Antonio Navalón
Many years ago, precisely in 1937 – months after the Spanish Civil War began – the poet Miguel Hernández, a native of a place full of history and invasions, Alicante, and who was self-taught, wrote a poem that completely uplifted the Spanish people. At the time, it was clear that what was at stake during the civil war, more than anything else, was the essence of the Spanish people. “Vientos del pueblo me llevan, vientos del pueblo me arrastran, me esparcen el corazón y me avientan la garganta” (“Winds of the people carry me away, winds of the people sweep me away, they scatter my heart and fan my throat.”).
Miguel Hernández was a communist and sensed he would be on the losers’ side. However, he would raise his left arm and would grasp and shout with the desire to obtain freedom: “If I die, may I die with my head held high. Dead and twenty times dead, my mouth against the grass, I will have my teeth clenched and my beard determined”. Hernandez was a leftist political activist who never knew nor imagined that decades later, there would exist a movement that would be consecrated as the supposed Fourth Transformation of a country that, in the imperialist era, was conquered by its own nation.
In a sense, in the political unreality that in the 1930s and during much of the civil war accompanied the Spanish republic, in the practical and non-homicidal sense – or without the homicidal instinct of the 4T being consummated – it can be said that both movements had many things in common. The court of intellectuals, educated people who lived according to the moral and political values of the Second Spanish Republic, made the huge mistake of forgetting that they were not alone and that they were part of a world in which the political extremes of left and right were at their most decisive moment.
Last Sunday, February 18, the same day that the official candidate of the 4T regime decided to register at the INE (National Electoral Institute) to write in letters – hopefully of gold and not of iron – the proof that she will become the first woman to win an election, through the popular will, which in turn will make her the first female representative to wear the presidential sash in our country.
On February 18, under the slogan “March for our democracy”, millions of Mexicans took to the streets in different Mexican cities. Regardless of the actual estimates of the precise number of people attending the marches, the reality is that there were many Mexicans who came out that day to defend one of the most precious values of any society. The first risk of this demonstration was that it would become a divisive act and end up in a frontal confrontation of one against the other. Democracy, like peace, marriage, or community life, requires the ability to put up with its opponents or those who threaten its preservation. The administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has made a massive disqualification of anyone who, regardless of their intentions or reasons for acting, has made even a pretense of being against him. The implicit argument that either they are with or against him is the emblem and seal that marks this regime.
I confess that for a moment, I had the idea and the hope that the president of the 4T, that charismatic, undisputed, and unique leader who acted so well in the months before being sworn in as leader of our country, would be the change we have been waiting for so long in Mexico. I had the illusion that the time would come when he would get out of the way and let the democratic process take place in an orderly, efficient, and transparent manner. What the president has yet to see is that the demonstration was not done against him or to question his leadership, but rather, it was done with the desire to defend democracy and to stop any action – regardless of where it comes from – that attempts against it.
The table was set. Nothing would have been easier that day than to have come down and leaned out from the balcony of the National Palace in front of those present and take advantage of the great opportunity presented to him. On that day, President López Obrador could have set himself up – or even pretended to be – as the great defender of democratic values and the principles that founded our Mexican Republic. He did not do so, nor has he taken advantage of this opportunity.
The winds of the people, which mark the temperament and state of societies, dictate that anyone who is an enemy of democracy is its enemy. The winds of the people indicate that we are no longer “oxen that bend their heads in the face of punishment”; instead, we are like lions that “rise up and at the same time punish with their clamorous paws” anyone who threatens their democratic system. I am not part of a people of oxen; our people are home to “lions’ beds, eagles’ gorges, and bulls’ ranges.” This is how we have to see and understand the demonstrations of last February 18. I hope that this demonstration was not a mirage or the wake of a time when, in Mexico, it was possible not to belong to or agree with the ideology of a leader without being discredited and judged with the total weight of power. I remember, although more and more distant, the Mexico, in which it was possible to think differently without being socially massacred or openly exposed in the mañanera. I wish that what happened that Sunday in different parts of the country is the awakening of a better tomorrow in which freedom of expression is respected, but, above all, that the will of the people and the hierarchy and essence of the laws are respected.
In a democracy, victories and defeats are only temporary facts and correspond to the direction of the current winds of each nation. When they begin to be squeezed out, the democratic exercise becomes impossible. Today, not sharing a taste or preference in political militancy or in ways of seeing history is enough to be considered an enemy or opponent of the regime. Nuances in our country have ceased to exist, and everything is reduced to the purest extremism: if you are not supporting someone, you are simply against them and deserve all the consequences that this entails. The election begins, although, unfortunately, what is beginning is the process that will answer whether democracy still fits in our country or if it has simply been killed by polarization, social hatred, and disqualification.
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