FORBES – Luis Rubio
A survey taken by the UNAM several years in a row in the 80s and 90s concluded that Mexicans abhorred the government, saw few alternatives and had a great fear of violence. The history of recent decades appears to justify the three conclusions: we have not been able to upgrade the quality of government, the opposition has not been particularly good at governing and violence has taken possession of vast regions of the country. Were there a social consensus, perhaps it would be possible to attack the causes of these phenomena; however, the persistence of political conflict stymies even beginning to define the problem.
There are at least three sources of political conflict. One derives from the combination of political decentralization (and the budget) together with the centralization of power of organized crime: “formal, legal” power was decentralized but the governors did not construct police, public prosecutors, and, in general, State capacity that would substitute for the vertical control previously exercised by the federal government and that, for a long time, allowed maintaining a semblance of order. This happened precisely when the Americans had sealed off Caribbean drug access routes, the Colombians had recovered control of their country and, after 2001, the Americans had beefed up the border. All this concocted a lethal mix: a brutal fortification of the criminal mafias vs. a weak system of government. The challenge is thus phenomenal and is not solved merely with a federal government that is forceful, although without one it would be impossible to achieve this.
The second source of conflict has its origin in community conflicts (land, regional control, local bosses or caciques) that have always existed but that for lengthy periods were controlled from above and whose hands were tied by a weighty political system that never dealt with resolving the sources of conflict but merely kept these from flaring up. The capacity for control disappears and the conflicts escape to the surface. In many cases, this is concerned with deeply ingrained social movements that cannot be resolved by repression, but that, rather, demand new forms of political participation. Inevitably, above all when this has a bearing on drug routes, community-engendered movements are not infrequently found enmeshed in organized crime, sowing the seeds that could eventually lead to the collapse of any vestige of order and functional government. Michoacan is a good case in point.
Finally, the third source of conflict is the result of the disagreements that are the product of a political system well past its prime that refuses to transform itself: a pre-modern political system, a medieval judiciary and non-democratic canons of political action. The legislators protest because of what they see in the Pact for Mexico as the usurpation of their functions and responsibilities. The governors exercise the budget with no accountability. The three branches of government have ill-defined self-limits and no checks and balances. In a word, institutions and old ways survive that are incompatible with a transformed reality.
The country’s structural problems have not barred its economy from progressing, but have unavoidably become an encumbrance that impedes productivity from growing, new sources of wealth from taking root and development from being less inequitable. That is to say, conflict and the peculiar approach to dealing with it –not confronting it but steering clear of it- do nothing other than postpone the solutions, tap into the Mexican’s traditional cynicism and, most importantly, constitute an impediment to exploiting the opportunities that come about.
How to break the vicious circle? Theories and proposals in this respect abound: my observations along three decades tell me that ideas and proposals are indispensible, but that the crucial factor is a leadership well-disposed to head a great transformation. Cases in point: Felipe González, Nelson Mandela, Ricardo Lagos, Margaret Thatcher. Eminently distinct, but with a common denominator: the desire to construct and the clarity that their mandate was finite. That simple.
@lrubiof