Well-developed institutions, regardless of purpose or profession, generate formal and informal patterns for selecting and promoting future leaders. In Mexico, informal qualities such as kinship ties or personal friendships often exercise greater influence in both the choice and progress of future public leaders. Formally, education plays a significant role, not just in terms of level and quality of education but where it occurs. A politician's education, therefore, brings that individual in contact with present and future public figures. 1 Among Mexican entrepreneurial elites, family is overwhelmingly the determining variable in arriving at the post of chief executive officer of a major corporation. 2 In the Mexican military, which shares more similarities with the Church, given its in-house training structures, than do the private and public sectors, educational experiences establish lifelong linkages among officers, and certain levels have become a sine qua non for achieving the rank of general. 3
The clergy, while sharing some similarities with each of these groups, differs substantially, generating credentialing processes peculiar to its structure and mission. It is much easier to identify and measure formal credentials among a leadership group. It is more difficult to determine what informal criteria enter into an individual career trajectory, both in its pace and the level reached. Education informally and formally exercises a crucial influence on the careers of bishops and archbishops.
Although we are examining bishops from the 1960s through the 1990s, the oldest generation of priests who provided most of the leadership through the 1960s reveals changing professionalization patterns occurring within the Church after the 1910 Revolution. Among those bishops born prior to 1990 who served after 1960,