Yearly Archives: 2019

Luis Rubio Life has its cycles and the calendar too. A year is about to end and the next one begins: the expectation never ceases to be present in the form of hope and fear, opportunity and possibility. As in other years, I take this moment to quote some of the great thinkers, this time […]

 Luis Rubio “Of all of man’s instruments that is not an extension of the body but of the mind, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book” Jorge Luis Borges   There are few themes as culminating in public discussion, in Mexico and in the world, as the manner in which to conduct economic affairs. […]

Luis Rubio Politics in the era of the ubiquity of information is about narratives: contrasting visions of the world that exaggerate the differences and attenuate the coincidences, all for the sake of capturing the support of the citizenry and its vote. The essence of politics has not changed, but the speed of the message, the […]

Luis Rubio The bullets did not do the job. Hugs aren’t working either. Insecurity and violence increase and there is no reasonable diagnosis of the problem nor of how to solve it. A threat by President Trump was enough for those responsible of security to forget about the problem or its terrible consequences for citizens, […]

WILSON CENTER – Mexico Institute Nov 24, 2019, by Luis Rubio @lrubiof As the López Obrador administration ends its first year in office, Mexicans can look back to a period of unrestrained change, mostly to recreate the legal structures of the past. The president has not been shy or modest in his objective to establish […]

 Luis Rubio Max Weber, the German sociologist, wrote that modernity –“the fate of our time”- consists of the advance of rationality and the retreat of the mystery, which he denominates “the disenchantment of the world.” Modernization implied, in his conception, the abandonment of magic in order to incorporate rationality into the making of decisions and […]

Luis Rubio According to a tweet that went viral, in the year 2192 the British Prime Minister flies to Brussels to ask for a new extension of the fatal date of the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union.  “No one remembers where that tradition originated, but each year it attracts many tourists […]

Luis Rubio “The reality of the myth is the unreality of the country”, wrote Monsiváis, a philosopher of everyday life.  The sixties qualify as mythological in Mexican politics, and more so at the current juncture. The sixties were years of great achievements, but also the seed of the dispute that, from that time, has devoured […]

Luis Rubio – Americas Quarterly – November 14, 2019 Mexico What to Make of AMLO After His Most Turbulent Weeks as President   How Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador has defied expectations – and not necessarily for the better. MEXICO CITY – Two things appeared certain when Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected president of Mexico […]

Luis Rubio The cartoon depicts Herman Munster, the abnormal fictional personage of the T.V. series of a half century ago, seated kindly next to a little girl who tells him: “I thought you were a monster, but you’re tender and sensitive,” to which Herman responds, “The thing is that I’m only campaigning for votes.” Whatever […]