Conquering the Nation for “the People”: Mexico and Spain a Comparative Study

• In Event: Populist Attitudes and Communication

Abstract

The use of the term “nation” is a historical enigma for the radical left. This work defends that new left-wing populist movements in Europe and Latin America (Levitsky & Roberts, 2011) openly embrace the concept of “Nation” in their discourse. We aim to answer how two political movements (Morena and Podemos in Mexico and Spain) re-signify what “Nation” -the “Fatherland” [La Patria]- means and how, by doing so, they have launched a new electorally successful populist strategy.
Podemos and Morena, represented by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), have similitudes in the way they re-approach the concept of Nation for the people. First, they are inspired by the political and theoretical concepts of Laclau and Mouffe about re-signify the concept of Nation (Laclau, et al, 1985, Laclau, 2002, Mouffe, 2000). Additionally, they construct dichotomous narratives between an “us”, the people, and “them”, the establishment. Moreover, the fatherland [La Patria] has become a link between a new sovereignty were “a patriot” -a good citizen- opposes a corrupt establishment which has infected the institutions.
This work explains nuances, complexity and depth of populism in the latest elections in Mexico and Spain. Thus, we suggest, these movements arisen in Mexico and Spain as a result of corruption and delegitimization of institutions. The Spanish economic crisis of 2008 and the subsequent political scandals around the Elite -specially corruption scandals related to public funding- as well as the drug war in Mexico and corruption scandals of the latest government have indeed propagated a generalized idea of institutionalized corruption. These issues where bought up in in recent elections by both populist movements which depended on a charismatic leaders -Pablo Iglesias and Andrés Manuel López Obrador- that sought to bring back the idea of “nation to the people, the true patriot of the country against the corrupt establishment”.

This research employs a comparative method, mainly due to the possibility to observe concepts such as “Nation” and “People”. Furthermore the use of language studies (Gareth Stedman Jones, 1983, Robert Chartier 1999, Daniel T. Rodgers, 2011) compliments the contextualization of the use of these terms. This small comparative study, uses Spain and Mexico because these are considered to be fragmented cultures (Hartz, 1969; Martin, 2009). However, institutionally, Mexico is a Constitutional, Federal, presidential, representative, democratic, republic. Whilst Spain, is a parliamentary monarchy. Samuel Huntington defines Mexico as a one-party, non-democratic (authoritarian) system (Huntington, 2009, p. 32). Nevertheless, this nation underwent in 1982 a transformation process towards democratization. This transformation was considered to be ideological, and it aimed to open the political system to more parties, which is why Mexico is catalogued as a young liberal democracy (Norris, 2011).The Spanish case also shares an authoritarian system, labelled as a personal dictatorship with an solo-leader, military Francisco Franco. Moreover, Spain also underwent a process of democratization in the late seventies that created the bases of the modern democracy with all its deficits -a closed two-party system, corruption in every institutional level, “caciquismo”, etc.-, which means that during the second half of the Twentieth Century, both Spain and Mexico shared similar process that led to a clientele, corporative and bureaucratic system that is on the base of the critique of both Podemos and AMLO (Lipset, 2000).
We utilise speeches pronounced by the movements main leaders: Andres Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, Pablo Iglesias and Iñigo Errejón in Spain, during the latest elections -2018 in Mexico, 2014-2015 in Spain, focusing on how these shaped their populist strategies by re-signifying the notions of “nation” and “People”. .
This study will contribute in understanding the existence of populism under an innovative scope, because to our knowledge populism has been observed under the scope of large comparative discourse studies (Hawkins, Carlin, Littvay, & Kaltwasser, 2018), Latin American populism (De Sousa Santos, 2017) or the idea of radical left in Europe (March and Keith, 2016).
We shall demonstrate novel ways on how “nation” has been used Furthermore understanding cases outside the mainstream politics could nuance our appreciation of this complex global movement: populism.
We also emphasize a need to research of these contemporary political phenomena outside the usual means by focusing on the bonds between the Hispanic culture in the center-periphery interrelation of Spain and Mexico. Finally, to our knowledge, Morena and Podemos has not been observed under this particular frame of reference. For instance, Scavelzon and Webber (2018) have compared Podemos with South America populism, nevertheless, there is no comparison between the two. Our study aim to close this gap and to that end encourage a fruitful debate about the contentious concept of populism in recent political theory.

Authors

• Iker Itoiz Ciaurriz, University of Edinburgh

• Yazmin Morlet Corti, University of Edinburgh