Antonio Navalón
The first day of September 1939 was the day on which World War II broke out. “Black September” was the name of one of the most fearsome terrorist groups led by the Palestinian organization Al-Fatah in the 1970s. Looking into the future, I wonder how September of this year 2021 will be analyzed and classified. A month that – in addition to marking the beginning of autumn, standing out for the shedding of leaves and for being the beginning of a new mood – this year coincided with the celebration of the Bicentennial of Independence, with the celebration of the entry of the Mexican army to the Zócalo to end the war against the Spaniards. I want to call this month Black September, among other things, because history will remind us that in this year – even though their first actions took place in August – the Taliban won again a war that they had lost twenty years ago after the greatest challenge and attack ever perpetuated against the United States of America.
I think the name Black September is ad hoc because, although there were many plans to withdraw the US military from Afghanistan, incredibly what no one did was anticipate the psychological impact that the return home of their troops would have – on both the soldiers and the population of the United States. A return that occurs twenty years after the first intervention is accompanied by the shadow of having lost thousands of soldiers in battle and the fact of having wasted trillions of dollars. And all so that – twenty years later – they would return to square one, leaving those who had allowed Osama bin Laden to emerge and develop to return to chopping off hands or hanging corpses in the streets of Afghanistan.
I call it black September because inevitably and being aware that memory plays tricks on us, it is easy to remember that in the past, there was a Democratic President who replaced Gerald Ford – after the lies of Richard Nixon – who surrounded himself with a great team of well-meaning young people full of love and sympathy for the world. That former President is still alive, ninety-seven years old, and his name is James Earl Carter. The thirty-ninth US president had a team that in theory would have been worthy of having been part of the John F. Kennedy administration, but – due to the nature of the world and their inexperience as a consequence of their youth – it was during the administration and management of this group of young people that Ayatollah Khomeini managed to carry out the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. An event that has had an irreversible impact from the time of its occurrence to the present day.
In the Americas, this September will be the return not of a Juan Velasco Alvarado to the leadership of Peru, nor that of a populist, but, much more than that, this month marked the arrival of a vindictive populist – with his feet nailed in the indigenous history of the country – and wanting to play at rediscovering modern formulas. Formulas that mix the Inca with the discovery that at the end of the day – given the prevailing situation of social injustice in the Americas – terrorist groups like Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) are living proof of the structural failure of countries like Peru.
Black September because the affliction of the ruined America is over, the one that has not succeeded in managing neither Argentina nor Venezuela nor Peru nor countries that are going through similar situations and in which the dawn seems to be more and more distant. An America in which a President decided to bring together a congregation of leaders, with the President of Cuba at the head, to celebrate their national holidays. The independence celebration was not a meeting of a losers’ club. It is a vindication – as if it were a poem by José Larralde – that serves as a reminder that the South also exists and that below, very below, one is closer to one’s roots.
Whether we like it or not, September will mark a milestone in the bilateral relationship between Mexico and the United States. With no ill will or great political insight, there has been a commitment to treat the United States as a country of losers. From my point of view, that is a very dangerous thing to do since the only thing that remains intact over the years is the capacity for destruction that the United States of America continues to have. We must not forget its more than eight hundred military installations distributed worldwide under a structure that could only be compared to the one established at the time by the Roman Empire. However, and despite being aware of it, in the delivery of the speech in the military parade on the occasion of Independence Day, the President of Mexico vindicated nationalism, his right to dream, and met with his people. And he did so by sending his former Secretary of the Interior and Biden’s new Ambassador, Ken Salazar, to the last row of the authorities’ representation.
Last Friday in Mexico, a meeting was held in which, beyond the official statements and what the respective Mexican and US authorities want to say, the only thing to trust is what it is that is escaping to the Mexican President. The meeting was attended by the Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security. The objective was to have a conversation to discuss security issues with the Mexican government. They sought ways to deal with a new security concept that – unlike previous ones – has a policy of “hugs not bullets” and with the supremacy, development, and civilian adaptation of organized crime winning elections.
Wherever it is, everything is difficult. We never thought we would live through what we are going through. But the truth is that the consequences of what happened last September and in the first days of this month will be with us for many years to come. Above all, because I repeat, beyond words are the facts. These are that – regardless of individual desires or preferences – in 2018, Mexico, Canada, and the United States signed a Treaty known as USMCA. The facts are that certain business freedoms are consolidated and guaranteed in this Treaty. The facts are also that the three governments were equally committed to creating the conditions necessary for free competition in all economic activities included. To my knowledge, at no time did Mexico introduce a safeguard clause explaining that it would participate in everything except energy. It never mentioned that it reserved the right to manage and regulate energy as it wished, regardless of what the other two members of the Treaty said.
The proposed changes and reforms to the electricity sector are another milestone of that black September that is coming to an end and of this October of uncertainty that is beginning. Not only because the changes and reforms are attacking the investments already made, but also because, seen in perspective, they are modifications to the Law that would only have worked in the past, in the era before markets were globalized. Before the energy unifications, the search for renewable energies, and the discovery of the climate crisis and its fight. If the reform is approved – which I have little doubt that it will be – it will mean the rupture of the USMCA, but, above all, it will be a definitive turning point. If approved, it will confirm that Mexico has decided to take a leap backward on energy issues – as it has also done on other issues. A leap that would make it return to and embrace the era in which Adolfo López Mateos was the country’s president.
It seems as if all the commercial, technological, and even social advances had never reached Mexico. We are at a point where the fight against corruption, impunity, and the holy sacrosanct right to sovereignty given to one person by thirty million votes -which is still a historical fact- allows him to rewrite history and deny reality. It is as if we were starting from scratch and as if what happened yesterday had never existed. We will see if history also qualifies the September that has just passed as a black month. It seems to me that now we have already broken a series of moorings that place us in the middle of an ocean under the perfect storm. I want to be wrong. I wish I am wrong.
