The Mexican political system in 1970 according to a report by the Spanish diplomat Juan Castrillo

Abstract

The Spanish diplomat Juan Castrillo wrote an extensive report in January 1970 entitled Report on Mexico, in which the first part is devoted to an in-depth examination of the Mexican political system. The recipient of this report was obviously the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Castrillo, in his extensive report, avoids haste and pressure to offer us a systematic and very well elaborated picture of what the Mexican political system was like around 1970, in full dominance as we know of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party). The fundamental issues that Castrillo addresses are the following: the dominance of the Executive Branch of the Legislative Branch, the relativeindependence of the Judiciary, the presidential succession through the mechanism of hiding, the subordination of the labor movement to the political government of the PRI, the false federalism replaced by a strong centralism, the control of the Army, the complex and controversial Church-State relations, the profanation of customs, and all the achievements made by the PRI regime summed up in political stability and economic prosperity.