Observations | Luis Rubio

Luis Rubio

All societies develop their myths and beliefs as ways of explaining life, but in Mexico these often fall short of reality. Someone once stated that if Kafka were Mexican, he would have been a narrator of everyday life. In that spirit, here are some observations that, without telling a coherent story, say a lot about this land of fantasy.

Mexico lives today the paradox of a weak government, but with a hyper powerful president. The government is incapable of managing a health crisis or distributing medicines, but the president can impose his law in the election of a local government. The country’s infrastructure is falling apart, the streets look like a war zone and extortion and violence proliferate in more and more regions, but a train that does not connect productive centers or add value destroys jungles and cenotes by presidential whim without there having been any feasibility assessment.
The flip side of that same paradox is that the international environment in which Mexico exists, and from which the government has pretended that it can be abstracted without cost or consequence. While the well-being of the population depends to a large extent on exports, the government does everything possible to complicate ties with the exterior, as if one thing were not related to the other. Instead of promoting and facilitating these ties -both in terms of trade negotiations and investment promotion as well as in the creation of infrastructure and facilitation of daily transactions- violations of the trade treaties keep piling up on which the fluidity of trade depends as well as the very viability of our economy. The claim that an electricity generation plant can be expropriated or prevented from operating without having international repercussions is mere wishful thinking.
Mexico does not have a food or self-sufficiency problem. The agricultural sector is, for the first time in centuries, in surplus and has achieved extraordinary productivity. What Mexico does suffer from, but is seldom addresses directly, is a huge problem of rural poverty. Imposing measures that restrict exports or imports of agricultural products will not solve rural poverty, which is at the heart of the country’s development dilemma. The next government could begin to meditate on the way in which rural poverty can be attacked, since the solution to three of the main challenges facing the country depends on this: social inequality, the quality and focus of education, and social mobility, three aspects of the same problem.
The recent state elections, in addition to the demonstrations sponsored by the citizenry as well as by the government, respectively, of the past few months, show one of the great contradictions that characterize Mexicans today. Not all Mexicans see themselves as citizens: in a recent survey, only 58% see themselves as such, compared to 42% who see themselves as “people”. In its desire to preserve and nurture the loyalty of the population above any other value or objective, the government has chosen to impede the growth of the economy, because, as the previous president of Morena once said, a poor people will always be loyal, but that sentiment withers as people prosper. Consequently, it is better to bet on permanent poverty.
But the above does not solve one of the key enigmas: the frequent distance that exists between organized civil society with respect to ordinary Mexicans. No one who has observed the contrasts between the demonstrations organized by the government and those of civil organizations can doubt that there lies not only a contradiction but also an enormous challenge. The very low turnout in the State of Mexico election speaks for itself.
Nor is it possible to close one’s eyes to the smallness of the Mexican political class, its lack of vision or the inability of the opposition to perform its crucial functions. The opposition leaders, now that their arrogance and incompetence have been exposed in the State of Mexico, cannot deny the obvious: that they have failed to act as the opposition to the institutional destruction led by the president. The citizenry has been losing one counterweight after another, remaining only protected by a harassed Supreme Court. The sum of arrogance, corruption and insignificance has left Mexicans observing how the only objective of the opposition is an embassy…
When one listens to leaders of countries that really aspire to progress, the contrasts with Mexico become all the more visible -and painful. It is not worth talking about places like Singapore, where the clarity of vision is impressive, but India, a nation infinitely poorer and more complex than Mexico, illustrates what is possible. The vocabulary used by officials as well as businessmen, political and social leaders speaks for itself: investment, productivity, social mobility, trust and predictability. Mexico has everything to adopt a similar catalogue, but worries about the little things always win out.

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -deliberate, contrived and dishonest- but the myth.” This is how Kennedy characterized the indisposition to advance and prosper. It would seem that he was referring to the Mexico of today…