Antonio Navalón
In the morning after the elections, things will be terribly confusing. For the good of everyone and the country, I hope this is not the case.
We are at a time in the history of humanity in which emotions have definitely managed to move reflective and logical processes into the background. Naturally, you will be able to tell me that I have my logic and way of thinking and that you have the right to have yours. And you are right. What happens is that before, from the finals of the soccer championship finals to the Olympic medals or the counts of the results of political elections, everything carried with it the possibility of error, of surprise. They had with them the possibility that in the end, things would happen differently from how they were initially thought they might.
A few days at the end of this electoral process and knowing its outcome, at this moment in Mexico, the truth is that, from a numerical, political, emotional point of view and on the state of the country, the true result is already a thing of the past. Regardless of what happens in the following elections – which is very important – the reality is that we are a country at odds with itself—a tormented and fragmented nation. There are lawsuits, claims, explanations, and pending appointments in front of, by, and with history. In addition, there is the undeniable fact that we have not yet accepted or known – perhaps because, deep down, we do not want it – to have an integration project in the country.
Whoever wins, we must be aware that on the morning of June 7 – in the midst of a wave of victory, defeat, denunciation, confrontation and, ultimately, the test of the profound breakdown of the unitary state of the country – for the first time the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, will visit Mexico. On that day, conspiracies and disabilities will have to be put into a standby mode, at least until the end of the American vice president’s visit.
Absolutely no one can be asked that the day after what is, in turn, the second most important electoral date of the current administration, be mentally able to start preparing and designing what will be the route of an insurmountable relationship. We can do everything. But what we cannot and must not forget is that – regardless of what the numbers say – what has already become evident is the level of fracture, separation, and divorce that we have as a country. Hence the magnitude of the challenge we face.
We can understand each other or fight with the current US administration; we can even forget the past agreements and transfer that forgetfulness to the present by putting obstacles and failing to comply with different phases or components of the USMCA. However, what we cannot do is tear the maps or alter, not the course of history, but the course of rivers, mountains, and deserts that – regardless of how much we love or hate each other – we are inescapably linked by more than 3,000 kilometers of common border with our northern neighbor. But beyond that, we cannot leave aside the DNA shared by more than 50 million people who live on both sides of the border between Mexico and the United States, much less all the commercial and economic exchange between both countries.
During her visit, our President will be able to deceive the woman that many people would like and predicts that she will be the future president of the United States. But, what is evident and that could even be counterproductive is that, during her visit, Kamala Harris will also witness the remains and debris of that morning of June 7. It will be necessary to have a lot of strength and security to accept that – in the midst of the last blows or the first fights to discuss and resolve the electoral result – that day we will be the hosts of, surely, the most important diplomatic mission of the current administration.
As we walk, we are making the way, like everyone else. But the only certain thing is that, whatever happens, on the morning of that June 7, the country will not be democratically better than before. Whatever happens, the death toll from violence derived from drug trafficking and the problem we face is so serious that nothing and no one will be able to erase it. These are elections written in blood and not only physically but also morally in the sense that we have become a society without the ability to set limits when defining our own rules of survival.
I hope that whatever is the outcome and what happens next week will have the strength and the ability to change the harsh reality we face. However, I believe that we must begin to consider that –from now on– the most important thing is to close the wounds, splint the broken bones, and start preparing a path in which we replace “them” and “us” with the possibility of creating a Mexico in which we all fit. All but the only ones who – based on bullets and violence – year after year have been gaining ground. I am referring to the representatives – in the purest sense – of evil, violence, and the mortgage of blood on the country’s history, which have increased their power not only in these three but in the last 30 years.
Faced with this situation, I find a great advantage that I personally plan to take advantage of. In the morning after the elections, things will be terribly confused. I hope and wish that this is not the case for the good of all and the country. In any case, what is very clear to me is where the work to be done is located and where we have to begin to occupy ourselves the morning of the next day, which is in the construction of a new and better social fabric that allows and ensures the cohesion and integration of the country. While that happens, you have to be able to live with what you have. And what there is that, if an election is the hope of re-founding a country, there are times when it gets so dirty, so weakened and, deep down, so compromised that – whatever the result – there are very few possibilities to improve reality. Despite having the right to cast a vote based on the power of the ballot box and has the power to change the situation, sometimes this practice is insufficient to combat the existing level of deterioration.
From the day on which the highest US delegation will visit us and which will coincide with the resolution of this very important electoral process, society and those responsible for it will have to decide if what we want is to complete the work of the total rupture or if, on the other hand –and due to all the internal and external problems that we have–, we are capable of building an integrating project within the country.
The institutions are there and they are not made of iron, they are shaped or have a life based on the trust they inspire in the peoples they regulate. In that sense, when trying to structure and on the belief that a large part of the Mexican people still trusts the electoral referee, the challenge is even greater. As for the basic structure of the country, make no mistake. Today, as in the past, the President is very important and we continue to be a country with a culture in which the highest expression is the tlatoani*.
*Tlatoani is the Nahuatl term for the ruler of an altepetl, a pre-Hispanic state. The word literally means “speaker” but may be translated into English as “king.”