Luis Rubio
Paraphrasing Albert Camus in his speech on receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature, “all governments doubtless feel called upon to reform the world.” Few achieve it. As soon as their mandate ends, the reverberations begin: what remained inconclusive, what was not done, what was done wrong. Or worse. In the Mexican post-Revolutionary era, the natural response was correcting the course in what was denominated as the “theory of the pendulum:” one government moved in one direction, and the next corrected course by going in the opposite direction. This manner of functioning changed from the eighties onward. The country incorporated itself into the world’s technological, financial, and commercial circuits to achieve lasting stability. Since 2018, the government has attempted to prevent that goal by recreating the risk of pendular movement. Where does that leave the future?
Contrary to what is usually thought (and is insisted upon in the daily narrative), between the eighties and 2018, there was less continuity than apparent, and there certainly was no consistent strategy throughout the period. After a clear beginning and one with strategic vision, what did ensue was an acceptance, sometimes a reluctant one, of the lack of alternatives in matters of economic policy, which translated into a series of disjointed policies, frequently inconsistent, but that advanced in the same direction. The formal objective was the incorporation of Mexico into the global economy, and every action of the governments of that era attempted to make headway on certain fronts or correct deficiencies that rendered the course of action difficult, but no integral or consistent strategy emerged.
The lacks and absences that emerged in that period are known by all because there is an irredeemable insistence on them in the daily public discourse. What is not recognized, in that it would be equivalent to engaging in heresy, is that Mexico’s problems are not the product of what was done (although there were errors, no doubt) but instead that of what was not done. Claudio Lomnitz described the heart of the problem in an article appearing in the periodical Nexos a year ago, whose subtitle says it all: “The Island of Rights and the Sea of Extortion.” According to Lomnitz, the reforms of the eighties and nineties created a space where there existed rules of the game and toward which resources were allotted in the form of infrastructure as well as of governmental capacity (a semblance of transparency and legality), but rather than amplifying that space for the whole society and territory, the government abandoned the Mexican who did not fit into the former space to their own devices, and it is therein that the country collapsed into a sea of violence, the absence of justice and extortion.
The paradox of the current government is that it did not have much of a favorable impact on any of those lacks or absences that it identified (and with which it won the presidency), but instead, in any case, it has accentuated, if not deepened them. Although there has been significant improvement in the population’s real incomes, severe reversals in institutional strength and democratic development do not augur well for the future and could undo the former. Against the expected, and despite the president’s popularity, Mexico today is more unequal and less prosperous.
For the past five years, the government has been mindful of public finances and benefitted from the previous decades’ reforms that it so much condemns and of the increasing “independence” of the exchange rate from the public accounts. Nonetheless, at the start of this electoral year, the horizon has changed: significant deficits now loom, threatening fiscal stability, and twenty bills to amend the constitution that would change the political and institutional panorama, which could lead to a crisis like that of the 80s, were introduced to the Congress. As the saying goes, he who sows the wind reaps the storm: nothing is written regarding the president’s popularity, exchange stability, or the electoral outcome.
In stark contrast with his predecessors, the President had the opportunity to affect deeply rooted interests in diverse ambits of the Mexican society that have been successful in impeding the adoption of much more aggressive policies in matters of justice, equity, distribution of public resources, and infrastructure, but he chose to rest on his laurels as if the mere presence of a powerful President would change history. Thus, he, who could have been the grand builder of the future, made it much more difficult and saturated with uncertainties.
On October 1, 2024, the day on which the next government will be inaugurated, the country will find itself before a somber panorama, with a divided society and a much less vigorous economy than it could, and, more than anything else, one whose productivity levels are very low, and where poverty and regional inequality will have proliferated. Whoever becomes the President that day will face severe lacks and the enormous challenge of having to correct course, which will require the support of the Mexican society. From the moment of the inaugural address itself, the new President’s first decision will, of necessity, be related to whether she will attempt to unite the entire Mexican society in a common project or proceed to accentuate the divisions.
Whoever wins, the true dilemma will be how to get out of the hole in which the outgoing government will have left the country and how to get rid of its protagonist.
@lrubiof
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