Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
A dense cloud of bitterness and the premonition of failure floats over Mexico’s official political landscape, headed by the President of the Republic. “I can’t take it anymore”, said Lopez Obrador recently, his face furrowed by his government’s failure and the debacle of the transformation he offered.
When asked about Mexico’s position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he did not talk about it but launched an angry and bitter diatribe on the alleged interference of the United States against his government and again talked about the fact that Mexico is not a “protectorate”. What do the 21 million Mexicans living in the United States think: that they live in a protectorate or in a country that protects them from their own misgovernment?
The President has always been bitter. He is the bearer of old wounds and governs the country without an ounce of joy. It is with scorn or contempt when he laughs but never with festive joy. He never thinks of uniting the country but of keeping it divided.
When he complains to the United States about support to the opposition, it is useless to remind him that 90% of the budget of the neighboring country’s government, via the organization called USAID, is spent supporting its projects, especially the spoiled Armed Forces. Very little of that money goes to civil society organizations. For the President, this little problem is a significant problem. Given that his government believes neither in independent civil society nor in Civil Society Organizations and actively promotes their disappearance, it is no surprise that the trusts that supported the autonomous activities of these social organizations are disappearing.
This dense cloud of bitterness emanates from the Presidential Palace and seeps into every pore of the political organization that gives life to the current government. So much so that the movement’s attitudes are so fatal that they promote internal confrontation on what their political positions should be. The feeling that the end of their reign is looming is hovering over their heads and disturbing their minds. The anticipated presidential succession has come to poison and weaken the political body that no longer finds how to support the government effectively.
From the President down to the last Morena cadre, they are engaged in an incessant battle to find the exact definition of their route and the map to follow, in the absence of clear definitions, except that they follow the vague leadership of a single man. They cannot square the circle. It is the same battle that has crossed and divided the Latin American left throughout its existence. I am referring to the bitter and hateful struggle between factions to decide who were the revolutionaries and who were the social democrats or reformists. Who are the good guys and the bad guys. The faithful and the traitors. That is why they kill each other. There is no possible conciliation between such extreme positions. The Sandinista decomposition is an obvious example of this.
This internal war of accusations between its two wings ended up deforming the left. It rendered it incapable of governing within the institutional guidelines of a functional democracy. The revolutionaries wanted all the power forever. They could not conceive of losing it in the next election because they considered themselves the chosen ones of the people, those who are never wrong. They preferred to annul the elections. Revolutionaries justify transforming themselves into “leftist” autocrats to rule with an iron fist “in the people’s name”. They are self-appointed messianic who rule as dictators.
Social democrat-reformists accept to govern within the republican and plural institutional order. But when they come to power, they are practically condemned to lose the elections because they are caught in the democratic contests between two powerful opposing forces: on the one hand, the opposition of authoritarian, liberal, and centrist rightists, and, on the other hand, with the resistance of autocratic “revolutionaries”.
It turns out that this process is taking place within López Obrador’s government and cabinet, albeit with new terminology that hides their dense and violent dispute. Within the political bloc called Morena, they accuse each other of being neoliberals while the others are radicals. The neoliberals would be the reformists or social democrats, and the radicals consider themselves the modern revolutionaries.
The internal war in that party is violent because when they want to define common political positions, they discover that there are no common visions on what to do. They are labels that, from opposite ideological positions, are fighting for power. They dispute the crumbs that their movement will leave after the inevitable decline of the leader. The President, Bonapartist or Caesarist in his conduct, wants to stay above and outside the fight to the death within his party, without getting stained. But he is a mute witness of the decomposition of the electoral bloc he formed and whose only programmatic purpose was the seizure of power by López Obrador. The man was the program.
The radicals want to nationalize the economy, regulate private initiative to extinction, control the electoral body with unconditional supporters, get closer to Russia and China attracted by their iron fist regimes, and confront the United States and Spain in all areas, considering them as original symbols and the crystallization of national misfortune.
The “neoliberal” camp believes that the USMCA regional bloc is the appropriate insertion model in the global economy, being the exit route for Mexico to return to the path of economic growth and, therefore, to the generation of jobs and more incredible jobs satisfaction for the population. Consequently, it means respecting private initiative and the rule of law. It also means being part of the liberal and republican world, with solid democratic institutions. It means being part of the West.
The two conceptions coexist so far within Morena. The President has expressed his empathy and inclination for the breakaway model with the United States and Spain, favoring Russia and China, and is notoriously anti-business. But as a ruler, he does not dare to break with the USMCA and the North America Bloc because he does not have a proposal for an alternative model. Mexico’s geographic location is a determining factor in defining its possible options as a society. If you do not believe it, ask any Ukrainian.
Morena has entered the crisis of its decline, as well as its President and leader. Hence the outburst “I can’t take it anymore”. And he is right. The failure of his government is already undeniable. No matter how many Mañaneras he makes, reality begins to bury the presidential efforts to evade it. Today, he is the only one escaping from himself and the facts shaping and defining his administration. The face of failure is looming, fierce and unbearable.
It is increasingly evident that Morena is a movement and government of a single six-year term. After 2024, if it does not dissolve, it will explode into pieces, spitting hatred and recriminations among its thousand different and unconnected members. That vast mantle of bitterness will ultimately be the legacy López Obrador will leave Mexico.
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