Luis Rubio
The narrative hides more than it illuminates: its purpose is not to explain the circumstances or to argue in favor of this or that proposal, but instead to control the national conversation and strengthen a message whose intention has nothing to do with progress or well-being. Five years of a daily dose of dogma from the official pulpit have created a parallel planet that makes it impossible to recognize the real goings-on in the world of the concrete. What takes place in the realm of reality -whether relative to insecurity, Ukraine or inflation- is relegated to the second plane and is discarded or interpreted in the light of the official narrative. All of that might be very good for the designs of political control, but it impedes the understanding of what is happening in the rest of the earthly world. And, of course, it has consequences.
“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle” wrote George Orwell in 1946. Although he was referring more to politics than to everyday life, his approach was quite logical: two things may be in the same place, but I may see only one of them. In today’s Mexico, where the narrative attracts and repels, respectively, either side of the citizenry, the day-to-day comings and goings are in the final analysis interpreted in radically contrasting and incompatible ways, generating a permanent disconnect, in addition to misunderstanding.
The obvious example these days is Xóchitl Gálvez, a political phenomenon whose appearance was circumstantial, not in the least because of the obstinacy of the narrator-in-chief who denied Gálvez’s “right of rebuttal,” provoking the emergence of the person who can well end up being the President’s nemesis. When the narrative not only affects the one being manipulated but also the manipulator himself, a miniscule error in calculation can acquire potentially cosmic dimensions.
Xóchitl Gálvez is not a new presence in the political panorama. The novelty is her sudden rise as a relevant political factor, in this case at the upcoming 2024 presidential election. Equally significant is the way her arrival on the political scene has been interpreted as an advent by some and as a figment of the imagination by others: a biblical phenomenon by the former, a fantasy by the latter. What’s remarkable is that few on each side of this great narrative divide characterizing current Mexican society take an interest in understanding the why of that keen difference in interpretation.
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts,” wrote Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the U.S. politician and diplomat. A complex concept to adopt in the Mexico of the “other data” (AMLO’s way of deflecting anything he disapproves of), but not for that is it less applicable at this present moment. No one can reasonably refute that current political discourse has taken a radical spin because Xóchitl Gálvez has become a key factor in this election. Each can have their own opinion on the fact of her emergence or on her specifically, but the fact itself is beyond dispute. The reality has changed and could affect the perception that, as the official narrative would suggest, everything had been settled, lacking only the formality of the president’s “finger pointing, or dedazo.
Beyond the fact, what is transcendent lies in the incapacity of the world of Morena to grasp the uneasiness and fears that afflict those not eating at that table. Xóchitl Gálvez became an element of hope and opportunity for an enormous portion of the population that discerns with worry and fear the continuation of a government dedicated to dividing and disqualifying, in addition to sacrificing the country’s future for the sake of a supposed transformation that is nothing other than the concentration of power in a sole individual. Needless to say, the same occurs on the other side of the divide, where the anger, rejection and resentment that decades -or centuries- of promises of development did not diminish poverty or reduce the vast inequalities characterizing the country. It is those misunderstandings that polarize and cause disagreements that leave the door open to conceivably radical, demagogical solutions.
What joins the two Mexicos that the narrative separates and divides is hope. AMLO peddles hope but only among his followers, while Xóchitl, the new political phenomenon, generates hope among those who view the presiding government with unease. The differences on that plane are minor: hope unifies if the leadership understands it and the importance it represents for the population. Much more important, hope can narrow the gap between the two Mexicos to convert it into a great transformative factor.
Mexicans are given to the search for saviors to address their limitations. Once and again throughout the last decades, the vote has favored those proffering nirvana. The illusion never dies, explaining the continuous failure to break away from endless traps. Thus, it is very important for those who find themselves encountering the possibility of heading up the looming candidacies to develop approaches that transcend the hopeful rhetoric and propose a project of development liable to advance it.
In the same text, George Orwell wrote that “we are all capable of believing things that we know to be untrue.” It is high time for those that aspire to the highest governmental function to explain what they would do to get the country out of the hole in which thousands of recent promises and acts of corruption, both recent and old, have left it.
www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof