Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
There are important signs of resistance by the people to the failure of the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The government perceives this resistance and makes the President go on the offensive. The resort to governing with daily rhetoric, telling lies, false data, or talking about things that no one can prove, is rapidly coming to an end.
He wants to take over the country to impose his “national project” and exterminate those who oppose this pretension. He is convinced that only he knows where Mexico should go in the future. Only his vision, idea, and truth are valid for all Mexicans. The radicalization of his political project is the only way he envisions to achieve his objectives.
There are, it must also be said, pragmatic imperatives in his decision to take Mexico to the precipice of deciding for him or for democracy. His administration is crumbling by every possible index. There are more poor people in Mexico today than when he came to power. Millions have lost previously available medical services. Medicines are scarce for severe and chronic illnesses. The destruction of public patrimony has been historical by defunding autonomous bodies vital to sustaining a democratic republic. At the same time, he wants to reduce science and research to the task of validating the authoritarian practices of the regime. And the corruption of its own and strangers has grown before everyone’s eyes, close relatives included.
Additionally, the national and international consensus is that, under his government, organized crime has taken over large swaths of the national territory. Furthermore, the intervention of criminal groups in municipal, state, and, now, possibly, national elections in 2024 has become normalized. If so, Mexico is on its way to becoming a narco-state under the “guidance” and endorsement of López Obrador. That means that the Mexican Army will become, by being an instrument of a narco State, a military force wholly corrupted in its purpose and far from its constitutional raison d’être.
These powerful reasons move the President to make serious and detailed plans to stay in power, personally or through an intermediary. He does not accept the idea of a historical and judicial trial of his failed administration as President since, in his mythology, he considers himself greater than Hidalgo, Juárez, Madero, and Cárdenas together.
This character has a personality deformation that could destroy him and the rest of the republic if we let him. This explains his infatuation with characters like Putin, Maduro, and Ortega and regimes like the Cuban one. His fascination with unlimited power for unlimited time is the driving force behind his relentless quest to eternalize himself in power. And also, this extension of his mandate serves him pragmatically so that his mistakes, cruelties, and corruption will be buried under the rubble of time, like the ancient temples of the Yucatan, which he so eagerly seeks to destroy with the Mayan Train.
Obviously, the conclusion reached by the President is that his government will not withstand the slightest scrutiny at the end of his six-year term. He realizes that history will evaluate him with the utmost rigor. And he profoundly fears history’s judgment.
Why is the President’s offensive intensifying at this moment? Because he perceives a broad and growing resistance from society against his administration. There are many signs of social dissatisfaction with López Obrador’s pretensions precisely because he has opened countless fronts of conflict everywhere.
In both Guerrero and Michoacan, a state of unacknowledged but active civil war exists. The inhabitants of large areas of Guerrero are taking up arms to defend themselves, convinced that the President is no longer their ally in the fight against organized crime but that he has put the armed forces on the wrong side of history. Weapons flow as freely as lemons and avocados. What is remarkable is the extent of citizen organization in the self-defense of their communities and regions. Something similar happens in Oaxaca, Chiapas, Zacatecas, Sonora, and Chihuahua.
This whole phenomenon speaks of citizens arming themselves for protection and self-defense in the face of the ineptitude or negligence of the Army and the National Guard and the surrender of the local police. Local police forces that are overwhelmed, ineffective, or bought by criminals are the common characteristic in all of these places. And the list of similar places and situations is very long.
The fact that López Obrador preferred to pact with crime instead of confronting it now bears this cost. The citizens are rising, arming themselves, to protect their property and lives, and they know they have to do it because they do not have the support of the federal government headed by an entelechy called the 4T, which is more of the same. They feel betrayed by López Obrador, no matter how much money is thrown in their faces.
There is a citizen rebellion deep down in society that does not suit López Obrador because, deep down, it despises his government and his blind rhetoric. This “agrarian or more ruralist” rebellion is tied, in fact, with the uprising of the urban middle classes against López Obrador and his 4T. The marches called around the defense of the National Electoral Institute (INE) and the security of elections free of manipulation took place in more than 100 cities of the country and received the solidarity of thousands of Mexicans living outside the country.
Feminism is part of this great social argument to change the course set by the 4T, including subsets of society, such as health workers, bureaucrats, teachers, and even unionized electricity and oil workers. The Army itself is showing internal fractures due to the servility of the high command, whose interest seems to be more focused on doing business than stopping organized crime.
These processes, between rural and urban, with different origins and even knowing that they do not necessarily recognize each other, are nevertheless destined to converge in a powerful electoral current that will displace the 4T in 2024. The social breakdown of the 4T model as an offer to improve the country has been confirmed. To think that the next government will depend only on the electoral support of the beneficiaries of social programs is to hand over the State to the interests of the narco. The 4T continues to govern because it controls the Executive and partially the Legislative Branches as a result of past elections, but whose legitimacy is increasingly questioned and in doubt.
López Obrador’s crown jewel, in the form of Plan B to destroy the electoral body and take over the vote count, has stalled in the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation and seems to be in a position to be reversed, either by rejection or by exceeding the term limits for changes to the electoral law. In any case, the presidential fury is exceeding the limits of tolerance for society. He insults and offends whoever stands in front of him. He attacks the United States, Republicans, Democrats, and its government. He despises the Ibero-American Summit out of hatred, frustration, and disgust. He no longer wants international scrutiny of his actions, plans, and trickery. He is an increasingly cornered President who assumes that the solution to his situation is to seize power. And that is what he is preparing for.
The fevered imagination can envision many exit strategies, each one crazier than the other. But it all starts from a reality that the dislocated mind recognizes. In Mexico, society is organizing itself in an unequal, complex manner and according to different situations, still, with a remarkable coincidence: the movement that brought López Obrador to the Presidency failed and must be replaced by a force capable of building new communicating vessels, with new policies and a vision of national unity.
After the coming storm, the result will yield a new governing social pact among broad sectors of the country’s social diversity to make Mexico resume its course toward democratic and constitutional normality. Despite the pressure towards establishing an authoritarian regime, Mexico is resisting.
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