Luis Rubio
Salim, a Central-African entrepreneur, is a personage who at once attracts and repels: his business prospers, serving up a perspective simultaneously optimistic about his country’s future and tragic in which progress, and the old practices that never disappeared, sow the seeds of the revolution that will come. The novel by V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River, allows one to appreciate two ways of perceiving the same reality. Something in that story brings to mind the way that the Mexico of today has split into two great blocs of persons who inhabit a same place, but who contemplate the future in very contrasting ways.
Sixty percent of Mexicans attest to being satisfied with their lives, they have seen their real income grow and they are employed. That same 60% supports the President and considers that his administration has made possible the stability and well-being that it enjoys. For its part, the remaining forty percent disapprove of the President’s administration due to their perception that it is damaging the foundations of future well-being. One asks oneself what it is that makes two groups of the same society able to entertain perceptions so radically contrasting about the same phenomenon or historical moment.
According to the survey of Alejandro Moreno in “El Financiero” (May 2, 2023), the fundamental difference between the two groups of Mexicans is the level of schooling: while the vote of university students was crucial in the 2018 Presidential Election, today that cohort represents the segment most critical of his work. The two most solid contingents that sustain the President’s popularity are older Mexicans and persons with less schooling. The inevitable conclusion is that the individuals most unfavored in their incomes and life and employment perspectives have benefitted from the economic stability, the growth of real disposable income and from a job market that, after the pandemic, has presented greater work opportunities.
In politico-electoral terms, these two contingents project their perception of the situation in the way they hold an opinion and vote: those feeling that they have reaped benefits approve of the presidential administration and emit their vote in favor of the governing party independently of belonging or not to the Morena Party; while on the other side, those disapproving of the presidential administration vote contrariwise. Nothing new under the sun.
What is relevant is the contrast of perspectives. It is evident that the improvement in the real income of the people exerts an impact similarly on the entire population, and, yet, the conclusions in mind-set at which those two population segments arrive are stringently opposed. The explanation for this phenomenon is key to understanding the moment and to emit a prognosis of the country’s prospects in the future, including at the 2024 ballot box.
The crux of the contrast seems to lie in the perspective of time. For the cohort that feels satisfied, what counts is the here and now; for the remaining 40% what matters is the perception of the future: where is the country going toward. This concerns the perspectives emanating from economic realities and from very distinct visions and that display the circumstances of a very divided country: the one that has had the opportunity to advance in the scale of education, and the one that got stuck in an educational system that does not prepare students for the labor market nor for life. In this world era, in which what adds value (and pays better salaries) is no longer physical strength but the person’s creativity, educational achievement makes an abysmal difference in individuals’ incomes and, inexorably, in their perceptions.
For those barely able to get a job, often a precarious one, what carries weight is preserving it, and it is natural to attribute the job’s availability to whoever is at the government’s helm at the time. For those who already have a job and who have the perception of being able to continue advancing up the rungs of the income scale and those of their family’s prosperity, their concerns are concentrated on the future: will the economic stability be maintained? Will there be a crisis akin to those at the end of prior governmental terms? For the former what is of import is the moment at which a survey is taken or the moment at which one deposits their vote in the urn; for the latter the only thing that matters are the future perspectives because the present is already resolved.
Two Mexicos that reflect the place at which each individual is found on the productive chain, but that, at the same time constitute a true censure of the political system in general that has been incapable, for decades, to resolve elemental problems such as those of infrastructure in general as well as health, but above all education. Previously, a half century ago, those things were not noteworthy because the Mexican economy was a simple one and negligibly demanding. Today, the job market demands increasing specialization and the educational system in force -and the government that covers up for union bosses instead of preparing children- is incapable of providing it.
The President can be very satisfied with the popularity afforded him by the least favored Mexicans, but what they are really awarding him for is his unwillingness to create conditions for that same support base to have a better future.
www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof
a quick-translation of this article can be found at www.luisrubio.mx