Luis Rubio

One week that brought President Peña’s original vision to ruin and extinguished his personal style of leading the government. What was not achieved by the houses provided by a government contractor or Ayotzinapa was accomplished by Trump or, more to the point, by the series of ill-advised decisions and mishaps that led to the imprudent invitation for him to visit Mexico. What remains is to observe whether this is the beginning of a political realignment in favor of making the country more consolidated in anticipation of the 2018 elections, or whether it is a mere attention-distracting ploy in order to leap over the immediate hurdle.

In a country inclined to conspiratorial interpretations, what had not changed was clear: for some this was a case of the secretary having resigned, for others he was fired. Without factual information, the conspiracy theoriescarry the day. What there is no doubt about is that the pressure rose in proportion to the absurdity of the explanations proffered on what had been sought with the famous visit. Whoever imagined that it was possible to neutralize or commit Trump does not understand him, and whoever believed that U.S. politics can be meddled with in such a skewed and heavy handed way without paying a huge price does not understand the U.S.

A cartoon by Brozo in which he photographed Andrés Manuel López Obrador visiting Obama conveys everything that the government did not understand: it is one thing to inform, establish ties and communicate with the candidates of another nation and its government, and it is another, very distinct, to interfere in its political life. No Mexican would have thanked the U.S. President had he invited only one of the candidates up for election in Mexico. As obvious as that.

However, beyond the individuals, there are four lessons that this week has furnished: in first place, the Peña administration began with absolute control of its personnel, processes and discipline. Much of what was attempted was anachronistic (to recreate the world of the old PRIist system), but its functioning was impeccable, at least in what was observable from the outside.  That discipline started to erode when the president’s“white house” was exposed and disintegrated with the exit of Aurelio Nuño, President Peña’s Cabinet head; and the phenomenon was exacerbated by the inexistence of control over the feuding at the interior of the Cabinet. It has been two years now since the government forfeited the political initiative and there is nothing to suggest that this will change. Within this context, it is not difficult to imagine that instead of duly analyzed decision-making procedures, happenings dominated the discussion (if there was any at all), leading to the fateful decision.

In second place, this administration has been peculiar in its propensity for generating enemies without building sources of support; disdaining public discussion rather than leading it; eyeing with contempt the legitimate concerns of all Mexicans from all quarters: from PEMEX creditors to censored journalists and including the growing number of citizens disconcerted by the growth of the public debt. In four years a sufficient number of grievances accumulated to last a whole lifetime and all of the aggrieved appeared to have made their triumphant appearance last week. Governing cannot be accomplished without informing the public and credibility –not to say popularity- cannot be earned without at least trying to convince the people of the government’s plans. Accouterments of democracy. Worse, this government ignored the obvious: that the price of the dollar does indeed matter to the electorate and that its depreciation engenders consequences. The signature of this government has been remaining immutable in the face of the wave of doubts, disquiet and criticisms. Hence, it was remarkable that among the instructions that the President gave to his new Minister of Finance were two very prominent ones to which the former Minister had not cared for: to lower the debt and end the deficit.

In third place, the Trump affaire harkened back to the old Mexican nationalism, but with an excessively promising aggregate: the new nationalism is not anti-Yankee. What is surprising about the various responses to the invitation and the visit -and, in fact, to the entire gamma of anti-Mexican broadsiding of this last year- is that the Mexican views the relationship with the U.S. as something normal, positive and necessary. The problem is with the personage, not with the country. Many unsavory aftertastes prevail from the old political system, but this one was indubitably overcome.

Finally, during last week Mexico underwent an authentic popular rebellion. The visit of the U.S. presidential candidate caused generalized disapproval and the President was obliged to back down. The rebellion speaks of a mature society and one that is willing to defend its rights (and its honor), all without violence or excesses, all of which opens great possibilities for the future.

The question is whether this is a redoubt conceived pure and simply to dodge more criticisms, above all in the light of the 2017 budget revision, or whether it at least includes the intention of constructing something more solid that ushers in that mature society and that evades a new hecatomb in the electoral process of 2018 and thereafter. Time will tell.

Edmundo O’Gorman, the great historian of the XIX century, left the president a prescription that is appropriate at the present moment: “Since an awakening is urgent, may it not be when the emulation takes place of Rip van Winkle, waking to a strange and foreign world that was no longer comfortable for him nor one with the feasibility of participating in an adventure of a new life incubated during the absence of his lethargy”. New life or lethargy? There’s, as Shakespeare would say, the rub.

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Luis Rubio

A Polish tale tells of a town that built a bridge but did not finish it.  Vehicles used it and, on reaching the end, fell off into the abyss. The town leaders got together to decide what to do and their response was to construct a hospital under the bridge to care for those injured as a result of their fall. Mexico’s government seems to be like that: great initiatives that are not concluded, desperate actions that are not thought through and, later, consequences that are to be dealt with.

The succession of circumstances and actions that led the government to invite Mr. Trump to Mexico is now quite clear. It is also known that the invitation was issued weeks before and at the margin of the professionals responsible for conducting foreign affairs. A candidate was invited and, later, at a quarter to midnight, in the colloquial vernacular, another invitation was sent to the Democratic Party candidate, so as not to incur in a slight. Mr. Trump arrived, was treated as a Head of State, listened to the formal and respectful speech delivered by President Peña and proceeded happily to Arizona to reiterate his rhetoric regarding Mexico and Mexicans.

In addition to the gift of the red-carpet treatment, which was something invaluable for Trump because that is where his opponent has ample experience and world recognition, the Republican candidate made off with what is most valuable to Mexico: the Mexican President was obsequious in offering him the renegotiation of the NAFTA, something no country ever does because that implies, de facto, its annulment, i.e., precisely what Trump has proposed. In just a few hours, the President placed the country and his government in the most vulnerable position that it has been in since the Revolution of 1910.

In an article appropriately entitled “The Unspeakable and the Inexplicable”, the British periodical The Economist states that “Mr. Peña may believe that he took a bold initiative by opening a dialogue with Mr. Trump. His demand for respect is legitimate. But it should be delivered by citizen diplomacy within the United States, and conveyed after the election to the winner. By allowing his visitor to seem presidential, he has helped Mr. Trump perform some rhetorical climbdowns that were electorally inevitable. Even if Mrs. Clinton wins, she will not thank him for that. If he turns out to have contributed to electing Mr. Trump, many Mexicans will never forgive him or his party, and neither will much of the rest of the world.” It is not by chance that other articles ask “What was he thinking?” In a few hours, the government lost its privileged relationship with the Obama administration, exhibited irrational behavior and proved itself to be an untrustworthy actor. Mexico became the laughingstock of the world.

Whatever the logic in concocting the invitation had been, it ignored Trump’s nature, the absolute impossibility of changing his rhetoric (because therein lies the heart of his candidacy) and, above all, the fact that for Mexico everything was a risky downside, while for Trump everything was potential upside. Mexico, the host, bore all the risk, and lost out. The very notion that Trump could be “reasoned with” and convinced to tone down his discourse was ludicrous.

The question is: What’s next?  The approaching months will be without doubt dark days. Many will interpret Trump’s call for renegotiating NAFTA (therefore, presumably, not annulling it) as a sign that Mexico’s vulnerability was drastically reduced. This perhaps will contribute to appease the financial markets, at least in the short term, but will not satisfy the skeptics; we must not forget that the main justification for calling into question Mexican debt’s investment-grade score on the part of Moody’s was not the debt per se but rather the political problems that characterize the country and that are reflected in the manner in which decisions are made and in the absence of the Rule of Law.

In his book on the circumstances that led to the 1994 devaluation, Sidney Weintraub* concludes that it was the absence of accountability that made it possible for the functionaries of the outgoing and incoming administrations to make brutally dangerous wagers, something inconceivable in a representative democracy.  That is what manifested itself in the Trump Affaire: the government undertook a series of actions and decisions without needing to think about the consequences, without measuring the risks, and without consulting with other political forces (let alone the rest of the cabinet) on the alternatives, because that is Mexico’s political reality: the government is not accountable to anyone and its members will not have to bear the costs of their decisions.

There are two planes on which to deal with the consequences. The first is obvious and urgent: rebuild the relationship with the U.S. government and with the Clinton campaign. This will not be easy because the problem is one of trust and, when this has been lost, it is supremely difficult to recover, and worst, in the middle of such an acrimonious campaign. This may only be possible to the extent that the President carries out a radical change in his Cabinet, incorporating individuals who enjoy the absolute respect of the international community in general, and of people in the U.S. in particular, in the political, judicial, financial ambits and that of foreign policy.

The other plane comprises the future. President Peña has wasted every opportunity presented to him:  he could have become the leader of the struggle against corruption (i.e., the Mexican White House) and of the fight against impunity (i.e., Ayotzinapa). Now he has the last opportunity: to begin to forge checks and balances so that  never again can decisions be made that so dramatically jeopardize the viability of the nation.

*Financial Decision Making in Mexico

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Luis Rubio

The intention can be praiseworthy but the reality is stubborn and implacable. The objective of the reforms was, in the governmental rhetoric, “to move Mexico.” At least in the case of education the one moved –in fact hoodwinked- has been the government. Contrary to many predictions at the beginning of the 6-year presidential term, the educative reform, doubtlessly the most popular of the reforms, has been, by far, the most conflictive. While the energy reform –the reform against which great opposition was anticipated- advances, the educative one evaporates in mortifying negotiations, mortifying and counterproductive.

Despite that the discourse and discussions regarding the educative reform have been well ordered, there is no consensus on what motivates the CNTE, which would permit solving (in contrast with postponing and prolonging) the conflict and, chiefly, advancing toward the core objective: a first-world education that puts equality of opportunity into effect. The government has see-sawed –from hard handedness to negotiation to capitulation- without having afforded any specimen of understanding the logic and motivation of the CNTE and its contingents.

The reform was conceived for a reality that had nothing to do with the Mexican of today and it has been that very reality that has ended up imposing itself on the governmental capitulation. The government aspires to a change à la italienne: that everything changes so that everything remains the same and that, CNTE dixit, is not going to happen. The educative reform, as with several of the reforms that the country has undergone in the last decades, supposes a paradigmatic change about what the country is, of what is desired to achieve and of what the manner of government action should be. In the absence of that conceptual change, no reform will be successful.

The old political system worked under the premise of a closed economy, a vertically controlled political system and a structure designed to generate benefits for the heirs of the Revolution and their cronies. In that schema, the educative system had two functions: on the one hand, to build and nurture an ideological hegemony that would serve to mollify the population and control it; and, on the other hand, particularly in the countryside, the teaching profession was a form of employment and generation of welfare in impoverished zones.  The quality of the education did not comprise a relevant issue and no one thought of it in those terms: there was an employer and a clientele, an effective mechanism for keeping the peace that favored, and made possible, the depredation, corruption and prosperity of the privileged.

While reforms have been approved in matters of competition, imports, investment and so on, the paradigm of control and privilege has not changed. Politicians behave as if there were no democratic competition among political parties, entrepreneurs exert pressure to eliminate competition, the government does not comprehend that its responsibility is to create conditions for the success of the population, and, in general, they all repudiate the international review mechanisms (as in human rights), which are the daily bread of the XXI century. In a word, everyone clings to a past that, in many respects, no longer exists. And the price of preserving the old privileges mushrooms daily.

Of course there are spaces of competition, first-world companies and niches, such as those engendered by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), that exhibit a singular modernity. But the overwhelming majority of Mexicans and, virtually, the entire political apparatus, live on another planet. Some because that is the way they exploit the system, others because they endure it. My hypothesis is that, as long as the status quo does not change, the educative reform is impossible. And that was as true with the two PAN administrations as with today’s “new” PRIists.

The educative reform attempts against the two pillars of the education system: it undermines hegemony on allowing the competition of ideas and views; and, most of all, threatens the guarantee of an employment system with benefits deriving from the historical marriage between the government and the field of teaching. The politicians want the teachers to accept a change in the rules of the game without the former altering their own behavior. More to the point, the reform takes for granted that teachers will submit to evaluations and other mechanisms of control, itself a new type of control, without offering teachers the possibility, the certainty, of becoming an integral and thriving part of the new system. Under these conditions, it is not difficult to fathom the clash of terminologies, postures and views.

Perhaps even more important, the government pretends to raise the quality of education within the old system, an inextricable contradiction. At least one segment of the government supposed that it could eliminate the patronage system overnight, at no cost and without opposition. What it found was that the governmental rear guard (those who later capitulated, mostly in Gobernacion), as well as the CNTE, continue playing under the old rules that are understood to perfection. Violence winds up as an instrument in the hands of the dissenters, mainly because the government lives in fear due to the memory of 1968 and, more recently, Nochistlán.

The educative reform will work when the Mexican political establishment is willing to enter into the XXI century. Inasmuch as this does not occur, CNTE and the Nochistlanes will be the norm, not the exception.

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Luis Rubio

Few things distinguish Mexico as crisply as a nation as the total absence of strategic vision: the nation lives day to day. Matters are not resolved, they are simply postponed; the problems are not seen to, they are bought; the challenges are not recognized as such, they are ignored. In one of the most descriptive anecdotes of the old political system, it was said that President Adolfo Ruíz-Cortines (1952-1958) had two trays on his desk: one said “problems that solve themselves” and the other, “problems that time takes care of”.

That way of governing (or pretending to) had viability in an era during which the government enjoyed full control. The PRIist system was a hegemonic mechanism of control which had tentacles throughout the country, even the most modest hamlet; its operators had a presence in the greater part of the national territory and served not only as a means for obtaining information on local affairs and potential risks or threats to the system, but also to dissuade potential troublemakers or, were the situation to require it, appease any dissidence. The problems were many, but the system possessed mechanisms to deal with them and, in a world without the ubiquity of information and telephones with cameras of today, no one found out how these were actually dealt with: what counted was not the care with which government operatives or forces acted, but rather the efficacy of their actions. Stability was all that mattered and the system of that era provided it generously. It was a simple world when compared with the complexity of the current one.

The presidents of recent decades surely dreamed of a world without the press, with citizens without options or information and with the capacity of making the powers of any governor not submitting to the central power disappear. But that was then: today we live in mounting chaos because the façade sought, today’s pretense, is that nothing has changed.

To function in these times, in addition to developing itself, a country needs to pave the way on multiple fronts and that implies a strategic vision. Its absence at present –and in our history – is astounding and even suicidal. The problems are not solved but instead, in the vernacular, “the can is kicked”. Recently, some members of the Cabinet sacrificed others in order to eliminate a contender from the presidential race without the consequences mattering, even for the government itself, not to speak of country; the case of the recent state elections is revealing: some influential Presidential Cabinet members preferred to lose some governorships in the interest of excluding a potential rival in the form of the president of the PRI. The only thing that matters is today, the here and now and me, myself and I. With this rationality, the problems do not vanish, they are only prolonged, postponed and magnified. The case of the CNTE (the National Confederation of Education Workers) is paradigmatic.

Were the problem about the playing of parlor games in a glass house, the issue would be irrelevant. But these are merely anecdotal examples. Mexico is facing basic decisions in countless areas for which we have not prepared and for which we have not exhibited a disposition to advance.

Here is an illustrative series of obstacles that Mexico is up against and that, without strategic vision, will be incapable of confronting:

• To consolidate democracy: currently we have a dysfunctional system of government in which it is not known where the executive powers end and the legislative ones begin. There are no checks and balances, no clear rules. Everything constitutes an incentive to conflict, rather than to effective government. How to construct a model of government? Who heads up the effort? How to convince the distinct political forces? How to build a future?
• The Police: in 1968 a mistaken lesson was learned (police = repression) and that has impeded the development of a modern police corps, respectful of the citizens’ rights and respected by the citizenry.
• Justice System: innumerable laws are approved but the paradigm has not changed: laws are meant to appease diverse constituencies, but not to fix the problem. Conflicts of interest in the judicial power are flagrant; politicized justice continues to be the norm.
• Corruption and impunity: everyone gives lip service to denouncing this, but no one wants to do away with the binome. What would have to happen to change the dominant paradigm, beyond laws with which no one pretends to comply with or to enforce?
• Relationship with the U.S.: we are at a crucial moment due to the upcoming elections in the U.S. but we have no idea, or less so a plan, to redefine the relationship. What happens under each potential scenario? What do we want from the relationship? What do we have to do for the desirable to be possible?
• Education: we have been for decades in a vicious circle in which what is important has not been the development of human capital. How can the vision of education be changed?   What has to be done to achieve this? How to join forces with, instead of combating, the teachers? How can we unhinge the leaderships devoted to holding back the development of education?
• Public finances: the spending model financed by few taxes from captive citizens and growing debt is creating a crisis. How to develop novel sources to raise revenue? How to develop accountability mechanism to make this possible?

The challenges that we face are huge and, clearly, cannot be solved overnight. Each of these –these and others- will demand understanding, vision, leadership and arduous negotiations. But if the sole objective is “don’t move anything”, “don’t even try to change the status quo”, the country will persist in its decline and conflict will be on the rise.

The only way to break through the inertia is to speak clearly: we have problems that require one or two generations of continuous efforts to transform the country. Kicking the can is not a solution, even if comfortable for some functionaries.

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 Luis Rubio

In the eighties, the title of a book on Indonesia summed up the moment in that society, not very distinct from that of today’s Mexico: “A Nation in Waiting”. In waiting for “a change”.

Governments come and governments go, all avowing deliverance. But deliverance did not come and everything turned out being excuses: the fault was always someone else’s.

When things turn out well, Mexican society leans over backward towards the government; when things come out poorly, the reaction is one of spite, of betrayal. That is why Mexican society’s reaction has been so brutal, making life easy for the promoters of chagrin as a politico-electoral strategy. And the government could not have acted worse: it entrenched itself, convinced of its virtue, thus incapable of reaching out, ended up an easy prey of its own prejudices, and of an opposition that it does not understand, nor tries to. This has led society towards absolute uncertainty with respect to the future.

During the last lustra, Mexicans have lived through two similar and, at the same time, totally distinct moments, a contrast that illustrates some of the causes of the disgust, desperation and anger ad hominem that currently characterize the country. Vicente Fox and Enrique Peña-Nieto have nothing in common in their biographies, proposals or abilities, but both share one thing: the two promised a transformation, which they forgot nearly immediately on taking office. Fox swore to “get the PRI out of los Pinos” in order to change the country; Peña-Nieto pledged an “effective government”. Both betrayed the population. Their failings explain the growing popularity of the miracle peddlers: “Bronco”, AMLO, and all those that are certain to show up later.

Joaquín Villalobos, an expert on social movements, says that there is no worse government strategy than that deriving from a simple reading of a complex reality. Fox did not understand the dimensions of his victory nor much less the nature or the depth of the demand for change in Mexican society; also he did not recognize the weakness of the PRI at that juncture in time. The problem for him were the persons and not the structures and institutions, the reason he wound up doing the dead man’s float for six long years, creating antibodies for the politico-economic transition that the country continues to await.

Peña-Nieto did not understand that the Mexico of today has nothing to do with that of the fifties of the last century, that the globalized economy forever altered the domestic politics, and that resorting to a high fiscal deficit is tremendously dangerous politically. The present government not only incorrectly read the circumstances that it came into power but also the crucial moments that changed under its own watch, especially Ayotzinapa. Its decision to attempt to recentralize power bespoke enormous naiveté, as if decentralization of the previous decades had been the product of the will of a president and not the result of a complicated and shifting political reality. But by centralizing an array of instruments and imposing controls on the media, governors and other social actors, in addition to tax increases to captive taxpayers, and the disdain with which it managed (and continues to mishandle) cases of corruption, the government ended in the worst of worlds: responsibility for all issues and events about which it did not have (nor could it have) control fell in the lap of the president. Worse, all Mexicans are aggrieved.

The case of Ayotzinapa is emblematic. In objective terms, it is evident that the matter was a local one and that the federal government did not become aware of it until much after it occurred. In contrast with other crises, in that one there was no participation of federal forces. Under those conditions, it is unbelievable that the federal government ended up taking the blame, but that was the product of its own way of acting, of its folly in protecting the governor and, above all, of its turning a blind eye to the complexity of the context. Even now, the government does not to appear to understand the amount of grievances that it engendered in all of society and that Ayotzinapa permitted bringing out into the open and making them explicit anonymously.

When Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor, denounced the crimes of the Soviet regime, one of the delegates called out, “Comrade Khrushchev, where were you when Stalin was doing all these terrible things?” Khrushchev shouted, “Who is that? Stand up!” No one rose. Khrushchev said, “That comrade, in the shadows, is where I was”.

President’s Peña’s government did not understand the society that it attempted to govern nor much less understood that its initiatives and policies were disrupting values, traditions, interests and, most of all, realities and rights won the hard way. At the moment that Iguala took place, the society manifested itself with brute force.

While uncertainty has become the dominant factor in citizens’ minds, the government remains trapped in its own simple reading of a complex reality, believing it controls the presidential succession process. The contradiction is flagrant: society demands definitions about the future while the government delivers nothing more than scorn. Mexicans clearly understand the complexity of the moment, and nobody seems disposed to violent action. However, no country can function in absence of certainty and clarity of the future and, at the very least, a sense of hope.

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Luis Rubio

The anger is tangible and fully justified: the risks for Mexico of a Trump presidency are evident; the scathing offenses that the U.S. presidential candidate has lavished upon Mexico and Mexicans are plainly inadmissible. All of this is clear and indisputable. The question is whether Mexico has the possibility of “stopping” Trump and derailing his candidacy, all this without risk or pernicious consequences. The latter is key: our geographic coordinates has provided us with enormous economic opportunity, but not substantial political power. I do not think anyone is willing to affirm Mexico as the regional powerhouse. Things being thus, without lessening the dishonored national dignity, the Mexican response to Trump cannot be visceral: Mexico has to act to improve its options, not its risks.

If we exchange the word “enemy” for “neighbor” in the following words, no one could say it better than Sun Tzu: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a thousand battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle”.

The strategy of a small actor facing a great one must consider the circumstances, and potential consequences, of its actions. For several months, the Mexican government has been acting –and boasting- in migratory matters, promoting the naturalization of Mexicans who qualify for it, particularly in the so-called swing states, where no party commands a systematic majority: the presumption being that the vote of the new citizens could make the difference on Election Day. The numerical logic is apparent, but not its political rationality: if unsuccessful, not only would Mexico must contend with the new, disliked, president, but also, at least potentially, with his ire.

It is obvious that Mexico has to “do something”, but that “something” cannot entail a devastating risk. Many Mexican presidents have gone to the U.S. Congress to “read them the riot act;” some have transcended the bilateral issues (such as migration and weapons) to venture into exceedingly rugged terrain, such as the Middle East and Vietnam. None achieved U.S. benevolence: expecting to would have been absurd. Observed from our side, any U.S. meddling in the internal political affairs of Mexico has always been rejected and denounced as unjustified intervention. U.S. nationalism begins where the differences among their political parties end.

Additionally, in the specific case of Trump, there is evidence that, throughout his campaign for the Republican Party nomination, his numbers improved whenever some Mexican personage, as Vicente Fox exemplified, would appear in the media criticizing him. Trump’s hard-core political base fervently believes in his message and any help on our part would do nothing but strengthen that base: the last thing Mexico should do is to upset (even more) the henhouse.

Mexican governments from the end of the eighties have maintained an excellent relationship with the U.S. Intergovernmental interaction is fluid, problems and claims are seen to (though not always solved) and, every time there is a crisis, the number one priority is avoiding its escalating. On at least two occasions, half of Obama’s cabinet came personally to Mexico City to prevent a burst of tensions. Mexico’s problem is not the relationship with the U.S. government but with the U.S. society. There lies the deficit which is acute and the cause of the strength and resonance of Trump’s rhetoric.

The great benefit of NAFTA was to open a world of opportunities for investment in Mexico and the export of manufactured products for our neighbors to the North; the great cost was having become a subject of U.S. internal politics. Up to the nineties, Mexico was seen as a pivotal country for the U.S. for geographic reasons, but it did not constitute a factor for internal political discussion beyond that of the agencies dedicated to drugs and the like. The debate that led to the ratification of NAFTA changed that reality and it generated a stigma for Mexico and everything Mexican through many U.S. regions and communities that have come out losing in the process of technological change, the disappearance of traditional jobs and the moving of manufacturing plants to Mexico and other countries. The political fact is that Mexico ended up being blamed of innumerable evils for which it was not responsible, but in politics that does not matter.

What does matter is that Mexio did nothing to attack the problem. After the ratification of NAFTA we forgot the U.S. society that had so successfully been courted for the ratification of the agreement. Now we are paying the bill. The question is what can be done now.

In the long term, what has to be done is axiomatic: win over U.S. society with our exceptional assets, such as culture, history, people, service, vitality, humor, etc. Nothing is lacking for achieving this, except for a long-term commitment. In the short term, from here to Election Day, there is little that can be done other than to establish bridges with both campaign teams, explain the Mexican perspective and procure minimizing future damage. And hoping that the worse scenario does not materialize.

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Luis Rubio

“Transitions are long, uncertain and complex, affirms Joaquín Villalobos. Worse yet, writes Australian novelist Nikki Rowe, “Transition isn’t pretty, but stagnation is hideous”. Mexico’s penal reform process is found in that limbo: significant advances in some aspects but without consolidating the port of arrival.

The country undertook an extraordinarily ambitious transformation in matters of criminal justice but did not devote itself to creating the conditions for it to fructify. As in so many other things, we crossed the river without a map to guide our arrival on the opposite shore. However, according to legislation approved years ago, at least in the interpretation by the Supreme Court, the principles of the new system would enter into operation immediately, impacting the imperfect legacies of the past. With this, the risks of an unfinished transition could become incommensurable.

The main concern with regard to implementation of the reform is reduced to the application of due process. Since Florence Cassez (a French woman accused of kidnapping) was released under the principle that her rights had been violated when the judiciary failed to follow the procedures established by the law, a great number of abductors, pederasts, and murderers have been freed. The ruling of the Supreme Court in this matter established the principle of due process of law and this has been used by innumerable attorneys to obtain their clients’ freedom, despite the fact that the majority of these had recognized their culpability. The new system will drastically accelerate this process of liberation.

Dispute in this regard was not long in coming about. The victims (and their families) of abduction, homicide, extortion and all types of crimes argue that it is not possible to apply a principle retroactively and that, in any case, the new system should be applied to future transgressions and not to those of the past. One of the most articulate plaintiffs, and the mother of a young man who was kidnapped and murdered, Isabel Miranda de Wallace, wrote that “Due process must be integral, that is, all parties must be similarly armed… Diverse voices are raised in favor of the rights of the accused, but I ask you, who looks after the victims? Who defends the human rights of those who were first violated by the criminals when these victims were tortured or mutilated?”

What Mrs. Wallace proposes is morally indisputable and casts light upon what the country is faced with in this matter. The question is how to carry out the transition that the country requires from the ashes of the old corrupt and authoritarian political system, but nonetheless the one that continues being the norm, to the construction of a new platform of civilization, democracy and justice for all. Given the corruption, dysfunctionality and, therefore, impunity that characterizes the justice procurement system, the virulence of those who have endured agony from crime is perfectly explainable and understandable. As is the logic that the citizens –from the most modest to the most prominent- would prefer to see a presumed criminal in jail –or to lynch him- than to trust in the promises inherent in due process. As the saying goes, the mule was not born stubborn; circumstances made it that way…

The point of departure in criminal affairs are the underworlds of corruption where those who govern justice are not the judges but rather the prosecutors -and their investigators and police-, who are lacking in the professionalism, forensic and other laboratories, capacities and incentives to conduct professional and legally irrefutable investigations. The emphasis of the system is not found on the procurement of justice but instead on the processing of those whom the prosecutors determine to be guilty; the process is so vice-ridden that it inevitably entails violations of the rights and procedures that comprise the essence of due process. A lawyer whom I consulted could not have been more eloquent: “Due process is a gift on a golden platter for defense lawyers because there is no way for present-day justice systems to do good work; it is always possible to find flaws in the process”.

It is clear that only a faultless transformation of the justice system would make it possible, on touching shore at the opposite side of the river, for Mexicans to have open and transparent processes, professional prosecutors and judges in charge of the process. As in a civilized nation.  The problem is how to get there.

The furor being generated by the release of individuals accused of homicide and abduction obliges the politicians to respond. The transition inherent to the reform should have started in 2008 but, Mexican style, it never did.  The question now is what to do now: put the reform on ice, thus preserving the present (in)justice system, as many propose, or create a mechanism sanctioned by the Supreme Court that separates the old system from the new, with which novel incentives would be created for the prompt implementation of the new system. That is to say, not superimposing the new on the old, but creating a parallel transition process.

What is responsible is not to step back for even an instant from the basic issue-at-hand: getting to the other side of the river, to the sanctuary of professional and unpolluted justice.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

Dogmas and factiousness forge the educative strategy. Some policy makers advance a reform that cannot in reality be applied, others undermine it to upset a rival in the presidential-succession race; some demand absolute compliance with what, simply, cannot be complied with and the rest just take advantage of the troubled waters to impose their law and construct their own candidacy. This brings to mind the old witticism on the difference between the paranoid and the schizophrenic: one builds castles in the air and the other lives in them, but it is the Psychiatrist that charges rent in both cases. The point is simple: only the Psychiatrist comes out unscathed; all the rest work for him.

In this entire tragic farce the least important thing is the only thing that matters: the possibility that every Mexican child can build a successful future. That is, break with a key structural impediment to the development of each citizen and to economic growth: an educative system erected for the attainment of ideological hegemony in support of the political system. Ceding educative control to the unions and their dissidents was not by chance:  the objective did not comprise an education for success in life (and to equalize opportunities for children born under such unequal conditions), but rather political control.

In this light, the mobilizations of the National Coordination of Educational Workers (CNTE) in the last weeks and months are perfectly explainable and follow an impeccable political logic of which the great strategist Sun Tzu would have approved: hit your enemy where he least expects it and where it hurts him most. The CNTE emerged as dissention within the National Union of Educational Workers (SNTE) and, over time, it became a corporate entity with similar objectives but through different means. In practice, the two organizations complemented each other: the SNTE blackmailed the government with the threat of the CNTE. Both organizations won through setting themselves against the government.

Detention of the Teachers’ Union Head Elba Esther Gordillo could not have come at a more sensitive moment. Although the government took action because it feared her opposition to the educative reform, the cost was extraordinary: on beheading its leadership, the SNTE ended up disjointed and the CNTE morphed into the inevitable counterpart in the negotiation.

The CNTE became powerful in the state of Oaxaca where, in control of the State Education Ministry, it extorted the government with an interminable source of money and power. The great merit of the current federal government was to wrest that power base from the CNTE. However, that did not resolve the core matter: the CNTE’s credibility among the teachers who support it.

And that is the issue in a nutshell: despite that many teachers participate in blockages and marches because they are obliged to do so, the majority do so out of conviction. The question is why. Years of observing the phenomenon have convinced me that there is a very one straightforward factor that spells it out: the teachers are petrified of being replaced by the reform, that is, they are afraid of failing the evaluations and being left without a job.

Behind all this lies the educative’ system’s perverse rationality: historically, a person who aspires to be a teacher must initially amass a (relatively) enormous sum of money to purchase a teaching post, which in turn becomes a virtual savings account, with its capitalization at the end of the individual’s teaching career on its later sale. On buying this position, the teacher ensures an income for the next thirty years and guaranteed retirement on selling it. The CNTE as well as the SNTE have devoted themselves to making sure that the equation is maintained per saecula saeculorum because it is an infallible source of control of the base.

The educative reform, basically labor-related in nature, seeks to redefine the relationship between the union and the Mexican Ministry of Education (SEP) as the basis for an eventual, thoroughgoing educational reform. From this perspective, it is purely the stick and no carrot. That is, it constitutes a huge threat to the status quo in that it does not offer a way out and, in contrast, issues a warning to those living in and from the traditional system. Individuals who bought their posts years ago view their retirement as endangered, and those in the system (probably most) who know they are below par as teachers, live in fear of losing their position due to the evaluations. The reform does not see to any of these elements. If the teacher does poorly in the exam he is out of the system; if she does well, her income does not compensate for the savings inherent in the position that was purchased years ago.

In the face of this, the government has gone from one incident of bungling to another. Some within the administration have taken a hard line, others just want to oust them. Behind all of this is the other dialectic of the political reality: the presidential succession. Within this context, the “negotiation” process (government-CNTE) does not address the crux of the problem: above all the crucial difference between the rationale of power and money that lies behind the CNTE’s leadership (the old corporatist logic) and the union members’ trepidations. Rather than splitting the two, the government’s actions only strengthen the alliance -and the fears. The negotiation –and the many agendas in conflict behind it- feed the protest.

The risk in all this is that the protest ends up being generalized against everything: education, “the” reforms, the economy, etc. The dogmatism of all of those involved –The Ministry of Education (SEP), the Department of the Interior (Gobernación), Mexicanos Primero, CNTE and SNTE- nourishes the candidacy of the only one that has led with exceptional skill: first backing the mobilizations, then affirming the reform’s permanence.

And the children?

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

Whoever has walked down the streets of a European city knows that sidewalk cafés are the social and community lifeblood. The cafés extend out to and onto the sidewalks, where customers coexist peaceably with passersby, without the least conflict arising between them. The cafés occupy the sidewalks but do not invade them, a perceptible reflection of a society in which there are clear rules that are respected by private actors as well as by the authorities responsible for making the rules be complied with.

While in Mexico there is a proliferation of cafés and restaurants with tables on the sidewalk, the result has been very different. The comparison, and contrast, is revealing.

In societies like Mexico’s, in which little importance is afforded to the rules -any rules-, quotidian coexistence requires alternate mechanisms that facilitate it. In the case of vehicular traffic, for example, the existence of traffic humps and innumerable stop lights is suggestive: due to lack of the knowledge and application of the (frequently changing) rules of the motor vehicle code, the authority resorts to physical barriers to force drivers to behave. In Europe, as in societies in which knowledge of the rules is a condition sine qua non for operating a vehicle, there are many fewer traffic signals and practically no street humps: the authority resorts to traffic circles as mechanisms of interaction among drivers headed simultaneously in distinct directions. Behind having recourse to traffic circles, there is a whole philosophy that also reveals the nature of the authority: it is expected that drivers will know the rules and adhere to them. In traffic circles there is a procedure for entering, circulating and exiting: only those who know the traffic rules can function within that schema -and successfully get through a traffic circle.

The cafés and restaurants of Mexico City’s Condesa neighborhood as in Presidente Masaryk Avenue live in ever-changing rules, always dependent on the whims of the municipal authority, which also changes frequently. That is, there is no permanent code that establishes what can be done and what is prohibited (and compliance with which is equally strict for the individual or businessperson as for the authority). With the dearth of that clear and transparent set of rules and regulations, everything is subject to negotiation that, in such a milieu, implies paying a bribe. When a businessperson arrives at an agreement (that is, meets the inspector’s price), the permit is valid only for the time that the public official maintains his post; thus, the restaurant invades the entire sidewalk in order to exploit every last centimeter of available space (which was paid for under the table, as it were), regardless of its effect on pedestrians. The conduct of the authority as well as that of the restauranteur is absolutely logical and rational: both are exploiting the opportunity created by the “agreement” and both know that it lasts for a limited time only. The arbitrary powers that the rules confer on the municipal authority permit this type of arrangement at whatever cost, starting with the passersby.

This is but one example of the impediments to the growth of investment, therefore of the economy, which transcend the reforms that with such great eagerness the government promoted during its first half in office. These are factors that inhibit investment because these render it costly and, above all, risky. A restauranteur who is unsure of the space that he is going to be able to utilize will think twice before going ahead with his investment. The same is true of a mega enterprise that considers investing in the energy sector or in a plant that manufactures goods for exports. It is not by chance that those who invest the most are those that, thanks to NAFTA, enjoy legal and patrimonial certainty, something from which virtually all Mexicans are excluded.

The late Mancur Olson, an American professor, clarified this phenomenon: he found that when a company or consortium entertains a clearly defined special interest it can obtain very broad benefits compared with those that could be achieved by millions of consumers lacking common objectives. In this manner, a nucleus of companies or labor unions can achieve customs or regulatory protection that negatively affects the consumer in general because it possesses the capacity to exert direct and effective pressure. Hence, they can come to an agreement with the authority of the Secretary of the Economy that, on benefiting those enterprises, jeopardizes not only the population in general, but also makes investment generally risky. Who would want to invest in an environment in which the rules are established in willful (that is, corrupt) fashion by the authority? This instance is extensive to sectors such as communications, agriculture, cattle raising, and others. When we ask ourselves why the Mexican economy does not grow, the answer should be obvious.

Mexico’s governmental system was constructed under the principle that the authority should be endowed with great latitude in deciding where and how the country would develop. Perhaps that made sense and worked one hundred years ago, after the revolutionary devastation and within the context of a closed and protected economy. Those very powers persist today but the reality is the opposite: in open and competitive surroundings, what previously was (conceivably) virtuous, today condemns us to poverty and disillusionment. Nothing will change while arbitrariness and the absence of checks and balances remain the norm.

www.cidac.org
@lrubiof

 Luis Rubio

In memory of Professor Stephen Zamora

Defying the reality is a sport engaged in by all politicians of the universe. However, sooner or later comes the day to pay the piper. Dilma Rousseff was removed because of alleged “crimes of responsibility” in fiscal matters, but her true crime was sustaining a cadence of spending that became unsustainable. The launching of a process of impeachment is exceedingly serious and worrisome, and all the more so when it entails a strong dose of vindictiveness and petty political disputes, but all of that does not preclude her country’s finding itself in a critical economic situation, the product of an economic strategy that she and her predecessor adopted and prolonged beyond the viable.

President Lula and President Dilma were benefited, first, from the reforms processed by the Cardoso government in the nineties but, above all, by the growth in the price of commodities that, for a decade, they exported to China. When the commodities bubble burst, the entire strategy of ever growing spending and interminable redistribution without consideration for the growth of productivity became unviable.

The strategy seemed sensible: effecting transfers with the Bolsa Familia program (designed after the Mexican Solidaridad-Progresa Program), with the objective of generating greater consumption by the most destitute population as a means of emerging from poverty. The result was immediate: millions of the poorest Brazilians began to enjoy formerly unthinkable consumption power. Nonetheless, the other side of the coin was absolute madness: there was no similar growth in productivity and, more important yet, the distribution program was not modified when the economy capsized, the product of the fall of exports.

In the end, the spectacular growth that the Brazilian economy had achieved for several years did not lead to the creation of internal engines of growth that would maintain it when the commodities boom evaporated. That is, they did the same thing that Mexicans have done with oil. The essential difference is that the Brazilians collect more taxes that Mexico but are not wealthier: they spend like prosperous Scandinavians but have a third-world infrastructure.

The “temporary” removal of the Brazilian President is an internal political affair of that country, about which I do not know enough, thus I dare not opine. But the evident lesson of the changes that occurred during the Rousseff presidency is that public expenditure is not a sustainable pathway toward development. An economy grows when there are conditions for making investment and an environment in which productivity grows in a systematic way. The Mexican crises of the eighties, the Asian crisis of 1997, the Russian crisis of 1998 and now the Brazilian crisis –not to mention the recurrent crises of Argentina and the approaching one in Venezuela- have a common denominator: all came about from attempts to defy the most basic economic logic.

The spectacular growth rates that the Brazilian economy underwent in recent years led many -in Mexico and outside it- to find fault with the Mexican government for its austerity (more in years past than at present). The Brazilians, the critics affirmed, had been able to diminish poverty in a none too despicable part of the population and its economy grew at rates that Mexicans have not seen since the sixties. It is now evident that that growth was due to exceptional circumstances –the Chinese demand for goods, mainly those for mining and agriculture and cattle-raising, in which Brazil had specialized- that are not repeatable.

During these years Brazil experienced what Mexico had in the seventies: they defied the reality and it came back to charge them every penny. Brazil has no option other than to begin to reform its economy. It would be wonderful if they learned from Mexico that reforms have to be real in order for growth to be high and sustained and not mediocre like ours.

Attacking corruption

Only naiveté can lead to thinking that a statement of patrimony and the publication of a tax return can lead to eradicating corruption and not to simulation. Given the core historical function that corruption has played in Mexico’s political system, the only way of ending corruption is by changing the structure of incentives and factors that make it possible.

In the first place, it would have to commence by modifying the powers that the bureaucracy relies on that, de facto, allow it to make decisions on purchases, contracts and multimillion allocations virtually without checks and balances. That would require changes in the laws, as well in the granting of full faculties, with teeth, to the Chief Audit Office of the Federation (within the congress), in order for there to exist an organ in the legislative branch that could effectively prosecute corruption.

In second place, a law would have to be approved that protects a person who denounces irregularities and cases of corruption, a whistle blower program. And even, as in some countries, it could confer a reward on those who accuse someone of something when those cases do indeed lead to sentencing.

Finally, it would have to draw a line in the sand with respect to the past, an end-point law, by which, through a determined payment, each person -public or private- who participated in an act of corruption is protected from any persecution regarding what has gone on before. This could seem unjust but one must start somewhere.  And one must never lose sight of that only by envisioning the future will it be possible to change the present reality.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof