete mess. I don't really want to know how did Jesús Silva-Herzog managed Hacienda, but here we have debts everywhere. And there's the large amount of complaints directed at the state companies. We need to move quickly, and do something about the state companies and to figure out a way to negotiate the debts the previous administration brought upon us.
Ifigenia Martínez (Hacienda 1988-1991) to the rest of the cabinet.

And so, another year has ended...

Footnotes:
[1] This is a self-insert fragment. I’ll throw these from time to time. I was born in April 1987, so I was a year old when that happened. OTL, my mom received that offer from one of her cousins who was living in Anaheim, CA, but both my parents refused (Mum because she had "second thoughts, Dad disliked the idea of living in the U.S. back then); my mum regretted it when my sister was born in February 1991, but my dad didn’t when the 1994 economical crisis kicked in. I decided to do it just to insert a more "Personal" touch to this TL, and just for kicks.
[2] "Senda de Gloria" was binned by the government about 30 episodes earlier because those were about the period where Lázaro Cárdenas (father of Cuauhtémoc) was president. It would make sense, given how perfectionist was Emilio Azcárraga Milmo, for him to push forward on trying on giving it a decent continuation. OTL, the last episodes of Senda de Gloria were mind-boggling, in the sense that there were so many scenes cut that the whole thing made no sense at all.
[3] My grand-aunt was a teacher, and she was a member of the SNTE (Teacher's labour union).
[4] Newspaper from Tijuana, infamous back in the day for its heavy PRI-favouritism, sloppy design and yellow journalism tactics. Nowadays it has lost a lot of its bias and questionable journalism, but it's still in dire need of good design.

Anyway, to compensate, here's also a few commercials from Mexico in the 1988. I kind-of like the strange sense of optimism they have.
 
Still interesting. Those commercials are so 1980's, though - you can tell with all that synthesized music, and some of them are just very funny (the yogurt ad, for example).
 
Never noticed this thing got bumped before...
Anyway, here's the next part.

January-March 1989
The dissolution of the Department of Colonization and Agrarian Affairs was a temporal solution to brace for the imminent impact that was the NAFTA, which unfortunately it was signed three years ago and Cárdenas policies could do nothing about it, except for buying some time by having the Congress stall its application for as much time as possible.

A more permanent solution had to be applied, which came in the form of a series of agrarian reforms which were made in place to prevent any further distribution of idle and infertile lands to the hoarders and to provide more money onto the Agrarian sector to increase the farming output. Like in the years of the Mexican Miracle, a massive investment into education had to be done again, and this time it had to come with reforms against the syndicate and to provide better and a more far-reaching education to the children in rural areas, and the proposal to make obligatory the Secundaria and High School were welcomed improvements, to allow a more prepared population base to face off against the coming storm.
Krauze, Enrique. “Transición”. Clío. México City, 2005.


“Recuerda, si ya concluiste la primaria, pasa de inmediato a la secundaria más cercana a tramitar tu acceso al siguiente nivel. Y si ya terminaste la secundaria, alístate de inmediato en la el bachillerato; hay muchas opciones de donde escoger. ¡En febrero son las inscripciones y las inscripciones deben de ser gratuitas!”
Remember! If you have finished primary school, go immediately to the nearest junior high school to advance to the next level. And if you have finished junior high school, enlist immediately at high school; there are plenty of options to choose from [1]. ¡The enrolment period is in February, and education will be free for all! [2]
Radio and TV announcement to incentive people to enroll into school.


Mr. Carlos Jongitud Barrios, leader of the teacher’s syndicate, Elba Esther Gordillo, second in command, and several of her closest collaborators were arrested under charges of corruption and embezzlement. If they are found guilty, they are to face 13 years in prison. The new leader of the SNTE, Rafael Ochoa Guzmán, pledged that there will be democratization in the syndicate, and more collaboration with the education secretariat.
Blurb in Pedro Ferriz’s news program in Imevisión 7.


My father told me that when my grand-aunt heard about the news of the detention of Mr. Barrios and Ms. Gordillo, the only thing she said was “Good riddance.”
What my father (in this ATL) told me about this.


“Con el programa Solidaridad, el gobierno se acercará a las familias de escasos recursos, proveyéndoles lo necesario para que puedan tener una vida plena.”
“With the Solidaridad program, the Government will approach to impoverished families, providing them with the necessary products they need to provide them with a decent living standard”. [3]
Radio ad for the Solidaridad program.


The room was filled with several anxious students and professors, expecting to witness this new technology that was called “Internet”. At the Monterrey campus of the ITESM, the first interconnection between our institute and another university in Texas had yielded results: From a 4-line private connection at 9600 bits per second, information could be transmitted back and forth between both institutions. The applications for this new technology are endless.
Testimony from the dean of the School of Electronics and Information Technologies from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Superior Studies (ITESM), Monterrey Campus, on the first internet connection between this school and the University of Texas in San Antonio.


The Secretaría de Programación y Presupuesto has put on sale the state’s telephone company, Telmex. Buyers shall present their price and budget plannings for the company before June 1990 to evaluate your acquisition proposals. [4]
Announcement by the Government to most corporate leaders.


The first tractor of the “El Campo para Todos” campaign was delivered to the community of El Mochomo, Sinaloa, in January 19, 1989, amidst a crowd of reporters and curious onlookers who wanted to see this new piece of technology for their fields.
This campaign’s main feature consists of a series of micro-credits given to farmers and small landowners, so they can invest it in what they need the most. With this program, most of the country’s farmers will reap benefits in less than two years.
A brief description of the "El Campo para Todos", a program to increase farming output to small and medium farmers, which insofar has been one of the main grievances OTL, since it's a fact that the NAFTA is not going to be stopped for long.


Footnotes:
[1] Here in Mexico, there are several types of high school: There’s the Technical School, where you graduate with a high school diploma and an assistant or a technical degree (be it as an assistant accountant or as an electric technician, for example); the normal baccaulerat, which consists of a 3 year program, in which you will get the first 2-4 semesters of common subjects, and the remainder on specialised subjects depending on your vocational field; the Colegio de Bachilleres (same as above, but more regional, more Nintendo-hard, and with a very crappy and generalised curricula); the International Baccaulerat program (you already know it); and in some places there’s a pre-Universitary Program, in which the whole high school is nothing but a glorified baccaulerat experience that lasts two years, with the bonus of not having to do an admission exam to get into the University that sponsors the program if you wish to get there.

[2] Education here in Mexico is free de jure. De facto it is not, with parents often having to pay several fees for pointless events (because at the end of the day most of the money gets diverted to the pockets of the syndicate bigwigs OTL).

[3] The Solidaridad program was used also by Salinas for vote-mongering, with many PRI cronies conditioning the social help in exchange for votes. However, this was also a campaign promise by Cárdenas, and the aid ITTL will be far more substantial and more far-reaching to the rural populations to make the whole education-nutrition worth it.

[4] Irregardless of political leanings, the sale of Telmex was an absolute necessity. However, the sale here will be limited only to Mexican buyers at first.
 
Another great update, Vault-boy.

The way you describe education in Mexico sounds somewhat similar to here in the US, so by making additional investment there Cárdenas is defintely going t make a huge impact. I wonder, though - is it possible for the IMSS and the ISSSTE to merge in TTL, or would that just be ASB?
 
How are you going to deal with the drug war?

Maybe this butterflies away Mexico's drug violence getting worse, IMO.
 
Top