The Democratic Dogma: Héctor Aguilar Camín, Jorge G. Castañeda, and Enrique Krauze in the Neoliberal Crucible

One of the salient traits of Mexico’s unfinished transition to democracy is the ubiquity of its intellectuals across mediascapes. All major radio and television networks recruit intellectuals as opinion makers and as hosts of nightly news shows, while local and national newspapers grant them a daily forum in their op-ed sections. The country has many leading magazines and newsweeklies (from Letras Libres and Nexos to Metapolítica and Proceso) where intellectuals play predominant roles and where their voices are heard alongside those of the politicians who seek to position themselves in the media and the journalists who report on the country’s daily life. Intellectuals have even reached high spheres of government and civil society: many founding figures of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) came from intellectual ranks, and writers, critics, commentators, and scholars have served in positions ranging from diplomatic outposts to local and federal cabinet offices. As I write this article, poet Javier Sicilia (the subject of chapter 11) is leading a nationwide caravan for peace in the wake of his son’s murder in the city of Cuernavaca, representing those who have been affected by the government’s war on drugs. The fact that a poet, of all people, is able to attain such a public status in a country where most relatives and loved ones of the thousands of victims of crime and drug violence have been silenced, ignored, or even criminalized, attests to the power and the symbolic aura still enjoyed by the intellectual class.