Luis Rubio
“Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push —in just the right place— it can be tipped.” This is the way that Malcolm Gladwell explains how things change, frequently and suddenly and without warning or without antecedents suggesting that a change was to be found within the realm of possibilities. As the 2024 presidential elections in Mexico approaches, it is natural to extrapolate the present moment to conclude that what appears obvious or inevitable today will be the reality in that moment. Notwithstanding this, history shows that the very process of succession alters reality, creating circumstances that modify the panorama. Worse yet when the lashing out against the sources of certainty that remain is incessant.
Many things in our world change suddenly. Some are the product of an alteration of specific circumstances (such as a bombing immediately before an election), others result from the gradual accumulation of factors, none of them significant or far-reaching by themselves, but altogether devastating. The revelation of a corruption case changes the image of who is involved, just as an irrelevant leadership suddenly acquires cosmic dimensions. Nobody anticipated the collapse of the USSR or the French Revolution.
For several decades successive Mexican governments dedicated themselves to building sources of certitude. That was how the regulatory commissions were born (competition, telecommunications, energy, etc.), the electoral institutions, the “new” Supreme Court and some others that, with greater or lesser impact, had as their purpose conferring certainty on the electorate, the economic agents, and on the citizenry in general. However, during the last four years Mexicans have been witness to a systemic attack on all those institutions, first in the undermining of their credibility and afterward in procuring their elimination, neutralization or submission.
The great question is whether it is possible to carry out all those changes without there being any consequence. To date the response to this seems clear-cut, in that private investment, especially foreign, has grown systematically, in good measure thanks to the existence of The Mexico—United States—Canada Agreement, USMCA, and to the U.S.–China conflict. Aside from some manifestations and complaints, Mexico has followed its course of deterioration but without confronting any serious crises. There is no better evidence of the latter than the Mexican peso–U.S. dollar exchange rate, which not only has not undergone a severe alteration, but instead has tended to strengthen.
In this context, it is natural to think that it is possible, and even reasonable to extrapolate the present moment to conclude that the 2024 presidential election has already been decided and whomever the President decides to nominate as his candidate will win without any discussion. I have not the least doubt that were the election to be held next Sunday, that would be the outcome. The problem with that scenario is two-fold: first, the election will take place in just over fifteen months and, if history teaches us anything at all, the probability of things staying constant is low. But the greatest problem entailed in that logic, and the reason for thinking that the encounter will be much more complex is the manner of acting of the President himself, who with his fight against the National Electoral Institute (INE) demonstrates that he entertains no certainty that the result will be in his favor, which is what moves him to do away with the INE to ensure control of the process, all with Stalin’s logic: what’s important is who counts the votes.
My impression is that it is possible to carry out many modifications without any apparent consequence, until all of a sudden one of those results is excessive and everything changes. There is an old saying in Mexican politics: “nothing changes here, until it changes.”
Various commentators have been arguing that the change proposed for the electoral institutions can be the tipping point, perhaps a breaking point, which reshapes the entire political scenario. This would constitute the equivalent of doing away with the underpinnings of the status quo. One might think that one pin more or one pin less does not change the panorama, until one of those pins causes a dramatic reaction that no one foretold specifically, but that ended changing everything: the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Of greater import, once the process is unleashed, nothing can stop it. If not, ask ex-President López Portillo.
In the seventies, everything seemed to be going along nicely, until the interest rates shot up and, with that, the Mexican economy collapsed like a house of cards, in fact bankrupting the Mexican economy and giving rise to a decade of recession and (nearly) hyperinflation. I do not suggest that this would be the probable chain of events in this moment, but it is paramount not to lose perspective. Beyond what people could say or even think, what humans value is certainty, like that provided by the INE voter identification card. The moment at which the population -and its diverse subsegments- begins to perceive that things could change people’s attitudes might be instantaneously revamped.
Mexico is found at an exceedingly delicate moment in which day upon day the few factors of certainty that persist are put at risk. No one knows what can set off a change, but the attempt to test the limits is systematic, incessant and irredeemable.
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