José Antonio Polo Oteyza
Two stories in one: the connection and good intentions. The Trinitarian saints.
In the maelstrom, the foundational myth of the supposed “connection” with the people was so spontaneous that it took two decades, and billions, and promises of everything and for everyone, and massive doses of weariness and credulity, and a little help from some Trojan or other, fades away. If there is something special about the relationship with the public, it is the torrents of inventions and pretexts it demands. It is even remarkable that it is necessary to point out that this is the opposite of communicating and informing, that there is no special communion with anyone, that “the people” do not exist. A philosopher once said that the limits of his language meant the limits of his world. And we are not asking for a lecture in the square, which would not be bad, but to understand that today’s feverish circularity monopolizing reflectors and microphones begins and ends in itself.
The wrathful sanctity derives from the story of the connection with the people, a source of inexhaustible legitimacy, and from a derivative: he may not know how to govern, but he has good intentions. Among those who think or say so, there is a particularly pathetic group, that of the (also) good consciences, many of them landed in intellectuals, academics or consultants, or privileged middle and upper-middle-class culprits, with information and position, many even with forums and spaces to express themselves; that is to say, with greater responsibility than the great majority. And although their ranks have thinned as they have been given a candle, from the intellectual and psychological petrification, they still emit silliness of the type: “they must have given him the wrong information”, “they deceive him”, “he has bad team” “it is wrong, but we must remember that…”, “how is it possible that he wants to destroy” this or that thing, “regrettable” this, “unfortunate” that…”, “until when will they tolerate…”, “but they have respected…”. “Now that they recognize that there are no medicines, they will not sleep peacefully,” they say of those who caused the shortage. Some victimize themselves: “I still don’t understand…”. Fanatics of optimism, others babble: “There is still time for them to straighten up…”. “And now what did he say? It is not possible,” say the incredulous gullible who have been in this situation for three years or 20 years for those who want to do the math. When they do not find results even under the rocks: “Well, but there was a good diagnosis…”, they tell us, even if it is nothing more than the usual spiel about a country of poverty that is impoverished even more without consideration, and even if the Constitution is used as a doormat, and the middle classes as a piñata, and whoever else is used as electoral rubble. And then there are the temperate critics who levitate above the filth to hand out indulgences and ex-communications. All these pusillanimous consciences recall those sinister set-ups of totalitarianism, the Stalinist terror trials, in which the victims took advantage of the time they had left to live to praise the executioner by finalizing accusations.
Oh, and then we also have the Adventists who rave about a historical trial as an emotional parapet for those who digress with a deus ex machina that will come down to assure us that “the people”, finally fed up, will turn the tables in a free election. Back to naivety, the need for analgesic psychology should not excuse the mirage of a justiciary determinism, finally, a luminous providence analogous to those touted by his adversary.
In times when the patinas are peeling, and the copper is showing, another refuge of those “involved” is that complaints are demanded, but no personal allusions are received because that is what the handful of unfortunate people the government attacks with name and surname are for. The rest of the country, the majority, goes along, dealing with life and assigning blame according to its majority misunderstanding. How not to notice that the country is deformed into a sinister circus full of enervated people who, like the government, assume the holy trinity of fashion; all at the same time, prosecutors, judges, and executioners; the only thing that changes are the preferences for lynching, and everyone dances to the tune of the filtration that fits well with their prejudice and ignorance.
But while each one entertains himself with his own particular cruelty, the majority maintains the most serious naivety. It turns out that Mexico’s most outstanding political achievement was the certain, legal and legitimate renewal of power, which allowed potentially deadly ambitions to flow for decades in relative peace; if one sees (because here, it is not necessary to analyze anything) the mafia-like behavior of MORENA, that achievement is already lost. Many imagine that it is only a matter of holding on and maintaining whatever alliance it is, even if it does not inspire anything or anyone, to manage a turbulent and polarized but normal election, to wake up from the nightmare and rebuild. It will not be so because this voracious political movement does not stop at constitutional delicacies and has endless compromises that (again, the objective and ineptitude as interchangeable qualities) cannot and will not be managed in contexts of freedoms and democracy.
And it is not as if there was massive resistance from researchers, doctors, businessmen, bureaucrats (among the debacles, there is not even mention of what is perhaps the most serious, education); Neither has there been a supportive definition of the media to close ranks before the onslaught; nor a citizen barrier to stop the assault to the INE; nor do they stop celebrating when the supposed villain that each one chooses for their personal scaffold is persecuted. In short, the majority will take care of their plot of land while the country sinks; it is understood, but it is not enough to say that “it is the politicians’ fault” because the collapse has its own story, and it is not easy to tell, nor is it easy to digest. Passivity is not prudence, and if significant groups of the elites and middle classes do not do what it is not in their nature to do -that is, unite and pull together the countless victims, create awareness and promote mobilization-, the bourgeois illusion that everything should get better will remain, in any judgment of this history, as a monument to political stupidity.
Up ahead: a cautious sketch with a broad brush.
It’s getting ugly, very ugly. A hybrid condition of cripple and slacker made its way among complicities, astonishment, and boutique-style indignations and destroyed what the country would have advanced in education, health, and development programs. Indeed, understandings or expectations that until yesterday were common sense no longer apply, such as the one that a country does not commit suicide by knocking down investment and canceling growth (by the way, when a government is a thug, the interest rate is irrelevant), pushing millions into poverty and burning money as fast as possible.
Concentration and extension of power, no other is the meaning of the government’s purges, the sabotage of the division of powers, the destruction of social programs, the subjugation of autonomies, and the militaristic enthusiasm. That is why López Obrador is so eager to mark targets on institutions, people, and truths that underline his monumental bankruptcy. Still, in its clumsy walk, MORENA also burned the ships and the essential instruments for governability.
It is still too early to assess the meaning of every cut, counter-reform, institutional mutilation, meaningless instruction, peso thrown away, and sensible decision not taken. Still, the disarray will open a new, sordid era, in which old frustrations and resignations are linked to new ones, and with the usual cynicism. The conditions of continuous punishment that favor, among other things, an increasingly deformed and arbitrary government generate violence, of course, but also a pedagogy of helplessness, an existential resignation that stifles initiatives and reactions that would be natural in less sick contexts. And it will get worse because, as the universal recipe book of infamy stipulates, when the economic and social indicators collapse, the next step is to also demolish liberties, bleed the country of resources and talents, placate the really powerful, and pay the respective customs and extortions, in order to reach, with the due moorings and without institutional intermediaries, the prolongation of the six-year term in any modality, starting with that of a López Obrador in the chair after 2024, as demanded by the pretensions of an eternity of this personage. Just as he has promoted shortages and dependencies all his political life, he may use the destabilization he provoked to prolong his mandate. Everything and everyone else will be plan B if anything.
That is the only fundamental objective of vanity without a project for which MORENA has only been a coarse and shoddy vehicle. Contrary to the PRI motto, “first the program and then the candidate”, here it is the boss first and then… well, we will see. With a weak opposition, immersed in his labyrinth of mirrors, imbued with paranoia, eviscerating the State and simulating that he controls the predators (turn the contradiction around, everything is very symbolic in the kingdom of the mañaneras), López Obrador will constantly raise his tone to the salvation of the homeland. Always embedded in political and mental trenches, he goes against the forces of evil, in a bad way and in a bad mood. The second half of the six-year term will be particularly violent and chaotic due to the destabilization to impose plan A and, if not possible, any of the plans B because the scorched earth directive will not be accompanied by a minimum capacity to set up the desired dictatorship.
Can they be derailed? Well, yes: Morena will never be an institution; it is a way station for upstarts and a few fanatics, which is also crowded and surrounded by forces that will be inclement when the flows are disrupted. Of course, there are pockets of civility and citizenship. The aggrieved are legion. The mass collective rapture hangs on subsidies that, the more they grow, the more unsustainable they will be. Hollow words are the ones that weigh most heavily on the thin layer of glass that cracks daily. Credibility could only go down, and down it goes. And then, the public square is a serious thing; let them ask Robespierre, Mussolini, or Ceaucescu, the Romanian dictator who one day went out on the balcony so removed from grief… it would be the last time.
And is the damage irreversible? Technically, no, but life is politics, and in Mexico, it is becoming increasingly crappy and short, not the best crop for a strong countercurrent to solidify with a reconstruction project. There may be many reasons, intellectual level, the twisted lines towards the immediate interest, the stress of survival in a swamp; the fact is that the main political groups, parties, and businessmen included, cannot imagine a way out; well, they do not even manage to hide their necrosis with some good speech, some catchy phrase. The PAN cannot find anyone who can overcome the boredom produced by its leadership, the PRD is trying to find someone who understands what social democracy is all about, and the PRI, on the other hand, is clearly communicating that it does not know whether it wants to exist or not. The fact is that when a supreme ignorance pretends to eliminate from the conversation the significant national interests, necessarily focused on the foundations and processes of governability and development, it is still unknown what will be the political agenda of an alliance that is late to assume an identity and an opposing responsibility.
Now, if militarism, organized crime, and the growth of poverty continue its trends, as everything indicates, with or without López Obrador, Mexico will continue as a banana republic; that is to say, as a non-republic in which “the authorities” increasingly resemble inconsequential languid ghosts and diverse groups parasitize an irremediably poor and unstable country, degraded to a market for plundering, in which exchanges take place fluidly in the forceful language of violence. If the militarized claudication is added to an inoperative government, a constant economic depression, ecological collapse, and educational collapse, this sinister confabulation will corner the youth in the two main factories of our violence, the home and the street. There will be no shortage of meat for the hoe. And, except for some pleasant surprise, the politicians in office will continue to compress themselves to the pathetic role of endless hand-wringing, entrenched in the arbitrariness that will confirm their weakness, always under the watchful eye of the strong, and ready to wield the remnants of the State when necessary, and when not, too, because we already know that the skin of the impotent power is sensitive, very sensitive.
A country more and more bankrupt and more and more broken, a bad country for good people. That is where we are going, and there are still those who ask when everything is going to explode, but really explode, seriously, not like now, it is understood… when is the whole mess going to fall, as if there were the same country for everybody, or as if everybody had ever had some shelter, or as if it had not already fallen for tens of millions, or as if whatever could fall were not falling down every day.
Back to the origin and in essence: the farce of the “legitimate” presidency began before, long before the formal presidency, and it wants eternity, with or without the votes. He lies but does not deceive. For this reason, there should be no doubt about the advances to inaugurate a dictatorship in Mexico, understood, and we must insist on it, as a weakness that is assumed to be indispensable.
The political problem of discontent consists, for those in power, in fragmenting it; for the opposition, in condensing it. A radical defense of INE and the Judiciary is required today, and political processes that integrate the grievances so far balkanized and deactivated are necessary today. Without these two great movements, but now, tomorrow, the vote will be a simulacrum in which the dirty and violent steamroller that already warmed up engines in the local elections and in the ratification will only have to stroll, proud, through the swamp of our institutional ruins. 2024 is too late to save Mexican democracy.
Nothing is a certainty, but with a dictatorship or with a different government, democratic, but both crippled, with capacities that decrease in the face of increasing needs, it is likely that Mexico will not be able to stop the spiral of its degradation. What forms and paths will its violence and disenchantment take? That is the big question, but the present already gives us a good idea.
The author is the Director of Causa en Común, an NGO specializing in security and police in Mexico.