Intellectuals Learn to Work

Mexico is still a country where a writer can call himself an “intellectual” without eliciting a bewildered response. In contrast with their American counterparts, Mexican intellectuals are not cloistered within the ivy towers of academe. Poets, academics, philosophers and historians argue, opine and influence beyond the narrow confines of their professions. But as the country limps toward democracy, the very essence of their role is changing. The days when intellectuals advised presidents and ruling party officials are coming to an end; independence and iconoclasm are replacing the complicity of the past. Intellectuals are discovering that their audience is Mexican public opinion and society at large. Instead of whispering into the king’s ear, they are shouting at the madding crowd.

In Mexico, intellectuals always have been public figures with a political voice. However, they often used their privileged position to serve the status quo and amplify the “official truth” of the ruling party. Organized around the country’s most influential journals, Vuelta and Nexos, they used their talent to fight wars against each other instead of against authoritarianism. With a few honorable exceptions--novelist Carlos Fuentes, historians Lorenzo Meyer and Enrique Krauze, and political analyst Jorge Castaneda come to mind--when intellectuals criticized the Mexican government, it was softly, in muted tones, behind closed doors.

The last great seducer of the Mexican intelligentsia was former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. And perhaps no other group has paid as dearly for its fling with power than the intellectuals he pampered and financed and listened to. They did not know how to maintain their distance from political power, and when he was disgraced, so were they. Some have sought refuge in silence, others wander heavy-hearted through the halls of conferences murmuring, “He tricked me.” When Salinas went into exile, the credibility of an important segment of the intellectual class went with him.

Post-Salinas soul-searching has prompted a reinvention of what it means to be an intellectual. But perhaps the most important change in the Mexican intellectual scene is the arrival of new money. In the past, financial dependence muzzled free speech, bought consciences and turned intellectuals into ideologues. But in recent years, intellectuals have discovered that disobedience pays better. Instead of knocking on the doors of government offices in search of patronage, intellectuals can operate freely in increasingly powerful private universities. Instead of relying on public funding, intellectuals can market themselves abroad. Writers and thinkers are finding an outlet for their ideas not in Los Pinos, the presidential palace, but in the media and speaking engagements in the United States. Their paychecks come from newspapers or television stations, not the government.

President Ernesto Zedillo has not shown any intellectual appetite what-soever. He does not seem to need intellectuals to legitimize his decisions. He is too busy saving the economy to woo or persecute his critics. This detachment has bruised the egos and confounded more than a few of the intellectual class but also has contributed to its evolution. Intellectuals have been forced to seek recognition elsewhere.

The rise of public opinion, measured by polls and counted in votes, has eroded the interpretive monopoly of Mexican intellectuals. For decades, they defined Mexicans as nationalistic, xenophobic and politically and socially conservative. But in the past decade, Mexicans have embraced NAFTA, put aside anti-Yankee rhetoric and voted for opposition parties. On July 6, Mexicans interpreted themselves through the ballot box, handing the ruling party its worst setback ever.

Before the arrival of competitive elections, Mexican intellectuals found it more productive to influence the government than the public. Now the reverse may be true. Intellectuals have begun to realize that fame and fortune can be achieved by proximity not to power but to the population.

In the midst of a turbulent transition, intellectuals run the risk of being overtaken by events. They tend to be more cautious, more worried than civil society. Now Mexican intellectuals must carve a new niche for themselves. They must learn how to conduct a continuing, uncompromising criticism of the established order--even if that order is governed by the left. Their new task will be to scrutinize political friends and foes with equal ferocity. Their daily challenge will be to produce analysis that is as unpredictable as the country’s political environment. They must substitute irreverence for self-censorship, debate for diatribe, and seek the approval of their readers instead of their colleagues. In sum, elite thinkers must metamorphosize into public intellectuals who use society and not themselves as a reference point. Unless they display the tolerance, flexibility and creativity of a democracy they now advocate, democracy will render them irrelevant.

Thirteen years ago in his bestseller “Distant Neighbors,” American journalist Alan Riding defined a Mexican intellectual as someone “who signs anti-American protests, writes a weekly column in a newspaper and dreams of becoming an ambassador.” Today, a Mexican intellectual should be someone who writes for audiences both north and south of the Rio Grande, listens to the people instead of pontificating to them and dreams of becoming a democrat.

To read previous articles in the Soundings on Mexico series, visit The Times’ Internet Web site: http://stats.nohib.com/HOME/NEWS/COMMENT