Order and Disorder

Leave a reply

Luis Rubio

A “trilemma” occurs when there are three critical objectives but only two are attainable at the same time. From the time that I became acquainted with this formulation it seemed to me that it described well the contradictions that characterize Mexico: the search for political and economic stability above the disorder, the violence and the propensity for anarchy; the desire to consolidate a democratic regime; and the eagerness to build a competent and functional governance. The past four decades have been witness to important efforts to advance in these three ambits, perhaps without coming to a halt to notice the inherent contradictions in the objective, thus, the impossibility of achieving it.

The reforms that were advanced between the eighties and the last decade were conceived to advance the first objective, especially economic stability. The goal was to create conditions to attract private investment for the purpose of developing an industrial development platform. Each of the components that was integrated into the process, from the liberalization of trade in    1985 up to the energy reform of 2013, constituted an additional scaffold to conform the scenario that has permitted the consolidation of an export manufacturing industry.  Today’s entire Mexican economy depends on those exports, therefore, despite all the avatars, the achievement is none the lesser.

The flip side of the coin is that everything was wagered on the construction of that export platform, which implied forgetting (and, in fact, losing) the majority of the population that remained trapped in the prevailing disorder, as much due to the poor government itself in general, as to the uncontainable wave of violence and criminality that razes increasing numbers of communities. Both factors –the incompetent government and the organized crime- complement each other and provide mutual feedback: those who occupy governmental posts derive political and personal benefits, while organized crime prospers and proliferates at the expense of the health and tranquility of the citizenry.

The desire to erect a democratic regime has been present since the dawning of Mexico as an independent  nation,  undergoing various exceptionally successful moments in the XIX as well as at the beginning of the XX century, but it was not until the second half of the last century, after the Student Movement (1968) and the growth of a solid and competitive opposition, that a democratic schema began to take shape that obligated the forging of an electoral regime into which everyone would  fit. However, observed in retrospect, that regime travelled faster than what the government and its sources of power were (are) willing to advance, yielding the results that one sees today: a government incapable of providing security to the population, an endless waste of resources; the total absence of transparency in the exercise of the governmental function; and, on top of everything, a government that does not satisfy even the most minimal standards of health, education, infrastructure and, in general, conditions for development.

The propensity toward anarchy that vast regions of the country experience is not the product of chance. A very high proportion of the population lives in submission to extortion and/or violence, in addition to injustice, generated by these same organizations and that impede not only the normality of daily life, but also the development of the country. The worst of it all is that there is not even a recognition of the nature of the problem or of the incompatibility of the current system of government with growth, stability, or democracy.

The question is, well, where to start. The promoters of the democratic transition assumed   that the professionalization of the mechanisms and the administrative organs of the electoral processes would in themselves resolve the problem of governance. It was reasonable to think like that, given that the approval of the respective reforms enjoyed near universal legislative support, with the decided participation of all the political forces. From that perspective, the wager made sense. Nonetheless, the result a quarter of century later is not commendable.

Scholars of the chaos marking nations such as Iraq and Syria have arrived at the conclusion that anarchy is the greatest threat to the construction of viable society. In the words of Robert Kaplan*, “A year of anarchy is worse than a hundred years of tyranny.”

Mexico has not reached the extreme of those nations, but parts of the country suffer in a climate of violence that is not very distant from what takes place in some zones of the Middle East. Also, although the level of dysfunctionality typifying Mexico is not like that of those nations, its inability (and indisposition) to resolve problems is comparable.

The bottom line is that the country runs the risk of advancing toward an ever more generalized chaos and that the democratic processes would not be able curb. What is urgent is to transform the system of government for it to be possible to build a lasting peace, create conditions for development and establish a sustainable platform of economic and political stability. Urgent and important at the very same time.

*The Tragic Mind

 

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

 

The legacy of the North American Free Trade Agreement

Leave a reply
Mexico News Daily

At its 30th anniversary, the North American Free Trade Agreement (and its second iteration in the form of the USMCA) has been the most successful instrument of economic transformation that Mexico has ever had in its life as an independent nation.

It sounds easy, but in recent decades it has been possible to provide stability to the economy and the exchange rate, two factors that for centuries seemed unattainable. Although there are many complaints and criticisms regarding this agreement, the best way to assess it would be to imagine what would have happened to Mexico in the absence of this instrument.

Three objectives motivated the negotiation of what ended up being NAFTA.

The first two were economic in nature and the third was political. The aim was to promote active engagement in international trade with the aim of modernizing the Mexican economy and generating a source of foreign currency that would allow paying for imports carried out on a regular basis.

Secondly, it sought to promote foreign investment in order to raise the growth rate of the economy, as a means of creating new sources of wealth and employment and, in this way, reducing poverty.

The numbers show that the success in both areas has been dramatic: Mexico has become a manufacturing export power, and these exports finance the growth of the economy as a whole. That is, exports are the main engine of growth of the Mexican economy and constitute a reliable source of foreign currency, which is an important part of the explanation why the peso-dollar exchange rate has remained stable in recent years (the other factor is remittances).

For its part, foreign investment has grown year after year, even in an environment as hostile to it as the one promoted by the current administration. A more favorable environment, particularly in the context of so-called “nearshoring” could raise these rates in an extraordinary way (and, with it, the sources of employment and wealth creation).

The third objective was political in nature: it sought to depoliticize government decision-making related to private investment. The NAFTA constituted a straitjacket for the government, since it committed it to a series of disciplines and limited its capacity for arbitrary decisions as well as those motivated by sheer tantrums.

By signing the agreement, the Mexican government committed to preserving a regulatory framework favorable to investment and foreign trade, protecting private investment and preserving a benign environment for economic development. These purposes arose after the expropriation of the banks in 1982, a situation that had created an environment of extreme distrust among both national and foreign investors, without whose activity the country would have no possibility of fostering economic growth, employment, as well as addressing poverty in a systematic way.

In this context, the NAFTA made it possible to depoliticize decisions regarding private investment, an objective that continues to work even with an administration that would clearly prefer that the NAFTA not exist, but from which it has benefited immensely. In fact, the NAFTA was designed precisely for a government like the current one.

For 24 years, with very different governments, each with its own, contrasting, priorities, the NAFTA was preserved, and its fundamental principles were respected. From this perspective, NAFTA fully achieved its goal, as even many of its staunchest critics at the beginning recognize today.

Criticism of the treaty originates from elements that have nothing to do with the agreement, essentially that it did not achieve the comprehensive development of the country. The inevitable answer is more than obvious: NAFTA is nothing more than an instrument for the achievement of specific objectives, all of which were achieved.

What was not achieved has to do with everything that was not done so that the country could effectively develop, poverty would disappear, and inequality would decrease, and that — all of it — has to do with the absence of a development policy that would have implied the consolidation of the rule of law, the creation of a modern public security system and the concomitant strategies in education, health and the like.

NAFTA was a central instrument for the country’s development, as is the USMCA today. It has allowed business decisions to be depoliticized, contributing to the development of highly competitive and world-class companies and industries. Although still far from benefiting all Mexicans, its success is so overwhelming that its limitations end up being inconsequential in relative terms.

But a free trade agreement is not, nor can it be, an objective in itself. The country requires a development strategy that assumes it as one of its pillars, but that goes further: to governance, to education, to infrastructure, to security, to the comprehensive competitiveness of the economy and the population. In short, to increase the general productivity of the economy, because only in this way will development be achieved.

In the absence of a strategy of this nature Mexico will end up being a country perpetually dependent on low wages. A sad corollary for an institution as visionary and successful as NAFTA has proven to be.

 

Luis Rubio is the president of México Evalúa-CIDAC and former president of the Mexican Council on International Affairs (COMEXI). He is a prolific columnist on international relations and on politics and the economy, writing weekly for Reforma newspaper, and regularly for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times.

https://mexiconewsdaily.com/politics/opinion-the-legacy-of-the-north-american-free-trade-agreement/

Bidenomics

Leave a reply

Luis Rubio

Biden is a rare specimen in the world of politics. Despite his chronological years and his (historical) discursive dyslexia, he has proven to be masterful in legislative matters and, although not recognized for it, he has advanced an agenda in a much more successful manner than would have seemed possible within a context of enormous polarization. The tangible fact is that Biden has altered the economic policy as well as the foreign policy of his country. The verdict regarding the goodness of these changes has yet to be discerned, but whatever it may be, Mexico will see itself impacted.

Beyond personalities, Biden shares a characteristic with Reagan, his predecessor in the eighties. Reagan was a great actor, an extraordinarily talented orator, but without the least pretense of being a profound intellectual, as was Adlai Stevenson (twice a presidential candidate in the fifties) or Barack Obama. Nor does Biden entertain the least intellectual aspiration, he stands, as Reagan did, for a set of very clear and simple principles that orient their decisions and their manner of acting. Of course, Biden’s principles are radically distinct from those of Reagan, given that he has not only broken with the notion of the United States as the main promoter of the world economy, but instead advocated for promoting an introspective industrial policy and protecting unionized workers.

Bidenomics, as his economic strategy has come to be known, is nothing other than a coarse way of promoting, through massive subsidies, the installation of manufacturing plants for high-technology goods, especially sophisticated processors, and sustainable energy, as part of his strategy of competing with China. This economic thrust complements the aggressive foreign policy of confrontation with China that Trump, his immediate predecessor, had launched, but now financed with huge fiscal subsidies. That is, the government (or, well, the taxpayers) subsidizes great enterprises to stop the fabrication of technological goods in China, Taiwan, and other latitudes.

In the 2022 mid-term elections Biden’s party lost control of the House of Representatives, whose new majority has been experiencing one convulsion after another in attempting to elect a leadership that ties in with the Trump cult that has come to dominate the Republicans. Despite that obstacle, Biden has achieved, at least to date, avoiding Congress declaring the bankruptcy of the U.S. government on not authorizing the debt limits required. But what is relevant is that, despite the obstacles and the uncertainty of his policies in economic as well as foreign matters, Biden has been able to advance once and again.

In addition to inflation the electorate does not pardon his age. Biden is an octogenarian who, on winning the next election would end his mandate at the age of 86 years. Although Trump is only three years younger, the difference between them in the capacity for communication is without doubt noticeable. This circumstance has led numerous observers and potentials contenders within his own Democratic circuit to call for him to renounce re-election in favor of another, younger alternative.

Biden is an enigma in the electoral sense. Those of us who have observed him over the decades know that his discursive capacity is extraordinarily limited and infinite in his propensity for committing gaffes. In the eighties, as pre-candidate, he was caught plagiarizing a speech, which excluded him from the contest at that moment. Forty years later he surprised half the world on defeating Trump, who will probably again be the contender for the November election.

For Mexico, the U.S. is not only its principal export market but also its principal growth engine through those same exports. Its future depends on the capacity to tighten those links, while expanding and generalizing these throughout the entire national territory, in that the revenue that the exports generate translate into incomes for increasingly more Mexicans. The problem is that this logic is not linear: in his eagerness to safeguard companies with unionized workers, Biden threatens to exclude diverse Mexican products, especially in the automotive realm, from the terms of the commercial treaty that regulates the bilateral economic relationship.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for Mexico lies in that AMLO, the current President, has objectives that are not in sync with the best economic interest of his own country.  In contrast with Biden, who (successfully) has been able to skirt the vast sources of confrontation within the U.S. society for advancing his agenda, AMLO sees no reason to even attempt to be the president of all Mexicans: better to polarize and confront than to advance the development of the country.

Mexico, as a middle-power nation, but with an outstandingly long border and an exceedingly wealthy neighbor, whosoever it is governing it, has the option of deciding to take advantage of the opportunity that this constitutes or pretend that its future would be more successful by joining the losers of the South of the continent. As at other crucial moments of Mexico’s history, the dilemma is real; the question is whether whoever governs Mexico from next October on will understand the magnitude of the challenge.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

 

NAFTA

Leave a reply

Luis Rubio

At its thirtieth anniversary, the North American Free Trade Agreement (and its second iteration in the form of the USMCA) has been the most successful instrument of economic transformation that Mexico has ever had in its life as an independent nation. It sounds easy, but in recent decades it has been possible to provide stability to the economy and the exchange rate, two factors that for centuries seemed unattainable. Although there are many complaints and criticisms regarding this agreement, the best way to assess it would be to imagine what would have happened to Mexico in the absence of this instrument.

Three objectives motivated the negotiation of what ended up being NAFTA. The first two were economic in nature and the third was political. The aim was to promote active engagement in international trade with the aim of modernizing the Mexican economy and generating a source of foreign currency that would allow paying for imports carried out on a regular basis. Secondly, it sought to promote foreign investment in order to raise the growth rate of the economy, as a means of creating new sources of wealth and employment and, in this way, reducing poverty.

The numbers show that the success in both areas has been dramatic: Mexico has become a manufacturing export power, and these exports finance the growth of the economy as a whole. That is, exports are the main engine of growth of the Mexican economy and constitute a reliable source of foreign currency, which is an important part of the explanation why the peso-dollar exchange rate has remained stable in recent years (the other factor is remittances). For its part, foreign investment has grown year after year, even in an environment as hostile to it as the one promoted by the current administration. A more favorable environment, particularly in the context of so-called “nearshoring” could raise these rates in an extraordinary way (and, with it, the sources of employment and wealth creation).

The third objective was political in nature: it sought to depoliticize government decision-making related to private investment. The NAFTA constituted a straitjacket for the government, since it committed it to a series of disciplines and limited its capacity for arbitrary decisions as well as those motivated by sheer tantrum. By signing the agreement, the Mexican government committed to preserving a regulatory framework favorable to investment and foreign trade, protecting private investment and preserving a benign environment for economic development. These purposes arose after the expropriation of the banks in 1982, a situation that had created an environment of extreme distrust among both national and foreign investors, without whose activity the country would have no possibility of fostering economic growth, employment, as well as addressing poverty in a systematic way. In this context, the NAFTA made it possible to depoliticize decisions regarding private investment, an objective that continues to work even with an administration that would clearly prefer that the NAFTA not exist, but from which it has benefited immensely. In fact, the NAFTA was designed precisely for a government like the current one.

For 24 years, with very different governments, each with its own, contrasting, priorities, the NAFTA was preserved, and its fundamental principles were respected. From this perspective, NAFTA fully achieved its goal, as even many of its staunchest critics at the beginning recognize today.

Criticism of the treaty originates from elements that have nothing to do with the agreement, essentially that it did not achieve the comprehensive development of the country. The inevitable answer is more than obvious: NAFTA is nothing more than an instrument for the achievement of specific objectives, all of which were achieved. What was not achieved has to do with everything that was not done so that the country could effectively develop, poverty would disappear, and inequality would decrease, and that -all of it- has to do with the absence of a development policy that would have implied the consolidation of the rule of law, the creation of a modern public security system and the concomitant strategies in education, health and the like.

NAFTA is a central instrument for the country’s development. It allowed business decisions to be depoliticized, contributing to the development of highly competitive and world-class companies and industries. Although it is still far from benefiting all Mexicans, its success is so overwhelming that its limitations end up being inconsequential in relative terms. But NAFTA is not, nor can it be, an objective in itself. The country requires a development strategy that assumes it as one of its pillars, but that goes further: to governance, to education, to infrastructure, to security, to the comprehensive competitiveness of the economy and the population. In short, to increase the general productivity of the economy, because only in this way will development be achieved. In the absence of a strategy of this nature Mexico will end up being a country perpetually dependent on low wages. Sad corollary for an institution as visionary and successful as NAFTA has proven to be.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

 

Mexico’s 2024 Elections: Time To Boost Democracy Or Cement Authoritarianism

Leave a reply

 • WORLDCRUNCH – ENGLISH EDITION

LOPEZ-OBRADOR
As Mexico´s president seeks to consolidate his power ahead of the 2024 general elections in the fall, will voters and institutions react to safeguard the country´s democracy or fall deeper into outgoing President López Obrador´s authoritarian impulses?

MEXICO CITY — Two philosophies divide the realm of power. One seeks to ensure the state has all the tools it needs to bring about equality, and the other pursues the state’s decentralization and expand civil liberties. The first philosophy, rooted in the ideas of the 18th century French thinker Rousseau, is cherished by governments keen to take charge of their citizens. Such governments will always tout the leader or head of state as the people’s only representative.

Though, inevitably, such regimes incline toward tyranny. The second philosophy, rooted in the writings of the Englishman John Locke, favors a balance of power inside the state, precisely to prevent the tyranny of any one person or party. Another 18th century thinker, Montesquieu, described the state as a structure made of three branches of government (judicial, legislative and executive), with each acting as a check on the power of the other two.

In the last century, the philosophy of government has evolved here in Mexico. An initial, formative period (1916-17) that followed the tumult of the 1910 revolution, saw jostling between liberal, conservative, authoritarian, even trade-unionist and anarchist ideas until a constitutional agreement was reached and a charter approved in 1917.

Much of it was based on the liberal constitution of 1857. Subsequent decades saw a consolidation of this centralising vision, associated especially with the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas, which shaped Mexican governance through a period of economic development. This system began to falter with the 1968 student riots, and then the 1985 Mexico City earthquake.

These events would fuel electoral rivalries throughout the 1980s, as well as a number of economic and political reforms that would lay the groundwork for a more open economy and a political system that aspired to be fully democratic.

Most importantly, the economic and especially political changes of recent decades did not emerge from a Left-Right division. Students were the first group to demand democratization and limits to presidential powers, later being backed, for a while at least, by the center-right National Action Party (PAN), which had itself emerged as a reaction to the corruption of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party).

 

A new reality
Such changes have entailed an extraordinary, philosophical revolution, which has
inevitably prompted its own counterrevolution seen in the current president, Andrés
Manuel López Obrador (often simply called by his initials AMLO). Since its election in
2018, the current administration has not only worked to consolidate its power but also
eliminate any counterweight or outpost of resistance.

Many institutions have been eradicated, starved of funds or neutralized (by leaving
vacancies in bodies like the market regulator or the Electoral Court, well, vacant). This
all illustrates an easily discernible pattern. The president says parallel bodies are
"onerous" to the public purse and are being removed to save people money. Yet this
downsizing has more to do with his vision of power – call it a blast from the past – that
excludes citizens and gives preference to total presidential control.

Power, unfortunately, corrupts.

In the Soviet Union — another top-down system — they'd say it was easy to
differentiate between authoritarian and democratic systems. In the former, politicians
mocked citizens and in democracies the opposite occurred. But political systems
where one person says and does as they please and mock, or pummel, those who
oppose their vision are all too common. Power, unfortunately, corrupts.
Looking ahead, two fundamental questions hang over the president's institutional plans.
Firstly: how will candidates (for the 2024 general elections) react to his proposals? The
answer to this question will reveal these candidates' inclinations to side either with their
citizens or with tyranny? The second concerns parliament: will it fulfill its responsibilities,
or continue to submit to the president as nothing more than a rubber stamp?

Hope for a new future

In 1997, when the PRI first lost its absolute majority in parliament, the opposition
celebrated the hope of a new future in Mexico.”Together we outnumber you,” one
opponent told the country´s PRI president Ernesto Zedillo. From 1997 to 2012,
parliament was not so much a counterweight as an impregnable wall of opposition.
That changed with Enrique Peña Nieto and the return of some old-style politics with a
bit of help from cash bribes! As for this parliament, it has been Soviet-style in its
submission and loyalty!
We´ve seen a lot of mediocrity and lackluster performances.
But our country has a big opportunity in September and October 2024, with the
formation of a new parliament and a new government. We´ve had a range of
experiences in recent decades, both in leadership and legislative terms, with a lot of
mediocrity and lackluster performances.
People have a chance to vote in a system of checks and balances that constitutes
collective governance. This means a new framework of full legitimacy consisting of
three branches of government. Put simply, it is the chance to end our decline towards
authoritarianism and begin a new stage of development.

https://worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/mexico-2024-elections

Crossing the Abyss

Leave a reply

Luis Rubio

“You can observe a lot by just watching” said Yogi Berra, the great baseball icon. There are few things as sobering as the way that campaigns for the presidency are coming to take shape. Times of presidential succession are exceptional moments because they present two contrasting processes: on the one hand, all the political arrangements become tauter, exhibiting cleavage lines and institutional vulnerabilities. On the other hand, there are intervals during which hope is renewed, especially among those aspiring to be part of a new government as well as among those angry and marginalized by the outgoing government. Tension and hope are two potentially transforming elements but only to the extent to which whoever wins possesses the vision and level-headedness necessary to transcend the inexorable pettiness involved in the contest to become a figure of State.

Few achieve this, but the opportunity is immense, at least potentially, for Mexico during this transition from a strong government but one dedicated to polarization, to another much weaker but for which the circumstances could obligate it to build a new institutional scaffolding. It is still too early to come to conclusions, but it is never late to speculate on what could be.

At one moment in the Monty Python film Life of Brian, the revolutionaries opposed to the Romans meet to devise a plan to defeat them; there, a desperate John Cleese asks rhetorically, “What have the Romans ever done for us?!” Abruptly, there arises a great trail of responses proffered by the multitude. In consternation, Cleese again poses his question: “Alright, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the freshwater system, and public health, what have the Romans done for us?!” The Romans, like some other civilizations throughout history, changed the world and opened the doors to a new era of human development. I do not expect something similar from the next Mexican government, but there exists a unique opportunity to change the direction of the country toward development, perhaps the first time in three or four decades.

In plain terms, one way of proposing the opportunity is by asking: how can we transition from the regime of the “other data” and “to hell with your institutions” to a regime characterized by an obsession with economic growth and construction of a new institutional framework with  a future vision? Ambitious, without doubt, but the circumstances under which the upcoming government will be inaugurated might create an exceptional opportunity for that.

After a strong and polarizing government there will arrive a woman president -whichever of the two it may be- under relatively precarious conditions.  Were the trends that we can observe today to materialize, the country in October 2024 (the time of the inauguration of the new government) will be quite different from that of the presidential narrative of the last five years.  Instead of abundant funds for subsidizing Pemex and nourishing Morena-party clienteles, the president will find herself with an exhausted budget, a country under confrontation and a very diverse Congress. That is to say, the world of AMLO will have disappeared and with it the capacity of imposition. The dilemma for the president will be very simple: to limit herself to filling potholes -just patching things up- or to negotiate a new schema of a political relationship with the legislature. The former, the natural propensity of all Mexican governments, is always feasible, but the cost of continuing to relegate and marginalize most of the population would be incremental. On the other hand, the opportunity to concertedly confront the basic problems of security, federalism and governance, all of which are crucial for the entire country, will be a one-off, so that everybody begins to focus on activities of high productivity, growth, certainty and, in a word, future.

The current government has wagered on the preservation of poverty as a means of ensuring votes in the present and the future.  A new government, less fatuous and vain, should focus itself on the creation of conditions for the country to enter into an era of accelerated economic growth, perhaps one anchored to the exceptional circumstances produced by so-called nearshoring.

As the experience of nations such as Korea, China, Estonia and Poland illustrate, the accelerated growth of the economy entails the extraordinary virtue of becoming the great equalizer, as well as the source of convergence. When a nation starts to experience high growth rates, those that imply political costs, the great obstacles diminish in relevance as the population begins to see the benefits and, above all, to perceive the urgency of joining in the process, demanding solutions to the problems of infrastructure, health, education and so on. That is, accelerated growth facilitates breaking with impediments to economic growth, while at the same time creating conditions, including financing, for rendering it possible.

The point is that it is urgent to break the vicious cycle that the country is now experiencing and that will only be possible to the degree that the new government creates conditions to achieve it.  The circumstances under which the new government will come into power will make it doable. The question is whether it will take advantage of the opportunity or persevere in the futility of patchworking.

 www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

 

Education

Leave a reply

Luis Rubio

Nothing is more important for the development of a country than education. In fact, some of the nations that succeeded in breaking away from underdevelopment the fastest were precisely those that turned education into a vehicle to transform their countries in an integral manner. Instead of exploiting natural resources, they turned their main asset, their population, into their most important resource. This explains the development of Korea and Taiwan, Singapore and China, nations that, through an educational system of exceptional quality and with an eye towards the future of the students, have been getting closer and closer to the level of development and well-being of such paragons of civilization, as Norway, Sweden and Finland.

This year I looked for quotes and anecdotes about education to celebrate the holidays.

The truth is […] that I have never read any story…. Unfortunate that I am, married and do not know the first letter of the alphabet! Well, by my faith, I can’t read. I don’t even think […], because I don’t know how to read or write, since I know how to sign. Letters […], I have few, because I don’t know the alphabet.

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, 1605

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet

Aristotle, c 330 bc

There is an enormous difference between knowledge and education

John Ruskin, 1853

It is as impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning

Agnes Rapplier, 1931

That obtained in youth may endure like characters engraved in stones

Ibn Gabirol, c 1040

Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends

Benjamin Disraeli, 1874

Our public powers are now organized: freedom and equality exist under the all-powerful guard of the law; property has regained its true foundations; and yet the constitution would seem incomplete if we did not add, at last, public education. No doubt, we have the right to call this a power, since it encompasses a distinct order of functions that relentlessly improves the body politic and our general prosperity.

Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, 1791

A good education is not so much one which prepares a man to succeed in the world as one which enables him to sustain failure.

Barnard Iddings Bell, 1950

A college degree is a social certificate, not a proof of competence

Elbert Hubbard, 1911

To teach is to learn twice over

Joseph Joubert S, c 1805

To deny education to any people is one of the greatest crimes against human nature. It is to deny them the means of freedom and the rightful pursuit of happiness and to defeat the very end of their being

Frederick Douglas, 1894

Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving our young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants

John W. Gardner, 1963

The schools we go to are reflections of the society that created them. Nobody is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help you set free

Assata Shakur, 1987

How much reading those speeches of Gracchus helped me, there’s no need for me to say, since you would know best of all –you’re the one who encouraged me to read them, with that so learned brain and that so kind nature of yours. But just so your books shouldn’t come back to you all by itself with nobody to keep company, I’ve sent this little nothing book along with it. Be well, my sweetest teacher, most loving friend; I’m going to owe you whatever I’ll ever know of letters. I’m not such an ingrate that I don’t understand what you’0ve given me, when you’ve shown me your own notebooks and when you don0’t stop leading me down the trail of truth every day and “opening my eyes,” as people say. I love you as you deserve to be loved.

Marcus Aurelius to Marcus Cornelius Fronto, c 152

Mexico in penultimate place in mathematics; Japan ranks first according to PISA test.

VanguardiaMX

Mexico will no longer be part of the 2021 edition of PISA, thereby losing the most detailed source of information on the knowledge and skills achieved by Mexican students.

IMCO

The discussion that took place in the middle of this year regarding the new textbooks is transcendental because it contrasts, in a brutal way, with what has been experienced in the nations that have seen their economies grow the fastest. The key to education ends up being the reflection of the conception that characterizes the ruling class of each nation and that is reflected in their priorities and budgets. When the objective is prosperity, education takes on the function of transforming the capacities of the students; when the objective is control of the minds of the people, education ends up being a mere instrument of submission.

Morena gets her votes from the most ignorant people. The more illiteracy, the more support for Morena

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador

It’s the educated barbarian who is the worst; he knows what to destroy

Helen MacInnes, 1963

 www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

My Readings

Leave a reply

 Luis Rubio

Inequality of opportunity is one of the greatest maladies of Mexico, perhaps the worst of all. The deep-seated notion in the mythology that any Mexican that can echo Benito Juárez’s arrival from a remote rural place to the presidential seat of power is clearly false, at least for the overwhelming majority of the population. Raymundo M. Campos Vázquez* has penned a treatise on the theme, focusing on the latter from distinct perspectives. HIs argument is clear and convincing: without creating conditions that permit any Mexican to entertain similar opportunities from the outset, the country will never resolve its problems of growth, development or security. Although I take issue with some of the specific measures that he proposes, his central proposition is indisputable: Mexico requires a non-partisan professional bureaucracy -a State that functions- to attend to that central malaise hampering the country’s development. I would add that a State of that nature would resolve not only that but much more.

“No Blank Check”, a book by Reeves and Rogowski, analyzes the traditional distrustfulness of Americans regarding the power of their president. The authors study the constitutional limitations boxing in their federal executives such as the surveys along time to determine the degree of freedom or restriction with which the presidents of that country count on to act. The conclusion to which they arrive is that the U.S. electorate is more concerned about the results than about the means employed to achieve them, but that, above all, the electorate is disgusted by presidents who give rein to their free will.

The best book I read this year, perhaps the best in at least a decade, is “The Tragic Mind”, by Robert Kaplan. It includes a profound reflection on the order, anarchy and leadership capable of leading a country under perennially difficult conditions, where the alternatives are not black and white, but the consequences of a bad decision can be tragic. The value of the book lies in its clairvoyance: the importance of knowledge and wisdom in decision making, which permits the differentiation of what is possible from what cannot be achieved or of what is accessible from what can easily lead to chaos.

Yeonmi Park is an immigrant from North Korea who was able to escape from her country and then experiencing the worst poverty until her graduation from Columbia University in the U.S. Her book, While Time Remains, describes the precariousness of life in her native country, the brutality of China’s ambition, and its apprehensions concerning how U.S. cultural wars evolve, explaining how the new religion of gender, equity and language is poisoning the interaction between people and politics in general, to the extent that the U.S. is beginning to look like the land of her birth. This presents a crushing history that is worthwhile reading.

“Why Empires Fall” is an imposing book that disputes the arguments of Edward Gibbon (1776) in his book “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. According to Heather and Rapley, Rome did not have to end up collapsing as it did, but rather there was a series of decisions that led to its fall and, especially, to actions that were understood but that were not undertaken to avoid the empire’s erosion at all of its borders, as in point of fact occurred. Deriving from that reading, the authors compare the becoming of the West during the past decades and conclude that the descent is evident, but that this can be reverted if the structural ills are attended to, above all the budgetary and financial affairs afflicting the main Western nations and that, as in the case of Rome, could be the ultimate cause of their undoing. This is a powerful line of reasoning although the parallels that the authors establish do not always seem reasonable.

In “The Russian Revolution”, Victor Sebestyen tells the most stark, iconoclastic and heretical story that I have read on this iconic event. He begins his description in terms of the nature of the leadership of the movement that led to the building of the society that would produce the “new man” and then proffers the most devastating story of destruction, oppression, and abuse that one could imagine. A well-told story that explains much of what today’s world is living and suffering through.

When China in the eighties decided to open its economy and incorporate itself into the international commercial circuits, the expectation in the West was that it would advance toward a democratic transition. That most certainly did not happen, but as Bethany Allen counters in her book “Beijing Rules,” China had its own plan and opted for applying it systematically from the start and, though this only became evident decades later, innumerable investors in China and diplomats who lived through that process observed it and understood it completely. The book contains an extraordinary description of the manner of evolution of the decisions that came to give shape to the development of that great Asian nation.

Spinoza en el Parque México, by Enrique Krauze, is an erudite tome and one that teaches a lesson that, despite its moments of hauteur, portrays a distinctive vein of Mexico, of the world and of history that should not be missed.

Happy holidays!

* Desigualdades. Por qué nos beneficia un país más igualitario

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Philosophies

Leave a reply

 Luis Rubio

Two philosophies of power divide the world: one seeks its concentration to guarantee that the State has full powers to advance equality, while the other seeks its decentralization to ensure the freedom of citizens. The first, originally articulated by Rousseau, is the favorite of governments that aim to put themselves above the citizenry. Hence the notion that the head of the government is the sole representative of the people. Inevitably, these governments tend to become tyrannical. The second philosophy, articulated by John Locke, aims at building counterweights to power to ensure that the consecration of a tyrannical government is impossible. Montesquieu formalized this philosophy with his approach to a structure of divided government (executive, legislative and judicial), with a system of limits where each branch balances the others. Clearly, these are explicitly contradictory views.

In the last hundred years, Mexico has seen its governing philosophy evolve. In the constituent period, diverse currents -liberal, conservative, authoritarian, unionist, democratic, anarchist and everything else- coexisted, until an agreement was reached in the form of the constitutional document that ended up being adopted in 1917, much of whose content was derived from the liberal constitution of 1857. In the following decades, the centralizing vision that characterized the Cardenista era took shape and was strengthened as the country advanced in its economic development. The student movement of 1968 and then the 1985 earthquake shook the political system, giving rise to the politico-electoral disputes of the eighties and, from there on, to the series of both economic and political reforms that laid the foundations for an open economy and a political system that aspires to be fully democratic.

It is important to note that the political-economic changes of recent decades, especially the political ones, did not emerge from a left-right axis. In the political sphere in particular, the calls for democracy and the demand to limit presidential power originated in the student movement and was supported -in time- by the PAN, whose very origin was a reaction to the consolidation of the PRI system.

The philosophical evolution has been extraordinary, and it would have been naive to assume that a counterrevolution like the one championed by the President would not occur. Since its inauguration in 2018, the current government has been committed not only to concentrating power, but also to eliminating any loopholes that would prevent or limit the exercise of power. The elimination of institutions, the financial starvation of some of these and the de facto neutralization of others (especially by not appointing replacements when their members’ terms expired, as in the INAI, the COFECE and now the Electoral Tribunal) are all examples of a pattern which is easy to discern. The presidential bill to formalize the elimination of these and other autonomous bodies, which the President justifies in terms of cost (they are “onerous,” he said), in reality is the product of a vision of power that excludes the citizenry and privileges the unrestricted exercise of power by the President.

In the Soviet era, many of whose jokes were like Mexico’s, it was said that the difference between an authoritarian government and a democratic one was very simple: in an authoritarian system politicians make fun of citizens, while in a democratic system It happens exactly the other way around. It is not difficult to understand the preference for an authoritarian system in which a person -in this case the President- systematically dedicates himself to excluding, disqualifying, ignoring and attacking all those who do not align with his vision of power and life.

Looking ahead there are two factors that are important. The first is how the two candidates will react to the presidential proposal, revealing their preferences and propensities. Will they align themselves with the citizenry or with tyranny? The second is regarding Congress: will it exercise its responsibility, or will it continue to accept being railroaded by the executive, as if it were a mere appendage?

In 1997, when the PRI lost its absolute majority in the Congress for the first time, the opposition boasted about the new reality (“together we are more than you,” Porfirio Muñoz Ledo snapped at then-President Zedillo), but dedicated itself to opposing each and any initiative that came from the executive. Instead of a counterweight, the Mexican Congress between 1997 and 2012 was an almost irreducible wall of opposition. The Congress of Peña’s presidency succumbed to direct cash payments that bought the votes. The current Congress has been submissive to a fault.

The big opportunity begins next September and October, respectively. Then Mexico will have a new Congress and a new government. After mixed experiences of alternation of political parties in government, various styles of Presidents in power and a pathetic performance overall, the opportunity to build an effective system of counterweights dedicated to co-governing will be unique: to build a new scaffolding of governance that enjoys full legitimacy, supported by the three branches of government, all committed to asserting their functions and responsibilities. In other words, to get out of the morass in which Mexicans find themselves to enter a new stage of development.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

 

Compass

Leave a reply

Luis Rubio

Plying the compass has not been the strong suit of most of Mexico’s governments, certainly not during the contemporary era. But some, such as the current one, knock the ball out of the park. From the end of the Mexican Revolution, more than one hundred years ago, there has not been a sole government that has not placed economic growth as its central objective: some achieved it, others failed, but all entertained the objective of raising living standards and accelerating social mobility.  Some were pragmatic, others ideological, some profound and clear-of-purpose, others frivolous and superficial. Some were distinguished by employing competent technocrats, others despised the latter; some were (more) corrupt, others extraordinarily ambitious, but all attempted to elevate the population’s per-capita product. That is, all of them, except for the present one. This government preferred to bet on the loyalty proffered by a citizenry that remains poor.

The point of departure the present-day government has been that the causes of the symptoms must be attacked: the inequality, the poverty, the corruption and the violence, all of these in turn symptoms of the structural problems afflicting Mexican society. But the government opted for modifying the logic: it never proposed to resolve or at least attack those causes, but only the symptoms, which have not been attacked either, but that’s another matter. Now, in the waning period of the presidential term, only the international context remains, which can equally be benign or full of storm clouds, for which the government never prepared.

It is at these moments of political transition that discussions ensue on the “viability” of the country. The imbalances -the new ones and those of always- accumulate and the worries grow: prices, jobs, incomes, assaults, protection money. Each one of these elements pile up, engendering an environment of uncertainty, the greatest risk any society can face, especially at times of presidential succession.

The moment is not like that which preceded the crises of the past century’s last decades.  Mexico today boasts an export-driven manufacturing plant that constitutes the main engine of the economy and that permits a comfortable situation in issues of balance of payments, the principal weakness at those former times. For their part, public finances, although deteriorating, are not in catastrophic straits. In addition, the real disposable incomes of Mexicans have increased. In a word, the seeds of the crises of the seventies to the nineties are not there.

What is indeed present is a country that progressively disintegrates before the incessant violence and two dramatically contrasting realities in the world of the economy: the Mexico associated with the exports and the rest. The former exists in an ambience of relative certainty, productivity and growing opportunities; the latter depends on the former, but exists in uncertainty, poverty and corruption. President López Obrador held all the cards and the skills to close that gap consuming the country, but rather opted for making it deeper and razor-edged, all with the object of developing a social base dependent on crumbs from his table in the form of cash transfers, which inexorably entail the preservation of porverty.

If something demonstrate the one hundred years that preceded the current government -from the end of the Revolution- it is precisely what systematically eludes the President: the desire for progress, the aspiration to improve and develop that is a trait of the whole population. That in which (nearly) all those prior governments failed and that the present one has done nothing to change is found in the lack of instruments in the possession of the population to materialize their desires and aspirations. Governments come and go, but the causes of the sluggish progress and of some of the undesirable consequences, of which the President speaks so often, are not seen to.

The history of bad governments was not born today. Instead of focusing on addressing citizen needs and creating conditions for their progress, Mexico’s history is plagued by governments that ignored and shirked their responsibility to create conditions for development. Nothing illustrates this better than the failure to build an effective security system (previously a product of the overwhelming weight of the federal government, not the existence of a functional security system), or of education, which was never conceived as a means to advance social mobility, but for political control. How can a country retain viability when its structures are focused on other purposes? Worse when the objective is expressly the preservation of poverty, not development.

Of course, there have been honest presidents and functionaries who committed themselves to ministering to these phenomena, but what counts is not the moment they acted or their intentions, but instead on the result, that which determines the population’s quality of life. Additionally, it is obvious that the nature of these problems is complex and that they cannot be immediately dispelled, but what is equally clear is the fact that rhetoric always prevails over action.

All this reminds the words of Bevan, the British Labour leader: “This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.”

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof