Antonio Navalón
It has been more than 50 years of living with slogans and endless campaign promises that remain just that… promises. It has been decades of hope and of imagining castles in the air. We have become accustomed to living surrounded by poverty, mediocrity, and need. We woke up with every inauguration, hoping things would improve, and we went back to sleep. We were disillusioned six years later and with the same old story.
Mexico, our beautiful and kind people, always deserved and deserve more. To wait after waiting, the despair begins and may lead to a very problematic scenario. As Don Jesús Reyes Heroles said, “Let us think cautiously and prudently that the violent, bronco Mexico… is not in the tomb; it is only sleeping, let us not wake it up”. Likewise, the man who was López Portillo’s Secretary of the Interior warned that we would all be defeated when the bronco Mexico woke up. By waiting and despairing, we have built a country without hope based on the saying of some hit men: “I prefer to live a little, but well, rather than a lot and screwed”.
I don’t know if what is happening is enough to move the world, as it happened to John Reed when he wrote his famous book “Mexico Insurgente,” in which he described a series of personal experiences and chronicles about our country’s revolution. Similar to the Mexican experience, another event moved the world years later: the October Revolution of 1917, led by Lenin, which marked a before and after in the way revolutions were carried out.
What happened in the past suddenly takes on enormous relevance in the present. The only thing left to do is to close our eyes, listen to the angry cries of the majority, and know that stadiums replace parliaments and that the people do not sleep for all the sleepless nights they have been accumulating for centuries in search of justice, as has happened in other countries and at different times in history.
The worst thing that can be done now is to confuse the balance of the era that has passed with the expectations that we have – and that it is legitimate to have – for the era that is about to begin. The time has come to do the math and to take stock of what has happened with our eyes focused on the new scenario, taking into account the levels of poverty and the current situation we are witnessing, supporting the most disadvantaged without limiting or taking away the stimuli of those who have the will to promote and develop the future of a country. Choosing to benefit those who have the time, energy, and ability to work for their survival and boost the economy has left our country in a very compromising situation.
Historical opportunities, like personal interests, have a cycle and validity. The cycle that now begins must include the chapters and sighs of hope of a people who yearn to be better. Having defined the actors who will lead the next administration, it is imperative to be able to value the inheritance received and consider the allowed margin of play.
We are in the midst of creating a revolution that is becoming more noticeable every day. The role of the cartels and the subversion of the political, social, and economic order at the horse trot of almost 200 thousand murders in a six-year term. Violence has always been part of our lives; however, there has never been so much violence in the streets as today. López Obrador’s term is the most violent six-year term in Mexico’s history due to a policy that I do not doubt was well-intentioned but whose results I do not know who has benefited from, except for some in Sinaloa or Jalisco. Simply put, the end of the shootings did not bring hugs, at least for a large part of the citizens of this country.
We will have to get used to living with the people’s triumph, not considering the costs that will be produced in the adjustments of the reality from which we started and towards which we will go from here on.
It is forbidden to think about who will pay. It is not permitted to question where the money will come from to keep stomachs and spirits at peace. It is forbidden to theorize that not only is the best yet to come, but the best has already arrived, and this means that we can be whatever we want or intend to be. The fact is, what is happening in the world today is the end of transitions.
The first day of celebrating the Roman games constituted the birth of the new empire, leaving everything that happened before in the past. In today’s Mexico, we have already finished with the unfair, always unnecessary, and unsatisfactory concept of justice. We have exchanged a malfunctioning system for a leap into the void, trusting – as in the case of violence – that in the end, we are good and that, because of our goodness, we will not only triumph but that judges will cease to be necessary for our country. Judges who have already become unpopular characters with questionable reputations will be elected according to the mood or feeling of the people. This will force the judicial exercise in Mexico to be carried out without any restrictions or possibility of corruption.
Revolutions are back – I do not know if they are here to stay – built on the bitter taste of unfulfilled promises. Today is already yesterday. The past is already repeating itself, and now we have no choice but to get used to living on the gigantic waves of illusion, sacrificing the image of how to get to the shore and, if we manage to get there, what we will find. It is a new world. A world in which, if we do nothing, it will only be a matter of time before we hit rock bottom.
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