Federico Reyes Heroles
Why spend several hours a week on an opinion article? In recent years, the idea has been that criticism is to defend or denigrate, for or against. Once this label was applied, the primary function of criticism was lost for everyone.
I started with a weekly engagement in 1981. Manuel Becerra Acosta pushed me. At that time, my father was in political “exile”. He had distanced himself from López Portillo, who removed him from the Secretariat of the Interior. I did not know Becerra Acosta. He read something of mine and called me. He was the editor of Unomásuno. He was a tough man; he pressured me. I told him yes, but about international politics, which has always interested me. But also domestic politics, he demanded. I accepted. It had to be delivered physically every Friday afternoon. Next step, a tostada in Los Guajolotes. There, I met great friends who, fortunately, I still keep. The others -who have already left- I keep in another dimension. At that moment, I realized my commitment. I would write for the reader, giving arguments and information. To study the issues. Sometimes, I would agree with the government; sometimes, I would not. I have no militancy and, if I may say so, no ideology, a word that gives me hives.
Over the years, I have discovered the enormous work required before sitting at the keyboard. The challenge was to provide hard information, defensible before third parties, as they say in epistemology, about the wrongness or rightness of a route. Secretaries of State and presidents invited me to talk, and we argued, sometimes hard. If they convinced me with inside information, that was useless to me. In other cases, I convinced them. One had to arrive armed. From Salinas to Calderón, I maintained a frank dialogue with different degrees of reception. I never saw the following ones.
I realized that one was a sort of “aulic advisor”; that is, one worked for them out of the conviction that what was said or written could be helpful to public life. It is difficult to explain the long hours of study behind each article. I know that sometimes they were annoyed by my materials. In others, they were happy. But that was not on my horizon. One compares public policies in the world, analyzes results, and, thinking of our country, proposes to the reader the path that seems best. It is a grain of sand that sometimes provokes reflection. It happened to me that I was called at night to take up an argument. New information can emerge, and everything changes. The analyst can be wrong. But, in an attitude of good faith, outside Los Pinos, today the National Palace, there is a wealth, a first-class patrimony, well-informed, and they are a legacy. Of course, there are also phonies, but the reader, listener, or viewer does not take long to realize it. They qualify.
That is why I am extremely concerned that the polarization induced by six years has led to a simplistic friend-or-foe divide.
Simplification denies the intrinsic value of diversity and plurality. Public debate is enriched when more heads pay attention to an issue. That helps those in power to make better decisions, and… we all win. The denial of arguments and the “raffle” are a disgrace. Sheinbaum inherits six years of communicative mechanics of predominance. The so-called “mañaneras” are an excellent instrument to impose an agenda, but in the long run, they are a trap. The head of state exposes herself daily to a controlled scrutiny in which no plurality exists. She closes herself in her “echo chamber” and loses the possibility of reasoning. She goes out to defend, not to listen. This generates a feeling of impotence.
If all those hours spent in convincing of the absurd -the reform of the Judiciary- had been used to analyze the arguments of the “aulic advisors”, the Republic would be doing better. Every regime has enemies. But the obsession to control everything can provoke the most dramatic asphyxiation: only breathing what it exhales.
“By not listening, on the verge of a constitutional crisis”.
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