Antonio Navalón
Since the 12th of October 1492, when Christopher Columbus heard the word “Tierra” and began to see the outlines of the island of Guanahaní – baptized by him as the island of San Salvador – Spanish-speaking America has had very few opportunities to be free and prosperous. First, it was the empire; it did not act as the English empire did in its colonizing period. Despite all their faults, their colonialism, and all the abuses they committed, the English soon understood that either they would create and develop institutions or they would end up with a dictatorship. It is often said that English democracy has the identical resilience as the English countryside. That is to say, English democracy is the product of centuries in which, regardless of whether it rained or was warmed by the sun, it remained immutable, even to this day.
When there was conflict, King Charles I of England and Scotland wanted to demonstrate that the divine mandate that means being born King could win against the popular will. And there was a politician, a landowner, an ordinary and believing man named Oliver Cromwell who not only defeated the King’s armies, but thanks to the fact that he cut the throat of King Charles I – whose magnificent portrait can be seen in the National Gallery in London – he saved the monarchy. However, it was another thing that Cromwell – who was not touched by the finger of God – made mistakes with his own name, to begin with. Someone who calls himself “Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland,” says everything about how he understood life and how he intended to rule.
Then came the Spanish empire and with it figures such as Christopher Columbus, Charles V, and Philip II. I still find it incredible the short period in which the Spanish empire – so defective and wrong in its lack of institution building, although, indeed, one cannot build what one does not possess – made a gigantic architectural and all kinds of works in the Americas where the sun did not set. And all to maintain his empire.
However, time passed, and the Spaniards fell. They were consumed by their internal contradictions and, above all, by the absence of organizations that would give structure and meaning to their power. Who replaced them? The Americans. On February 15, 1898, the day on which the American ship “USS Maine” exploded in the bay of Havana, on that day, the possibility of a free non-English speaking America also exploded. Since the time of Thomas Jefferson, Americans knew and understood that the key to their country’s success lay in being a vast and gigantic nation. That is why they bought everything, invaded everything – as happened in the 1848 U.S. intervention in Mexico in which they stole more than half of our territory – and built the rest with bayonets and dollars.
Today America is free. Since 1990, U.S. Marines have not been roaming Spanish-speaking America imposing regimes. The last two military confrontations won by the U.S. empire were the 1983 invasion of Grenada and the takeover of Panama between 1989 and 1990. Although they also did it in 1994 and 2004 in Haiti, but with the help of France and the United Kingdom. The rest is shame and scorn, U.S. military defeat after U.S. military defeat. Just in case there was any doubt about how free America, the non-English speaking America, could be, came September 11, 2001. After the attack on the Twin Towers, our neighbors to the North did everything they could to avoid experiencing a September 12th in which they found themselves fighting with all their might and against all their enemies. It was at that moment that they abandoned America. Without that situation and set of factors, Hugo Chávez would never have finished his government, and there would never have been a consolidation such as the one that took place with the ALBA countries, with the leftist alliances, or there would never have been a scenario such as the one we are facing today.
In the mind of Andrés Manuel López Obrador – constitutional President of Mexico and the ruler with the most significant popular legitimacy since the country declared its independence – Chile and Salvador Allende have always occupied an exceptional place. And they occupy it doubly, on the one hand, because of what Allende’s self-absorption and utopia were and represented. And, on the other hand, because of the terrible fear that the Americans and the military would put an end to his regime and – I fear – also to his life.
It all began in Chile in 1973, and it is in Chile where it all ends in 2022. Today, in an America that is free but a failure, there is a figure that shines more than any other, and his name is Andrés Manuel López Obrador. A follower of Allende, a socialist, someone with communist roots, will be the most voted Chilean President in its history. Young, very young – only 35 years old – the newly elected president of Chile presents a program that genuinely raises the tragedy of free America.
Last week, on behalf of President López Obrador, Marcelo Ebrard gave the go-ahead to the new President of Chile, Luis Orlando-Lagos, during his visit to the Chilean capital. Boric is a man who was born when everything I mentioned previously had already happened. Boric only knows about the revenge he took in Santiago de Chile’s Plaza Italia, fighting against the Carabineros during the Chilean social outbreak. He does not know what it means to be afraid of the CIA or what it means to be invaded by the Marines. But above all, he knows – as we all know – the failure in the social distribution of the regimes that, with ideology, reason, and votes, never knew how to change the history of their countries.
America, the free one, has dreams. It has ideologies. It has affronts. It has hatred stored in its soul. It does not have favorable economic balances or economic and social successes to offer its people. The best offer of free America is historical revenge. Look at Cuba, Bolivia, or Venezuela, countries with all the riches of the world ruling – are failures that produce hunger and repression in their peoples. Mexico is another matter. Mexico has always been different. From the beginning, Mexico was not a consolidated kingdom against which it was necessary to fight to defeat it, as, for example, happened in Peru and the Inca empire. The Mexica empire was a sum of weaknesses around the strength of cruelty that imposed taxes on others and imposed a way of life in the form of a plume.
Today, free America has an undisputed leader in the President who governs Mexico. Today, free America is still dragging Argentina’s unredeemed debt but, above all, there is a big question that is still present in every corner of Latin America. This question is: why have the political regimes – which are not in power for the first time – failed time and again in the enormous pending subject of the Americas, which is social distribution? Why is it that the offer can be one of hatred and revenge but cannot be one of the development and construction of countries that finally consolidate themselves as what they can be, that is to say, as world powers? Undoubtedly, they could be, not only because of all the capacity they have in raw materials but also because of various historical and cultural elements.
Will the United States ever again become important and play a decisive and determining role in America? I don’t know. Is China a determining factor in America? Undoubtedly. What lies ahead? I don’t know either. I only hope that in this spring of freedom, we can honestly do something so that the poor in America will be fewer and fewer. And that the changes of regimes and politics will really serve to change and end the criminal social gap. Otherwise, it would have served no purpose to have been free.
