Luis Rubio
Decisive moments in people’s lives and nations’ histories determine the beginning of one era and the end of another. The coming election on June 2 will be one of these. This is neither good nor bad—only time can tell—but it can well be decisive for the road Mexico follows in the future.
Just as in each person’s life, some situations might appear to be normal but that, in time, acquire great significance because they implied decisions that marked a course; there are distinguishing moments in the history of the world, points of inflection that mark a before and an after, although it may take time for this to be discerned.
Mexico’s problems are known and, in many respects, almost ancestral. For decades, various administrations recurred to distinct types of economic and political strategies aimed at dealing with the challenges, actually the symptoms, of a reality that keeps failing to transform itself in full: President López Obrador articulated these as objectives of his government (inequality, poverty, low growth rate, and corruption) but, like his predecessors in the past half-century, he was incapable of influencing upon these more than marginally and, perhaps, in a merely ephemeral way. These challenges continue to exist, and although the two presidential candidates do not address these issues directly, their rhetoric and proposals continually evoke them. For the voter, the critical question is whether the ideas and proposals of those aspiring to govern Mexico are susceptible to making a real difference on those ancestral and recent challenges; above all, if one adds two of these that are no less transcendent for being (more) recent: governance and security.
The government that takes the country’s reins next October 1 has no marbles left to play with. Beyond the political or ideological preferences of whoever wins the electoral race, the panorama that the government of the fourth involution (instead of the much-heralded Fourth Transformation) bequeaths to its successor will be, to say the least, dire: a huge public debt, excessive fiscal commitments, rapidly growing labor liabilities, a collapsed health system, the saddest of educative panoramas and, to top it all off, violence, insecurity and a government incapable of resolving any problem whatsoever. Independent of who wins, the problems will be enormous and will usher in an inexorable pragmatism.
However, how the candidate who wins attempts to resolve the problems does indeed make a difference, and it is here that the country comes face to face with that great choice, the fork ahead, implying a definition of the future: the government’s way or the citizenry’s way. In a serious-minded, developed, and civilized country, the difference would be merely a matter of focus, of a slight inclination in balance because the counterweights inherent in a democracy and a good system of government are sufficient to avoid excesses. But in a country polarized to such a degree that it has not achieved the consolidation of its democracy or minimal effective checks and balances, the resulting lurches hither and yon tend to be brutal and definitory.
It is precisely because of those erratic lurches literally always characterizing Mexican politics that the population does not envisage or expect a president but rather a savior, and saviors are not prone to being benign because they entail, by their very nature, excessive power, never a recipe for success. In 1996, Mexico formalized a project of transition toward democracy that, although incomplete, guided politics for several decades. However, the tendency to cast for a savior has always been present: Mexicans have had Fox, Peña, and now AMLO. All wanted to save Mexico, but the country’s problems persisted and worsened.
Judging by the proposals now in vogue, the present pitch of things presents a clear choice between entrepreneurial capitalism and State-managed capitalism. This manner of seeing it explains why there exists a difference of perceptions inside Mexico and abroad: for the operators of the financial markets, rating agencies, and other foreign players, the operative word is capitalism, not the preceding adjective, in that both guarantee a path forward, at least in the conceptual sense. For the Mexican citizen, the contrast is more manifest and crystalline: a government that imposes itself and pretends to administer and control everything or a government that creates conditions for the country to develop. Within that striking difference, the country will define a path towards its long-term future, the path initiated by Peña and dug deeper by AMLO, or the path towards a democratic and liberal thoroughfare.
Campaign times are accompanied by extreme rhetoric and present categorical dilemmas akin to those of a biblical confrontation. However, if one glances back at the past, one can see that Mexico has faced a similar dilemma for decades. Edmundo O’Gorman, the great historian of the 19th century, spoke of the “axis of our history” as a confrontation between two ancestral aspirations: “the need to achieve the prosperity of the United States” and, at the same time, “the need to maintain the mode of being colonial”, which, he continued, constitutes a “choice between two impossibilities.”
The upcoming election on June 2nd will have greater clarity in one direction or the other, which is why it is critical for the candidates to define themselves: where they see Mexico today and what kind of country they wish for it to become. In one word, how they would govern and what for.
Image: Hidden Catch on iStock
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