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.
--------
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.
Sé
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.
---------------
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]
"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.
“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.
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
"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.
Sé
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]
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.
“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.
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