Federico Reyes Heroles
God save us from people of limited scope who do evil, even when it is inconvenient for them.
Jacinto Benavente
Clever, they call him, a very seasoned politician. I can’t entirely agree with him, but… what a skill. Something is already twisted when we accept the perverse as intelligent. Intelligence is much more than the ability to facilitate insidiousness. AMLO knows that, despite the thousands of hours spent by him and his ilk to deceive Mexicans, the end of his six-year term is a long list of failures. He knows that he and his cohorts need to remain in power because the number of outrages, thefts, abuses, and law violations committed during his six-year term constitute fantastic material to proceed legally against many. That is his true legacy. The negligence in the handling of the pandemic was criminal, the treatment of migrants, the disappearances, the human rights violations committed by the Armed Forces and the National Guard, and their links with organized crime that today are in the sights of the United States and other nations. He, who invokes the felines so much, should remember José Martí’s saying: politics is like riding a tiger; the problem is getting off it.
Last week, in a rage, the President and the ineffable director of Pemex committed an arbitrary act of such magnitude that they will carry a tombstone. As Luis Farías Mackey has splendidly explained, they are trapped in a perverse gibberish because of last Friday’s spectacle. In trying to deceive the public opinion about the death of Carlos Fernando Márquez Padilla, who was the husband of María Amparo Casar, they tried to tear down an official document that supported the death by accident. The document came from the then Attorney General’s Office of the capital city 20 years ago. As Luis Farias explains, a death certificate is an act of authority that cannot be modified without opening a process that allows the parties to air their positions. However, according to the new version, which they now want to impose without showing a single piece of evidence, the certificate was modified due to the pressures of the ” politically influential”; that is what the book says. In other words, the Chief of Government and his prosecutor, Bernardo Bátiz, modified official documents at their discretion and, therefore, incurred administrative and criminal liability by distorting the facts based on pressure. There was connivance. It is written.
Now, they are talking about a new report stating that it was suicide. Who modified the certificate, and why did they not notify those affected? Without explanation, Pemex unilaterally suspended the pension, which is imprescriptible. All this is to go over the prestige of a great analyst and fighter for human rights because let us remember that the right to information is part of them. As Farias says, there is a machination; without being authorities, they interfere in a matter that does not concern them. By publishing the file, violating basic principles of privacy, and exposing personal data, which would make them liable to other types of sanctions, they nullify any possibility of proceeding judicially because… they have already violated due process. Not intelligence but short-sightedness, pettiness, meanness, and stinginess.
For going around reviewing María Amparo’s pension, for having wasted five years in attacks and personal vendettas, they have not even realized that Pemex is bankrupt, that it owes hundreds of millions of pesos to suppliers, that it loses in refining, that it produces progressively less, that it has received 1.32 billion in support and does not emerge. It could drag the country down. It is an embarrassment that costs Mexicans a lot. But now it is María Amparo’s pension that deserves his attention. The Casar case faithfully portrays the administration: venom as a vital and governmental compass. Emotional continuity?
Life has given me the fortune to know MAC since we were students. The blows strengthen her. And, besides, her excellent book The Dots on the I’s… will sell more.
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