Opening Mexico

The Story of Mexico''s political rebirth by two pulitzer prize-winning reporters. Opening Mexico is a narrative history of the citizens'' movement which dismantled the kleptocratic one-party state that dominated Mexico in the twentieth century and replaced it with a lively democracy. Told through the stories of Mexicans who helped make the transformation the book gives new and gripping behind-the-scenes accounts of major episodes in Mexico''s recent politics.. Mexico''s Institutional Revolutionary Party led by presidents who ruled like Mesoamerican monarchs came to be called the perfect dictatorship. But a 1968 massacre of student protesters by government snipers ignited the desire for democratic change in a generation of Mexicans. Opening Mexico recounts the democratic revolution that unfolded over the following three decades. It portrays clean-vote crusaders labor organizers human rights monitors investigative journalists Indian guerrillas and dissident political leaders such as President Ernesto Zedillo-Mexico''s Gorbachev. It traces the rise of Vicente Fox who toppled the authoritarian system in a peaceful election in July 2000.. Opening Mexico dramatizes how Mexican politics works in smoke-filled rooms and profiles many leaders of the country''s elite. It is the best book to date about the modern history of the United States'' southern neighbor-and is a tale rich in implications for the spread of democracy worldwide.