Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Any analysis of López Obrador’s book “Grandeza” (Greatness) must start from its essentially political and ideological nature, rather than as an academic historical review. It is a text written based on assumptions about the past to explain and defend his vision of the present. Many historians, including archaeologists who are experts in this period of Mexican history, will examine López Obrador’s statements, assumptions, and opinions in much greater detail. Preliminary statements have already been heard disqualifying his speculations about the practices of Mesoamerican cultures regarding human sacrifice.
It is precisely in the case of human sacrifice that López Obrador’s Judeo-Christian prejudices and criteria are imposed over the realities of cultures that think differently. Nor does he believe that the elites could have eaten human flesh, when it could have been a perfectly legitimate practice as a way of transmuting experiences from one culture to another. Several cultures have done the same. But to understand that, one must separate the analyst’s Judeo-Christian values to empathize with other ways of seeing and understanding life, ethics, and values.
López Obrador’s book is a gem for studying how a man imbued with Judeo-Christian values seeks to twist the human experience to fit his very particular vision of the universe and the humanity that inhabits it. And to his apparent political-ideological needs. Curiously, it is reminiscent of Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto. Marx and Engels accused religion of being the opium of the masses because it numbs their ability to understand reality, and yet they proceed to declare the “inevitability of socialism.” In other words, they claim to have discovered, through logic and scientific deduction, a religious truth: that there is an earthly paradise for humanity (in this case, called socialism). There is no religion that does not offer, as a reward, a paradise at the end of the road of life. These two agnostics and “religious anti-establishmentarians” ended up creating their own religion, with paradise included.
López Obrador’s review of pre-Hispanic peoples is indicative of his belief that he has discovered societies of moral and ethical purity (sic), almost without sin. His “discovery” sounds like a mimicry of the paradise of Eden before the witch Eve bit the apple. López Obrador thinks like an Old Testament theologian rather than a historian or archaeologist from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). Hence, his search for past truths is not naive but rather oriented toward addressing a modern, more urgent agenda. He wants to defend his political project and perceives that the evaluation of his paradise is being questioned.
The central axis of López Obrador’s ideological and political project is the assumption that, in today’s Mexico, there exist a good, wise, and honest people. Let us remember that these are his words. And that these good and wise people were subjected to degradation and humiliation by neoliberal historical actors as perverse as the cruel and heartless Spaniards who dared to massacre the indigenous people in pursuit of one thing: gold.
Neoliberalism, according to the supposed Morenista ethos, is equivalent to the heartless Spaniards during the conquest, because the only thing that interests neoliberals is money—gold for some, money for others. The parallel with the Bible and Judeo-Christian culture continues to appear and spring forth from every pore of Obrador’s narrative about the undefeated good people.
In John Milton’s poem Paradise Lost, written around 1667, the themes of the Fall of humanity and its relationship to gold are central to understanding the Christian struggle between good and evil. The Fall of humanity (Adam and Eve) is the result of moral failure, while gold is seen as a symbol of idolatry, ambition, and satanic perversion. The rebellious angels even built a city in hell called Pandemonium while digging for gold.
These are the true original sources of López Obrador’s thinking. And he desperately believes he has discovered a people that existed before the Fall of Humanity. Foolish man! Fantasies about the past cloud his vision of the true character of human beings, before and after the arrival of the Spaniards in Mexican lands. Envy, pride, greed, and hatred have always coexisted in all cultures, along with empathy, tenderness, generosity, and ethical honesty. There have always been wicked and dishonest people alongside fair-minded and collaborative beings. To think that there was a paradise and then the Fall came is a fantasy that speaks to how far removed the proponent is from reality. Or, in this case, how far removed López Obrador is from reality.
And so it must be, because he wants to use the book to demonstrate and prove the historical correctness of the 4T. He wants to justify his foundational proposal that there is a “good and wise people” who deserve to be saved (by him). Furthermore, that the struggle between good and Evil exists and must be fought with all available weapons to destroy Evil. Gold (money) is evil and will be confronted with the ethics of a supportive government. Violence leads nowhere, and therefore, the justice and necessity of “hugs, not bullets” is evident to all. In essence, López Obrador and the 4T propose to return Mexico to its pre-Fall stage.
Obviously, blindness works for López Obrador. He established a regime based on corruption, the fanaticization of the good against the bad, the legitimization of criminal violence, the polarization of society, and the worship of gold. His family is a mirror of all these attributes. It is reasonable to think that his book “Grandeza” is an ode to an ideal world that never existed. Still, it is the fantasy of the former president, surrounded by a peacock, that builds such delirium.
But there is also the reality of López Obrador, who threatens to return to the streets of Mexico to impose his will, as López de Santa Anna did. He threatens war, destruction, and chaos. It is the complete contradiction of the author who supposedly seeks a return to “Man before the Fall.” Behind the contradictions and blatant lies in López Obrador’s book lie two pretensions. One is clearly not to relinquish presidential power, which he considers temporarily lent to Sheinbaum. The second is to construct an explanation as colorful as it is Byzantine, but which purports to be coherent, to justify his next moves, the effects of which will be felt in national politics, probably for the worse.
@rpascoep
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