Mexico's Cultural Landscapes:
A Conversation with
Carlos Monsiváis

Carlos Monsiváis was interviewed in the Hotel Majestic overlooking Mexico City's Zocalo in April 1998. I edited a transcript of the interview and invited him to make changes and corrections in August 1998 and then further copyedited the manuscript and sent it to him in July 1999. He revised and returned that transcript in July 1999.	1
DAVID THELEN
DAVID THELEN:What do you see as the major developments that have transformed Mexicans' sense of who they are?	2
Carlos Monsiváis:In a way, the Zapatistas have transformed the cultural landscape. Perhaps, after five years of an orthodox cold war, of crimes against the Indian people in Chiapas, of harrassment by the army, and of boredom among the public, people are thinking differently, but it's a big cultural, social, and political change. To begin with, Mexican racism has been exposed for the first time at a national level. And we have a different perception of the country's history. Since the 1994 Chiapas revolt of the Zapatistas proclaiming the rights and grievances of poor Indians in southern Mexico, more books on the Indian question have been published than in the rest of the century. It's incredible that for the first time in Mexican history we have begun to problematize racism, the misery and inequality with respect to Indian rights. Chiapas is a key word for understanding what's transforming Mexico, but not because it's important as a political issue. As political issues, violence in the cities and drug trafficking are more important than Chiapas. But as a moral and cultural issue, Chiapas comes first. (Chiapas, here, is not the region but the consciousness of a tragedy). And Chiapas, now, is not only the Indian situation, but the tragedy of a country historically stricken by poverty.	3
Before the rebellion in Chiapas, the key word in Mexico was "modernization," the illusion of the First World around the corner: "Happiness is here again for the first time." "Modernization" took the place of nationalism, the old-time "act" that united all sectors through festivity, mythology. And Chiapas, I think, was powerful in destroying, first, the mirage of "modernity" and, second, that kind of nationalist mythology. It led to the discovery of a Hollywood scenario, the result of government know-how. We had really lived in a world of make-believe. For the first time we asked: How was it possible that we could believe in a Noah's ark of the happy few, and that we could overlook the existence of ten million Indians? Suppose you have an upper crust travelin' to Los Angeles, Dallas, New York, Las Vegas, and livin' like high-class Americans, suppose you have soccer games and national festivities and the generalizations, "Mexicans are like this, Mexicans are like that." All that now becomes secondary. If you have an unequal nation—80 percent of the Mexican population lives in either poverty or misery—you can't have modernization and you can't trust nationalism. And that's what Chiapas helped us discover.	4
Chiapas helped me understand the dangers of complacence. I thought I was a person of the intellectual Left. But I was unaware of the effects of the poverty and misery and the way they destroy lives all the time. And now the key word to me is democracy. No longer nationalism, and no longer the helpless faith in modernization. But it's not an easy task. Sometimes I try to be optimistic, but most of the time I feel the nation is trapped in a web of sordid interests, the big bosses of politics and money, the ruthless entrepreneurs, the bankers. See what happened with fobaproa (El Fondo Bancario de Protección al Ahorro, the bank fund to protect savings), the institution for rescuing the banking system. It's a mess—corruption and impunity. More than $70 billion thrown away to the wind. As long as impunity reigns, it's hard to believe in democracy getting closer. Nineteen ninety-nine has been the year of lost illusions.	5
DT:Could you please elaborate on this point about democracy getting closer and the disappointment?	. . .