Luis Rubio
Mexicans longed for -such was the spirit of the moment thirty years ago and again in 2018- a successful country, developed, more equal and without the corruption that corrodes everything. But they were never willing to do what was necessary to achieve those aspirations. The result was to be expected: many promises, great expectations, followed by enormous disillusionments and their consequent political impacts.
Reform or transform, the two verbs employed to promote changes in the structure of the economy, the society, and Mexican politics during the last decades, mean the same thing: modify structures to procure a better social and economic performance. What exists is changed to build something better. However, what happens when those changes are inadequate, insufficient, erroneous, contradictory or non-existent?
This is the history of Mexico in the last decades and now it is repeating itself, but inversely: formerly attempting to construct something new, now seeking to restore what there was before. The easy part is to blame this or that on what was done in the past or what is being done now, but the reality is that Mexico has for decades been subject to experimentation without the commitment (or even the real intention) or carrying out those reforms or the present “transformation” in integral fashion.
The countries that have executed flourishing transformations are characterized by political negotiations -among the politicians who represent the society and their diverse interests- to define and agree upon the final objective, and the costs they are disposed to assume. The case of Spain is exceedingly eloquent: the famous debates of Felipe González during his years as leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) show how he faced his counterparts head on to define objectives, arrive at solutions, and attend to the consequences of these. Once the political negotiation was resolved, the “technicians” were put in charge of implementation, the way already paved.
In Mexico the process was exactly the opposite: here the objectives and strategies were defined by the technicians and then the politicians, lacking any incentive to cooperate, had to deal with the consequences. Yet more importantly, though it may seem paradoxical, that manner of proceeding limited the reach of the proposed reforms because the technicians themselves adjusted them to the political realities that they perceived. That is, instead of subjecting the transformation that they envisioned to broad political negotiation, they resorted to the circus stunt of preserving the status quo (maintaining the political system in form and the party in power) while the structures of the economy were altered, with evident impacts on the social order.
In this context, it is not by chance that in Spain a democracy was consolidated while the economy was being transformed, while Mexicans ended up with a split economy (modern and old, exporter and protected, productive and unproductive) and a political system in permanent strife. Additionally, Spain is not exceptional: there are multiple nations in Asia, South America and Europe that have carried out sensitive transformations in an integral way.
President López Obrador has been a stubborn critic of the reforms initiated after the 1982 economic collapse, but his own proposal, beyond his moral streak (attack corruption, poverty and inequality), suffers from the same transgression as that of his very indefatigable predecessors: he tries to impose it relentlessly, without discussion and, in the best of cases, with rigged surveys, and an interminable gift of gab designed to hush up a most incommensurate reality. Worse still, in contrast with the “neoliberals” he so revels in berating, on eliminating the entire technical capacity the government used to possess there can be no advancement of projects susceptible of generating income, wealth or jobs.
Looking back, past the scope of individuals and political parties, the results produced by governmental management since the end of the sixties to date are atrocious. Certainly, advances in various rubrics are impacting (and AMLO himself benefits from the financial stability as well as from the vitality of the export sector), but it is equally certain that an immense portion of the population does not sense improvement, above all in contrast with the expectations and promises accompanying those reforms (former and present).
López Obrador delights in beleaguering his predecessors, but before the cock crows, he will find himself on the other side of the podium with infinitely fewer valuable results (in fact, the majority of these negative) with which to defend himself. Suffice to observe the corruption typifying his government, the burgeoning poverty and the incessant insecurity. Worst of all for him would be a scenario in which whoever succeeds him were to persist in the tactic of confrontation: confrontation with him.
The question now is what is it that is required to get out of the hole in which Mexicans find themselves and the one that the president continues to dig deeper one a.m. press conference after another. AMLO built his career by enlivening and exploiting social resentment which, while containing and diminishing the risk of a social explosion, has done nothing, aside from his narrative, to channel that capacity of mobilization toward the transformation of the national structures to achieve a more vigorous and equitable economy. No one, beginning with the president himself, should harbor the expectation of a promising future.
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