Antonio Navalón
The century in which most of us were born, by us I mean those who share this space with me through your reading – for which I am grateful -, was a century that began characterized by a continuous dance of frontiers. It started with the dispute between two empires, the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman. It ended with the creation of other absolutely undefined and unsuspected empires, such as the empires of technologies and the substitution of manufacturing by mindfacturing.
At this moment, without our realizing it, a silent shifting of frontiers is once again taking place in the world. The movement that is taking place not only causes and allows scenarios such as what happened in Crimea – produced by the hand of Vladimir Putin – or as the permanent war in Kyiv, but it is also an upheaval that is contained in diverse territories that are also bordering many of the points from where our levels of control and survival have passed up to here.
We Mexicans belonged – and to some extent still belong – to a world, the West, in which whatever we did, weapons, discipline, and the American system meant that the positions adopted by Mexico intrinsically had to be under the greater good of the United States. It was one thing to play for a while at being a non-aligned nation or to call for the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Cuban cause and another thing to set aside the very high stakes involved. Regarding the Cuban case, it would not be harmful to hold a referendum among the Cubans themselves to find out what they think about it and their unfortunate situation and who the real culprits are, instead of seeking to solve all their ills. All of this has led us to end up, as we are now, at a point of reconfiguration of history that has rarely been repeated.
Every time I see what the arrival of today’s large corporations such as Amazon, Tesla, Google, or Microsoft means to the areas where they choose to settle, I realize something that every intelligent person knows, which is that we are hardly anything and that we can all more or less be bought at different prices, but for the same needs. In this regard, I was a close witness to the negotiations that Amazon had with the States of New York and New Jersey. In this process, I was able to see the conditions under which this empire intended to install its production and distribution centers. But, more importantly, I was able to see and witness the emergence of that new mixed fusion that the modern world has given us in the form of a kind of trick gift that is the combination of people with the use of robots and which has given us these types of companies.
The possibility of companies like Amazon, Tesla, Google, or Microsoft arriving in a territory is as if – intrinsically – their arrival is a kind of pouring of gold and economic well-being on a grand scale. But this is a lie. To begin with, because one of the first conditions that these corporations set is to be exempt from paying any tax. Then, they demand to have social laws that – compared to the more savage conditions of outsourcing and its more positive side – are practically beyond the legal and juridical reach of the States. Finally, these companies have the same social spirit that can be asked of a modem or a state-of-the-art software incorporated in any of our essential elements for living. In other words, their social soul is practically null and void.
The new technological empires have the power, technology, and ability to administer the wage of hunger, but what they do not have is humanity. And that, naturally, is something that stains, marks, replaces, and places all societies in a situation of permanent crisis. With us, the Mexicans – given the singularities of the historical moment we are living – neither approach us nor move away from us since they know it is a problem of timing. A situation in which they see that it is only a matter of time before they occupy us from the borders under conditions in which at the end of the day, they will not have to negotiate so much with the national government, but instead with the parallel governments that govern the border areas of our country. In other words, in Mexico, they always negotiate twice: once in the morning in the National Palace and once in the afternoon in the Cartel offices in turn.
Borders move. The world moves. And that’s why, in the world, it makes more and more sense that China’s military parades through Taiwan no longer have the same surprise they had ten or fifteen years ago. And they don’t work for one elementary reason: ten or fifteen years ago, the borders did not have the movement they have today. In Europe, not only are they moving, but there are cases such as the Spanish one with Catalonia, where there is movement, but there has even been a referendum that produced a social uprising that has divided Catalan society. An uprising that led to a trial that sent to jail several Catalan leaders and rulers and that although they are currently out of prison – as a result of the pardon granted – does not detract from the fact that moving the border is still the goal.
In the midst of all this, we, the poor humans – who at this moment are half robot and half people – and who are the ones who depend on so many things at the same time as we have never depended before, have to be aware that every time the big players start playing Russian roulette with our borders, it means that the cannon fodder will be us. It means that sooner or later, this massive readjustment of balances that are taking place between the United States and China will become increasingly decisive and forceful. It means, in short, that little by little, we will have to get used to living not only in ignorance about what might happen but – what is worse – in whose hands we will be when whatever happens happens.
In Mexico, what borders are moving? Evidently, some are black and unconfessable borders represented by the territories in which it is determined who, where, and in what way each of the cartels governs and their different phases of development. In this regard, it is necessary to clarify that there are different types of cartels: the one with international expansion, the one with corporate structure, the one that has already achieved a democratic victory, or the one that simply remains calm and under an apparent cordiality and that are the ones that every time they give bullets, we answer them with hugs.
We Mexicans have the pending problems to be solved that are shared with the complicated stage the world is going through at this time, but we must also add our problems with their own unique characteristics.
We are in a situation in which, at the end of the day, those frontiers of hunger that are marked by migration, the absence of future, or the lack of clear leadership, are marking our lives. In the meantime, I would like to know which party, organization or part of society – not the civil one, since in Mexico it has definitely been banned and declared illegal as a matter of fact – but which religious, civil or any other kind of association is really concerned about the consequences of all the accumulated effects. Effects that every day that passes are growing over our poor heads but that, in addition, and what is worse, are developing without even knowing who pulled the trigger.
