Federico Reyes Heroles
In memory of Alfredo Elías Ayub, who had true public service in his blood.
One day, while driving around Mexico City with Peter Eigen, the German lawyer who had the vision to found Transparency International and put the issue and its costs on the world’s agenda, Peter surprised me with a question. “What, this street is called Revolution? In Germany, that would be banned.” After the terrible experience of the rise of Nazism, supported by the legal structure of the Weimar Republic, the 1949 Constitution was categorical. All parties must defend the constitutional order. Human dignity and human rights are inviolable and inalienable. They call it the “eternity clause”; no parliamentary majority can restrict them. What would they say about the PPO? Anti-constitutional parties are banned, and existing parties are obliged to promote democracy. That day, I tried to explain to him that the Mexican Revolution, Madero’s revolution, had displaced a dictatorship and that this had led to a great confrontation with, perhaps, a million deaths. The focus was on social, agrarian, and labor rights, among others. He listened to me thoughtfully.
At another intersection, he read Insurgentes and asked for an explanation. The longest avenue in the capital celebrates those who took up arms. Peter looked at me ironically: “So here they celebrate those who destroy institutions.”
The word “revolution” is revered in Mexico. The origins are historical and cultural: Villa, Zapata, PNR, PRM, PRI, PRD. But this is not the case everywhere in the world. François Furet, a brilliant French historian, published a book in 1978, on the bicentennial of the French Revolution, that was as famous as it was heretical: Thinking the French Revolution. Furet exposed the civilizational damage of honoring revolutions. The great examples were already in sight: the Soviet, Chinese, Cuban, and so on. He was very clear: they do not lead to democracies. This myth of revolutions generates a false hope that societies can suddenly improve with an eruption, with a messiah. It encapsulates a false break from the boring linear time that every civilizing process demands. It is an illusion that procrastinates the real problems.
In Mexico, Don Edmundo O’Gorman, a brilliant historian with a devilish character, repeated ad nauseam: let’s leave the mythical Revolution behind and talk about the evolution of public affairs. An unprecedented celebration is on the way: the current administration will celebrate Morena’s triumph. National regeneration? The shadow of the redeeming caudillo looms. Better to follow O’Gorman. Economic growth, GDP, which they say here doesn’t matter, is a global touchstone, and it’s at rock bottom for the seventh year in a row. Formal employment, which can truly promote economic stability? Well, the same thing. And educational levels, the figures are there, are plummeting. No matter how much they dress them up, reality prevails.
In upper secondary education, it’s dramatic. Inegi reported that 476,000 Mexicans from Generation Z have left the labor market. “Young people building the future,” known as the Caguama program, named after the beer bottle that young people buy, is a perverse incentive. They don’t study; they destroy their future. Productivity declines. Energy: growing imports of gas, gasoline, and a few incentives for green energy.
The lack of planning and deception has monuments: the Mayan Train, Felipe Ángeles Airport, Mexicana de Aviación, the Transoceanic Train, the Mega-Pharmacy, and several more, all of which cost us. As expected, the effects of the minimum wage increase—which was possible, necessary, but limited—are coming to an end. The main objective, social mobility, is stagnant, according to studies by the Espinosa Yglesias Research Center.
Violence? Half the territory is in the hands of drug traffickers. Missing persons? 42 a day. Corruption? It seems to have reached its peak, all before the eyes of the world.
And they want to celebrate! Pure schizophrenia or cynicism.
Better evolution.
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