Denise Dresser—Why She’s Laughing at Mexico

By Bruce Jensen -- Críticas, 8/15/2006

Humorist Denise Dresser is one of Mexico’s best-known political minds—not only in Mexico itself, where her iconoclastic views are on TV, radio, and in newspapers and magazines galore, but north of the border as well. This Princeton Ph.D. is the go-to source when the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and major English-language broadcasters need an explanation of the dizzying turns of her country’s politics. Dresser has been busier than ever since the disputed results of last month’s presidential balloting have sent more than a million angry Mexicans into the streets, demanding that their votes be properly counted and reviving old doubts about democracy. For more than 70 years, elections were routinely rigged to maintain control at every level by the ruling party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI). Many hoped 2000’s historic election of a non-PRI president would mean a new era for Mexico, but peculiarities in the recent campaign and its aftermath convinced rivals that President Fox’s party cheats just as competently as the one it replaced.

The run-up to this year’s election was spiced by the release of a satirical “textbook” by Dresser and Jorge Volpi. México: Lo que todo ciudadano quisiera (no) saber de su patria (Mexico: What Every Citizen Would Like to (Not) Know About His or Her Country) devotes a lot of attention to the current crop of politicos—emulating in many ways Jon Stewart’s America. Volpi, a celebrated novelist, best known for the prize-winning En busca de Klingsor (In Search of Klingsor, Seix Barral), has also practiced law and is a formidable scholar and historian. Dresser captured the nation’s attention three years ago with Gritos y susurros (Cries and Whispers, Grijalbo), a collection of revealing essays by 38 Mexican women of distinction. During a break from writing columns and making media appearances, Dresser spent some time telling Críticas what’s so funny about Mexican politics.

Viewing the process as humorists rather than analysts, what do you regard as the funniest moments of the 2006 presidential campaign, the election, and its ongoing denouement?

One of the funniest and most memorable moments was during the first presidential debate, when the PRI’s presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo waved sheets of paper that contained alleged proof of the corrupt activities of his adversaries. Suddenly, one of those sheets dropped to the floor, and he bent down to pick it up, completely disappearing from the television screen for almost a minute. His disappearance seemed like the perfect metaphor for his disastrous campaign.

And now, what could be funnier than the never-ending election, led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador—a man who might still be president of Mexico—as he camps out on one of Mexico’s main streets, eats canned tuna, and rails against the system while sleeping in a tent probably purchased at Walmart.

In general terms, what is your assessment of the textbooks used in your country's schools? What should a good textbook tell students about the recent election? 

Is the first question a joke? Most Mexican history textbooks end their coverage in the 1960s and treat events since then in a limited, cursory fashion. Perhaps one day our grandchildren might read about this contested election—if those traditional books are ever updated—but that won’t happen until Elba Esther Gordillo, head of the teacher’s union, dies from yet another plastic surgery. One of the reasons we wrote the book was precisely to take on those official textbooks steeped in the PRI’s mythology about the country’s past. The winners always write history, and in Mexico’s case, the ruling party created books that taught people how to be passive, how to be resigned, how to accept authoritarian rule rather than question it. Those books explain, to a large extent, why Mexico is a country with imaginary citizens. People haven’t been taught to think critically and act accordingly. They haven’t been taught that government exists to represent their interests and should be lambasted when it doesn’t. We view our book as just another step in the long and winding road towards effective citizenship in Mexico.

Your own book aside, what do you consider exemplary works of Mexican political satire or social commentary? 

One of the best is Jorge Ibargüengoitia’s novel Los relámpagos de agosto (Planeta, 2003) (The Lightning in August, Vintage, 1986) in which he skewers Mexico’s postrevolutionary elite in a humorous, biting way. Guillermo Sheridan’s El dedo de oro (The Gold Finger), a novel about the infamous dedazo, the traditional practice whereby Mexican presidents hand-picked their succesors. Also, anything and everything by Carlos Monsivais. The extraordinary Mexican film La ley de Herodes (Herod’s Law) should be on the list of works that use laughter as a way of generating social consciousness.

Who are the readers you had in mind when you were creating México, and do you feel it has reached that audience? 

The book is dedicated to all “indignant citizens” and those are the people we had in mind when we wrote it: the millions of Mexicans who feel disenfranchised, disenchanted, underrepresented, exasperated by Mexico’s politics and the tribal politicians who run them. The book has sold well, but we feel that there are many more irked citizens out there than the thousands who have read our book.

The free textbooks that you spoof enjoy a much wider distribution than does this relatively costly commercial title. How will you make this one available to more people in Mexico?

As soon as we have a new government, we plan to camp out on the Zócalo (town square) and demand that our book replace the official textbooks. Or alternatively, demand a recount of all the books we’ve allegedly sold, just to make sure the number is absolutely right and publishing “fraud” hasn’t occurred. If all of that doesn’t work, a cheaper pocketbook edition may be our last recourse.

I understand the book was something of a collaboration involving students from your Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (The Autonomous Technical Institute of Mexico or ITAM) and Universidad de las Américas. How did you assemble your "team"?  What was your and their participation?

Jorge and I contacted some of our top students who we thought might be interested in the project, and then assembled a small team of smart, creative people. The criteria for inclusion were an irreverent sense of humor and a willingness to take risks. Probably the best parts of putting the book together were those weekly brainstorming meetings, in which we couldn’t stop laughing at our own stupid jokes. Our students suggested images, dreamed up some of the charts, and found a lot of the photographs, while Jorge and I wrote most of the text. The provocative tone of the book reflects the humor of young Mexicans who can make fun of their country’s ills but love it anyway. The book is rebellious but also beautiful, and we owe that to the incredible graphic designer Alejandro Magallanes and his team, who understood the visual message we wanted to convey and made it happen.

Finally, you both have deep ties to, and a great deal of experience with, cultures outside of Mexico. How would you compare your country's relationship with political humor and social satire to what you've observed in other places, particularly the United States?  What makes your book relevant to Mexicans and other Latinos who are living in this country?

Mexico needs someone like Jon Stewart and many others willing to use humor as an instrument of social change. Mexico has always taken itself too seriously; its citizens tend to have a reverential respect for power. They don’t understand that in functional democracies, institutions exist to represent them. Mark Twain once wrote “nothing remains standing against the assault of humor.” Mexico should use laughter more frequently to expose uncomfortable truths that perhaps couldn’t be addressed in another way.

Our book asks readers to view what it is to be Mexican more honestly, by turning the “official story” on its head and examining what’s behind it: racism, corruption, impunity, a failed political class, and an impassive citizenry. We hope that it will make Mexicans—on both side of the border—laugh at their country instead of just complaining about it. We both firmly believe that laughter can be a subversive force, capable of producing a healthy form of indignation that acts as an antidote against passivity, against apathy, against the historic genuflection of Mexicans toward the powerful. That’s why the book, after all of the irreverent jokes and images, ends with the following words: “No, it shouldn’t be the end of the story.… Vote. Denounce. Educate yourself. Participate. Don’t just be a survivor. Participate.”