Yearly Archives: 2011

Success and opportunity are in the air and even the most modest of citizens alludes to the future. The question is what sustains this flagrant optimism to such a degree. Brazil impresses us because of the attitude of its population and because the possibility of development has grown despite the obstacles imposed by its impenetrable […]

The Sicilia march began as a cluster of bereaved victims justifiably angry due to the violence that is stalking the society. There was no agenda other than that of expressing and giving testimony to anguish and suffering on encountering the worst pain that a parent can endure. He sought to exact answers from the authority: […]

According to Lord Byron, “A thousand years may scarce form a State. An hour may lay it in ruins”. Our problem is that, despite what the PRIists –and everyone else- always thought, an institutional system was never consolidated in Mexico. Everyone spoke (and speaks) about institutions, but what the PRI defeat revealed is that the […]

Whatever’s the rage rules us. Referendum, revoking mandates, and popular initiative are grandiloquent words that enthuse politicians and scholars. The idea of constructing a direct democracy holds enormous allure because it allows one to imagine an engrossed citizenry and immense respect among political actors, all at the service of the citizens. It would appear unnecessary […]

Poverty is one of our worst blemishes and also one of our greatest mismatches. Beyond the quotidian polemics (similarly originating from political, ideological, or, simply, conceptual differences), I doubt that poverty is not a cause that all Mexicans would wish to defeat. In contrast with other controversial themes, in this one the differences do not […]

In one of his many memorable moments, on sitting down to play a game of dominoes, Cantinflas asked: “Are we going to play like gentlemen, or like what we are?” We have been playing for many years as what we are and not as gentlemen, that is, with rules of the game that always change. […]

President George H.W. Bush’s adviser, the fearless southern political strategist Lee Atwater, once said to Dan Quayle, Bush’s vice-president at that time, “You were the best rabbit we ever had. Let them chase you and they’ll stay off the important things.” From the time that I read this anecdote some years ago, I kept thinking […]

“The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates.” Thus said Tacitus, Roman senator. In Mexico, the government is weak, weighty, ostentatious, and very noisy, but not at all effective although it, yes indeed, has an interminable proclivity for legislating. The evidence is everywhere: in the poor performance of the economy; the violence; the lack […]

Control or responsibility: That, as Hamlet would have said, is the question. But this is not a literary digression; rather, it is a central question of the nature of power, the responsibility of those of who govern, and their relationship with the citizenry. For some, the citizen is a mere peon in the social dynamic: […]

“You have been sitting there too long for any good you have been doing,” Oliver Cromwell, the British Republican who defeated the throne, told the nobility. The same could be said for many businessmen and their respective chambers who cannot see further than their particular and immediate interest, even if that is entirely legitimate.  The […]