Luis Rubio

“Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push —in just the right place— it can be tipped.” This is the way that Malcolm Gladwell explains how things change, frequently and suddenly and without warning or without antecedents suggesting that a change was to be found within the realm of possibilities. As the 2024 presidential elections in Mexico approaches, it is natural to extrapolate the present moment to conclude that what appears obvious or inevitable today will be the reality in that moment. Notwithstanding this, history shows that the very process of succession alters reality, creating circumstances that modify the panorama. Worse yet when the lashing out against the sources of certainty that remain is incessant.

Many things in our world change suddenly. Some are the product of an alteration of specific circumstances (such as a bombing immediately before an election), others result from the gradual accumulation of factors, none of them significant or far-reaching by themselves, but altogether devastating. The revelation of a corruption case changes the image of who is involved, just as an irrelevant leadership suddenly acquires cosmic dimensions. Nobody anticipated the collapse of the USSR or the French Revolution.

For several decades successive Mexican governments dedicated themselves to building sources of certitude. That was how the regulatory commissions were born (competition, telecommunications, energy, etc.), the electoral institutions, the “new” Supreme Court and some others that, with greater or lesser impact, had as their purpose conferring certainty on the electorate, the economic agents, and on the citizenry in general. However, during the last four years Mexicans have been witness to a systemic attack on all those institutions, first in the undermining of their credibility and afterward in procuring their elimination, neutralization or submission.

The great question is whether it is possible to carry out all those changes without there being any consequence. To date the response to this seems clear-cut, in that private investment, especially foreign, has grown systematically, in good measure thanks to the existence of The Mexico—United States—Canada Agreement, USMCA, and to the U.S.–China conflict. Aside from some manifestations and complaints, Mexico has followed its course of deterioration but without confronting any serious crises. There is no better evidence of the latter than the Mexican peso–U.S. dollar exchange rate, which not only has not undergone a severe alteration, but instead has tended to strengthen.

In this context, it is natural to think that it is possible, and even reasonable to extrapolate the present moment to conclude that the 2024 presidential election has already been decided and whomever the President decides to nominate as his candidate will win without any discussion. I have not the least doubt that were the election to be held next Sunday, that would be the outcome. The problem with that scenario is two-fold: first, the election will take place in just over fifteen months and, if history teaches us anything at all, the probability of things staying constant is low. But the greatest problem entailed in that logic, and the reason for thinking that the encounter will be much more complex is the manner of acting of the President himself, who with his fight against the National Electoral Institute (INE) demonstrates that he entertains no certainty that the result will be in his favor, which is what moves him to do away with the INE to ensure  control of the process, all with Stalin’s logic: what’s important is who counts the votes.

My impression is that it is possible to carry out many modifications without any apparent consequence, until all of a sudden one of those results is excessive and everything changes. There is an old saying in Mexican politics: “nothing changes here, until it changes.”

Various commentators have been arguing that the change proposed for the electoral institutions can be the tipping point, perhaps a breaking point, which reshapes the entire political scenario. This would constitute the equivalent of doing away with the underpinnings of the status quo. One might think that one pin more or one pin less does not change the panorama, until one of those pins causes a dramatic reaction that no one foretold specifically, but that ended changing everything: the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Of greater import, once the process is unleashed, nothing can stop it. If not, ask ex-President López Portillo.

In the seventies, everything seemed to be going along nicely, until the interest rates shot up and, with that, the Mexican economy collapsed like a house of cards, in fact bankrupting the Mexican economy and giving rise to a decade of recession and (nearly) hyperinflation. I do not suggest that this would be the probable chain of events in this moment, but it is paramount not to lose perspective. Beyond what people could say or even think, what humans value is certainty, like that provided by the INE voter identification card. The moment at which the population -and its diverse subsegments- begins to perceive that things could change people’s attitudes might be instantaneously revamped.

Mexico is found at an exceedingly delicate moment in which day upon day the few factors of certainty that persist are put at risk. No one knows what can set off a change, but the attempt to test the limits is systematic, incessant and irredeemable.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The great success of President   López Obrador is not to be found in an exceptional strategy or ability, but instead in his having discovered an amorphous and untapped electorate that did not feel represented. His mastery for communicating with that part of the population has equipped him with enormous impetus, much of that the product of the nonexistence of discernible alternatives in current national political formations. That is, his success has been twice driven by the incapacity of the political parties to understand the new realities that characterize the citizenry and to adapt to them. Therein lies the success of AMLO, but also the opportunities for the opposition.

The argument is very simple: the country has undergone immense changes over the last decades; the electorate was transformed; the context -both internal and external- is another; the citizenry comprises a new reality, previously practically nonexistent; and the transmission of information, ideas and dogmas is now instantaneous. Each of these elements has built a new political reality that does not dovetail with the traditional paradigms lying at the heart of the national political entities and institutions. In a word, the country changed, but the politicians, especially the political parties, live on in a remote past that has nothing to do with the Mexico of today.

That maladjustment explains the incoherence among the stances of the political parties -all of them, including Morena- and the national electorate. Suffice to observe the atrophied, clumsy, corrupt and petty leaderships that typify these entelechies dubbed “political parties”. The fluidity of the electorate finds no dwelling place in the mind or game plan of the parties, thence their incapacity to motivate or attract voters.

In this context an astute politician arrived on the scene who identified an electorate that does not respond to traditional party brands, which is resentful of the prevailing corruption and that is (or was, at least in 2018) made up of an extraordinarily diverse fringe of persons regarding their origin or social and economic position. The connection of AMLO with his electorate takes place at his party’s perimeter. López Obrador, like Trump (in another context), chanced upon a new electorate and capitalizes on it each morning, apparently even defying the laws of gravity.

The political parties enjoy a privileged situation because the law elevates them and protects them. The law grants certainty of permanence, funds and stability on the three largest parties, and generates opportunities of association for the small ones for them to partake from those same benefits. That is, the entire politico-legal structure that kindles the political parties is designed to preserve the status quo of decades ago and all the incentives that arise therein rekindle the maladjustment distinguishing Mexican politics.

If anyone doubts the latter,  they have only to look at the way that the reelection of legislators or municipal presidents operates: rather than this functioning to draw near the deputies, senators and municipal presidents and oblige them to respond to the demands of the citizenry, that is, for them to represent the latter, reelection fortifies and secures the power of the party leaderships because it is the latter that decide who can register to run for reelection. The inexorable conclusion is that the authors of the electoral statutes -those that have afforded Mexicans certainty, stability and less political violence- have also made it possible for the emergence of a political phenomenon such as López Obrador. Instead of that legal framework favoring a natural evolution of the political system, its effect was that of paralyzing said system, anchoring it to a distant past, heightening citizen anger and indignation. Paradoxically it now ends up that AMLO wants to alter the very scheme that fortifies him, but that’s another story for another day.

The problem of the political parties are their misdeeds, many of these historic, especially those of the PRI, because they form, like corruption, an inherent component of their former times and nature. The passing of the PAN through power was no more commendable, because in addition to its being sparsely effective as a governing party, it ended up falling into many of the same corrupt practices. Morena will soon come across to face the same dilemmas because, beyond the person of the president, it is not distinct from the others.  But the worse part is not the existence of those transgressions, but the inability of the opposition political parties to grasp the causes of the citizens’ ire or of AMLO’s success.

The strengths that the law confers on party leaderships end up being colossal weaknesses, as recent PRI conduct illustrates. The question is when will the parties and their leaders break free from that partisan dead weight, both the historic as well as the contemporary. That liberation must be the product not only of an elemental congruence with today’s Mexico or of a false morality, but one deriving from cold political calculation: because being associated with corruption, the narco, predatory unionism or a conception of the world long ago surpassed entails ever growing diminishing returns.

In as much as the 2024 mother of all electoral battles is closing in, the question is not about AMLO, who will pass on in history in one way or another. The question is whether the opposition will be capable of reforming itself to be able to ally itself, because without that it will continue to dig the hole of its own extinction. And with it, that of the country.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The engine of political liberalization -and of the incipient Mexican democracy- was the succession of electoral reforms that, from the year 1964, but above all in 1996, was experienced by Mexican society. Each of those reforms responded to its own circumstances, but that of 1996 was crucial because it was the product of an open negotiation between the diverse forces and political parties, smoothing the way for transparent, fair and duly protected competition, in an institutional sense, for accession to power. In true  Mexican style, Mexicans took a great step forward and subsequently did not follow through.

During these decades the country underwent two contradictory processes. On the one hand, the economy was modernized and transformed, creating an exceptional platform of growth in some regions and sectors, but also a series of enormous backlogs and obstacles for the rest. On the other hand, in unison with competitive elections, politics withstood increasing degradation due to the on-going violence and insecurity, the impunity with which public and private actors conducted themselves without the slightest compunction, and with the corruption that corrodes all things. The bases were established for political competition and economic functionality, but the institutional structures were not built that would bestow permanence and viability on those two great achievements.

Democracy flourishes when society assumes itself as citizenry, capable of rendering their rights valid, which is only possible through solid, vital and functional institutions. Although various institutions were developed, two indicators reveal that the result is not commendable. On the one hand, the violence and insecurity demonstrate that an adequate security and justice system was not engendered to match the prevailing state of affairs. On the other hand, nothing better illustrates the deficit that the facility with which the current government has destroyed that entire scaffolding with which it was hoped that Mexico would accede to modernity and civilization.

Democracy is more than elections: it has to do with citizen rights, justice, freedom of expression, checks and balances for the exercise of power and the limits of potential abuse on the part of the rulers. In fact, in the words of the great XX century philosopher, Karl Popper, democracy consists of the certainty that those that rule will not abuse the citizens. And Popper speaks of countries with functional governments, of which Mexico is plainly not a good example.

In Mexico democracy stayed stuck in place on the first rung of the ladder. In 1997, in the first federal election after the 1996 reform, the opposition won the majority of the Congressional seats, followed by the victory of Fox in 2000. Two outstanding successes in a country that had been characterized by political stability but not due to citizen participation. However, nothing, except access to power, changed in Mexican politics. Truth be told, politics continued to deteriorate in parallel with the rise of organized crime, the absence of justice and the increasingly visible corruption. Now with AMLO attacking the National Electoral Institute (INE) it is not even evident that access to power through competition is guaranteed.

AMLO was a response of society to an unsustainable reality, but his strategy of returning to the centralization of power is a poor solution and in the last instance, futile, with regard to a fundamental problem: how is the country going to be governed. This is the main challenge with an eye cocked on the future but that is not the matter on which the public discussion is concentrated. The unique evident issue is that the control of a sole individual is not only unviable, but extraordinarily pernicious and dangerous.

The political forms and discourse changed, but not the reality.   Counterweights were claimed, but the presidents -each with the greatness or smalless of their vision and capacity- persisted in exercising power at will. They carried out ambitious reforms during the previous administration, but neglected to legitimize these through public dialogue, just as AMLO had done in his topics of priority. The point is that the country is not being governed and the climate of uncertainty is increasing and more and more risky, placing in doubt the economy’s viability and the functionality of the politics. Months away from the beginning of the formal process of presidential succession, it is less and less clear that the elections of 2024 will be clean and recognized.

The electoral processes barely comprise the first step in the edification of a successful and functional democracy, economically as well as politically. Mexico stayed stuck on that first step, and has now remained in limbo because of the contradictory electoral reforms being imposed in steam-roller fashion, not unlike those of the distant and nearby past. The grand question, with sights trained on the future, is how is Mexico going to emerge from the hole in which the government will have left the country.

The country is at present very divided, the government modifies practices that had been key for political stability and incurs ever more elevated risks in the political ambit, especially that of the succession. For those who blindly support the President, these are not relevant themes, but for those of us brooding about the building of a successful country, one less violent and with greater equity, there is no matter more transcendental.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

Perhaps the best paradox of Mexican politics today lies in that the main promoter of the opposition is the president himself, while it applies itself to wasting every opportunity it encounters. Lost in thought and in their own labyrinths, the political parties and their pathetic leaderships appear to lack the capacity to position themselves in the moment -and in the opportunity- in which the government as well as the citizenry have placed them.

The leaders of the opposition seem to ratify the saying of the great actor John Quinton: “Politicians are people who, when they see the light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.” Those of the opposition are even more confused because they believe that they have nothing to lose, even when the president eagerly devotes himself each morning to setting out a silver platter in front of them. Much more transcendental is the pressure from the citizenry, a factor previously inexistent in Mexican politics, but today a potential opportunity.

Two months ago, this very citizenry went out to march in protest. Beyond the numbers of each march, the political fact is undeniable, so much so that the president dedicated entire weeks, before and after, to the matter of the citizenry coming out to march in defense of the National Electoral Institute (INE). There is nothing like an emboldened citizenry that finds a concrete and tangible cause to defend; much more so when the perceptions of the marchers clash in so frontal a manner with the everyday political rhetoric.

But the fact of the citizens’ march does not entail, in itself, political transcendence. Marches are citizen manifestations that make the participants bolder and pressure the authorities, but they do not translate, automatically, into votes, and even less so in such an inflexible electoral system that renders difficult (in fact, it entails a disincentive for) the birth or death of political parties. In a word, for a march to transcend it is indispensable for the existing political parties to activate and mobilize the expressions, fears, protests and aspirations of the citizenry and the civil society in general to convert them into political action and, at its time, into votes.

The march brought together a segment of the citizenry, made available a stronghold for the civil society and breached a big hole (especially in Mexico City) to the governing party and to the appearance of absolute control to which the president pretends, but it does not constitute a factor likely to gain political agency in the light of the 2024 elections. Even in the specific objective of the march -that is the INE- the citizenry was barely able of staving off Morena’s getting its way  in that and in other legislative affairs.

For that it is the political parties that hold all the cards and therein lies the great incognito of the electoral politics of the moment, and that is where the opposition lies. The opposition today, with the possible exception of the Movimiento Ciudadano, lingers as no more than a memory. Of course, in all political formations there are exceptional individuals with a surplus of abilities, but the parties themselves are virtual entelechies dominated by lugubrious leaderships without any ambition other than their own, already small, when not vile.

Such an inflexible electoral system allows for the perpetuation of the parties as well as of the leaderships, which incorporates an enormous degree of uncertainty concerning the capacity of those parties and leaderships to become vehicles susceptible of channeling the preferences of the citizenry.  In order to entertain the possibility of winning an election in 2024, the opposition will have to find not only an ideal candidate for that purpose, but also articulate a program that attracts the citizenry, stealing the control of the narrative from the president and creating conditions for all of the opposition parties to unite among themselves into the transformer force that the country requires, and that the citizenry demands.

The challenge is evidently huge, but there are three elements that will foreseeably assist in the process. The first is the president, whose bullheadedness will continue to alienate the citizenry, thus strengthening the   opportunities of the opposition, as it did with the march. The second is that Mexico is entering the period of succession, the most complex political process in any nation, in which the vulnerabilities, contradictions and insufficiencies of the government and of the political system in general exacerbate.  Along the way, all these factors are going to heighten and multiply precisely because of the nature of the president, of his party and of the level of conflict that both have imposed on the country. Finally, the third element will be the civil society’s entities, which today comprise the true source of organization, proposals, criticisms and studies that, de facto, have been putting in evidence the abuse of power.

What are lacking are opposition parties, at present lost in space and without exerting much influence but with all the elements to become the overwhelming might that the moment requires. On his deathbed, Voltaire said that “this is not the time to make new enemies.” The parties that today wander aimlessly along like the walking dead have in their hands the possibility, and the responsibility, to do the contrary.

That is, the opportunity is there.  The question is whether the opposition, pathetic today, could make it theirs.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The discussion in which the country should be engaging is what comes after this government. Some propose that by returning to before 2018 everything would be resolved; others propose a clean slate to start over.  Wherever one finds oneself between these extremes, in 2024 the country will find itself under the utmost of precarious conditions.

The first certainty is that there is nowhere to which to return. The majority of the citizenry voted to disapprove of what existed after giving an additional opportunity to the PAN (2006) and one more to the PRI (2012). AMLO won in 2018 because people were fed up with promises without satisfactory results for all. No one can doubt that during the past decades exceedingly favorable things were achieved that seemed impossible only some years before, but it would be equally absurd to fail to recognize that the results were not always benign and that in the interim, too many resentments had accumulated. To deny these basic circumstances would be to trigger yet another absurdity.

A second certainty is that the future does not pertain to anyone in particular, starting with the president and his acolytes. The future cannot be generated by a small group, however powerful, whatever its ideology or social position. Thus, the future belongs to the citizenry in its entirety. It is individual actions that, on their amalgamation, produce the society being built. The way is made by walking.

Finally, a third certainty is that the stability, functionality, growth and development of a society and its economy require stout moorings that create circumstances that satisfy at least two criteria: one is to protect the rights of the citizenry and its interests. That is, that engender institutional mechanisms of access and participation in decision making and that establish procedures that solve disputes through methods that are known and available to all, unlike the present methods that negate justice to the majority. In a word, all of society should feel itself to be an integral component of the social fabric, and not, as demonstrated by AMLO, a society divided, a good part of which is alienated from the advances and successes that have indeed been achieved by parts of the society and the economy. The other criterion is that the distribution mechanisms of wealth should be transparent, technically developed and subject to audit, so that the Treasury is not utilized for personal promotions nor for diverting public resources for the enrichment of those found (temporarily) in power.

Mexico’s problem is not “technical”, that is, it does not rest on having the best legislation for the this or the most adequate strategy for that. All those factors are obviously necessary, but also obtainable. The problems of Mexico do not arise from the lack of laws or lawyers and legislators capable of redacting and improving them; the same can be said for competent professionals to administer the public treasure, justice or the strategies of public policy that would be susceptible to redressing the problems or edifying new realities.

Throughout the last century, Mexicans have witnessed the presence of exceptionally endowed functionaries and visionaries in parallel with others who were embarrassing, incompetent and destructive.  The problem is not one of capacities, but instead of the absence of limits. Therefore, the challenge lies in the citizenry obligating the politicians to act within the earmarked institutional frameworks. And that is a political challenge, one of power.

Going back or changing is not the choice facing the Mexican citizenry. Its true dilemma lies in breaking the bonds imposed by a political structure that confers excessive power on a single individual, to the degree that his mere gift of gab can dismantle institutions, cancel highly transcendent (and costly) projects, or initiate economic as well as criminal processes against whomever they please. Four years into these misdoings have made it evident that the institutional constructions of the past decades were pure and simply a facade not (necessarily) because their authors thought so, but rather because they never understood, and thus did not calculate, the reality of the power that the presidency consolidates. Or, in benevolent terms, because they assumed that no one would come to wreak havoc on it all as their raison d’etre.

The issue is not new: it arose from the constitutional reforms undertaken in 1933, whose objective was to strengthen the presidency by eliminating the Supreme Court and the legislature as effective counterweights. Along the way, the “system,” which had conferred so many years of stability to the country, consequently turned into an impediment to the natural development of the citizenry, with all that implies: an educational system dedicated to control instead of to development; an economy with excessively dominant entities, beginning with those of the State; and a judiciary subordinate to the executive. In sum, a too powerful presidency with great capacity of positive action, but with a similar propensity toward destruction.

The coming challenge will be much greater than any that any Mexican currently alive has known.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

How times change! At this stage of the previous presidential term, the political discussion was concentrated on the weakness of the presidency after the end of the PRI era, when the debate was concerned about the excessive power of the presidency. Twenty years later those worries were focused on the feeble presidency. Without there having been a radical change in the legal or constitutional structures, today the debate is once again about the concentration of power. Now that the crucial year of candidate nomination begins, it is critical to elucidate what has changed.

The evidence is robust: change has not been of a structural nature but is instead one of individuals. Former president Peña Nieto practically retired from politics, leaving the (paltry) political task to be executed by his ministers or operators. The result was a government quite ineffective in governing, even while it affected weighty legislative changes.

On his part, López Obrador concentrates nearly exclusively on the political duty-at-hand, dedicating himself to narrating the events of the day in such a compelling manner that he dominates the domestic panorama. He complements that central assignment with frequent visits to the most remote spots in the country, where his entire activity and focus is concentrated on aggrandizing his popularity and securing power alliances. Nothing to do with governing.

The two governments evidence contrasts and similarities that are worthwhile highlighting. They are similar in their devotion to the past, but acutely different in their priorities. The contradiction at the interior of the Peña government was always flagrant: the old presidency cannot be recreated while headway it is advancing reforms whose essence is decentralization, as was the case of communications and energy. In the end the reformer part won, but the political work which so transcendental changes -in ideological and historical terms- demanded, failed. The easiness with which López Obrador has been veered the helm in the opposite direction is clear testimony to that.

The contradiction within the AMLO government is no less great, but it is of a different nature. The president has been markedly successful in dismantling many of the entities, institutions and mechanisms that characterized his predecessors, but the economic and social performance has been, to say the least, (nearly) catastrophic. For a government whose narrative exalts key issues such as poverty, corruption and inequality, his administration is wending its way as fast as it can toward substantially increasing all those indicators. The question today, at the beginning of the government’s penultimate year, is what will be the consequences of this way of managing (or lack thereof) and how distinct will the end be from that of his predecessor.

What is apparent is that the great difference between both administrations has been the person of the president: one reserved and the other hyperactive; the former committed to working in private, the latter foisting himself upon all the forums and excluding, disqualifying or intimidating everything he perceives as an obstacle to the consecration of his (al)mighty presidency.

Last October, President Xi Jinping achieved a milestone that might look similar in terms of consolidating himself as the most powerful leader in China in at least half a century; but the differences are notable: in China, the structure that the president developed, within a consolidated legal and political edifice, is imposing, which renders him so much more powerful and, potentially impregnable.

The case of Mexico is very distinct. The same context   produced a president in Peña Nieto who ended up being weak and the other, López-Obrador, whom, to date, has been extraordinarily strong. Given that the difference is one of individuals in the presidency and of their capacity to act, the question is, how will the next president -male or female- be. What seems obvious is that neither of the two models is repeatable: the first because no one would wish to consciously imitate it, and the second because the conditions that made it possible are unique, exclusive to the person and his history. Much more importantly, how many years can a country endure the systematic deterioration of its economy, security, public services and in the relations between the government and society? And without being governed?

President López Obrador has concentrated exclusively on his popularity and power. To attain this, he has procured the preservation of poverty, containing (or impeding) the growth of the economy, and has permitted insecurity to flourish. He might well had been following the script that, from the XVI century, was penned by Étienne de la Boétie: “It has always happened that tyrants, in order to strengthen their power, have made every effort to train their people not only in obedience and servility toward themselves, but also in adoration.”

Whosoever succeeds President López Obrador will not count on the elements that would allow them to recreate their predecessor. Rather, the new president would have to correct the course to confront the fiscal, political, economic and social problems, not to mention the international ones, which will comprise the legacy of the current administration.

The candidates who are decided on this year should be clear in this regard because the citizenry, currently overwhelmed by a fallacious narrative, but one that is highly effective, will clamor for accountability at the first light.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

People migrate for any number of reasons, and have done so for millennia: climate, the search for opportunities, fear, and insecurity. Sonia Shah* explains that the prototypical migrant tends to be the kind of people who don’t have big bank accounts or landholdings, but are rich in good health, skills, education and social connections with people in other places. Nobody doubts the contributions that migrants make to the societies in which they settle or the benefits to their communities of origin but, says Shah, the relevant question to ask as massive waves of migrants take shape is not why people migrate, for migration is a force of nature, rooted in human biology and history. “The relevant question to ask is what are we going to do about it.” This question is key as migration became a powerful force behind Trump’s victory and Brexit.

One should always have one’s boots on and be ready to leave

Michel de Montaigne, 1580

A refugee used to be a person driven to seek refuge because of some act committed or some political opinion held. Well, it is true we have had to seek refuge; but we committed no acts, and most of us never dreamed of having any radical opinion. With us the meaning of the term refugee has changed. Now “refugees” are those of us who have been so unfortunate as to arrive in a new country without means and have to be helped by refugee committees. Before the war broke out, we were even more sensitive about being called refugees. We did our best to prove… that we were just ordinary immigrants.

Hanna Arendt, 1943

A stranger always has his homeland in his arms like an orphan for which he may be seeking nothing but a grave

Nelly Sachs, 1959

Migration isn’t a one-directional process; it’s a colossal process that has been happening in all directions for thousands of years

Moshin Hamid, 2017

I am not an Athenian or Greek but a citizen of the world

Socrates, c 420bc

Emigration is easy, but immigration is something else. To flee, yes; but to be accepted?

Victoria Wolff, 1943

Those who go overseas find a change of climate, not a change of soul

Horace, c20bc

The first thing that a new migrant sends to his family back home isn’t money; it’s a story

Suketu Mehta, 2019

Better free in a strange land than a slave at home

German proverb

All of man’s unhappiness stems from one thing, his inability to stay quietly in one room

Blaise Pascal, c 1660

Here everyone is equal. There are no poor, no rich. He spouts names like Columbus, Shakespeare, and Buckle and big words I don’t understand like civilization. He wants to write a song about them but has no ink, pen, or paper. My brother Elyahu tells me that if he doesn’t like this country, he can go back.

Sholem Aleichem, 1916

In 1937 the Dewey Commission conducted and investigation into the charges against Leon Trotsky made during Joseph Stalin’s Moscow show trials. “Of what country are you a citizen, Mr. Trotsky?” the commission asked. “I am deprived of my citizenship in the Soviet Union. I am not a citizen of any country,” Trotsky replied. “What, if anything, did you do when you were informed of the deprivation of your citizenship?” “I wrote an article about it,” he said. I am a man armed with a pen.”

Migration has been politicized before it has been analyzed

Paul Collier, 2015

In June 2021 the city of San Antonio inaugurated its North American Friendship Garden, a rest stop for migrating monarch butterflies featuring native wildflowers, shrubs, and trees. The garden’s aim is “the friendship and goodwill of three countries working toward common goals,” one city official said. “As a migratory insect, the monarch is a representative of migration.”

Shrimps may dance, but they do not leave the river

Japanese proverb

In 1639 Puritan settlers in Massachusetts authorized the expulsion of “pauper aliens” in what is thought to be the first case of deportations in the country. Soon after, Virginia and Pennsylvania passed laws heavily restricting “the importation of paupers,” which included criminals and “foreigners and Iris servants.”

Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Emma Lazarus, 1883

According to an Aztec myth, the war god Huitzilopochtli sent a group of Mexica on a journey to establish the new center of the world. After some two hundred years of wandering, they saw an eagle resting on a cactus with its “wings stretched outward like the rays of the sun.” Taking the bird to be a divine sign that they had reached their destination, they “began to weep and dance about with joy and contentment.”

Heaven and earth and all things change and transform into something new every day

Guo Xiang, c300

Human migration is unstoppable and, given the vast and growing differences between Southern and Northern nations, it is bound to keep growing. The big question is whether it can become orderly to serve and complement each other’s needs.

*The Next great Migration, Bloomsbury, 2020

Happy New Year!

www.mexicoevalua.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) says that “the True University of these days is a collection of books.” Here is my best attempt to share some of the readings that have most impacted me this year.

Two emblematic dictators-Stalin and Hitler- were allies at the beginning of theSecond World War, each because of his own interests and reasons, only to later end up in a fight to the deathuntil the Soviet Union’s occupation of Berlin in 1945. Hitler started the war and is the figure that has received more attention in the historical literature, to the degree that    WWII has frequently been identified as “Hitler’s war.” Sean McMeekin[i]argues that this is an erroneous focus becauseit was Stalin who took advantage of the circumstances presented to himat every juncture until gaining incomparable strategic benefits.While it was the United States that achieved the unconditional defeat of Germany and Japan,this iconoclastic account concludes that the undisputed winner of the conflict was Stalin, who imposed a very much longer-lasting tyranny.

InThe Spectre of War”, Jonathan Haslam venturesthat the Russian Revolution of 1917 altered international relations forever and that those who continued to adhere to the previous frame of reference erred in all their decisions, some extraordinarily transcendental,beginning with that the new Soviet regime was as important in Hitler’s rise as the Treaty of Versailles. Yet more important, it led Western leaders to believe thatespecially for the British (Chamberlain), Hitler would be a key factor in containing Communism. No one can know what would have happened had the West and the Soviet Union become allies in the thirties in order to impede the growth of Germany, butHaslam’s speculation is key: “the lesson of theinterwar years is that in political lifethe extremecan tooeasily become the mainstream.”It is key, Haslamgoes on, not to ignore history,because “History does offer warnings, if we care to recognize them for what they are.”

Michael Nieberg wrote on the fall of France in 1940, a collapse that no one anticipated given the famous Maginot Linethat the French, and the rest of the world, thought invulnerable, only to find that Nazi Germany invaded France through The Netherlands, circumventing formidable fortifications. The book[ii]deals with the impact of the invasion of France on the U.S. and the approach transcends the immediate matter-at-hand. In essence, the argument is that the folding of France swayed theU.S. because our neighbor to the North had conceived of France as a wall of contention that would provide protection from any enemy on the Atlantic side; the fall would oblige it to rethink its entire conception of the world and, thence,to build the mightiest army inthe history of the planet that not only won that war, but that also became henceforth a world factotum. Of particular interest is the description that Nieberg portrays on howthe U.S. decided who would be their allyin France, wagering on Vichy, the government of the Occupied France, going against the British government that had carried out a conscientious   analysis of the French situation and concluding that the ideal partner would be de Gaulle. The book is itself fascinating, but it seems to me especially relevantbecause of the U.S. propensity for ignoring the local situation, thus blundering in the identification of its allies, as evidenced inVietnam, Afghanistanand Iraq.

Manuel Hinds wrote a book thatbreaks with the tendency of the last years on seeing in the government the solution to all the problems. In Defense of Liberal Democracy is a peculiar book in thatit is authored by a Salvadoran addressing the Americans. The central argument is that periods of technological change produce severe disruptions that, as now,  translate into income inequality and greater poverty, but that liberal democracy is the best instrument that humans have devised to confront these evils.  Hinds analyzes complex periods such as the French Revolution and Nazi Germany to conclude that the key to development and democracy lies in the consolidation of a horizontal society that he denominates “multidimensional,”which immediately creates checks and balances that strengthen  the capacity of the generation of ideas, projects and productive activity becausethese align the incentives of persons with those of the development of their country.

The best book that I have read on the China–U.S. relation was written by a former Australian prime minister, who describes the complexity of the interaction of these two societies, its historical misunderstandings and, especially the points of convergence and divergence.  Its title,“The Avoidable War”[iii], is suggestive: the route of suspicions and conspiracies that are assumed by both sides have a sole possible outcome, lest both parties recognize the need to come to key understandings for them and for the world.

Luis Rubio

The way that the current presidential term closes will be determinant for the potential future of Mexico. Given the enormous power and legitimacy that President López Obrador has accumulated during these years, the matter turns in good measure to a very simple dilemma:  Which will win: the narrative or the reality?

In a recent video that went viral, the political consultant Antonio Sola states that AMLO is a transitional president who decodes the national reality with which he will create the conditions for governments of the upcoming decades. His argument is essentially that AMLO owns the narrative because it is he who dominates the technique of telling stories that touch the emotions and that he can do this because he has no competition, in that the opposition plays the president’s game instead of building an alternative narrative. While not new, the argument is powerful because it could determine the evolution of this president’s term of office and, in consequence, the nature of the next.

The flip side of the coin is that not all of it is narrative. Piquing the emotions of the voters, that which politicians do, is central to the exercise of leadership in a nation, but it is no substitute for the government’s performance, especially in the economy and security, which at the end of the day is fundamental for each of the members of the society.

In so far as the reality walks in parallel to the narrative, that is to say, one complements the other, presidential leadership marshals strength.  Contrariwise, when the distance between both results unsustainable, one of the two culminates in imposing itself on the other, usually the reality… That is the tessitura that, from my point of view, will determine the next two years.

The way this government ends will be determinant of the capacity that the president retains in terms of nominating his preferred candidate and, not of scant import, avoiding the fracture of the Morena party.  To date, the president has been able to have the upper hand over the political panorama with his exceptional narrative skill, but his unwillingness to promote economic growth and his stubbornness in controlling everything, now including the electoral institutions and processes, has stagnated the country and provoked ever deeper divisions within society. In addition, the institutional destruction and concentration of power creates negative incentives for investment as the perception of risk rises. The result has been that, however marvelous the narrative, its distance from the day-to-day reality is growing.

In this context, there are two means of focusing on what is to come in 2024: one is the way in which the economy and security situation evolve during the subsequent two years, in that the latter will determine the distance between the narrative and the reality, as well as the strength of the president. On the other hand, independently of how the government ends, the liabilities that this administration will leave will be monumental, with dramatic repercussions that will be measured in terms not in years but in generations.

Even the believers in the presidential project will have to recognize that structural liabilities have been created that will not be easy to correct. Here are some of the obvious ones: first and foremost, the destruction of trust and of institutional sources of certainty. Part of this is due more to Trump than to López Obrador (for weakening NAFTA), but the aggregate effect is devastating, and it will require decades to build something liable to secure wellsprings of sustainable, not politicized, trust. The change in the structure of the governmental budget will reverberate with the lack of growth beyond this term because it will be exceedingly difficult to eliminate expenditure items that are politically and socially transcendent (especially cash transfers to the president’s clienteles), but that do not contribute to the general growth of the economy. Third, deriving from the latter, the same is true of expenditures that are today executed by the army and that, in addition to its being prone to corruption, does not contribute to the chief function of that public institution while diverting resources that are necessary for the promotion of economic development. Finally, the educational system, already a long-standing burden regarding development, especially in the digital era, will not only have not advanced, but it rather acquired a deeply ideological profile that could lead to generations of graduates with no possibility of being employed in the productive apparatus.

These four examples illustrate the nature of the current government that, past the scope of its dogmas and obsessions, has entertained, as its sole objective, power, not a better future. The narrative has served to amass that concentration of power, but it will not be benign at the moment of succession. Of course, this does not alter the immense challenge facing the opposition to convince the electorate of a better future to dethrone the, up to now successful, presidential standing.

In addition to economic stagnation, the structural deficits that the present government will leave behind    are incommensurable.   Therefore, it is rash to extrapolate into the future supposing that nothing will change: the Latin phrase ceteris paribus, that implies conditions remaining the same. For a society accustomed to a permanent transactional relationship with those in government -votes for benefits- no narrative will compensate for the lack of jobs, opportunities, security and, not inconceivable, another crisis.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof