Luis Rubio
“When people stop trusting any institutions or having any firmly held values, they can easily accept a conspiratorial view of the world”. That, says Peter Pomerantsev*, is the ulterior objective of the Kremlin’s strategy of propaganda and control: generating cynicism among the population so that it will accept the command of the government. Cynicism ends up becoming an instrument of political control.
In Mexico the cynicism of the population is ancestral. Although the reign of the old system did not entail the perversity of the Soviet system, the witticisms, jokes and, in general, cynicism comprised the defense mechanisms that the society developed in the face of poor economic performance, governmental corruption and abuse. However, there was, and is, a glimmer of Soviet inspiration in the management of information, which always led to the flowering of conspiratorial explanations. In this light, it is fascinating to observe the inherent contradiction in the protests –before and now- against the exacerbated power of Mexican presidents: how even the civil organizations that pride themselves most in their autonomy heartily end up demanding from the President himself action, response and resolutions.
One of the chief qualities of the old Mexican political system was the equilibrium generally maintained between control and freedom. Although it was doubtlessly a system infused with control accompanied by eventual recourse to authoritarian measures, spaces of personal freedom were also significant. The contrast with military dictatorships and totalitarian societies was brutal: not by chance was the system always referred to (and an infinity of academicians characterized it thus) as relatively unique or at least exceptional. Its paramount defect was the absence of adjustment mechanisms that would have permitted the flexibility necessary to proceed to adapt to changing times. That lack of adjustment capacity explains in good measure the complexity of the moment Mexico is currently experiencing.
Totalitarian systems generated loyalties that were the product of fear, but they never acknowledged the fact that, on attempting to control everything –all aspects of the society and daily life-, those same regimes made it possible for anything to become a source of dissent. Vaclav Havel, the dissident intellectual and later Czech Republic President, exhorted the population to take advantage of that spirit of control and overturn it: if the government wanted to monopolize the entire life of the citizenry, citizens had to, simply, live “the truth”, ignoring the official verities.
One of the objectives of the KGB, the Soviet intelligence and repression organization, consisted of manipulating information, day-to-day life and the economy: things could not “simply happen”; they had to be the product of a decision from above devoted to manipulating the day-to-day progression. Markets could not be free; they had to be administered. Elections could not be unpredictable: they had to be decided upon beforehand. Everything that is not controlled is hostile. With that logic, the Russian Government and its satellites kept the population subjected for decades.
The Mexican political system learned much from those practices and improved on them in a myriad of cases, beginning with a very simple one: it never fell into the pretentiousness of controlling everything. One day, after I published an article that had upset a functionary, the Minister of the Interior called me. As if we were great friends, he told me, in overly colloquial mode, as if providing harmless counsel, “in Mexico anything can be thought, some things can be said and very little can be written”. The threat was clear, but it wasn’t same as the Gulag.
What the system did not learn was to adapt; while it did achieve the containing of dissident movements when independent candidates emerged in the forties and fifties, the repression of the 1968 Student Movement marked an end and a beginning. Instead of steering clear of the storm as it was wont to do, the government at the time interpreted it as a challenge to its essence and existence and acted in consequence. Fifty years later we are still living with the consequences; not only has the raison d’être of any government, that of maintaining order and security, been cast aside, but any vestige of civility has vanished.
Can the vicious circle be broken? The manner in which diverse tight-spots in recent times have been resolved give the impression that this would be difficult. Seen in retrospect, the great electoral reform, that of 1996, was for all intents and purposes a mechanism of co-optation: in reality the electoral system did not change to open competition, but instead incorporated two additional parties (PAN and PRD) into the old system, that of privileges. In today’s Congress there is enormous diversity of representation, but there is a multiplicity of anecdotes intimating that the actual mechanism of legislative control and voting can be likened to the world’s oldest practice: money under the table. In fact, it seems so obvious and in the open that it is over the table and with well-established tariffs. Some decisions with regard to appointments have been forced upon the legislature and other nominating bodies by the threat of demonstrations and work stoppages. That is, by means of force.
It seems to me that there are two ways to break the conundrum: one would be the product of leadership that understands the risks involved in continuing to pursue the present course. The other would be for organizations of the civil society to mature and develop strategies and coalitions dedicated to driving the development of checks and balances that would impede the abuse and excesses. I do not see how the reality is going to change by requesting action from the individual concentrating the power (indeed, ever more complicated to exercise) if what is sought is checks and balances and transparency. The alternative is cynicism.
*The Kremlin’s Information War, Journal of Democracy, Oct. 2015.
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