Ethnic Entrepreneurs, Crony Capitalism, and the Making of the Franco-Mexican Elite

While most people are aware that Mexico was ruled by the same political party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional and its previous iterations, from 1929 to 2000, few may connect this institutionalized dictatorship to a more complicated history of economic and political cronyism. José Galindo's recent book, Ethnic Entrepreneurs, Crony Capitalism, and the Making of the Franco-Mexican Elite, explains precisely that history, using as a case study a group of French immigrants and, within this group, the Jean family, most famously connected to the Banamex banks and the Televisa media network. Galindo expands on previous efforts to look at corruption by combining political, economic, and cultural analyses with the use of UCINET software, which allows him to map the players of political and economic networks and to calculate their relative influence within each organization. Galindo's key argument is that Mexico's success in achieving greater economic and political stability during the...