Fantasies of the Naked King

Ricardo Pascoe Pierce

A fantastic bubble has enveloped President López Obrador in a time capsule where he does not quite know which century he lives in. Throughout his troubled presidency, he has shown signs that he lives in several centuries simultaneously, with an immaterial body that transports him from one historical moment to another, simulating a Bollywood movie (not Hollywood, mind you). The fantasy began when he decided to live in a Viceroyal Palace, leaving behind the republican house of Los Pinos.

The presidential rage against Spain and the effects of the arrival of its troops in Tenochtitlan take him back to the beginning of the 16th century. It is expressed with the ardor of those stripped yesterday of their traditions, government, and religion. The hatred of everything Spanish, it must be said, contains, in his case, a disturbing Freudian connotation: he is a descendant of those same Spaniards who, he claims, have just stripped him of his innermost being.

Does his hatred of “the conquistadors” justify the President’s attempt to turn that hatred into state ideology? The setting of wooden pyramids in the capital’s Zócalo, with soldiers dressed as Tenochtitlán warriors resisting the Spanish soldiers in a show of remarkable aesthetic and intellectual mediocrity, reflects the current state of mental confusion that pervades that viceregal place now called “Palacio Nacional” (National Palace). The onslaught against companies of Spanish origin is a sign of the times. He did not attend the Ibero-American Summit in the Dominican Republic because of his anger with the King of Spain for not responding to a letter he sent him, with a long litany of historical claims, just about events that took place since the 16th century.

Fast forward three centuries, and suddenly the President feels he is the confessor and interpreter of the Sentiments of the Nation as if he had written them. Father Miguel Hidalgo and Benito Juárez mingle in his inner self as a sordid orgy of interpretations and identifications where they remain as the subjects that paved the way for López Obrador’s future splendid work. His wisdom comes from them, and they drink from the same source of intuition. In essence, that 19th century is also López Obrador’s century, and he refers to it with the familiarity of one of its inhabitants.

The Spanish and the Americans served as a backdrop in the 19th century during the creation of the new national State. They confirmed for Hidalgo, Juarez, and his loyal friend Lopez that living in the shadow of an empire would be the inevitable conditioning factor of the new national identity. Since that century, the triplets apparently realized that living in the shadow of an empire could be a death sentence (Hidalgo) or a useful instrument, knowing how to manage it (Juarez). Lopez leaned, since the 19th century, towards the Hidalgo definition.

Having managed to get out of the capsule of the 19th century, he entered the 20th century, shoulder to shoulder with Madero. He fantasizes about Madero as his great friend, convinced they both face the same tragedy: a sold-out press, avaricious and anti-patriotic conservatives, and an old regime plotting against them but imbued with a personal mystique that is a design of God, of martyrology and sanctity.

Of course, when López Obrador compared himself to Jesus, that character of more than two thousand years ago, he went off the deep end, abusing baseball jargon. But his intention was to create a similarity between his supposed personal suffering with that of Jesus as a persecuted man who ended up hanging on a cross. Thus, López Obrador assumes his own holiness, vulnerability, and generosity to the diminished and the dispossessed, like Jesus. And since no one else noticed this obvious parallel between the two, he had to proclaim it publicly.

The 20th century presents López Obrador with another myth that, for him, is a challenge. That mythological challenge is Lázaro Cárdenas. His problem with Lázaro Cárdenas is that, as President, he did nationalize the oil industry. That fact changed the correlation of forces between the Mexican State, the internal political forces that were fighting him, and the relationship with the world powers before World War II: Great Britain and the United States, that neighboring empire. This nationalization work by Cardenas has had no parallel in the history of Mexico. The reorganization of the electricity industry under López Mateos does not have the epic meaning of the oil expropriation.

Desperate to compare himself with Cárdenas, López resorts to fallacies. Once again, he announced his “nationalization” by buying the combined cycle power generation plants from the Spanish company Iberdrola, which, according to the President, is his great enemy. The company sold him “junk”, some say. For the time being, at the cost of 6 billion dollars, Mexico did not add one more volt to its electric energy production. Some claim that this acquisition was the product of a feverish presidential mind, desperate to say three words: “It was a nationalization”, when it is known that it was not that. This is another example where President López Obrador feels obliged to name his epics because no one else would do it.

Another fallacy of López regarding Cárdenas is that he says he bowed to “the conservatives” of his time and appointed a successor who would not continue his transforming work. But Cárdenas prioritized pacifying the country, reconciling sides, and allowing the country’s diversity to express itself. The current López says he will appoint a radical “like him” to continue transforming Mexico, refuses to select a conservative, and confirms that he does not aspire to pacify the country. It is also the first time López acknowledges that he, and only he, will name his successor.

His transmutation into a time traveler also allows President López Obrador to speak of achievements of other times, hiding that his own are meager and bitter. This also explains why he constantly praises himself and loudly declares his magnificence and sanctity. He fears, deep down, that history will not do so.

And he knows well that he is not the one who will define the achievements and failures of his administration. Nor will it be “the people”. It will be history, that intangible and impersonal entity that judges without distinction of country, race, sex, or position. History judges coldly and harshly, like a stone. Tyrants have been judged by history. So have authoritarians and incompetents. That judgment of history chills his heart. He fears being judged for what he was: a make-believe naked king who lived in a palace for six years, hiding his failure as a ruler but being seen by all the people.

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