Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The phrase “Love is paid with love” is the invitation to do something unconfessable accompanied by a complicit silence. It is the admission that “the unconfessable” will remain between the two, creating a relationship of mutual complicity. And it is also a threat: if the silence is broken, the consequences will also be “unconfessable”.
This is how AMLO governed as head of the Mexico City Government and now, with his six years as President of the Republic. He has created a relationship of subordination with his companions in the government and with the social sectors, equivalent to a mafia patronage.
It is based on the exercise of “meta-constitutional” powers as President of the Republic. If, as a society, we have allowed this to practically all PRI Presidents of the Republic, it is reasonable to ask ourselves why we will not allow the same to López Obrador.
The two PAN Presidencies (Fox and Calderón) will be remembered, then, as unusual episodes of a temporary democratic-liberal irruption in the long national history of corporative and politically oppressive regimes. The complex mechanisms of co-optation and corruption that kept the majority of Mexicans in material poverty and intellectual destitution were temporarily fractured. Those two presidencies did not have the strength to change Mexico’s ancestral culture and gave way to regression.
The arrival of Peña Nieto to the Presidency should then be understood, in our context, as the sign that the process of regression to the previous and natural state of things in Mexico had begun. It was not, as many thought, another sign of the democratic alternation of the modern Mexican political system. It was quite the opposite: it represented the simulacrum of many, which they longed for, where autocracy reigned, and the people festinated in their character, not as citizens, but as serfs. That is why the concept of the ” Serfs of the Nation” is a formulation that clearly expresses the unconscious aspiration of some sectors willing to be subordinated to public power once again. The word ” serfs” and its social acceptance tell us about centuries of Mexican culture.
Image: on humanidades.com
“Love is paid with love”, goes the saying. In the context of a state of regression towards a political regime dominated by powers that impose themselves on the population, outside of democracy and where the law is the law, what does “love is paid with love” mean?
In the most rudimentary way possible, “love is paid with love” is a message to anyone who will listen. “If you give me your vote, I will give you direct economic resources and to your wife and each of your children. Oh, and I forgot: also to your parents…”! This scheme is of an overwhelming simplicity and cynicism. It presupposes that the consciences and values of Mexicans are for sale. It also presupposes the latter because people are so desperate about their economic situation that they will sell themselves for a sum of money that can be absolutely defrayed by the State.
The assumption is that human weakness, or vulnerability, puts even their dignity for sale. That is the assumption underlying the idea of “love is paid with love”. Needless to say, behind the various assumptions about human nature that underlie that comment is a ruthless view of the politician about his utter lack of empathy for people. His idea of people is not to help the nation progress toward higher goals of dignity. Not at all. His interest lies in keeping the people in that prostration because that way, they are more manipulable. This utopian idea of a “middle-class Mexico” causes them to laugh nervously: a Mexico without millions of poor people would be unacceptable.
With their partners or “equals,” the scheme of “love is paid with love” is different. It has just been invoked by former Justice Zaldívar when he demanded full support from President López Obrador in his confrontation with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation. He repeated the phrase in a press conference, so that everyone would hear the threat: “Love is paid with love, because the President will go against the Chief Justice if she decides, after an investigation, to remove all my privileges as a former Justice of the Court”. Here, Zaldívar defends his retirement benefits and his political future to the hilt. His honor does not matter to him; his standard of living does.
AMLO responded to his former operator of corruption in the Mexican justice system with a thundering act of support in defense of the collaborator, recognizing all his services rendered to…the interests of the President, although not of Justice. The famous “14th floor” of the Federal Judiciary Council building had become the symbol of corruption, cronyism, and the actions of the mafia in power. On that floor, they acted according to the principles of any mafia boss: cooperate, or else it’s your neck.
The system of complicities was so overwhelming that even the ruling party’s presidential candidate came out to defend it. If there is a rule that goes through the heart of the mafia’s commitments, it is this: if one falls, they all fall. For this reason, support is instantaneous. The President understands that by defending Zaldívar, he is defending his other corrupt acts, starting with those of his children. If someone as important as Zaldívar, whose secrets could destroy AMLO’s system as a whole, were to defend himself by becoming a whistleblower in the system of pressure that favors the President, it would be the end of his “movement”.
That is how important the slogan “love is paid with love” is. It is the pinnacle of a fragile and mafia-like system that AMLO has created to sustain himself in power with meta-constitutional powers. Without that ironclad complicity, his power would be gone. That is how strong he is. But, also, that is how fragile it is. That is why the President threatens: “If Zaldívar falls, the Chief Justice will fall.”
The President threatens the Chief Justice, but deep down, like any good mafioso, he also offers an olive branch of peace: don’t touch mine, and I won’t touch you. AMLO operates with the mentality of a mafia boss: “you to your drug routes and I to mine”.
With that mob boss mentality, he has ruled Mexico for six long and destructive years. The advance of the drug cartels does not worry him. He negotiates with them as the head of another mafia. They understand each other. They have common values. They negotiate with the same coldness as those who know how to kill. And they will do it, if necessary, all so as not to lose power and money.
This is how terrible their apparently innocent motto reads: “Love is paid with love”.
Meanwhile, the country is a prisoner in the war of exchange of favors between mafias.
[email protected]
@rpascoep
Further Reading: