Yearly Archives: 2023

Luis Rubio In the early nineties, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Enrique Krauze explored the implications of those events on Latin-American countries, arriving at the conclusion that the last Stalinist would not die in the USSR, but rather in a university cubicle in Latin America. His sole error concerned the venue: the last […]

Luis Rubio “The stability of a democracy depends very much on the people making a careful distinction between what a government can do and cannot do,” stated the academician, diplomat and politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Seeking what it cannot achieve implies “creating the conditions for frustration and ruin.” All societies procure finding an equilibrium between […]

Luis Rubio The “liar’s paradox” is one of the most amusing logic puzzles: If the liar is indeed lying, then the liar is telling the truth, which means the liar just lied. In today’s Mexico, lies become truths, corruption is purified and impunity flourishes, confusing both those who narrate daily life as well as those […]

Luis Rubio Radicals -of any stripe- tend to perceive themselves as being the advance party of a society that shares their truth and desires a thoroughgoing transformation, right away. But that notion clashes with an obvious truth: most people want nothing other than to live normally: work, enjoy security, educate their children and have the […]

Luis Rubio The brew is complicated in itself: an unsatisfied electorate, a culture hardly prone to reaching compromises and considering the rights of others, and a tradition devoted to dividing rather than adding up. The past years have displayed the best and the worst of Mexico’s primitive democratic culture and our scant disposition for venturing […]

   Luis Rubio The narrative hides more than it illuminates: its purpose is not to explain the circumstances or to argue in favor of this or that proposal, but instead to control the national conversation and strengthen a message whose intention has nothing to do with progress or well-being. Five years of a daily dose […]

Luis Rubio Salim, a Central-African entrepreneur, is a personage who at once attracts and repels: his business prospers, serving up a perspective simultaneously optimistic about his country’s future and tragic in which progress, and the old practices that never disappeared, sow the seeds of the revolution that will come. The novel by V.S. Naipaul, A […]

Luis Rubio Three truths are indisputable:  President López Obrador is unrepeatable; public finances are more vulnerable than they appear; and the election of the Mexico’s next president will have of necessity to be the beginning of a great negotiation for building a new future. Whoever wins, man or woman, of whichever party, the country will […]

Luis Rubio Step by step, the project of concentration of power is now in its final phase with its consequent economic risks and inevitable destruction of civility. This statement will seem excessive to many, but history shows that when power is concentrated in a single person -and, worse, when this is done through disqualification and […]

  Conciliate Luis Rubio The great challenge for the future of Mexico lies in conciliating, or reconciling, a society that feels itself to be afflicted by circumstances and reasons that appear irreconcilable. The reality, perceptions and emotions pull in opposite directions, creating a perfect breeding ground for the environment of conflict -and, potentially, violence- characterizing […]