Excepciones y privilegios

In a recent publication, Professor Aboites and I pointed out that, unlike in the 1800s, the twentieth century had “forgotten” the utilization of the fiscal past — fiscal history — for decision making in relation to financial behavior of the Mexican government. This “forgetfulness” not only had implications with respect to the management of Mexican fiscal variables but also implied a transition that went from studies by bureaucrats and politicians to those of historians. This transition took part during most of the twentieth century; in fact, through the 1980s we can see how, apart from brief essays in Revista de Hacienda in the late 1930s and early 1940s, little has been done concerning fiscal history, other than testimonies or, in the best of cases, short-or medium-term analyses by economists. By the end of the century, the scarcity of fiscal history responds to the almost nonexistent archives (or their total disarray), forcing researchers to use press accounts, testimonials, or foreign sources.Aboites’s book is one of the first truly successful achievements on twentieth-century fiscal history. Essentially, the book is a long essay about the formation of the Mexican public treasury in the decades between the revolution and the early 1970s. This endpoint corresponds with the definitive elimination of the alcabala: a long-standing tax established in the late sixteenth century. By no means trivial, this last event determines the end of a very long cycle, starting with the fragmentation of the late colonial treasury, as has been pointed out by John TePaske. At the same time, another old and long cycle is ongoing: the continued dependence on external conditions for the attainment of fiscal resources.Aboites specifically marks off his study as spanning the years from 1922, when a policy was issued that set out the way states and towns were to participate in the federal tax on petroleum, to the 1949 congressional reform on the taxation of beer production. According to the author, the years between 1949 and 1980 (when the value-added tax was implemented) were relatively uneventful, except for the fact that public incomes in Mexico went through a process of “detributation”: that is, a reduction of the relative weight of taxes and a growth in income from public enterprises (such a PEMEX) and public debt.Aboites’s book concentrates on those taxes that created dissent between national, state-level, and municipal governments. It is mostly an account on how the Mexican federal government appropriated resources generated at the local level. It shows the culmination of nineteenth-century plight to attain fiscal unity within a strong federation that had the ability to extend its reach onto all individuals and into all regions. The increased fiscal weight of Mexico City is a part of this story; the other one has to do with Mexico’s reduced fiscal burden.Excepciones y privilegios is divided into three parts. The first section offers a general overview of federal efforts at treasury modernization in postrevolutionary years. The second, chronologically organized section is more specific about the characteristics of modernization. It shows that for the Mexican federal government, modernization meant federalization of public resources: that is, taxes and their accounts were to wind up in the Mexico City office of the federal treasury. It also sheds light on federal efforts to attain fiscal centralization and the opposition to it presented by local groups and authorities. Part 3 of the book is even more specific about certain problems pointed out in the first two sections. This is the main contribution of the book; Aboites analyzes agrarian exemptions, the relationship between the president and congress, the states’ position in light of the increasing centralization, and an account of events after 1952. Aboites then adds an epilogue covering 1950 – 70, which explores the final destiny of the Mexican alcabala.In his conclusions, the author delineates a set of very useful suggestions for further study. Aboites contends that the concentration of revenue in federal hands and low fiscal burden are the result of a long-term government decision to encourage progress and modernity. This was done through the concession of privileges and exceptions to a minority of entrepreneurs, proprietors, and a good part of the agrarian economy. Thus, the weight of taxes fell on certain sectors and social groups. It is suggested that post-revolutionary Mexican government attained modernization through the perpetuation of social heterogeneity.In relation to the first federal republic (1824 – 25), some years ago Marcello Carmagnani demonstrated that the state’s reach extended into only a very small part of the territory and with very few resources. In this sense, Aboites’s book suggests that Mexican fiscal history has come to a complete circle; nowadays, the federal government has a large part of the territory with practically all public resources. This was the solution to the old problem of regional differences. In that sense, Aboites’s conclusion is that, in spite of the disappointing results, Mexico’s very strong political center helped to mediate between the “many Mexicos.”

Colonialism · Economic history · Government (linguistics) · Political science · Treasury · History · Law · Mexican Socioeconomic and Environmental Dynamics · Philosophy · Public Policy and Governance