Antonio Navalón
Words have always had a fundamental weight in the history of humanity, especially in what is related to faith, hope, or the generation of alternatives and solutions. We must not forget that it is written in the book of books: “in the beginning was the Word.” The problem is that looking back at my life experiences – looking at my available time and how it was used and its various results – the moment just came when I got fed up with words.
Its effect is less and less, but worse; they are words spoken to be heard by a few but not listened to. It is exactly the opposite of what the German playwright and thinker, Bertolt Brecht, warns at the end of his work “The irresistible rise of Arturo Ui”: “learn to hear and not just to listen. Learn to see and not just to look. Because the bitch that spawned fascism is pregnant again ”.
Everything is always written. Human beings have a great capacity to listen, but not to hear; to look but not see; to not wanting to know that the bitches that breed the worst of our humanity are pregnant again. Our capacity is so virtuous that to take an example in the last century – in an interwar era and before humanity reached unprecedented quotas of deaths, of hatred, and before generating the corresponding revenge – everything was so glamorous, so full of fun, alcohol, food, and women, that this era became known as la Belle Époque.
You could tell me that the pandemic forced us to do the worst and most painful of exercises, but please, at this time, do not scrub the list and statistics of suicides. Since it is terrible and even incredible to think that, in a country like the United States, the second leading cause of deaths between adolescents aged 15-19 years is suicide, same as in Mexico, where the second cause of death for young people between the ages of 12 and 24 is suicide. That means something straightforward: many of our compatriots have lost their motivation, orientation, a vision of a better future, and desire, leading them to want to lose their lives.
Being close to the catastrophe only awakens the desire to run towards the precipice but not run in the opposite direction. I refuse to be part of the shaking of words, of this sinister shadow game in which we have turned politics not only in Mexico but in much of the planet. The magical illusions are over, and as always happens, it is not that the husband is the last one to know; the husband only finds out when he has no choice but to know the truth. And this happens for a simple reason: knowing means that there is something that has to be done, but doing is having to deal with the things that it is better to ignore or that we simply do not want to solve.
We are being deceived. We are happy, joyful, but, above all, we are repeating – point by point – the script of the deception. The more insulting it is to our intelligence, the more contrary a situation is to reality or the easier it is to demonstrate – through figures – that everything is a lie, the more we insist on discussing and debating the agenda that is served to us every morning. as an ideal of politics.
Right now, there is a series on Netflix – the forgers of the new social reality – that more or less explains, in a language that anyone can understand, how tyrants are formed. However, the methodology used to explain how Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, or many other tyrants came to achieve Cum Laude in the art of being murderous, cruel, and in destroying their people, lacks a counterpart. This counterpart supposes that in any analysis of the figure of the tyrant or the dictator, something fundamental is needed, which allows the result of this oppression and debauchery to act, that something is the people. Where were the peoples when these tyrants insisted on killing them either for lack of medicine, for deception, for having other data, or simply for decreeing that it was only possible one child per family? We have to define whether these people are annulled or turned into nothingness under the justification that nothing can be done except to follow the tyrant and hope that he will not harm us much by killing us.
They are cheating us. Without exonerating our past responsibilities or having to confess that we live in a kleptocracy, that we are part of an order that was corrupt and unpunished, and that we did nothing to prevent or change it, I have come to a reflection. And I have had enough time, thirty-six months to be specific, to reflect on the question: having witnessed a past like ours, what have we done better or differently?
Of course, if it is true that, if one does not lie, does not steal, and is good, he acquires a special immunity against Covid-19, then, naturally, everything makes sense. This explains why our dead are not really dead but are simply part of other data. We have reached such contempt for the reality that we have to prepare for the huge hangover we will have when we wake up one morning – because tomorrow always comes – and we will have to analyze what happened to us.
After spending ten years explaining to the world that what happened in Venezuela could never happen in Mexico simply because the Mexican people are different from the Venezuelans, now we are facing a difficult situation to defend. Indeed, in Mexico, has not happened the same as in the nation led by Maduro. But something has happened that only history will determine if it was better or worse. On the one hand, we have the complete failure of the political structure. There is nothing to put forward if we do not like what is there and what he commands. It is not enough that the greatest victory is that they agreed to appear together on some lists and have a common enemy. On the other hand, there is a lack of initiative to act as a true opposition seeking and proposing to change the situation and not continue to be part of the problem.
The great difference between a family war, a war between neighbors, and a political war is that, although in the first cases it is enough to want to eliminate or harm someone, in politics it is understood – that in addition to seeking to finish with someone – that the most important part of the confrontation is to offer something as a guarantee of change. In Mexico, we have become accustomed to being against it, but the time has come to ask in exchange for what one is on the other side. I would not like to conclude that deep down, it is not only that we have what we deserve – which, believe me, almost all the peoples of the world have what they deserve – but also that what we have has no likelihood of improvement. I would be disappointed in a situation in which what we have as a guarantee of change did not even have the capacity to deceive or delude us, even if for a short time.
There is nothing more human, repeated in history, and nothing that unites people more than a common enemy. The enemy is there. Now the question is: in the face of collective insult, where are the people? But, above all, it is necessary to resolve and define the true solution to get out of where we are, which allows us to yearn for a better tomorrow. Meanwhile, we are neither dreaming nor having a nightmare, but what is a fact is that – sooner or later – the dawn will come. Dawn is the time to reiterate the great commitments with life and with God. However, our dawn has been used to offer, disguise and try to dictate what the national agenda should be. Dawn is not the best time to formulate dreams. At dawn, you come from a dream or a nightmare. At this moment, our dawn is formed almost exclusively by the fact that, if there is something that we can no longer bear, it is more words.
