Luis Rubio
Jack-of-all-trades (Milusos in Spanish) is one of the most accurate and audacious, at the same time, characterizations of the Mexican who can do nothing other than work for a living. Héctor Suárez, an actor, popularized the term in his film of the same name, a drama and simultaneously a social critique: the enormous capacity of adaptation of the Mexican on coming up against the adversity that the socioeconomic structure produces. The term milusos reveals a very in-depth reality of the Mexicans: their search for solutions, their rejection of imposition, and, to achieve this, their extraordinary creativity.
In the early eighties, a European ambassador in Mexico told me she’d gone to see the pyramids of Teotihuacán. On the way, she observed a phenomenon that contradicted everything she’d learned from the preparatory materials with which her Foreign Ministry had provided her, these materials which had characterized the country as a socialist nation. She expected a conformist and timorous population. What she found, literally from the moment she advanced along Mexico City’s Insurgentes Avenue toward Indios Verdes, was the most enterprising population she’d ever seen: no corner was bereft of a vendor of sweets, magazines, cold drinks, and on entering the zone of the pyramids, it was replete with sellers of handicrafts and evocative playthings of the most diverse type.
The creativity of the Mexicans may be noted in all aspects of life, but above all in their hunger for getting ahead, for which they work longer hours than in many countries, many more than the average in the nations of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a testament not only to their willingness to work but also to Mexico’s poor socioeconomic organization, rendering as it does such low productivity levels. The differences in the nature and quality of the educational and health systems and more significant investment in the infrastructure of other OECD nations translate into much higher productivity levels.
Labour productivity growth in the OECD
GDP per hour worked, percentage rate at annual rate
Another way of phrasing this is that the Mexican possesses an enormous propensity for procuring innovative ways of creating, resolving problems, and setting up shop. Mexicans in the United States tend to create enterprises with great celerity because they discern opportunities and attempt to convert them into realities for their greater well-being. There, as well as in Mexico, the key lies in that no one has their life all tied up with a red bow for them in advance.
Mexicans work because there is no other way. Still, they nearly always work without ideal instruments or with tools that are very poorly prepared for success, especially the poor quality and inadequate education provided to them by the educational system. Despite that, their attitude and disposition do not falter because their skills and toolkits are lacking compared to those of other nationalities. They work and put forth their best effort to this in life, but, above all, they work to generate wealth, without which no government would have anything to distribute.
Conversely, when a government opts to give away money so that people don’t have to work, it impedes the creation of wealth and inhibits personal development. Of course, not all jobs are equally desirable, remunerative, or satisfactory, but all contribute to the development of people and, therefore, of families and countries. To eliminate the incentive to work implies destroying the essence of life itself and, consequently, that of the nation.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Argentina was one of the wealthiest nations in the world, comparable with the European ones or the United States of the epoch. The combination of natural resources, a fundamentally middle-class population, and a disposition to work led to the consecration of a prosperous nation. One hundred years later, the profile of Argentina is very different, with a much lower range of product per capita. One of the main reasons for this fall was the disincentive to work and to create wealth incorporated into the Peronist strategy of subsidizing workers and women, children, older adults, the unemployed, and persons who retired after only a few short work years. When people do not need to work because the government systematically subsidizes them, the country begins to break down.
It is within this context that the recent proposal by the Morena-party candidate looms so dangerous and pernicious concerning the function of the government in this matter: “It is not true, it is false, that if one does not work, then one cannot have a good living standard. That is the discourse of the past. Here, the government, the Mexican State, has to provide support.” One” thing is to “support” older adults who no longer entertain the possibility of contributing to the nation’s productive life, and another very different one is to subsidize everyone because work is not important. That would imply that not only is depending on the government a virtue but that, in addition, people do not have the right to develop themselves. Worse yet, work is not a form of progressing, realizing oneself, and contributing to personal, familial, and national development.
The reason the Morena presidential candidate thinks of work is obvious: as past President Porfirio Díaz said, “A dog” with a bone in its mouth neither bites nor barks.” But” beyond creating clienteles, Gertrude Himmelfarb had a most appropriate idea concerning the issue: “Work, if not sacred, is essential not only to their sustenance but to their self-respect.”
@lrubiof
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