Luis Rubio
Jack-of-all-trades (Milusos in Spanish) is one of the most accurate, and audacious at the same time, characterizations of the Mexican who can do nothing other than to work for a living. Héctor Suárez, an actor, popularized the term in his film of the same name, a drama and simultaneously a social critique: the enormous capacity of adaptation of the Mexican on coming up against the adversity that the socioeconomic structure produces. The term milusos reveals a very in-depth reality of the Mexican: their search for solutions, their rejection of imposition and, to achieve this, their extraordinary creativity.
In the early eighties, a European ambassador in Mexico told me that she’d gone to see the pyramids of Teotihuacán. On the way, she observed a phenomenon that contradicted everything she’d learned from the preparatory materials with which her Foreign Ministry had provided her, these materials which had characterized the country as a socialist nation. She expected a conformist and timorous population. What she found, literally from the moment she advanced along Mexico City’s Insurgentes Avenue toward Indios Verdes, was the most enterprising population she’d ever seen: no corner was bereft of a vendor of sweets, magazines, cold drinks, and on entering the zone of the pyramids, it was replete with sellers of handicrafts and evocative playthings of the most diverse type.
The creativity of the Mexican may be noted in all aspects of life, but above all in their hunger for getting ahead, for which they work longer hours than in many countries, many more than the average in the nations of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a testament not only to their willingness to work, but also to Mexico’s very poor socioeconomic organization, rendering as it does such low productivity levels. The differences in the nature and quality of the educational and health systems, as well as a greater investment in the infrastructure of other OECD nations, translate into much higher levels of productivity.
Another way of phrasing this is that the Mexican possesses an enormous propensity for procuring innovative ways of creating, resolving problems and setting up shop. Mexicans in the United States tend to create enterprises with great celerity because they discern opportunities and attempt to convert them into realities for their own greater well-being. There as well as in Mexico, the key lies in that no one has their life all tied up with a red bow for them in advance.
Mexicans work because there’s no other way, but nearly always they work without ideal instruments or with tools that are very poorly prepared for being successful, especially the poor-quality and inadequate education provided to them by the educational system. Despite that, their attitude and disposition do not falter because their skills and tool kits are lacking in comparison with those of other nationalities. They work and put forth their best effort to this in life, but, above all, they work to generate wealth, without which no government would have anything to distribute.
Contrariwise, when a government opts for giving away money for people not to have to work, it impedes the creation of wealth and inhibits personal development. Of course, not all jobs are equally desirable, remunerative or satisfactory, but all contribute to the development of people, therefore to that of families and countries. To eliminate the incentive to work implies destroying the essence of life itself and, consequently, that of the nation.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Argentina was of the wealthiest nations in the world, comparable with the European ones or the United States of the epoch. The combination of natural resources, a fundamentally middle-class population and a disposition to work led to the consecration of a successful nation. One hundred years later, the profile of Argentina is very different, with a very much lower range of product per capita. One of the main reasons for this fall was the disincentive to work and to create wealth incorporated into the Peronist strategy of subsidizing workers and women, children, older adults, the unemployed and persons who retired after only a few short work years. When people do not have the need to work because the government systematically subsidizes them, the country begins to break down.
It is within this context that the recent proposal by the Morena-party candidate looms so dangerous and pernicious with respect to the function of the government in this matter: “It is not true, it is false, that if one does not work, then one cannot have a good living standard. That is the discourse of the past. Here the government, the Mexican State, has to provide support.” One thing is to “support” older adults who no longer entertain the possibility of contributing to the nation’s productive life and another very different one is to subsidize everyone because work is not important. That would imply not only that depending on the government is a virtue, but that, in addition, people do not have the right to develop themselves. Worse yet, that work is not a form of progressing, realizing oneself and contributing to personal, familial and national development.
The reason is obvious why the Morena presidential candidate thinks of work: as past President Porfirio Díaz said, “A dog with a bone in its mouth neither bites nor barks.” But, beyond creating clienteles, Gertrude Himmelfarb had a most appropriate idea concerning the issue: “Work, if not sacred, is essential not only to their sustenance but to their self-respect.”
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