Yearly Archives: 2024
Complex Times
Luis Rubio The electoral victory last June has emboldened not only the President, but also his successor, now President-elect, and the entire Morena contingent. The happiness of having triumphed, fully justified despite the irregularities committed by the President, is leading to a cascade of actions and decisions that could well end up undermining, if not […]
Beginning or End?
Luis Rubio As the saying goes, after an intemperate night before comes the morning after. A less amiable way to observe the current government is to recall Louis XV when he stated that “Après moi le déluge.” In effect, soon will conclude the most destructive Mexican government of the last century leaving more than deficits […]
Corruption
Luis Rubio “If it does not make sense, it sounds metallic” goes a popular refrain. In Mexico the governments change but not the practices nor the customs. Corruption could be an evil, a cultural factor or a characteristic, but never a crime. Many are accused of corruption, but never for the corruption itself, but instead […]
An Anecdote
Luis Rubio It was to be a government that would transform Mexico, the government would stave off the ills that characterized the country and that had impeded it from acquiring the grandeur corresponding to it. The ambition was great: it would be a transformation of the size of the Mexican Independence or of the Madero […]
Nearshoring
Luis Rubio Opportunities are opportunities when they are taken advantage of and summarily assumed, because contrariwise they simply are not. At the same time, no governmental or national action constitutes a panacea. Nearshoring is a great potential opportunity if Mexicans know how to take advantage of it and convert it into an instrument for the […]
Democracy According to AMLO
Luis Rubio A banner hanging from a building during the recent presidential race defined the challenge of Mexico in pithy fashion: “democracy with defects or dictatorship without rights: you decide.” Although democracy is a term frequently employed in Mexican political rhetoric, AMLO, the outgoing president, converted the term into an insubstantial turn of phrase that […]
Fantasy World
Luis Rubio In The Name of The Rose, Umberto Eco employs an anecdote to evoke an obvious fact. He says: “In the Middle Ages, cathedrals and convents burned like tinder; imagining a medieval story without a fire is like imagining a Second World War movie in the Pacific without a fighter plane shot down in […]
A Coup-Like Mentality
Luis Rubio No one can doubt that justice in Mexico is practically nonexistent. The average Mexican lives in a sea of permanent abuse without having any recourse to protect their interests. Most of the issues -contracts, services, defective products- that involve the average citizen are local, unlike the federal jurisdiction, which is the one that […]
The Obverse
Luis Rubio Leaders inherit their circumstances, affirm Zelikow and Rice.* “Facing those circumstances between the years 1988 and 1992, some leaders chose, quite deliberately, to transform the basic operating principles of whole societies. They chose to abolish countries and create new ones. They chose to roll back and substantially disarm the larger and most dangerous […]
Paradigms
Luis Rubio During her campaign, today’s President-Elect repeatedly stated that two contrasting models of the country and the government were at stake in the election. In effect: democracy and tyranny are two models in counterpoint that entail fundamental consequences for the citizenry and for the country’s future. Whatever way each citizen voted in past election, […]