Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The President of Mexico is organizing a fratricidal war against Biden, aligning himself with Trump and Putin. He seems to be driven by the conviction that the central commitment of his government is to launch the wrecking ball against all the country’s institutions and, now, also against our most important strategic relationship: the neighboring country to the north. The axis of the attack is to go against democracies and push the agenda of authoritarian regimes.
Desperate for the twilight of his government without substantive achievements, López Obrador has shown that he is following the path of demolishing everything in his way, refusing to build alternative and functional institutions. He lacks a new national project. Promising to fight corruption is not an alternative program. Offering money to the poor is not an alternative economic model. Building an airport is no different than what has been done before. Returning education to union control is a regression. Building trains is not a new idea, nor is building another refinery.
Destroying health institutions to return to Social Security (IMSS) is definitely not new. It is more of the same. Wanting to insert the National Guard into the army is not new. Peña Nieto did the same with his Gendarmerie. López Obrador is preparing to make the same mistake.
Now, following his instinct to destroy without building alternatives, he has decided to try to become a Latin American leader and challenge President Biden. López Obrador prefers his friend Trump as President, that radical right-wing populist, even though he publicly mocks him (what pathology shines through there?) He is irritated that the United States, now governed by a Democrat, insists on promoting democracy and sustainable economies. He does not defend himself against Trump, but he becomes an attack dog against Biden, the one who defends Ukraine against the Russian invasion. And he does not dare to say what he really thinks about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine because he is betting on the return of Putin’s best ally to the Presidency of the United States: Donald Trump.
Everything is in turmoil in the world. And even more, if our President is condemned to conclude his six-year term without tangible results, having led Mexico to the precipice of a lost six-year term. At the end of Lopez Obrador’s term, Mexico will report 0% growth in his six years. With high inflationary rates and zero growth, Mexico faces the reality of stagflation. Inflation and stagnation. That is why he wants to win the next election by avoiding talking about concrete achievements and inflaming the festering and irrational passions of the population. His idea is to propose that we are full of hatred and resentments, waiting for them to overflow, unrestrained. The President does not want a rational debate to address the tremendous national problems but one about festering and clashing passions. For this strategy to succeed, he needs a perfectly identifiable enemy—a new object of hate.
His use of hate objects has been extraordinarily profitable politically. These objects of hate have helped him promote the myth that nothing can be “solved” until the hated nuisance is destroyed. He always prefers destruction, never construction. From the first object of hate that was Salinas and the mafia of power, we passed to Calderón, his fraud, and his war until we came across, in this six-year term, the appearance of conservatives and “fifis” who defend unquantifiable privileges of the past. López Obrador always needs an object of hatred to direct the supposed endless anger that he presumes the Mexican people feel for historical grievances that have never been addressed. He uses humanity’s dissatisfaction with modern life to stoke it against imaginary enemies.
The only thing López Obrador is interested in is elections and power. In his lexicon, power is the most potent aphrodisiac in the world. After the exhaustion of the well-known objects of collective hatred (power mafia and Salinas, Calderón and fraud, Peña and corruption, conservatives and privileges of the past), he now needs a new target to trap and control the fury that will allow him to contend in the election of 2024 earnestly. To hold on to power, even if it is through the maximato (strong man rule), he wants to win elections for two reasons. First, because the exercise of power excites him and because he fears a review of his government’s accounts, those of his family, his close government associates, and his own.
One hypothesis to explore is that López Obrador is analyzing the feasibility of turning the United States and Biden into his new object of hatred. It would be a risky bet because each object of hate destroys bridges to circumstances that condition and make reality functional. This six-year term has been a transitional moment in national history because it has demolished the economy, health, education, peace, security, and the union between Mexicans. As a next step, blasting the relationship with the United States is a risky bet because this route could mean the end of Mexico’s economic recovery expectations for the next decades.
What could follow after this logic of demolition, under the premise that from the ashes of a demolished Republic will emerge, like the Phoenix Bird, a new nation, glorious and vigorous? Is the President delirious? Is it credible to think that a confrontation of this magnitude with the United States will be the intense climax of his heroic deed as a ruler?
If everything internal, everything concerning the country, has been destroyed, now it is time to demolish the external. But to destroy the relationship with the United States under an ideological logic alien to economy and society is to risk, to begin with, the life and economy of 20 million Mexicans living in that country. What if, for example, in a phase of bad bilateral relations, the U.S. banking system restricts sending remittances to our country, as it does with Cuba?
Then we will be sacrificial lambs, the rest of the inhabitants of this country. And what about the regulatory framework of the USMCA? Will it end in the trash bin of history?
To accuse the United States of being the Great Culprit of all our ills would be like discovering the Holy Grail. Apart from being an adolescent attitude, it would surpass all the corrupt powers of the past, such as Salinas, the mafia that accompanies him, the business people, all (well, almost all) corrupt, Calderón, and the retrograde Catholic panismo, the evil and corrupting Peñismo. The conservatives (who are still many, President Dixit) represent the last internal stronghold of resistance to the destructive work of this six-year term.
Continuing with López Obrador’s wrecking ball allegory, it is time to destroy the relationship with the only thing that could decisively help Mexico return to the path of rationality and abandon the imaginary route of collective suicide, like lemmings throwing themselves into the sea. (I know: there is no proof that lemmings commit collective suicide. Poor creatures, anyway.)
The U.S. today charts a course of defending freedoms, supporting Ukraine against Russian invasion, and setting out on a path to prevent Trump’s anti-democratic, coup-mongering populism from returning to power.
All this goes against the tide of López Obrador’s flagship project. He is part of the wave of thought that believes in the goodness and necessity of authoritarianism as the only possible model to navigate in the contemporary world.
López Obrador barely disguises his admiration for Trump and Putin. His defense of the three sad authoritarian tigers of Latin America (Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela) is part of a strategy to sabotage Biden’s summit initiative, pretending to show the US President as weak and vincible. This coincides perfectly with Trump’s political interests. The six are marching in unison: Putin, Trump, Diaz Canel, Ortega, Maduro, and Lopez Obrador, the latter as a newcomer to the authoritarian feast.
Mexico as a country, and not only represented by López Obrador, will have to decide its historical path: to strengthen democracy or sit around the table with rulers who violate the rights of their fellow citizens. It is time to decide.
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