Luis Rubio

The past will not return: Mexico and the world changed, each at its own rhythm and circumstance. Thus, the only certainty is that we are facing a different future. The “old” order is over; we find ourselves in the face of a historic rift of enormous proportions and the more one delays in assimilating this basic premise, the worse that future will be.

The most human propensity is to cling to what exists or, more commonly, to what is known. The clearest image in this respect is that of the interminable efforts that we all make, every day, for the genie to go back into its magic lamp. Instead of dealing with the new realities, we dream of returning to what there was: that the September 11th attacks had never occurred, that Candidate X (insert your preference, there are many) would have lost.  It’s like wanting to put the toothpaste back in the tube: it can’t be done. The only thing for sure is that the past no longer exists; the big question is what’s next.

Immersed in the conflict for the independence of India, someone asked Mahatma Gandhi what he thought about European civilization: his response was “it would be a great idea.” Attaining civilization would imply reaching a new stage of stability, growth and civility, three major concepts that are absent in Mexico’s current reality. It seems evident that the way we are going will not permit any of these three elements to materialize, which is why Gandhi’s response is highly pertinent for the Mexico of today. Civilization is built, it does not come about fortuitously.

It is important to recognize the crossroads at which Mexicans find themselves: it is not the product of chance, nor is it the result, at least in its origin, of the present government. That merit is held by a succession of various administrations that carried out changes and reforms without reflecting on the totality that they were constructing, particularly in the political ambit: in a word, they did not reckon with the need to develop the governmental capacity to cope with the social, economic and political forces being unleashed. But there is a specific government that not only lost its way, but that also never found it: it never understood why it came into power, what it came into power for or what its “mission” was.

The reforms began in 1983 because it was the last resort: the governments of the seventies had left the country bankrupt. One might coincide or not with the inclination of those reforms, but there was no alternative to the urgency for restructuring the government and stabilizing the economy. The governments that followed imprinted their bias on the process, some with greater vision and skill than others; some with clarity of course and others with an entire misunderstanding of the challenge they were dealt.

But without doubt it was the government of Peña Nieto which never understood, first, why the electorate conferred on the PRI a new opportunity to govern again and, second, the huge potential that this President had in his hands. Instead of edifying a “new” Mexican State, the project was limited to advancing some reforms (not to be scorned as is likely to become obvious when AMLO’s cart gets stuck in the near future) while the swindle of the century was being consummated. Without the government of Peña today’s Mexico would be very different.

No one can blame AMLO for the causes of his victory. The forcefulness with which he won constitutes a sentence of disapproval that leaves no doubt of the message: the electorate felt betrayed by the outgoing government and turned in full to the only option that offered something clearly different. And that distinct part is what today is in the throes of building a different order toward the future: it is not only another government; it is another way of seeing and understanding the world.

On the planet much is being debated concerning the end of the world order constructed after the conclusion of WWII. The reason, the same as that within Mexico, is that there are new actors, new power realities and new game rules. We find ourselves in the stage of the “arm wrestling” in which the new groups in power are attempting to impose themselves on diverse political, economic and social instances and institutions. Little by little, novel criteria and values are appearing, affecting –for good or for ill- the manner in which power is come by, the effective rights of the citizenry, the way the economy is run and how social controls are procured.

The new order does not necessarily imply less poverty, more equality or a better economic situation. It solely implies new rules of the game that respond to the new groups in power. As throughout the world, we find ourselves at a moment of change in which everything is at the verge of sprouting, susceptible to being altered, because what we see today cannot last, all of which creates a climate of inexorable uncertainty.

The President has devoted himself to attempting to provide certainty to the diverse social interests in that his conception of the old Mexico is viable and the message, like it or not, has been taken up by many key actors of all ambits –politicians, entrepreneurs, union leaders-, all of them jockeying to position themselves well. But it is, nonetheless, a misleading scenario, of a dead calm before the forces, interests and values of the new governing group make impose themselves on the whole of the political scene and ordain their law. A new order that despite being new will not necessarily be benign.

@lrubiof

https://mexicotoday.com/2020/02/11/opinion-theres-no-turning-back/

Luis Rubio

Why did the Mexican government lose effectiveness? What had distinguished it throughout nearly the entire XX century was its steadiness and efficacy, in stark contrast with most of the nations of the hemisphere. Mexico was characterized, as the President constantly states, by its stability, order and economic growth. That all ceased and there is no shared diagnosis concerning the causes of the weakness of the Mexican government, but I am certain that the current attempt at centralization will not achieve its objective of restoring its effectiveness of yesteryear.

The heart of the problem lies in an obsolete system of government that has not worked for almost a half century and, more importantly, that is not going to function however much the present government attempts to reconstruct its decrepit structures. Mexico acquired a federal system of government because it replicated the U.S. Constitution, but the nations’ circumstances were not similar. Not by chance were the two stages of greatest economic growth –and of their benefits in the form of social mobility and job creation- those of the Porfirio Diaz government and the post-revolutionary PRI. The common denominator was the centralization of power, in flagrant violation of the constitutional framework. Despite the rhetorical reverence paid to federalism, the country does not possess a system of government that is compatible with a federal political organization.

Prior to the Porfiriato and from the end of the seventies, the Mexican government had been ineffective. Before because an institutional structure did not exist, today because that which exists does not work. Many Mexicans alive today remember (some with nostalgia) the stability and economic growth that made possible the strategy of “stabilizing development”, which gave up the ghost due to that the factors that rendered it successful disappeared. On the economic side, the import-substitution model reached its limit, while political demands ended up forcing an opening that reduced its vertical control.

Instead of the gradual economic liberalization that would allow for an adjustment of the domestic industry to the competition, from the 1970s the economy closed to an even greater degree, favoring national groups not concerned with elevating their productivity levels or satisfying the consumer. On top of that, the public expenditure rose in unusual fashion, all financed with debt. The mix ended up provoking the collapse of the government’s finances in 1982, bringing about a brutal adjustment because there was no longer any alternative.

The political opening was further encroached upon because it was reactive and went in counterflow to the most powerful interests. The most important electoral reform, that of 1996, created the conditions for equitable competition, but did not modify the manner in which the country was to be governed. The system of government, structured since the thirties, remained essentially the same. For example, instead of liberalizing the electoral system the reform incorporated the second and third parties (which then were the PAN and the PRD) into the PRI system of privilege. That is, it extended the existing system, assuming that the problems that the new structure would generate would solve themselves, which obviously did not take place.

Instead of transforming the system of government in order for it to deal with the conditions and challenges of the XXI century, its structure and objectives were clung to, leaving it totally incapable of functioning in a radically changed environment. Opening the economy implied that the government stopped controlling the private sector and the unions of the private sector. The political reforms produced vices that magnified themselves systematically: decontrol of the governors; the absence of institutions for security, beginning at the local level; mediocre services; de facto powers acting at will; and a population that, legitimately, reproved the existing order.

The reforms, in political and economic ambits, were necessary, but a strategy did not develop that anticipated their consequences in terms of governability, stability, security and efficacy. As Francis Fukuyama would say, Mexico became democratized before constructing a functional government. What we are observing today is an attempt to reconstruct what –a half-century ago- worked, when what is required is building a system of government for the XXI century.

The nodal point is that Mexico’s federal government is ever less powerful (even while more functions are being centralized) in the face of a society that is increasingly larger, more demanding and diverse and an economy that calls for conditions of stability in order to be successful. The Porfiriato and PRIist ruse of centralizing the power will not yield the result that the President desires because it is not compatible with the era of the ubiquity of information and of ferocious international competition.

The Mexican government needs to increase its capacity and that implies a change of conception: to build mechanisms that allow it to perform its functions from the municipal level to the federation, with procedures that make accountability possible, while systematically increasing its capacities to fulfill its functions, from the most elementary such as security, to the vital ones to eradicate poverty such as education and infrastructure.

Mexico stands in need of a revolution in its system of government; while this does not occur, governments will come and go, but peace and stability will continue to be illusory.

www.cidac.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

According to the new dogma, in 2019 conditions were created for the Mexican economy, and the country in general, to enter into a stage of elevated growth and development during this year. The conclusion -finally- of the new North American Trade Agreement, the high raise in minimum salaries and financial stability are the anchors that will allow for the widely awaited transformation. The only thing missing is for the decision-makers on savings and investment to get on board.

The new mantra makes sense but is not reality. The achievements so extensively celebrated by the president of the CCE (Business Coordinating Council) and his counterparts in the government –indistinguishable some from others- are useful conditions, but not sufficient: investment and savings flow when there are objective as well as subjective elements favorable for growth.

Among the objective elements are found without doubt those mentioned in the first paragraph of this piece, but these are not sufficient: in the XXI century investment as well as savings see the world as their space-of-interest, which implies that Mexico  literally competes with the rest of the planet to finance projects in our territory. In net terms, attracting investment requires appropriate conditions for that, which range from the macro economy to the infrastructure and the legal framework. These also require smoothing the way for projects to materialize. The government has changed the rules of the game and the legal framework and has abandoned any pretense of helping the way for investors and has not made any inroads on the issue of security. In addition to the latter, the new USMCA was designed by the U.S. to not drive investment in key industries for Mexico such as the automotive sector. In consequence, the objective factors that are indispensable for attracting investment are not conducive to satisfying the government’s rhetoric and that of its private trustee.

On the subjective side things are much more complicated, but also more transparent, because the President of the Republic has done everything possible to undermine the confidence essential for investment and savings to materialize. From the decision relative to the airport to the manner of deciding about projects such as the Tren Maya and the Dos Bocas Oil Refinery, any neutral observer could do nothing other than conclude that the only discernible pattern lies in the will of a sole individual. Aggravating these circumstances is the elimination (de jure or de facto) of any counterweight in regulatory matters: entities created over the years precisely to confer certainty on the investor. The way in which the (new) CRE* opened the door to PEMEX for its incursion into predatory practices in fuel sales speaks for itself. In a word, the absence of counterweights and (reasonably) autonomous institutions that limit governmental excesses or that, at least, evidence these, constitute absolute brakes on any investment project.

Objective as well as subjective conditions render it more difficult to suppose that the economy will be reactivated significantly in the upcoming months, even with the infrastructure projects that are in bud.  The question is whether there is something that could be done to improve the panorama.

There are two very clear routes: one is functional and the other ambitious. On the functional side, there are areas where the damage done is not (yet) catastrophic and thus, with relatively few actions, the perspective could be altered.  The case of energy is, by far, the most obvious: in this ambit the legislation has not changed and, with the exception (albeit not a lesser one)    of the composition of the Boards of the CRE and of the CNH**, basic institutions for the functioning of the sector, the government has only stopped soliciting bids. Recreating conditions for the re-launching of the sector is not something inconceivable and would exert the dual effect of strengthening the pragmatic side of the government and encouraging the development of a sector that is key under any premise. If in addition conditions were re-established for renewable energies, the scenario would improve. None of this would dramatically change the perspective, but it would permit reverting the worst tendencies profiling today.

The more ambitious way out, which would permit not only getting on with the remainder of the six-year presidential term of office but also modifying the general future of the country for good, would require a series of reforms that no government of the past four decades was willing to envision and that for which   President López Obrador counts on not only with the legitimacy but also with popular support for carrying out them out. The country requires profound reforms to attack the real lacks that Mexico possesses, such as poverty and inequality, and these would imply attacking the power groups and vested interests that have devoted themselves to impeding development in the states of Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas; abusive unions with their daily pillaging; the politico-legal structure that create fiefdoms in state governments; and, in general, the jumble of interests that prey upon, extort and corrupt as their quotidian activity.

If the government truly desires to advance the development of the country, the agenda is not trifling, but its assets for achieving it are enormous.

*Comisión Reguladora de Energía, Energy Regulatory Commission **Comisión Nacional de Hidrocarburos, National Hydrocarbons Commission

www.cidac.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

For President López Obrador the sixties were the climactic moment of the public life of the country. In that era Mexico grew at rates of nearly 7%, there was order and there was no social conflict. The time seemed idyllic; much more so, on being viewed in retrospect. However, a backward glance at the way that Mexican society functioned during those times reveals circumstances that were much less commendable and, in any case, unrepeatable.

The main characteristic of that time was the almighty presidency that set the course, fixed priorities, resolved disputes and kept the peace. At least so goes the myth, but the undeniable fact is that the post-revolutionary system had achieved an effective equilibrium between the diverse interests of the so-called “revolutionary family” and the requirements of a thriving economy. The governing coalition –and the party’s structure of control that allowed the president enormous latitude- sanctioned a huge capacity of decision and action that, in the specific context of the post-WWII era, created an exceptionally favorable environment for economic growth.

The powerful presidency was maintained thanks to the conjunction of remarkable circumstances that, years later, no longer existed. In the first place, the private sector was strongly controlled through requisite permits for investing, exporting and importing. The closed economy gave the government immense carte blanche in terms of decisions and control over this factor of production that, in addition, was complemented by severe limitations to foreign investment and a robust propensity toward endorsing the existence of monopolies. The government regulated competition and determined, indirectly, the profits of the enterprises. For businesses, what was important did not dwell in the quality or the price of their products, but in their close proximity to the bureaucracy.

In second place, the unions worked as a mechanism of control in which the union leaders became wealthy in exchange for upholding control of the bases. The Labor Congress made it appear that there was union democracy, but this was limited to the rhetoric and worked provided that the leaders operated within the clearly delineated rules of the game. The key was control without any dissidence.

In third place, the governors lived under the constraints of the central government, always aware that they could undergo what was known as a “disappearance of powers,” that is, their removal, at the least provocation. Governors who in the recent past have boasted about not having any reason to answer to the president, received instructions from third- and fourth-level civil servants without a flinch.

In a word, this pertained to an authoritarian system centered on the president who, through the party’s tentacles and the mechanisms of reward and punishment sustained an iron-fisted grip on the country. A European diplomat based in Mexico during that time cited a Soviet functionary in that nation’s embassy, affirming that, compared with Mexico, the Russians were mere amateurs because here the construction of an authoritarian system was achieved with complete control but absolute legitimacy,  while in his country control could only be preserved through acute repression.

The success of that era permitted dreaming of its re-creation. The notion that it is possible to subordinate the private sector and economic decision-making to political priorities would lead to an alignment of priorities and higher rates of growth. Workers’ freedom, as mandated by the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the new free trade agreement, the USMCA, would facilitate the elimination of corrupt leaderships and their replacement by leaders trained in Canada, upgrading anti-corruption criteria to levels never seen before. The budget endorsed the reconstruction of political controls over governors, subordinating them to the central power and obliging them to cede their ambitions to the designs of the great national leader. Finally, the army would become the touchstone that empowers the central control with absolute dominion over all local and sectorial actors, with no consequences or risk of corruption. In other words, Nirvana, the XXI century version but with a 1960 signature.

The world of the sixties ended badly, not because it was poorly conceived or structured, but because it, simply, ended. As the saying goes, everything used gets used up, and that is what happened to the epoch of stabilizing development. It came to an end because it became unsustainable: because the way of producing in the world changed, because there was a financial revolution and another technological and because, little by little, communications created the conditions for the radical democratization of information.

Instead of leveraging what had been accomplished in order to then transform the political and productive structure as so many other Asian, European and a couple of Latin American nations had done, Mexicans insisted on proceeding stubbornly from crisis to crisis. And there we continue to this day. Pretending to reconstruct that era will not end up distinct because it is not anchored in the reality, but in an unattainable nostalgia.

www.cidac.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The second complete year of the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador commences, a year in which his project and strategies begin to bear fruits. That sown in his first year (in reality, given the circumstances, a year and a half) must yield results. But above all, from now on there is no way to blame the past, as in “they left us a mess.” The country, thus the responsibility for it, lies firmly in the hands of the President.

By now two things are undoubtable: first, the President’s central project –political control- has advanced relentlessly. Second, the economy exhibits severe affectations. The effect of this is manifested in diverse forms, but two sum up the dilemma: on the one hand, there is no private investment (and very little by the public sector), and on the other, tax revenues are ebbing inexorably. The latter is explained in good measure by the lack of growth of the economy, but its impact on public expenditure is dramatic, largely due to the government’s obligations in matters such as retirees’ pensions, which increase systematically, minimizing the so-called “fiscal space,” that is, the amount available for the government to direct toward its programs. In addition to this, the decision of the government to use its increasingly scarce resources to PEMEX reduces its expenditure options to an even greater extent.

Truth to tell, the issue of attracting private investment did not begin with this government. Investment practically disappeared from the time of the Trump campaign with his threat of cancelling NAFTA. That fact, which preceded by far the election of President López Obrador, is an obvious indicator of what prods or inhibits private investment, domestic as well as foreign. What NAFTA supplied was certainty regarding the rules of the game, with respect to what the government had committed itself to in terms of attracting investment. Trump brought investment to a halt and this has not been resolved since because the new USMCA eliminates the nodal source of certainty that was the heart of NAFTA, as well as because the current government displays a thorough lack of understanding (or refuses to accept) of what is required to attract private investment. Its insistence that economic decisions should be subordinated to political decisions evidences a thoroughgoing ignorance of the nature of the XXI century.

The question is whether, in the face of the risk that the economy will remain stagnant or of a recession, the government will be willing to review its premises and correct its course. From my point of view, the AMLO government has a better and greater opportunity historically speaking for confronting the problems that decades of reforms (the majority benign and necessary) were not resolved. The opportunity derives from two circumstances: first, the enormous legitimacy that it possesses and, second, the fact that the priorities that it marked long ago -corruption, poverty, regional inequality and lack of growth- are the national ones.

The economy has grown little on average for a long time due to decidedly explainable reasons. In the first place, in that there has not been greater investment in infrastructure in the South; in the second place, because there are powerful economic, political and/or union interests in the regions that do not grow that impede the development of new investment projects; in the third place, because innumerable regulations and practices promote the growth of the informal economy (which entails limits to its growth due to lack of access to credit and does not contribute to the tax pool) and, in the end, but perhaps summing up everything, because the country is characterized by permanent extortion: inspectors extort the citizens and entrepreneurs, union leaders extort the workers, politicians extort the population, the narcos extort the government and the society in general.  NAFTA did not eliminate extortion, but it did create conditions for it to be controlled in its space.  The rest of the country lives under permanent extortion.

The agenda of changes that the country requires is not difficult to identify and it is all absolutely compatible with the priorities the President earmarked a long time ago as well as with his political base.  In fact, if one observes the (incomplete) list in the previous paragraph, the big losers are always citizens who are small business owners, informal businesses, etc., who are not covered by the protection like the one NAFTA provides. Still worse, the South has fared worst of all, because local unions and politicians extort the population and deny them growth and development opportunities because this would imply altering the local status quo. Were one to evaluate where the regions of greatest poverty and inequity are found, their correlation with these evils is patent.

This incipient year comprises the great -and perhaps last- opportunity for the government to devote itself to attending to the cause of the ills the country suffers from and that, as mentioned previously, are precisely those that the President hand-picked as the axis of his campaign and his agenda. What has not worked to date constitutes a unique opportunity to advance this year. Given Mexico’s six-year term-of-office cycle, what is not done now will not done at all.

www.cidac.org
@lrubiof

Wilson Center – Mexico Institute
January 06,2020
by Luis Rubio
@lrubiof

 There is no border as complex and diverse as that separating Mexico from the U.S. It would be easy to simplify it, rationalize it as a merely commercial matter. The reality comprises an enormous diversity, complexity and multiplicity. The boundary with the U.S. includes legal and illegal crossing points, drugs, contraband, persons, ideas, goods, services and disputes. An old saying from the Mexican side of the region held that “if it fits through the bridge, it can pass”.

From the high plateau of Mexico City, it is difficult to understand the diversity and complexity of the border zone. It concerns a region, on both sides, that experiences a symbiotic relationship in which each lives off each other and neither could explain its existence, and success, in the absence of the other. Many have spoken of a “third” country as distant from Mexico as from Washington D.C., but in reality it entails a space of dynamic exchange where everything comes to pass, the best as well as the worst of both nations.

For decades, U.S. citizens saw the Mexican side of the border as a space for recreation and lust, but also of greater simplicity and ease of living without the very structured life of their country. We Mexicans ended up seeing the border as an inexhaustible opportunity for markets, clients and developments that would never have been possible without the liberalization of trade that took place under the auspices of NAFTA. Beyond the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the devalued successor of NAFTA, and, in general, deriving from the close relationship that existed up to 2016, the ties between the two nations are increasingly deeper and more diverse. The trade war between the U.S. and China opens additional opportunities that would have been inconceivable only a few years ago.

The big question is whether we Mexicans will be capable of converting this juncture into opportunity, now within the context of Trump and of old structural problems of Mexico that never get fixed and are not even part of the public agenda.

The Mexican government recognizes the existence of problems and limitations regarding the development of the country, but it has not been willing to recognize that its preconceptions are unviable and act to the detriment of the government’s objective of relaunching the development of the country. On the side of the problems, it recognizes that the insecurity is persistent, but not that its great purposes can be met with the strategy that it has adopted, which does not even strengthen or standardizes the police forces at the local level.

Mexicans, of any origin and lineage, have demonstrated a huge capacity of adaptation to daily life, while migrants, with an ever-greater capacity and enthusiasm for developing grand projects of economic and commercial transformation, make their appearance in the national life. The bilateral relationship is constant, unequivocal and systematic: source of enormous benefits or intractable conflict. But it does not endure radical changes.

The violence that typifies the relationship is the product of a poorly understood interaction. It is obvious that a large proportion of the arms employed by the mafias of organized crime stems from the U.S. Similarly obvious is the fact that Mexico –at all levels- has not been capable of developing security strategies that confer certainty on the inhabitants of the Mexican side of the border. It is a secret to no one that Mexico has been an immense failure in providing the most basic of rights, which is security, whether in borderline municipalities or in the principal cities of the country.

Mexico leads a life of uncertainty and insecurity that all Mexicans know, independent of the loyalty or rejection that they profess toward the President. Although many respond positively in opinion surveys and with conviction support the President, the same surveys show that the majority wants an improvement and not a radical change.

From the summit of power it is easy to accuse or pardon the supposed transgressors of the law but, for the Mexican citizen in the street, every example of corruption, extortion, murder and flagrant lying is just another milestone in a long history of abuse, imposition and corruption. The President can be impeccable, but his administration has been shown to be indistinguishable from those that have preceded it. Corruption is strangling Morena, as it did with the PRI, the PAN and the PRD. Unless it changes course, its results could not be distinct.

The bilateral relationship poses an opportunity or a curse, depending on the perspective that each Mexican decides to adopt. Whosoever has observed the day-to-day reality of life in the neighborhood knows well that the fundamental problem is not the border, the Americans, or the relationship, but the persistent incapacity of the Mexican side to stabilize the country, to generate local police officers capable of maintaining order and guaranteeing security, likewise to the most modest and the most lofty Mexican.

The President’s agenda is as ambitious as it is blind.  What Mexico requires is solutions; what the President seeks is excuses for going against what the citizenry wants and demands. The question is how much time –and damage- it will take for the obstinacy to cede to the reality.

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/the-relationship

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author. 

Luis Rubio

There is no border as complex and diverse as that separating Mexico from the U.S. It would be easy to simplify it, rationalize it as a merely commercial matter. The reality comprises an enormous diversity, complexity and multiplicity. The boundary with the U.S. includes legal and illegal crossing points, drugs, contraband, persons, ideas, goods, services and disputes. An old saying from the Mexican side of the region held that “if it fits through the bridge, it can pass”.

From the high plateau of Mexico City, it is difficult to understand the diversity and complexity of the border zone. It concerns a region, on both sides, that experiences a symbiotic relationship in which each lives off each other andneither could explain its existence, and success, in the absence of the other. Many have spoken of a “third” country as distant from Mexico as from Washington D.C., but in reality it entails a space of dynamic exchange where everything comes to pass, the best as well as the worst of both nations.

For decades, U.S. citizens saw the Mexican side of the border as a space for recreation and lust, but also of greater simplicity and ease of living without the very structured life of their country. We Mexicans ended up seeing the border as an inexhaustible opportunity for markets, clients and developments that would never have been possible without the liberalization of trade that took place under the auspices of NAFTA. Beyond the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the devalued successor of NAFTA, and, in general, deriving from the close relationship that existed up to 2016, the ties between the two nations are increasingly deeper and more diverse. The trade war between the U.S. and China opens additional opportunities that would have been inconceivable only a few years ago.

The big question is whether we Mexicans will be capable of converting this juncture into opportunity, now within the context of Trump and of old structural problems of Mexico that never get fixed and are not even part of the public agenda.

The Mexican government recognizes the existence of problems and limitations regarding the development of the country, but it has not been willing to recognize that its preconceptions are unviable and act to the detriment of the government’s objective of relaunching the development of the country. On the side of the problems, it recognizes that the insecurity is persistent, but not that its great purposes can be met with the strategy that it has adopted, which does not even strengthen or standardizes the police forces at the local level.

Mexicans, of any origin and lineage, have demonstrated a huge capacity of adaptation to daily life, while migrants, with an ever-greater capacity and enthusiasm for developing grand projects of economic and commercial transformation, make their appearance in the national life. The bilateral relationship is constant, unequivocal and systematic: source of enormous benefits or intractable conflict. But it does not endure radical changes.

The violence that typifies the relationship is the product of a poorly understood interaction. It is obvious that a large proportion of the arms employed by the mafias of organized crime stems from the U.S. Similarly obvious is the fact that Mexico –at all levels- has not been capable of developing security strategies that confer certainty on the inhabitants of the Mexican side of the border. It is a secret to no one that Mexico has been an immense failure in providing the most basic of rights, which is security, whether in borderline municipalities or in the principal cities of the country.

Mexico leads a life of uncertainty and insecurity that all Mexicans know, independent of the loyalty or rejection that they profess toward the President. Although many respond positively in opinion surveys and with conviction support the President, the same surveys show that the majority wants an improvement and not a radical change.

From the summit of power it is easy to accuse or pardon the supposed transgressors of the law but, for the Mexican citizen in the street, every example of corruption, extortion, murder and flagrant lying is just another milestone in a long history of abuse, imposition and corruption. The President can be impeccable, but his administration has been shown to be indistinguishable from those that have preceded it. Corruption is strangling Morena, as it did with the PRI, the PAN and the PRD. Unless it changes course, its results could not be distinct.

The bilateral relationship poses an opportunity or a curse, depending on the perspective that each Mexican decides to adopt. Whosoever has observed the day-to-day reality of life in the neighborhood knows well that the fundamental problem is not the border, the Americans, or the relationship, but the persistent incapacity of the Mexican side to stabilize the country, to generate local police officers capable of maintaining order and guaranteeing security, likewise to the most modest and the most lofty Mexican.

The President’s agenda is as ambitious as it is blind.  What Mexico requires is solutions; what the President seeks is excuses for going against what the citizenry wants and demands. The question is how much time –and damage- it will take for the obstinacy to cede to the reality.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

Life has its cycles and the calendar too. A year is about to end and the next one begins: the expectation never ceases to be present in the form of hope and fear, opportunity and possibility. As in other years, I take this moment to quote some of the great thinkers, this time regarding one of the great aspirations of all members of the human race: happiness.*

“Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalized.” GK Chesterton, 1905

“One is never as unhappy as one thinks, nor as happy as one hopes.” La Rochefoucald, 1664

“Here you are, my dear child, my necklace, my feather, my offspring, my progeny, my blood, my color, my blood elation. Now please understand, please listen, for you came to life, you were born, for our omnipresent lord, the maker, the creator, has sent you here to earth…And now that you already see, that you observe how things are, that there is not contentment, there is not happiness, but that there is torment, there is pain, there is weariness; out of it comes misery, torment and pain. It’s difficult on earth; it is a place of weeping, a place of suffering, where affliction and hardship are common. And as cold, chill wind comes up and passes through. It is truly said that the wind cools the sun’s warmth ro4 people. It is a place of thirst and hunger. That’s just the way it is… But on earth life goes on.”  Bernardino de Sahagun, Florentine Codex, 1596

“A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.” George Bernard Shaw, 1903

“I have already enjoyed too much; give me something to desire.” The old man was surprised at this new species of affliction and knew not what to replay, yet was unwilling to be silent. “Sir,” said he, “if you had seen the miseries of the world, you would know how to value your present state.” “Now,” said the prince, “you have given me something to desire; I shall long to see the miseries of the world, since the sight of them is necessary to happiness.” Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, 1759

“Goal Post: 1. Be patient. No matter what.2. Don’t bad-mouth: assign responsibility, not blame. Say nothing of another you wouldn’t say to him. 3. Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble that yours are to you. 4. Expand your sense of the possible. 5. Don’t trouble yourself with matters you truly cannot change. 6. Expect no more of anyone than you can deliver yourself. 7. Tolerate ambiguity. 8. Laugh at yourself frequently. 9. Concern yourself with what is right rather than with who is right. 10. Never forget that, no matter how certain, you might be wrong. 11. Give up blood sports. 12. Remember that your life belongs to others as well. Don’t risk it frivolously. 13. Never lie to anyone for any reason (lies of omission are sometimes exempt). 14. Learn of the needs of those around you and respect them. 15. Avoid the pursuit of happiness. Seek to redefine your mission and pursue that. 16. Reduce your use of the first personal pronoun. 17. Praise at least as often as you disparage. 18. Admit your errors freely and soon. 19. Become less suspicious of joy. 20 Understand humility. 21. Remember that love forgives everything. 22. Foster dignity. 23. Love memorably. 24. Love yourself.  25. Endure. I don’t expect the perfect attainment of these principles. However, I post them as a standard of conduct as an adult. Should any of my friends or colleagues catch me violating any of them, bust me.” John Perry Barlow, Principles of Adult Behavior,1977

“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back on its own weight… The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.

“How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do.” William James, 1902

“Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination,” Immanuel Kant, 1785

“The happiness of society is the end of government.” John Adams, 1776

“It is one of the most saddening things of life that, try as we may, we can never be certain of making people happy, whereas we can almost be certain of making them unhappy.” Thomas Henry Huxley, 1895

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Mahatma Gandhi

“Until death, it is all life.” Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes

“There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.” H.L. Mencken, 1920

*All quotes from Lapham’s Quarterly, volume XII, Number 3, Summer, 2019

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 Luis Rubio

“Of all of man’s instruments that is not an extension of the body but of the mind, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book”

Jorge Luis Borges

There are few themes as culminating in public discussion, in Mexico and in the world, as the manner in which to conduct economic affairs. Trump, Brexit and AMLO personify the countercurrent in the era of trade liberation: the emphasis being not on what has been won and the benefits attained, but rather the losses, the losers and the resulting inequality. John Tomasi confronts the phenomenon directly, but with an exceptional focus: in Free Market Fairness he takes a philosophical approach arguing that it is indeed possible to achieve both things: the economic efficiency that supplies the markets with the justice for which the population clamors. His proposal is that it is feasible to couple the arguments of F.A. Hayek, hero of the liberals, with those of John Rawls, hero of those pursuing justice on the part of equality. For Tomasi, democratic legitimacy is only come by when achieved in the presence of social justice and rights to property, the mainstays of each of the philosophical currents.

Noah Rothman writes a text on social justice, entitled Unjust, in which he affirms that the emphasis on social justice in terms of political activity entails an “identitarian” victimhood view that does nothing other than undermine democracy and freedom of expression. Situated within the context of United States politics, in which the identity of persons or groups has become the central factor in question, Rothman advocates for a well-balanced vision in democracy and the search for equity that lead to social mobility. Read in the Mexican context, very distinct from that of the U.S., the book permits visualizing easily employable philosophical guidelines to improve our own domestic debates.

I came by chance upon a relatively old book, on the nature of the Mexican presidency. In “The Man Who Could Everything, Everything, Everything” Juan Espíndola Mata analyzes the myth of the all-powerful presidency. This is a retrospective analysis of the presidency of the PRI era seen from the dysfunctionality that took place in the Fox years. Instead of absolute powers, the author asserts, the president abides within a constant negotiation with interest groups that procured the advance of their objectives. The president, in the nucleus of the system, surely had more power than that which the author concedes, essentially due to the pairing of the party and the presidency itself, but the argument is implacable.

Victor Bulmer-Thomas* argues that the United States is an empire (a term harshly disputed in that country) and that it is on the way to becoming a “normal” nation, which will not be as powerful but that will be at peace with itself.  This is a controversial argument but a powerful one because, in addition to its being sustained upon an thorough historical investigation, it responds to the logic that showed Trump the way to the government, positioning him as one additional symptom of the cause at the very bowels of the war that nation is experiencing with respect to its power, responsibility as a world power and the internal requirements for the solution to daily problems. Good read.

Everything Flows, by Vasily Grossman, was a revelation, thanks to Leonardo Curzio. A novelized chronicle of the Soviet Union’s Stalinist era, the content showcases human fallibility, the destructive capacity of an oppressive and incompetent system of government, human relationships subjected to the fears and manipulations of power and an unviable economy, social tragedy catapulted into broad daylight. Nothing like the absence of freedom to evidence human vitality.

Sophia Rosenfeld** attacks one of the most politicized matters of the moment, truth in political life. Conforming to an historical sequence, this author evaluates the statements in the sense that “fake news” is something novel and comes to a conclusion that is of utmost relevance for the world as polarized as that of today: truth does not exist: like democracy, truth is something that is forged consciously and collectively. Only thus will there be “facts” and perspectives that everyone shares and commends. An enormous challenge for modern society, bedazzled by ubiquitous information, instantaneous and always subject to discordant interpretations.

Peter Pomertansev published this year a sequel to his extraordinary book Nothing Is Certain: Everything Is Possible. In that volume, he described the absurdities of his work on Russian television and the manner in which reality was deformed to house the interests of power. In his new work, This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality, Pomerantsev goes beyond the world of Putin to that to which his first work referred for expanding reality toward the trend that has made the strategy of false news its own, the famous “fake news.” What is extraordinary about the book is that, on contrasting the structure of absolute control of communication in the era of the Soviet dictatorship with the media chaos of our times in which anything goes, the world of today lays itself bare, evidencing itself as something not very distinct from that of those former times: the potential for infinite manipulation to control did not change much, it only acquired other modalities.

*Empire in Retreat, **Democracy and Truth

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Luis Rubio

Politics in the era of the ubiquity of information is about narratives: contrasting visions of the world that exaggerate the differences and attenuate the coincidences, all for the sake of capturing the support of the citizenry and its vote. The essence of politics has not changed, but the speed of the message, the social networks and the confrontation inherent in instantaneous communication produce very different effects from those of the epoch of direct or unidirectional politics, through television. The result is a direct face-off that does not contribute to advancing the objectives that all politicians say they wish to procure, such as peace, security, economic growth and stability.

Over the last four decades, Mexicans have experienced two contrasting narratives: one that exalts the transformation that has produced the structural reforms whose implementation began in the mid-eighties, and the other that reviles the current reality, reproves the reforms and extolls an idyllic past. Between those two narratives exists a reality that the population undergoes daily and that probably entails something of each of those extreme positions, which naturally impacts the perception that the citizenry entertains of politics, of the government and of the future.

The narrative of the reforming success is very clear: reforms allowed for breaking with times of financial crises, stabilized the economy, laid the foundations for an elevated and sustained economy and eliminated inflation as a matter of concern for the population. According to this world vision, integration of the Mexican economy into the international technology, trade and investment circuits has permitted Mexico to become an exporter power, whose modern industry has transformed and converted into one of the most competitive worldwide and one in which all of the personnel associated with this segment of the economy are able to find better paying jobs and with greater benefits.  Entities such as the Mexican states of Querétaro and Aguascalientes are paradigmatic of what a good strategy of development can offer the citizens and the country and shows that, on following the chosen pathway, the country will be consolidated as a robust economy with a democratic political system governed by an all-encompassing Rule of Law.

The narrative of economic, ecological and social chaos highlights the poverty by which the reforms have been accompanied, the lack of economic growth (a mere 2% on average), the insecurity under which the population lives and the poor, uncertain means of livelihood without perks, which characterize the majority of Mexicans. The point of departure of this narrative is the high economic growth that typified the decade of the seventies, the social tranquility experienced and the public security that was the norm. This narrative occupies states such as Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas as paradigms that reveal the worst results of the reforms, the poverty that distinguishes those entities and the inequality that accumulates and that is increasingly obvious in the country. Instead of opportunities and achievements, this narrative has at its fore corruption, insecurity, impunity, and excesses of those in government at all of levels and dimensions. Its proposal is to return to the eras, and the strategies, that rendered possible the steadiness of the old days, which would fortify democracy and citizen participation. The problems started precisely when things deviated from the course with the reforms of the eighties, the very reforms that need to be cancelled to restore the capacity of economic growth and social development.

Each individual will amend and embellish the description of these narratives, but what is important is that, due to their nature, polarization is pursued: for some everything is right, for others everything is wrong. For the former what is consequential is to do more of the same; for the others everything must be changed. Were one to analyze the concrete data, the differences are less stunning than the narratives suggest, but the relevant part is less the narrative -that concentrates all the attention- than the reality of everyday life.

A more objective vision of recent decades would suggest that the Mexican economy demonstrates extraordinary diversity, that there are regions growing  at more than 7% while there are others that are lagging behind; that the greater part of those who are employed live in a state of relative precariousness; that insecurity is not associated with the reforms but instead with the lack of a transformation of the government itself and the political system; and that it is not possible to return to the past, but that more of the same clearly will not resolve anything either. In addition, the county is not moving in the direction of democracy or the Rule of Law. Perhaps of greater import is that Mexico’s problems are real and transcend the narratives that polarize but do not solve anything.

The great success of former President Salinas in his first five years of government was that he was able to achieve a single narrative and one which enabled the population to look ahead to make this narrative a reality. His failure in his sixth year in office had nothing to do with the reforms themselves but caused the confrontation of narratives that polarize and generate mistrust. AMLO would do better by displaying an ability to join with the citizens and bring that exceedingly destructive gap to an end.

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