Transição à democracia e os usos do passado recente para a legitimação de um novo regime político no México

Abstract

This article aims at discussing the process of transition to democracy in Mexico in the light of political and institutional changes and the performance of social movements that allowed Vicente Fox to win in the 2000 presidential elections. In this sense, two central aspects of this process will be discussed: political reforms made by the priistas governments since the 1970s and the social struggles that have taken place since at least the 1960s that were able to pressure for the democratization of the State, for political-party changes and for the assignment of responsibilities for the humans rights violations committed in the previous decades. Besides that, we seek to understand how Fox made use of the demands for truth, memory and justice claimed by human rights and organizations and family members of deaths and missing persons, to build a political platform and a coalition between different ideological sectors in the name of the “political turn”.