Antonio Navalón
Every day it is more difficult to understand the actions of our leaders. More often than not, our political leaders do things that only they seem to be able to understand. I want to believe that their way of acting transcends having other data and that their actions are based on something more real or tangible than their own understanding of reality. In recent months it has become an arduous and complicated task to understand the logic and forcefulness of the actions that the Mexican government is taking. But, above all, it has become complex to understand the guide’s actions and the only lighthouse in the country, who, every morning, exposes and sometimes explains his political agenda and what has been done.
Even though we were guaranteed a promising future based on the work of social purification and the mystique that the new power was carrying out or continues to seek, there are uncertain elements and necessary actions to evaluate. On the one hand, we seem to be in a real conceptual battle of denying reality based on the other data. On the other hand, as the months go by and the current administration enters the last part of its mandate, it is possible to already take the accounting – with the available data and with the others – on which programs or actions were the ones that worked, and which ones were simply unsuccessful. In the midst of a veritable flood of words, concepts, and, above all, explanations where the past was always responsible for how bad things were in the present, the time has come to analyze what has been done and what has not been done.
What a pity that humans have to eat at least twice a day, and what a pity that our world is not filled only with orientations, ideals, or exhortations about how we have to live. We belong to an order in which data impose concrete results on us. And that is the problem, that these determined results are obvious in the appearance and in the dialectical, but they are more brutally clear in the figures and the numbers that show the evidence. This is undoubtedly evidence of a task that was never made easy but that, nevertheless, had popular support and political support like never before. In other words, the results, figures, and numbers that reflect the reality of our country – even though the objective was difficult to achieve – are the consequence of the actions or omissions of the 4T. In addition to having been voted on by more than thirty million Mexicans, and administration also had a congressional majority but that, despite this, could not or has not been able to turn its intentions into reality.
The kleptocracy in which we lived and the attitude that as a society we had towards abuse and theft makes us guilty of sin, at least of omission, although sometimes also of complicity. But, history has taught us that – as could be seen with the case of Sodom and Gomorrah – even the worst of sins have an endpoint, which is represented by the complete elimination or extirpation of evil. In Sodom and Gomorrah, the exhumation was the destruction of the two cities. In our case, the question is: how long will we have to continue paying for the inherited guilt and everything that we did not know how to resolve before the arrival of this gale of regeneration? Nobody has the answer. The problem is that fact after fact, and circumstance after circumstance, the reality is currently imposing a panorama in which the greatest temptation and the greatest danger is – as the French say – the flight forward. Unfortunately, it seems that we have become accustomed to the fact that if something does not work, we limit ourselves to blaming the past, looking at and constructing the explanation that only those who dominate the past can have the future.
Yesterday, through the consultation carried out, was a key day to understand a government-managed by gestures. The action of determining whether or not we will sit down and judge the former presidents – or any other political actor who has served as such in the past, as stated in the question reformulated by the Supreme Court – says more than meets the eye. The logic, the debate, and the discourse of all these years – it is true that many times with good reason – has placed those who erred in their actions as condemned in front of history. However, in history, it is necessary to know that justice is an anthropological value that will require thousands of years to reach a point of equilibrium. But that condemnation that collectively is so easy to produce and only requires a spark for everything to burst into flames in Mexico had already occurred. Now the question to ask is whether we will build a great court of history and whether we will burn the alleged culprits not only from a moral or historical point of view but – as was done in ancient times – we will also incinerate them publicly.
Given what happened, there were two possible speeches. The first, that of the requirement of responsibilities, saying at the same time that our entire legal system was changed by way of fact, which – as has been done in other fields – could also have been done in this area. And it could have been done in the sense that there was no prescription for crimes against the people and that it did not matter the time or what had happened; they were condemned and judged with the social condemnation that they had already been dragging from before and now collectively embodied with the birth of the new time. Or there was also the other discourse, that of creating a great court – in the style of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission chaired by Desmond Tutu in South Africa – where ethical and moral behavior condemned the regime but restricting physical sentences to the minimum in order not to produce a boomerang-type phenomenon against the social and political situation itself.
We can judge, burn and destroy everything. Everything except the physical reality since, despite what is desired, the borders will continue to be where they are, and the millions of border people will remain the same and – despite what we do and to give an example – Mexico will continue to be the first problem of the internal security of the United States.
As of this writing, the final query count remains to be seen. However, I have the feeling that the meadow was already on fire. Among other things, because either we condemn those who commanded or condemn ourselves, those who were there, and that at the same time we were guilty and innocent of what happened and what the country has become. Or, to put it another way, we had been hating for so long and creating the conditions to blame the past that in each of us, there was already a court to convict those who had been before.
We are at a juncture in which, from here, we have to see if words are enough. The very logic of the system, the regime, and the President is based on what is said. In his book “Country of a single man,” Enrique González Pedrero talks about former president Antonio López de Santa Anna and the country governed during his mandate, including everything that Mexico lost because of him. At present, you cannot be a one-person country unless you want an ending like Santa Anna’s. In this sense, knowing if words will be enough is the big question we will face when this August heatwave passes. Because what is evident is that all the problems, all the situations, and all the present and past guilt continue to condition and mortgage our future.
If we did not have enough with the situation before us, we would take another step towards the precipice and inaugurate what was always the great dream of all Latin American revolutionaries: a Latin America for the Americans, but of the South and not of the North, seeking to have the ability and strength to face them. Will it be difficult to know the consequences of this new policy that moves away from the new meddling and respect? I ask this because, despite the wishes and aspirations, we cannot put aside an argument that the Benemérito de las Américas has already said in the past, written in gold letters in the mind of the 4T. “Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace.” That said, it is impossible to think that everything we are doing – as a country and as a subcontinent – has no consequences. Above all, because from here, everything will change and will continue to change. We will see at what cost.
Like every August, this space will take a short break, will be back on Monday, August 23. See you soon!