This book is among the top contemporary accounts of Mexico and Latin America by top journalists such as Alma Guillermoprieto. I can not stop reading it, it reads very fluidly.

Having lived in Mexico for 38 years, I would say that this THE definitive work. Another reviewer insists on looking at only the negative side of what happens in Mexico, as do so many Mexicans themselves. However, there is a positive side - a very positive side. Things are happening, and Mexico is, indeed, opening to a whole new way of life. No, it is not happening in a single day, but what does?
I arrived in 1966. I have witnessed all the changes that Preston and Dillon depict in their book. It is a true picture of those events - and a pretty gutsy one at that.
I once heard Julia Preston speak at the school where I am working. I was impressed at her intelligence and how knowlegeable she was. She was one of the most open-minded and objective Americans I had ever heard on the subject of this country. And that is exactly what I saw in her book.
I don't wear a hat, but, if I did, it would certainly be off to these journalists who have done such a fine job.

"Opening Mexico" is a very readable and thought provoking work on the 30+-year process of democratic reform in Mexico. As many will know, Mexico has developed its own unique form of democratic governance. Yes, a single party controlled the government since the revolution and all power flowed from the president, selected by the prior incumbent; but this arrangement was flexible enough to encompass most social, labor, business and popular sectors of society. This highly adaptive system survived and indeed brought a modicum of order to what had been a highly chaotic and often barely governable society.

The authors describe how this system began to break under the weight of its own size. The election of Diaz Ordaz, a stern and cold authoritarian figure who rather than negotiate with student radicals, orders their suppression, is the beginning of the end for the old line regime. This event, the Tlatelolco Massacre (1968) begins the slow process of loss of legitimacy that culminates in the election of the first opposition politician Vicente Fox in 2000.

In between, the authors take us on a survey of corruption throughout all levels of public life, mainly bred by drug money. Further, we see the incredible flexibility of the PRI system as well as its ruthlessness in holding on to power. Bribery, strong arm tactics, ballot box stuffing, intimidation, beatings and murders are all tools in the repertoire of the ruling party. While dissent is officially encouraged, we also see the aggressive co-opting of opposition politicians of all stripes. This results in a political environment where political alternatives have been either infected by corruption or have become so indebted to the current system so as to lose all legitimacy.

A good book not a definitive history but certainly a well written account of a tumultuous time in the history of Mexico and a fascinating view of an authoritarian regime struggling with democratic change.

John C. McKee

This is an essential reading to understand the presidential polling results of July 2, 2000, i.e., the first time in almost 70 years a non-official party candidate reached the Mexican Presidency. Notwithstanding the authors ignore the influence of the rail workers' and GP's strikes of 1958 and 1964, respectively, the book details objectively the events that took place between 1968 and 2000, which transforms -very slowly, indeed- the perception of the Mexican middle class, basically, giving democracy a chance. I'm afraid the epilogue, yet to be written, will not be a happy one.

This book traces the gradual development of multi-party democracy in Mexico during recent decades, particularly since the massacre of students in Mexico City in 1968. Preston and Dillon are chillingly effective when they describe the brutal techniques of the PRI's "perfect dictatorship," ranging from stealing ballot boxes to assassinating opponents of the regime. They give us sympathetic brief portraits of individual democratic activists, including many women. President Zedillo emerges as something of a hero in enabling the emergence of a more democratic political system, though even he sometimes acted in the authoritarian way of a PRI dinosaur.

For the most part, Preston and Dillon tell this story in a clear and interesting way. However, they get a bit carried away with personal vignettes, as if they wanted to include as many of their contacts as possible. Their first-person insertions (Julia writes, Sam writes) are distracting and interrupt the flow of the narrative. The more than five hundred pages of text could have been cut to four hundred by judicious editing.