Al Grito de Guerra: the Second Mexican Revolution
- Thread starter Roberto El Rey
- Start date
I dunno, it's pretty long.... Granted, the US has had a lot of time to see this coming and ideally take some precautionary steps.
Mexico hasn't had the concept of a Vice President since the 1910s. Basically Congress gets to choose the successor long term, and if the assassination is in the first 2 years, that person has to go up for a national vote. But short term, it appears that the rules have changed since the time of the TL, so I don't know what they are..
Oh dear. I'm starting to have a sinking feeling Salinas the Younger will become President of Mexico...
As am I
Thank you so much for providing the morale boost I needed to press ahead with it, it's clearly paying off incredibly well!Good eye. Mexico will become uncomfortably familiar with that cycle in the coming years...
Looking back, I may actually have to add two or three
Close. The Constitution has been amended since then, but at the time, the provision was such:
So the Congress names a temporary President, and then an entirely new person must be elected between 14 and 18 months.
Careful about making such predictions. The Mexican government might track you down and throw you in Lecumberri!
Also, Raúl is the older brother, not Carlos.
Part 10: Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Mexican presidential election of 1989
Carlos Salinas de Gortari is one of the most frequently-discussed figures in contemporary Mexican history. Some historians claim that Salinas's sexenio would have been a dismal failure if allowed to run its course, because his agenda of privatization and cutbacks would have only worsened the country's economic hardship. Others have turned him into Mexico's Yuri Andropov, the man who could have saved the PRI system from collapse if only he had lived longer. His assassination is similarly polarizing in terms of the slew of conspiracy theories it has inspired; dozens of individuals and entities have blamed for the assassination with varying degrees of plausibility, including Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Manuel Bartlett, the President’s own brother Raúl, the Army, the oil workers' union, hardline priístas angered by Salinas’s reformist attitude, and even the soldiers who were standing behind Salinas at the moment of the assassination—enough potential culprits to rival the assassination of John F. Kennedy (in fact, two suspects—the CIA and Fidel Castro—are occasionally accused of having killed both Salinas and Kennedy).
Idle speculation aside, the most commonly agreed-upon explanation is as follows: Angelo Orozco Vela [1], a 21-year-old undergraduate student-turned-ELM guerrilla, entered the Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral, just across from the National Palace, on the morning of September 15, thus bypassing the police checkpoints which would be set up later in the day to screen visitors to the central square for weapons. Armed with a Cuban-supplied, Romanian-made PSL sniper rifle which he had dismantled and packed away into a suitcase, Orozco Vela managed to locate a backroom stairwell and ascend to the roof of the cathedral, where he hid from public view for over thirteen hours, subsisting on a few paltry snacks and attending to certain bodily needs in rather unpleasant ways. Finally, at 11:08 that night, after the Zócalo had been filled with people, soldiers and policemen, the President finally emerged onto the central balcony of the National Palace and into the view of his assassin. Orozco Vela fired several missed shots, each time waiting until the crowd shouted "¡Viva!" so as to mask the sound of the gunshots. Orozco Vela missed as many as four shots before finally hitting his target at a range of about 153 meters; the bullet tore through the President's abdomen, ripping his right lung in two and grazing against his heart. The assassin was quickly spotted by policemen and soldiers on the square below, who began firing automatic rifles at him. To avoid capture, Orozco Vela leapt from the roof of the cathedral and fell 36 meters to his death on the pavement below.
Orozco Vela’s suicide naturally prevented him from being interrogated, but his most likely motive for shooting the President seems to be that he held Salinas personally responsible for the death of his father and sister, who were killed by the Federal Judicial Police during protests in his home state of Sinaloa in October of 1988. A formal government investigation in 1998 concluded that Orozco Vela had acted of his own volition, and not on the orders of his ELM cell, the Cuban government, or any other entity. Many disbelieve this story, but can offer little or no evidence that their chosen boogeymen were behind the killing. As for the weapon, the fact that it came from an Eastern Bloc country was surprising to some, but the PSL had seen frequent use in Nicaragua since the 1970s, and it was presumed that a few thousand may have found their way up the continent to Mexico and into the hands of the amateur assassin. The Cuban connection would not become clear until later on, although the CISEN’s suspicions regarding Castro's involvement were raised significantly by the discovery of the Romanian rifle.
But all of this speculation and ambiguity would come later. Right now, all that mattered was that Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the 53rd President of Mexico, was dead.
Idle speculation aside, the most commonly agreed-upon explanation is as follows: Angelo Orozco Vela [1], a 21-year-old undergraduate student-turned-ELM guerrilla, entered the Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral, just across from the National Palace, on the morning of September 15, thus bypassing the police checkpoints which would be set up later in the day to screen visitors to the central square for weapons. Armed with a Cuban-supplied, Romanian-made PSL sniper rifle which he had dismantled and packed away into a suitcase, Orozco Vela managed to locate a backroom stairwell and ascend to the roof of the cathedral, where he hid from public view for over thirteen hours, subsisting on a few paltry snacks and attending to certain bodily needs in rather unpleasant ways. Finally, at 11:08 that night, after the Zócalo had been filled with people, soldiers and policemen, the President finally emerged onto the central balcony of the National Palace and into the view of his assassin. Orozco Vela fired several missed shots, each time waiting until the crowd shouted "¡Viva!" so as to mask the sound of the gunshots. Orozco Vela missed as many as four shots before finally hitting his target at a range of about 153 meters; the bullet tore through the President's abdomen, ripping his right lung in two and grazing against his heart. The assassin was quickly spotted by policemen and soldiers on the square below, who began firing automatic rifles at him. To avoid capture, Orozco Vela leapt from the roof of the cathedral and fell 36 meters to his death on the pavement below.
Orozco Vela’s suicide naturally prevented him from being interrogated, but his most likely motive for shooting the President seems to be that he held Salinas personally responsible for the death of his father and sister, who were killed by the Federal Judicial Police during protests in his home state of Sinaloa in October of 1988. A formal government investigation in 1998 concluded that Orozco Vela had acted of his own volition, and not on the orders of his ELM cell, the Cuban government, or any other entity. Many disbelieve this story, but can offer little or no evidence that their chosen boogeymen were behind the killing. As for the weapon, the fact that it came from an Eastern Bloc country was surprising to some, but the PSL had seen frequent use in Nicaragua since the 1970s, and it was presumed that a few thousand may have found their way up the continent to Mexico and into the hands of the amateur assassin. The Cuban connection would not become clear until later on, although the CISEN’s suspicions regarding Castro's involvement were raised significantly by the discovery of the Romanian rifle.
But all of this speculation and ambiguity would come later. Right now, all that mattered was that Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the 53rd President of Mexico, was dead.
Still, it was the government's duty to uphold the public order, and it certainly wouldn't be swayed from this objective by something as frivolous as the lack of a serious threat to the public order. President Salinas had gradually downgraded the military presence in Mexico City to the point that the soldiers had essentially become nothing more than an auxiliary street patrol. However, de la Madrid's order permitting unlimited occupation of the Federal District remained in effect, and Defense Secretary Antonio Riviello Bazán invoked it to mobilize over 11,000 additional troops. September 16, 1989 bore an uncanny resemblance to September 16, 1988, as citizens of Mexico City awoke to the sight of troops patrolling most of the city's major thoroughfares.
When several thousand troops moved to occupy Mexico City for the second time in a year, they found a populace with little interest in rioting over political issues. Instead, it soon became clear that the most pressing issue for the soldiers was dealing with the city's substantial and unruly population of unemployed and "underemployed" citizens, whose number had been steadily growing since the beginning of the economic recession the previous year.
The obvious choice was Manuel Bartlett Díaz, the Secretary of Government. Bartlett had held the second-most important position in the government for almost seven years under two different administrations, and after Carlos Salinas was declared dead in the final moments of the 15th, Bartlett automatically became the highest-ranking federal official in the country. Miguel de la Madrid had strongly considered nominating Bartlett as the PRI's candidate in the 1988 Presidential election, and it was fully expected that the Congress would name him interim president when it convened for an extraordinary session on the afternoon of the 16th. However, in an address to the assembled legislators, Bartlett announced that he was withdrawing his name from consideration, stunning the 463 members of Congress who had managed to arrive on time.
Manuel Bartlett Díaz had been a prominent luminary of the PRI system since his college years, and was upset when Miguel de la Madrid passed him up as Presidential nominee for his role in rigging the Chihuahua state elections in 1986. The Presidency had been a lifelong goal of Bartlett's, and when the opportunity presented itself with Carlos Salinas's assassination, he was determined not to let it slip.
The shock wore off when, in the same Congressional address, Bartlett announced that he was endorsing Raúl Salinas, the late President's older brother and Secretary of Tourism, for the interim presidency. Veteran priístas quickly saw through the gambit: Bartlett wanted the top job, but knew that, as interim President, he could serve for between fourteen and eighteen months, after which point he would be constitutionally barred from serving as President ever again. So Bartlett made a pact with Raúl, who was heavily influenced by greed and by his grief over the death of his brother. Bartlett would use his influence over the nationwide PRI to have Raúl elected to the post of caretaker President, and in exchange, Raúl would give Bartlett a free hand over domestic policy, and would promise to name Bartlett as the PRI's presidential candidate in the subsequent replacement election, after which he would be President until late 1994. By endorsing Raúl, Bartlett ensured that he would wield strong executive power for the remaining five years of the sexenio, rather than just for a year and a half.
The outcome of the balloting was never in doubt, but the vote itself provided an interesting insight into the inner mechanics of the Frente Democratic Nacional, the leftist coalition which Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas had engineered for the election of 1988. Between them, the four parties that made up the Frente had 139 deputies and four senators. But many of those legislators were themselves former priístas, and two of the constituent parties—the Popular Socialist Party (PPS) and the Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution (PARM)—had long been considered satellite organizations of the PRI, voting with the ruling party on almost all occasions until the late 1980s. Cárdenas (still grieving in his self-imposed house arrest, though he had increasingly been coordinating with his political allies over the preceding months) was swiftly nominated for the presidency, but, despite the best efforts of the Frente's congressional leader, Senator Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, the old habit of supporting the PRI proved too second-nature for many Frente deputies to kick. Of the 102 Frente deputies who made it to the Centro Medico Nacional in time for the vote, 26 broke ranks to vote for Raúl Salinas.
Party discipline was much stronger within the PAN delegation. The PAN had 101 deputies, 77 of whom showed up to the balloting ceremony. All but two of these 77 backed Manuel Clouthier, who had been the PAN candidate for President in 1988. Of the 411 assembled deputies, 75 voted for Manuel Clouthier, 78 voted for Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, and 258—including all 232 priístas and 26 Frentistas—voted for Raúl Salinas de Gortari. The Senate was a much larger landslide. Of 64 senators, 52 showed up: 49 priístas and three Frentistas. The result was predictable, as all senators managed to adhere to their party's line. In a way, the presidential election of 1989 was simply a rematch of the previous one: the only difference was that the PRI candidate had a different first name and a slightly less questionable margin of victory.
By January, all hope of such a consensus would fall apart, and it would soon become clear that Mexico's social turbulence and political unrest was only just beginning.
__________
[1] Angelo Orozco Vela is a made-up individual, because I didn't want to turn some random person into a presidential assassin. Still, I feel his story is plausible enough that it could have happened to a real Mexican, given the turbulence of TTL's autumn of 1988 and the weapons flowing into the country through Cuba in TTL.
[2] In 1989, Article 84 of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 (which has since been amended) said the following:
"In the event of the absolute disability of the President of the Republic, occurring during the first two years of his term, if the Congress is in session, it shall immediately constitute itself as an electoral college, and if there is at least two thirds of the total membership present, it shall name by secret ballot, and by an absolute majority of votes, an interim President; the same Congress shall issue, within ten days following the designation of the interim President, a call for the election of a President to complete the respective term; between the date of the call and that designated for holding the election, there must be an interval of not less than fourteen months nor more than eighteen."
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Oh boy, this is not good at all... Raul... oh deary me...
Nice to see Clouthier perhaps not dying ITTL (I mean I guess that's what has happened here). The section regarding the coherency of the party coalitions is interesting as it infers that while FDN is still the main opposition force, it is still an uneasy coalition united behind the Cardenas name. Meanwhile PAN is a far more unified entity here. Based on the date of the next election in the infobox... I'm not expecting the Lesser Salinas (love the 'nickname' BTW!) to make the eighteen months out. Some of the stuff here makes me feel even a tiny bit sorry for the guy, though knowing his OTL antics, I'm sure he'll find a way to bugger that up.
Great update as always!
Nice to see Clouthier perhaps not dying ITTL (I mean I guess that's what has happened here). The section regarding the coherency of the party coalitions is interesting as it infers that while FDN is still the main opposition force, it is still an uneasy coalition united behind the Cardenas name. Meanwhile PAN is a far more unified entity here. Based on the date of the next election in the infobox... I'm not expecting the Lesser Salinas (love the 'nickname' BTW!) to make the eighteen months out. Some of the stuff here makes me feel even a tiny bit sorry for the guy, though knowing his OTL antics, I'm sure he'll find a way to bugger that up.
Great update as always!
Knew it! Knew Raul would become President!
Mexico will burn, and I'm curious as to how it affects the rest of the world
Mexico will burn, and I'm curious as to how it affects the rest of the world
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Oh dulce jesus cristo.
Well, I read up on big boy Raul, and welp...Mexico's dun going to be a giant parking lot now.
In any case, Really curious as to see how everything goes to pot.
Well, I read up on big boy Raul, and welp...Mexico's dun going to be a giant parking lot now.
In any case, Really curious as to see how everything goes to pot.
Bookmark1995
Banned
Gortari embodies EVERYTHING wrong with Mexican politicians.
He might even be called "Mexico's Tsar Nicholas" ITTL.
What I'm actually finding to be the most significant piece of the story is
"The Cuban connection was not conclusively demonstrated until later, although the CISEN’s suspicions regarding Castro's involvement were raised significantly by the discovery of the Romanian rifle."
I simply can not see this information being "conclusively demonstrated" unless there is a *complete* overthrow of the communist regime in Cuba. (not even at the USSR->Current Russia level, but closer to the Polish or Romanian level)
By comparison, if this level of connection was conclusively demonstrated for the Kennedy Assassination, I think the USSR would have taken out the Castros themselves rather than see the US reponse.
"The Cuban connection was not conclusively demonstrated until later, although the CISEN’s suspicions regarding Castro's involvement were raised significantly by the discovery of the Romanian rifle."
I simply can not see this information being "conclusively demonstrated" unless there is a *complete* overthrow of the communist regime in Cuba. (not even at the USSR->Current Russia level, but closer to the Polish or Romanian level)
By comparison, if this level of connection was conclusively demonstrated for the Kennedy Assassination, I think the USSR would have taken out the Castros themselves rather than see the US reponse.
Hmmm...
Thanks for pointing that out. I’m not trying to imply it works out one way or the other here, so I don’t want the language to be too spoilerific here. I’ll change the wording there.
RamscoopRaider
Donor
Minor nitpick, the PSL-54C actually designates the post Cold War sporting version meant for commercial importation into the USA, the 54 referring to the 7.62x54mmR caliber version and C referring to Century Arms International who imported it. Just delete the -54C part and your fine, it's probably the perfect weapon to justify missing so much, it's designed to be fired while wearing a heavy winter coat, which is unlikely in Mexico City in September to say the least