Antonio Navalón
In the midst of the discussion and the claims to count ballot by ballot and polling station by polling station – in the way of bringing back what happened in 2006 – today, what is a reality is the confrontation that Mexicans have with our destiny. Yesterday, we took to the streets and voted. In an ideal democratic system, this exercise represents the end of the unknowns and the beginning of the process to obtain the answers sought. However, on this day, the day after, it remains to be seen what these elections will bring.
Even though there are systems of democratic normality in which the electoral elections are designed to add together, integrate the programs, and unify the different visions of a country, this is not the case in Mexico. In our country, in addition to the apparent practice that has become the custom of imposing one’s own vision on others, the division is today the main characteristic seen in the elections that we have just experienced. We have reached this point in the midst of an electoral war of total confrontation. On this June 7, in which the country witnessed the tireless struggle between one and the other, the winners and losers find themselves before a panorama in which the most visible thing is the scorched landscape that is before them.
For the powers that be, for this unique power with such personal readings of everything as the one represented by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, now is the time to make a decision on which there is no turning back. From here on, the current administration either deepens the total institutional wrecking or takes advantage of the strength it has to convene and build a country in which, in the end – if it is not our turn – our children end up fitting. Although the current President seems to have found crises fit him like a ring for his finger to change the face of the country and make it impossible for anything other than his model to continue, this is an opportunity to establish a new and better nation. A united country with a shared vision.
At this point, it is convenient not to forget all the pending issues. In other words, the fight against corruption, impunity, inequality, and theft or embezzlement cannot be set aside. More than ever, these problems cannot be ignored, which in the first instance were the causes that led us to the situation we find ourselves in. However, the truth is that we are the real culprits of being at the point where we are ourselves. First because of our votes and then because of our tolerance, which seems inexhaustible given what we have seen. We have already experienced this division, crisis, and confrontation on multiple occasions throughout our history; however, now it is a question of knowing to whom we will direct our weapons and our discontent. It is necessary to determine whether these weapons and discontent will be directed against our underdevelopment, our social slopes, our missing education plans, or our lack of industrial, wage, and sanitary repopulation. As a society, we have to decide whether we will continue in this everlasting spectacle of the national slaughter of one against the other or whether we will end and, once and for all, uproot the entire evil that has been afflicting us for so long.
The more we strive to continue living under the dichotomy of being the biggest trading partners of a giant – one of the few left on Earth – but to keep trying to shape our destiny without considering these elements, the more difficult the path will be.
President López Obrador will now have to decide if he can be more powerful than nature. In the sense that despite from the beginning, God placed Mexico so far from Him, but so close to the Americans, Mexicans have always had and still have the right to choose our destiny. However, much of the country’s destiny is predestined – as happens to all of us – by geography. And although one can change, alter, leave a pact and enter another, be more friend or less enemy, you cannot change the physical dimension of things. In this sense, we repeatedly find ourselves condemned to the same thing, to understanding by hook or by crook. In these moments, the more we tighten the rope, the worse the scenario can be. The more we strive to continue living under the dichotomy of being the biggest trading partners of a giant – one of the few left on Earth – but to keep trying to shape our destiny without considering these elements, the more difficult the path will be.
At present, the United States represents a political and economic model confronted with the current Mexican administration. However, the fact that our northern neighbor still remains the only relevant reference and player in the new bipolar confrontation between China and the West cannot be ignored. This situation leads us to decide not which side we will be on but how we will resolve our political differences and controversies – if that is the case – and understand forcefully each other physically, economically, and socially. All this while keeping in mind that neither party really has many choices about where to go or turn.
Internally – in addition to the design of the new discourse, to resolve the grievance and damage done by past generations – in Mexico, we will have to build a panorama or a vision that we can offer to the following generations. It cannot be that a country that – in the time of José Vasconcelos – substituted bullets for books is now without a defined program and without a clear proposal to face one of the great challenges of our times, which is education. Also, another of the internal problems that will need to be resolved is the one concerning the federal pact and its implications. If this issue continues unresolved, we will not be able to govern the country based on the continuous confrontation between the governors and the state governments’ economic exhaustion. It is one thing to cut off theft, indecency, and corruption and another thing to stifle the functioning of the governorships simply by economic strangulation.
In short, if desired, even in the scorched earth, a good harvest may emerge. But first of all, we have to decide what we will do with that land. Will we keep burning it to the last layer, or will we take advantage of the situation so that we can really give birth to a new country? This is a question that we will have to continue answering day by day, and as we did yesterday, with a ballot in hand and considering every one of the components of the Mexican people.
The responsibility of leaders and how they carry out their functions has always been a determining factor in setting the course of a country. At this moment, this responsibility and this role have a historical dimension. Will we continue to be involved in a war until we reach total destruction, or will we take advantage of this political and social confrontation to devise the foundations of the future? This is another great question raised in these first hours after the closing – at least the official one – of the political battle we have experienced in recent months. However, given the particular characteristics of these elections, the counting of the votes and the dispute to know who won and who lost will continue for a while. For the good of all, let’s hope it continues for as little time as possible.
After what happened yesterday, the question remains about who of the political class in the country will survive. It remains to be seen who of the old and the new politics – assuming this difference exists – will survive, since in the end, what is really unifying us is the feeling that the other party cannot be allowed to escape alive. There are political wars that are raised in terms of all or nothing. The situation we are experiencing, represented by a panorama of scorched landscape, exceeds the models and leads us to assimilate that – as statistics show – when in doubt, it is cheaper to shoot than to try to convince or conciliate.
