Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Xóchitl Gálvez came to revolutionize the political and intellectual life of the country. She revolutionized politics because the opposition acquired a new fighting spirit, cohesion, and purpose, besides having real possibilities of winning the presidency in the next elections. And it revolutionized the intellectual debate because she opened the discussion about viable and useful future projects for the country in terms that had not been seriously heard during this six-year term, where only one voice and one idea prevails. Xóchitl took away the President’s discursive primacy, whose ability to crush different opinions is the hallmark of the Morenista house.
As long as candidate Xóchitl springs ideas, she will confront candidate Claudia and her manager, the President, who will debate on a par with her. This was seen recently. When Xóchitl raised that the inclusion of private investment in the oil industry should be contemplated, the one who reacted by rejecting the proposal was the President, not Claudia. She didn’t say anything about the subject. Who holds the “command” and the Morenista candidacy, Claudia or the President?
The presidential reaction reflects the importance of Xóchitl’s alternative proposals. Any comment, suggestion, or joke from Xóchitl receives an immediate response from the President. His obsession with diminishing her, attacking her, offending her, and mocking her reflects his concern for the presence of a disruptive social and political phenomenon.
Because Xochitl is already a cultural, sentimental, iconic phenomenon in the Mexican imaginary. She is a disruptive phenomenon for Morena, beginning with her name, Xóchitl, and going through her life history. She is the generator of a social mood. And attacks, insults, or offenses do not destroy social moods, no matter how systematic and permanent they may be. By their nature, social moods are intangible.
In 2018, López Obrador was a social mood. Today, the one who brings that momentum is Xóchitl. Claudia lacks all the virtues required to be a social mood. Claudia is a product of a political apparatus, hard and cold. She is seen as a clone, a pitiful but ultimately a clone, of her manager. The only resource she has left in her campaign is to repeat what Lopez Obrador has said hundreds of times during the six-year term. Her mission, which she has already accepted, is to repeat the discourse of “you against us”, “the good against the bad”, “conservatives against liberals”, and “it is an honor to be with Obrador”.
Xóchitl, on the other hand, has the whole world ahead of her. She calls for national reconciliation, to listen to all voices, and to promote inclusion, expressly rejecting exclusion. She will defend women in budgetary terms. Also, education, health, and autonomous bodies. The budget items will reflect Xóchitl’s priorities. Because a government reflects its priorities in the budget.
The federal government’s budget for 2024 reflects its limited but exorbitant priorities. First, it proposes a gigantic expenditure for Pemex just to pay its debts, being a company in technical bankruptcy and with no real chance of salvation. But the government wants to throw good money into bad expenses. The Mayan Train will be the white elephant of this government. It is an exorbitant expense for a train that will never operate with black numbers. It will be the albatross around the neck of the Mexican taxpayer until some private party takes pity on Mexico and agrees to operate the train, or short profitable sections of it, with private resources. Putting the military to operate trains, airports, port terminals, and commercial airlines is a perversity fermenting in the president’s mind. These are totally twisted budgetary priorities because, with his decisions, he wants to determine Mexico’s fiscal spending for the next twenty years. By militarizing the administration of the projects, he thinks he is forcing the country to continue investing in subsidizing his projects indefinitely, despite the fact that they are economically unviable.
Xochitl knows this and is drawing up plans to save Mexico from being strangled as a country by the perversion of this man who dreams of being a mythical object in Mexican historiography. But the President’s futuristic fantasy is wrong about one central thing: all great historical figures are recognized for what they did when they unified the nation around them. AMLO has dedicated himself to dividing the nation. He does not know how to unite. His own movement is divided. He is not a great historical leader. He is a pawn of the moment, a figure that will die in the burning pyre of repudiation for having thought only of him, not of everyone.
Xóchitl builds, not destroys. Great leaders are builders of nations and consensus. They do not need to leave white elephants in their path. Xóchitl’s call is valid for the urban and the rural. For all social classes and all regions of the country. She is the antidote to sectarianism and polarization.
Claudia must rely on the recipients of public money forced to vote for her. They will be driven to the polls by other recipients of public funds: the nation’s serfs, who will take off their government vests to wear Morena vests during the election period. Another budgetary priority is to massify the distribution of public money to ensure their votes. We have already seen the squandering of public funds in favor of the corcholatas in the Morenista internal elections. Will Morena be able to buy the electoral victory in 2024? Of course, it is possible.
But it is also possible that some of these likely voters see in Xóchitl Gálvez an opportunity to receive their support without being subjected to the humiliation of having to sell their conscience and personal honorability to Morenista electoral blackmail.
Everything is based on the offer to be made by Xóchitl. Giving them certainty that their support will not be subject to political-partisan endorsements, many will choose to support a more attractive and fresh candidacy than the one the governing party offers.
Three issues will constantly appear in the campaign. First, the continuity of social programs, the feasibility of financing them without causing bankruptcy in public finances, and their immoral use to control entire populations. Second, the mega-works and their endless financing due to their unproductive nature in the hands of the military, who are not accountable and who do not make their expenses transparent. Third, the Armed Forces funding: will it serve to enrich the commanders or fight crime?
It should be evident at this stage of the six-year term that the offer made by the Secretary of Finance and Public Credit to the legislators when he delivered a budget that will serve for “good finances at the beginning of the next government” does not contain an ounce of truth. He is handing the next government an economic terrain more mined and dangerous than the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russian troops. He leaves a country in debt, public spending committed for the next 20 years, severe conflicts looming between military and civilians, and a crumbling energy infrastructure unsuitable for these times of economic relocation.
After a six-year term where dissent with presidential opinion was not allowed, Xochitl Gálvez can govern differently. Creating a new national consensus based on dialogue will be indispensable, with a governing team of professionals in all areas of expertise to steer a ship that has lost its course.
It is no longer acceptable or possible to govern the country as if there were a single path and a single voice, let alone entrusting the nation to a clone. That is why Xochitl, with that name, generates a new social mood and conquers a country tired of false redeemers. Her name authentically brings together the essence of Mexico: the ancient, the ancestral fused naturally with the modern, with the world. That is the importance of being called Xochitl.
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