When Mexican filmmaker Luis Estrada first showed his Law of Herod, a daring film which explores corruption and violence inside Mexico's ruling party, a number of things started to go wrong. The placards outside the film theatres gave the wrong hour for the screening, the sound was distorted and the reels were even shown back to front.
The ruling party sent a message to Estrada, asking him to delay the release of the film, scheduled for February, until after last week's elections. When Estrada refused, the Mexican Film Institute (IMCINE) declared its co-funding of the project to be an outstanding debt, causing the city film authorities to resign en masse.
The attempted censorship of the film turned it into a mass event, as one million Mexicans turned up to see it in the past six months. The central message in the film, repeated like a mantra, is "o te chingas o te chingas", in polite terms, "step on others or be stepped on yourself".
Under the existing one-party state the future of each Mexican depends on his or her ability to scale the ladder of deceit, where ideas and loyalty count for little.
It would have been unthinkable to make a film like that even six years ago, a sign of how far Mexican society has come of age. Such liberties have not been dispensed by a benevolent state but have been wrested from power through an extended period of struggle.
"I'm not the kind of guy who sits behind a desk all day, I like to be where Mexicans are working, to support them in their hour of need. I like to visit prisons, get into police cars, turn up at farms and factories, I like to be near the people," said Vicente Fox, after winning last Sunday's presidential elections.
Mexicans are still coming to terms with an event which looked like it could never happen; the defeat of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ran the country for the past seven decades. On the morning after the shock result, people glanced at each other in the street, smiled complicitly and quietly celebrated the end of their own version of the Berlin Wall.
The writing was on that wall a long time ago, but the speed and effortlessness of the final day took everyone by surprise. After all the years of repression and fraud, a simple ballot marked with an X threw the regime out of power. In the run-up to the election a unanimity of taxi-drivers, students, shopkeepers and neighbours all announced they were voting for Fox, but it seemed to pale beside the strength of the ruling party's electoral machine. In addition, it never looked like the centre-right National Action Party, (PAN) had much appetite for power, and the previous candidate in 1994 gave up long before polling day.
"We all wanted a change," said Jesusa Rodriguez, a leading actress, "but it wasn't supposed to come from the right," outlining a curious contradiction - most Mexicans voted against their economic interests.
Before the PRI took power in 1929, Mexico endured dictatorship, chaos and a civil war (1910-1917) in which 10 per cent of the population lost their lives, the equivalent of 10 million deaths today.
In the intervening years the ruling party has combined populism with repression, appealing to a receding revolutionary consciousness, a shallow bluff which was called at the polls last week.
The PRI developed symbiotic links between itself and all sectors of society, as intellectuals, workers, farmers, indigenous and church, all co-opted into the "permanent revolution". The high point of the Revolution came in 1938, when Mexicans participated in a national crusade to reclaim ownership of their oil industry, donating wedding rings and even furniture to the cause.
Party loyalists were free to dissent from inside party ranks but as Cuban leader Fidel Castro, describing the rules of engagement in his state, once put it: "Within the revolution, everything, outside the revolution, nothing."
The first serious cracks in the system appeared in 1968, when students took to the streets, inspired by events in Paris and Eastern Europe, soon followed by workers and other disgruntled sectors of society. The mass candlelight marches were a collective outpouring of frustration and anger, quickly overwhelming the state security forces and the loyal press, as momentum built toward the showcase Olympic Games hosted by Mexico that October.
On the eve of the Olympics, a huge demonstration was trapped by security forces inside Tlatelolco square and troops opened fire indiscriminately, killing hundreds of people. The PRI, with total control over the national media, erased the massacre from the pages of history - but not from the popular imagination.
Octavio Paz, Mexico's poet laureate, dedicated a considerable amount of time to unravelling the Mexican psyche, holding up a mirror to a society ruled by self-deception and fear. Paz described the Mexican condition as akin to "someone dragging the rags of a past which is still alive", unsure of how to proceed.
President-elect Vicente Fox, known as "the Caudillo (Latin American strongman) in the cowboy boots", tapped in to that psyche, using Coca-Cola's global image-makers to construct a modern, sympathetic candidate. First appearances are deceptive, as Fox doesn't look like any Mexican I've ever seen. He stands six foot six, has enormous hands, wears loud ties and exaggerated belts inscribed with his initials. But as soon as Fox opens his mouth he makes a direct connection to the Mexican psyche, battered by decades of neglect and self-deception. "I'm going to govern for the jodidos [vulgar term for the downtrodden]," said Fox, "it's time to run this shower out of power."
Fox also represents values that Mexicans appreciate, a self-made man who worked his way up through the Coca-Cola company from delivery boy to chief executive, by hard work rather than state patronage. He has political experience, as a deputy and state governor, and eschews formalities, at ease with Mexico's poor.
The long road to change continued in 1985 when a powerful earthquake not only tore apart the capital city from its roots, but laid bare the myth of the PRI's revolutionary commitment: foreign aid was diverted into private coffers and citizens displaced security forces during the rescue operation, despite some noble exceptions.
Mexicans began to form housing associations and independent unions, coalescing around centre-left PRI dissident Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, son of the legendary president who nationalised Mexico's oil. To Weekend3
Cardenas ran for president in 1988, running a low-key campaign which gathered steam until it became an unstoppable whirlwind. The first election results gave Cardenas the lead, but the vote-counting computer system mysteriously crashed, rising once more when the results had been altered to ensure the PRI victory.
Octavio Paz claimed that Mexicans put on a mask to be themselves, enjoying release through the celebration of death, excess alcohol and religious fervour. After the tragic events of 1968, a generation of activists took to the hills, while others fumed silently within the system, the only possible outlet for self-advancement.
One group of radical seekers went to Chiapas state, half a dozen orthodox Marxists who immersed themselves in "profound Mexico", the hermetic, indigenous Mexico of silent peasants living in conditions of virtual slave labour, zero civil rights and infant mortality rates to rival Ethiopia.
Ten years later the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) launched an indigenous uprising, with the same impact as the previous earthquake, mobilising civil society behind the rebel demands, principally land and freedom.
"You can question the methods but not the causes," said Subcomandante Marcos, military strategist and author of hundreds of communiques, explaining the roots of the uprising. The rebels wore ski-masks and refused to reveal their identity; "Behind us," said one indigenous commander, "is you."
Vicente Fox's party has been hostile to the Zapatista movement, but the candidate promised to solve the Chiapas conflict "in 15 minutes", planning to sit down with Marcos and other rebel leaders, demilitarise the region and implement the San Andres Peace Accord, signed in 1996, which would grant limited autonomy within the state.
The seeds of change in Mexico were planted by the 1968 students, pushed forward by popular organisations after the 1985 earthquake, thwarted by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas's failed 1988 election bid, then advanced by the 1994 Zapatista uprising.
Vicente Fox was the candidate who best knew how to harvest those seeds but it remains to be seen whether the upcoming handover of power will bring real change or merely promote the interests of Fox's friends, the business class which bankrolled his election campaign.