Luis Rubio
The “liar’s paradox” is one of the most amusing logic puzzles: If the liar is indeed lying, then the liar is telling the truth, which means the liar just lied. In today’s Mexico, lies become truths, corruption is purified, and impunity flourishes, confusing both those who narrate daily life as well as those who live it: endless contradictions.
The daily presidential rhetoric, with all the falsehoods that pass through there, is nothing more than a permanent construction of myths, with a strong component of hate oriented to creating prejudices and loyalties. That covers the immediate issues, but in the world of the concrete, myths are pernicious creatures that obscure more than what they illuminate. Denying the existence of factors of reality –such as insecurity, extortion, few economic opportunities, and poverty- acquires mythical dimensions. Except that this clashes with what Mexicans observe and live in their daily life, and, more importantly, neither squares with what then-candidate López Obrador denounced as the great evils that afflicted the country. The contradictions cannot but become more acute during the coming succession period.
The great paradox that has been showing up in these years is that the president has been able to destroy innumerable institutional structures that hindered the concentration of power in his person, but he has had much less impact on the economy or in the factors on which he built his presidential bid, and that is an inherent component of his narrative, such as poverty, corruption, and inequality. However, the post-pandemic economic performance has been much better than expected by the government, the leading banks, and national and foreign analysts.
There may be no better evidence of the contradictions that characterize the country than the exchange rate: the peso has not only strengthened, but it keeps less and less relationship with what happens in the economy at large and, certainly, with the deteriorating politico-institutional sphere. Violence affects exports such as those of avocados, corruption remains embedded at customs, extortion alters the lives of both the population and of companies, public finances are weaker than it appears (now aggravated by the insatiable appetite for public funds by PEMEX), and the President keeps attacking the Supreme Court of Justice. And yet, none of this seems to impact the peso. The obvious conclusion is that the factors that affect the exchange rate have changed. JP Morgan has just published a study that argues precisely this: that factors such as exports, remittances, and commercial exchanges that Mexico keeps with the outside have become structural and, therefore, less susceptible to the ups and downs that characterized the past.
An alert and sensible government would conclude from this fact that what is required is to strengthen the factors that contribute to multiplying investment and stabilizing the economy to tackle phenomena such as poverty and corruption. However, what the government has produced are obstacles to trade and investment, unnecessary conflicts in energy, and a total absence of mechanisms to attract and secure the new manna that is falling from the sky in the form of the so-called nearshoring, as if economic success were pernicious. Regrettably, the perception within the government is precisely this last one, as revealed by the new textbooks aimed at impoverishing the population because they do not contribute to the development of skills among children so that they can make it in life. Instead, they aim at saturating children with ideological prejudices. The same could be said of the institutions, starting with those dedicated to justice, where there has been a systematic attempt to degrade and subordinate them to the President.
Contradictions are everywhere and reveal both the government’s objectives and the economic and political reality of the country. The economy has proven to be more complex, mature, and resilient than the government supposed, less susceptible to the President’s attacks. Its structural connection via exports with the US economy has given it enormous dynamism, and thirty years of trade liberalization have translated into rising real incomes. In a word, the government benefits from the very actions and policies undertaken over the past three decades that it derides so much.
Contrarywise, the past five years have shown that the country faces a political challenge of enormous dimensions. The ease with which the President attacks and dismantles institutions proves that Mexican democracy is far too fragile and that the citizenry still has not managed to impose itself to exercise its rights. What remains to be determined is whether the political frailty will undermine the economic strength.
A few months ago, the authoritarian Polish government approved a law to purge the country of all Russian influence. The use of Stalinist methods to eliminate Russian influence does not cease to be ironic. Not much different from what is happening in Mexico today.
@lrubiof
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