The Chinese lady. In front of the building where I live is a cafe where no one stops, not even the flies. Perhaps that's what makes it so pleasant. It lacks the bustle and noise of a Starbucks or Italian Coffee. It lacks the déjà vu gas station atmosphere to which so many people seem to have now become accustomed. The manager knows the customers and their tastes. One becomes accustomed to this careful courtesy. Every Saturday at 11:00 AM the Chinese lady arrives--svelte, tall, dressed in a suit that ends with a subtle mandarin collar. She reads the newspaper and orders a double espresso. As I am the only other diner, sometimes we chat.
She was born in a small farming village near Beijing. As a teenager she liked Mexican telenovelas and never missed the annual competition of Chinese mariachis in the capital, which, apparently, is spectacular. Since then, her dream was to come to Mexico someday. Even when she imagined that life wasn't like in the telenovelas, she figured it couldn't be worse than in her small town. The opportunity arose when she was in business school, and a government official appeared to urge students to migrate to other countries in search of opportunities. The government itself paid for her first trip.
She arrived in Mexico without knowing much Spanish and in search of a new life. After a few failed attempts, she found what would be her calling. She is one of those responsible for safeguarding the financing of street stalls [puestos] in downtown Mexico City. The street stalls acquire Chinese goods with money a Chinese bank loans to them de facto. It is a loan "without formalities" that she processes every ninety (90) days. The puesto does not see the money, only the goods that it receives on consignment. The bank in Beijing pays the Chinese company that ships the goods directly to Mexico. After 90 days, the stallholders pay religiously. There are neither market studies nor risk calculations nor reliability studies over which the [Western] banks take great pains.
- "Do they pay on time?" I asked.
- "Of course, it is their livelihood," she replied.The majority of loans are granted to women from the families of the stallholders:
- "They never leave. They are more responsible, because they have family to support," explained the Chinese lady.So if anyone is curious to know where the funding comes from for the street stalls in the Eje Central [Mexico City's main north-south thoroughfare], the unexpected response is: Beijing. A perfect deal that a bank must more than envy. A sociological attempt to define this business woman's place in the giant retail chain is that of an invisible institution. She is a bank in herself, but without buildings, windows, without tiresome procedures, without police. She is imperceptible in the public order. In the underworld [i.e., 'informal'] economy she is responsible for thousands of working families. The Chinese companies rely on a market, and Chinese banks do a profitable business.
The subsoil of politics. Mexican politics is replete with these informal institutions. The political boss [cacique] is not one of them. The bosses are well known: they rely on consensus and deterrence. But their operational networks are underground. When the newspapers published the map of the network on which Elba Esther Gordillo's power rested, two pages of the paper were not enough.
Someday someone should conduct a survey to find out if the people who watch prime time television news know that some of those "news stories" are paid spots. It is an industry of such magnitude that it requires invisible institutions to sustain it. It isn't just the "powers that be". The issue is more complicated.
The invisible presidency. The presidency in Mexico functions in a similar manner. There is a formal presidency that signs agreements, issues initiatives and attends public rituals. In parallel, there is an invisible presidency that operates para-constitucional in the shadow of power; this 'shadow' presidency has been a hallmark of the post since it was founded in 1917. In some cases, the two levels have been exercised by different individuals. Some historians of the 1960's have concluded that for considerable periods during the administration of Adolfo López Mateos [1958-1964], Díaz Ordaz performed the role of an invisible presidency. The aura that surrounded José Cordoba Montoya [economist and politician] during the administration of Carlos Salinas de Gortari speaks of a similar phenomenon, although in smaller proportions.
The Pact for Mexico, which has established the policy of unification of the current administration, suggests a similar practice. More than a program, it is about a place that allows the president to appear not only as a unifying axis of the entire political society, but as the representative of its whole. Since the 1940s, the PRI has elevated the presidency above its internal factions with symbolic emblems such as those of National Unity. The Pact is something quite similar, only now the parties to this agreement are not only the PRI but the [opposition] political parties.
The old corporatism has been restored from Los Pinos [The Pines, Mexico's White House], but the subjects of the new corporate body are different.
Be that as it may, the invisible presidency has concluded the pacts (with lowercase) to provide mechanisms of cooptation and to oil the machinery, so Peña Nieto can appear as the representative of a unity that squanders the immature Mexican democracy even more.
The question is whether today this invisible presidency can count on enough connections to face the internal crises that can flare up not among the members of the pact, but from those left out of it. Spanish original