Cuba Through Mexico's Mirror From Salinas To Fox: Shifting Benchmarks of Legitimacy and the Emergence of Revolutionary Democracy.

The Cuban and Mexican regimes both used their respective Revolutions as their benchmark for legitimacy until the late 1980s. By 1989, neither regime could afford itself and the myth that a state-led revolutionary economy could provide effectively for a population indefinitely was shattered. Mexico gradually shifted its benchmark of legitimacy from Revolution to Liberal Democracy starting with the Salinas sexenio and culminating with the administration of Vicente Fox, the first opposition president to break the PRI's monopoly on power at the national level. Cuba transformed its economy but maintained its benchmark of legitimacy act by preventing the emergence of an independent sector of small businessmen, the same sector that brought the opposition to power in Mexico. Cuba's post Cold War realignment has given birth to an apparent alternative to liberal democracy- Revolutionary Democracy, a system based on selective access to free market pockets, a permanent state of siege mentality, and the maintenance of quality social programs. The key variables affecting the survivability of revolutionary ideology are security and transparency. The higher the level of security provided to the population and the lower the levels of transparency, the greater the support for a revolutionary regime. This paper is based on oral histories and interviews conducted in Mexico between 1995 and 2002 and Cuba in the summer of 2004. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]