Luis Rubio

The brew is complicated in itself: an unsatisfied electorate, a culture hardly prone to reaching compromises and considering the rights of others, and a tradition devoted to dividing rather than adding up. The past years have displayed the best and the worst of Mexico’s primitive democratic culture and our scant disposition for venturing into the search for solutions. While the surveys show elevated popularity for presidents while in office (all except for one since the nineties were as popular or more so than the present one), the majority of votes since 1997 have been cast against the incumbent political party, especially governors and presidents. An unsatisfied electorate.

The Morena party and the alliance that the opposition has built share more traits than their members are disposed to admit. That is not strange, in that they respond to factors of culture and tradition that are equal across the board. Morena, as a movement, incorporated citizens of an extraordinary diversity of origin and essential features; the alliance of the opposition embodies historical contradictions due to antagonisms dating back to the thirties of the past century.   Forging accords and building lasting mechanisms, but above all efficient ones for the achievement of their objectives (presumably power) has not been simple.

Morena had achieved it because it is able to count on an exceptional factor of unity in the figure of the President, but, as the current internal contest illustrates, the factors that divide are always more powerful than those that unite. In the state of Coahuila, Morena was incapable of avoiding division and low blows among aspirants to the presidential candidacy are more prominent than their attributes.

The case of the alliance is equally revealing: although the opposition overall won more votes in 2021 than Morena, its success was due to a much greater degree to the disappointment and anger of a broad swath of the urban population than to the ability (and willingness) of the political parties to bring their structures to operate together and to assure that their capacity of mobilization would be maximized. The case of the state of Mexico is a proverbial example: there the candidate was nominated by one of the political parties in the alliance and the other members of the supposed alliance essentially abandoned ship.

The difference between the two coalitions (because that is what Morena is) is not as large as it appears. The opposition has been losing ground at the gubernatorial level because of Morena’s thrust with its leadership and its capacity of extortion, but now that Morena is the incumbent (in the presidency and in 23 governorships) it will no doubt begin to undergo the same phenomenon: an unsatisfied electorate.  This process will deepen to the extent that the factor of unity in Morena, the President, is relegated to that of second tier.

The point is that the political culture is not naturally compatible with democracy.  The country has over several decades dismantled the structures that made the one-party system function, but it has not advanced much in the construction of a new form of governing nor in the development of a citizenry capable of defending its rights and asserting its preferences. While Mexicans have experienced a severe democratic regression during these past few years, the permanence of the current clique in power will be brief, given that structures and scaffolds susceptible to providing continuity were not built. The concentration of power in a sole individual does not constitute an enduring alternative.

All of this suggests that the country is found on the threshold of a new political era, one more like that lived through during the political transition’s first era (the 2000’s) than to the more recent one. But with an enormous difference: the accumulated frustration of decades of unsatisfied promises, saviors who proved incapable of saving anything, and tensions caused by a style of government effective at generating loyalties but not for advancing the country’s development. A complicated brew that will exact outstanding political skills to start over… one more time.

But between today and the moment when that immense challenge must be dealt with, the process of succession will take place, one that shows signs of being not only competitive, but also potentially highly conflictive. The divisive factors will be prominent and the propensity toward conflict even more so. There will be manifested all the deficiencies of the country’s primitive democratic culture: the difficulty in accepting a defeat, the inability to join forces with whoever wins (in both the internal competition and in the constitutional election), and the indisposition for recognizing the merits of the others. On top of this lies the mindset of the clique around the president that believes that a coup is in the works.

The challenge for whomever turns out to be Morena’s nominee will consist of uniting the divergent support bases that sustained each of the contenders. Easy enough to say, but without the factor of unity, the President, this will be remarkably difficult. The challenge for the candidate arising from the opposition will reside in persuading the parties sustaining his or her candidacy to bringing their structures forth, as well as in forsaking the complex tradition of competition and antagonism amongst them, that is explained by history but that, to win, would of necessity have to be abandoned once and for all. Neither candidate will have it easy.

The great democratic advance of Mexico lies in that no one has a sure win: its great deficit lies in that many forces and interests persist that are dedicated to eradicating democracy as a form of government.

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   Luis Rubio

The narrative hides more than it illuminates: its purpose is not to explain the circumstances or to argue in favor of this or that proposal, but instead to control the national conversation and strengthen a message whose intention has nothing to do with progress or well-being. Five years of a daily dose of dogma from the official pulpit have created a parallel planet that makes it impossible to recognize the real goings-on in the world of the concrete. What takes place in the realm of reality -whether relative to insecurity, Ukraine or inflation- is relegated to the second plane and is discarded or interpreted in the light of the official narrative. All of that might be very good for the designs of political control, but it impedes the understanding of what is happening in the rest of the earthly world. And, of course, it has consequences.

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle” wrote George Orwell in 1946. Although he was referring more to politics than to everyday life, his approach was quite logical:   two things may be in the same place, but I may see only one of them. In today’s Mexico, where the narrative attracts and repels, respectively, either side of the citizenry, the day-to-day comings and goings are in the final analysis interpreted in radically contrasting and incompatible ways, generating a permanent disconnect, in addition to misunderstanding.

The obvious example these days is Xóchitl Gálvez, a political phenomenon whose appearance was circumstantial, not in the least because of the obstinacy of the narrator-in-chief who denied Gálvez’s “right of rebuttal,” provoking the emergence of the person who can well end up being the President’s nemesis. When the narrative not only affects the one being manipulated but also the manipulator himself, a miniscule error in calculation can acquire potentially cosmic dimensions.

Xóchitl Gálvez is not a new presence in the political panorama. The novelty is her sudden rise as a relevant political factor, in this case at the upcoming 2024 presidential election. Equally significant is the way her arrival on the political scene has been interpreted as an advent by some and as a figment of the imagination by others: a biblical phenomenon by the former, a fantasy by the latter. What’s remarkable is that few on each side of this great narrative divide characterizing current Mexican society take an interest in understanding the why of that keen difference in interpretation.

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts,” wrote Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the U.S. politician and diplomat. A complex concept to adopt in the Mexico of the “other data” (AMLO’s way of deflecting anything he disapproves of), but not for that is it less applicable at this present moment. No one can reasonably refute that current political discourse has taken a radical spin because Xóchitl Gálvez has become a key factor in this election. Each can have their own opinion on the fact of her emergence or on her specifically, but the fact itself is beyond dispute. The reality has changed and could affect the perception that, as the official narrative would suggest, everything had been settled, lacking only the formality of the president’s “finger pointing, or dedazo.

Beyond the fact, what is transcendent lies in the incapacity of the world of Morena to grasp the uneasiness and fears that afflict those not eating at that table. Xóchitl Gálvez became an element of hope and opportunity for an enormous portion of the population that discerns with worry and fear the continuation of a government dedicated to dividing and disqualifying, in addition to sacrificing the country’s future for the sake of a supposed transformation that is nothing other than the concentration of power in a sole individual. Needless to say, the same occurs on the other side of the divide, where the anger, rejection and resentment that decades -or centuries- of promises of development did not diminish poverty or reduce the vast inequalities characterizing the country. It is those misunderstandings that polarize and cause disagreements that leave the door open to conceivably radical, demagogical solutions.

What joins the two Mexicos that the narrative separates and divides is hope. AMLO peddles hope but only among his followers, while Xóchitl, the new political phenomenon, generates hope among those who view the presiding government with unease. The differences on that plane are minor: hope unifies if the leadership understands it and the importance it represents for the population. Much more important, hope can narrow the gap between the two Mexicos to convert it into a great transformative factor.

Mexicans are given to the search for saviors to address their limitations.   Once and again throughout the last decades, the vote has favored those proffering nirvana. The illusion never dies, explaining the continuous failure to break away from endless traps. Thus, it is very important for those who find themselves encountering the possibility of heading up the looming candidacies to develop approaches that transcend the hopeful rhetoric and propose a project of development liable to advance it.

In the same text, George Orwell wrote that “we are all capable of believing things that we know to be untrue.” It is high time for those that aspire to the highest governmental function to explain what they would do to get the country out of the hole in which thousands of recent promises and acts of corruption, both recent and old, have left it.

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Luis Rubio

Salim, a Central-African entrepreneur, is a personage who at once attracts and repels: his business prospers, serving up a perspective simultaneously optimistic about his country’s future and tragic in which progress, and the old practices that never disappeared, sow the seeds of the revolution that will come. The novel by V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River, allows one to appreciate two ways of perceiving the same reality. Something in that story brings to mind the way that the Mexico of today has split into two great blocs of persons who inhabit a same place, but who   contemplate the future in very contrasting ways.

Sixty percent of Mexicans attest to being satisfied with their lives, they have seen their real income grow and they are employed. That same 60% supports the President and considers that his administration has made possible the stability and well-being that it enjoys. For its part, the remaining forty percent disapprove of the President’s administration due to their perception that it is damaging the foundations of future well-being. One asks oneself what it is that makes two groups of the same society able to entertain perceptions so radically contrasting about the same phenomenon or historical moment.

According to the survey of Alejandro Moreno in “El Financiero” (May 2, 2023), the fundamental difference between the two groups of Mexicans is the level of schooling: while the vote of university students was crucial in the 2018 Presidential Election, today that cohort represents the segment most critical of his work. The two most solid contingents that sustain the President’s popularity are older Mexicans and persons with less schooling.  The inevitable conclusion is that the individuals most unfavored in their incomes and life and employment perspectives have benefitted from the economic stability, the growth of real disposable income and from a job market that, after the pandemic, has presented greater work opportunities.

In politico-electoral terms, these two contingents project their perception of the situation in the way they hold an opinion and vote: those feeling that they have reaped benefits approve of the presidential administration and emit their vote in favor of the governing party independently of belonging or not to the Morena Party; while on the other side, those disapproving of the presidential administration vote contrariwise. Nothing new under the sun.

What is relevant is the contrast of perspectives. It is evident that the improvement in the real income of the people exerts an impact similarly on the entire population, and, yet, the conclusions in mind-set at which those two population segments arrive are stringently opposed.  The explanation for this phenomenon is key to understanding the moment and to emit a prognosis of the country’s prospects in the future, including at the 2024 ballot box.

The crux of the contrast seems to lie in the perspective of time. For the cohort that feels satisfied, what counts is the here and now; for the remaining 40% what matters is the perception of the future: where is the country going toward. This concerns the perspectives emanating from economic realities and from very distinct visions and that display the circumstances of a very divided country: the one that has had the opportunity to advance in the scale of education, and the one that got stuck in an educational system that does not prepare students for the labor market nor for life. In this world era, in which what adds value (and pays better salaries) is no longer physical strength but the person’s creativity, educational achievement makes an abysmal difference in individuals’ incomes and, inexorably, in their perceptions.

For those barely able to get a job, often a precarious one, what carries weight is preserving it, and it is natural to attribute the job’s availability to whoever is at the government’s helm at the time. For those who already have a job and who have the perception of being able to continue advancing up the rungs of the income scale and those of their family’s prosperity, their concerns are concentrated on the future: will the economic stability be maintained? Will there be a crisis akin to those at the end of prior governmental terms? For the former what is of import is the moment at which a survey is taken or the moment at which one deposits their vote in the urn; for the latter the only thing that matters are the future perspectives because the present is already resolved.

Two Mexicos that reflect the place at which each individual is found on the productive chain, but that, at the same time constitute a true censure of the political system in general that has been incapable, for decades, to resolve elemental problems such as those of infrastructure in general as well as health, but above all education. Previously, a half century ago, those things were not noteworthy because the Mexican economy was a simple one and negligibly demanding. Today, the job market demands increasing specialization and the educational system in force -and the government that covers up for union bosses instead of preparing children- is incapable of providing it.

The President can be very satisfied with the popularity afforded him by the least favored Mexicans, but what they are really awarding him for is his unwillingness to create conditions for that same support base to have a better future.

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a quick-translation of this article can be found at www.luisrubio.mx

Luis Rubio

Three truths are indisputable:  President López Obrador is unrepeatable; public finances are more vulnerable than they appear; and the election of the Mexico’s next president will have of necessity to be the beginning of a great negotiation for building a new future. Whoever wins, man or woman, of whichever party, the country will find itself in a situation much more delicate and precarious that it would appear today. The mixture of structural factors and situational circumstances will evoke the imperious need to muster the will of groups, political parties and citizens who are at present found on distinct sides of the fence -the real differences and those artificially driven by the present government- that today divide the population.

There are also other things that are evident and that do not merit greater discussion: the National Regeneration Movement (Morena Party) has launched an open process for the nomination of its candidate; the opposition is beginning to show muscle; and the electoral law turns out to be more flexible, and at the same time more complex, than many supposed. Each of the three elements treads on the heels of its own rationality and will generate results that will affect the other two. What a few weeks ago appeared to be a unidirectional process inside Morena has ceased to be obvious, while the potential for a truly competitive race is becoming ever more real.

Despite the incentives that lead the parties of the opposition not to entertain competing for power but looking for federal monies (like the Labor Party (PT) or the Ecological Green Party of Mexico (PVEM) have always done), reality is railroading them and forcing them to develop a competitive strategy.

Regarding the electoral legislation, there are two contrasting perspectives: on the one hand, the electoral authorities (the National Electoral Institute [INE] and the Electoral Tribunal); and, on the other, the revenues that the political parties receive based on their performance in the previous election. Application of the law has resulted in being more flexible than it seemed to be: the contrast between the severity of the way the previous INE board and the volubility of the present one is evident. It is possible that the law permits that malleability, but it is ironic that it is the ideological current that Morena represents -the principal source of restrictions in electoral matters from the nineties on- the one that exhibits such a flagrant willingness to violate at least the spirit of the law, now with the formal backing of INE.

On the other hand, the President is indeed correct in that there are things in that same legislation that should be changed, although not necessarily those he is demanding, which are incompatible with a democratic regime. The lack of opposition-party dynamism suggests that, when conditions are less contentious, a discussion should ensue on the privileges that the 1996 Electoral Reform conferred on the three main parties, which have become de facto business enterprises rather than institutions dedicated to the aggregation of citizen interests for seeking power.

In black and white, the upcoming government, wheresoever it derives from, will find the coffers empty, with a wholly distorted budget (devoted to clienteles at the cost of health, education and public investment) and in the face of a scenario of polarization that will not cut it much slack. Its circumstances will be easier or more difficult depending on what the outcome of the election itself is: how close it was to winning and how the composition of legislative power ended up. That is where the structural problems, the situational circumstances and the spirits of those responsible will condense. The opportunity to build a new future will be enormous.

I return to the beginning: the President is unrepeatable. Even if his preferred candidate were to triumph, no one in the national scene has AMLO’s history, presence or skill. His personality has achieved not only dominating Mexican political life, but also avoiding that the daily reality, that affecting the citizenry, acquires relevance among the population, something unprecedented. His successor will not enjoy those circumstances, thus necessitating the procurement of a method allowing for governing and for the country to find a brand new bedrock for a better future.

The public finances look good, but their fragility is immense, above all due to the disappearance of the contingency funds, which generates an outlook much more uncertain than apparent.

No one can predict what the future holds or the moment at which the factors would come together that facilitate or render the function of governing difficult. That will be the moment when the great opportunity will present itself, but only if whoever wins has a vision of transcendence and development and if the rest of the political world and the citizenry prove that they can be at the height of the circumstances.

Much of what will have to be negotiated could come to a few percentage points of this or that (taxes, for example), but the moment will also permit establishing the foundations of a novel political arrangement that will transform a government dedicated to control into one devoted to development and well-being, and the political system to turn into an environment of respectful competition between a society that has the means to be well and truthfully informed.

Some will recall the 1977 Moncloa Pacts that engendered the Spanish democracy were about salaries and prices, but they achieved much more. Yes, it is possible.

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Luis Rubio

Step by step, the project of concentration of power is now in its final phase with its consequent economic risks and inevitable destruction of civility. This statement will seem excessive to many, but history shows that when power is concentrated in a single person -and, worse, when this is done through disqualification and alienation- the result is an inexorable impoverishment of the country and, inevitably, of the poorest, those who gave their vote for the President who now betrays them.

The twilight of a government whose central project was the absolute denial of the plurality that characterizes the country begins. The President won with just over half the vote of the population, an exceptional result since the votes began to be counted in an impeccable and professional manner after the creation of the IFE (Federal Electoral Institute) in 1996. Five years later, the situation is different, as the contrasts between the potential candidates to succeed him attest to this. None of them fully represents him and none can bring up the same percentage of votes that López Obrador achieved in 2018. The exclusion of half of the citizenry, in addition to a good part of those who, while not being from Morena, conferred their vote to him, now present themselves in the form of incompatible pre-candidacies.

The president has created a mechanism that aims to avoid ruptures, while adding dissimilar contingents behind a winning candidate. A difficult objective to achieve despite the resounding success he has had in controlling not only the public debate, but especially the narrative that lies behind his leadership and the loyalty that his bases grant him. The President is popular, but his government is unpopular, and no one knows how these two factors will add up or collide on Election Day. The population seems satisfied with the improvement in their real incomes and in the level of employment, but the country continues to lag from when the government was inaugurated. In the UNDP’s human development index, Mexico lost 12 points, equivalent to ten years of previous progress. Here too, it is not obvious how these two factors -the recent improvement or the absolute loss – will impact on the minds of voters on Election Day in 2024.

The opportunity for the opposition, if it manages to ally itself and set up a common front, is more than evident. First of all, the loss of support for the President is real: Morena lost the midterm elections. The opposition does not control the Chamber of Deputies because it did not join in a common front on that election, but that could, and should, change in 2024. The speed with which the ruling party has entered the process of nominating its candidate does not mean that an alternative candidacy is impossible eleven months hence, when the new President will be elected. The notion that the only thing missing for the meal to be ready is for Morena to issue its verdict in the form of a candidacy is clearly false.

The exercise of power wears out all governments and more so when there is so little to offer in the form of tangible results. The government’s key projects remain unfinished, and it is doubtful whether they will have significant impacts on the lives of the population. The contentious nature of the presidential rhetoric pays off, but it is also alienating, and the resulting division translates into fractures that can end up being as consequential as the benefits. When the President imposes himself by demanding that the Congress “not change even a comma” to his legislative bills, he sends a message to his base, but he loses the rest of the citizenry. Not all the population is identical, submissive or docile, and it is not at all unlikely that, as the vote in 2021 illustrated, the President has lost the majority with which he won five years ago.

The attack against the institutional framework, the opposition parties and the emblematic institutions of the political transition undertaken from the nineties, especially entities such as the Supreme Court of Justice, the National Electoral Institute (INE) and the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Personal Data (INAI), has been relentless. The objective of submitting and subordinating the people has been express and manifest. But it has not been successful. The relevant question, less than a year from the day of the presidential election, is whether the current government will end up leaving a better country than it found. The hard data says no; the narrative that disputes the data says that the country has a health system like Denmark’s, that insecurity is decreasing, and that corruption has disappeared. Which will win: reality or the illusion? Another imponderable.

The reality is overwhelming and more so when, despite perceptions, there is no project liable to yield better results. Malcolm X, a human rights activist, wrote that “you’re not to be so blind in patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter what it says or does.” The citizenry will have in their hands the opportunity, and the responsibility, to decide what wins: reality or passing perception. The problem is not the government, always temporary, but the impact on the population, always permanent.

Today everything seems clear, but there are many months to go. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson said that a week is a lifetime in politics. Eleven months is an eternity.

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Luis Rubio

All societies develop their myths and beliefs as ways of explaining life, but in Mexico these often fall short of reality. Someone once stated that if Kafka were Mexican, he would have been a narrator of everyday life. In that spirit, here are some observations that, without telling a coherent story, say a lot about this land of fantasy.

• Mexico lives today the paradox of a weak government, but with a hyper powerful president. The government is incapable of managing a health crisis or distributing medicines, but the president can impose his law in the election of a local government. The country’s infrastructure is falling apart, the streets look like a war zone and extortion and violence proliferate in more and more regions, but a train that does not connect productive centers or add value destroys jungles and cenotes by presidential whim without there having been any feasibility assessment.
• The flip side of that same paradox is that the international environment in which Mexico exists, and from which the government has pretended that it can be abstracted without cost or consequence. While the well-being of the population depends to a large extent on exports, the government does everything possible to complicate ties with the exterior, as if one thing were not related to the other. Instead of promoting and facilitating these ties -both in terms of trade negotiations and investment promotion as well as in the creation of infrastructure and facilitation of daily transactions- violations of the trade treaties keep piling up on which the fluidity of trade depends as well as the very viability of our economy. The claim that an electricity generation plant can be expropriated or prevented from operating without having international repercussions is mere wishful thinking.
• Mexico does not have a food or self-sufficiency problem. The agricultural sector is, for the first time in centuries, in surplus and has achieved extraordinary productivity. What Mexico does suffer from, but is seldom addresses directly, is a huge problem of rural poverty. Imposing measures that restrict exports or imports of agricultural products will not solve rural poverty, which is at the heart of the country’s development dilemma. The next government could begin to meditate on the way in which rural poverty can be attacked, since the solution to three of the main challenges facing the country depends on this: social inequality, the quality and focus of education, and social mobility, three aspects of the same problem.
• The recent state elections, in addition to the demonstrations sponsored by the citizenry as well as by the government, respectively, of the past few months, show one of the great contradictions that characterize Mexicans today. Not all Mexicans see themselves as citizens: in a recent survey, only 58% see themselves as such, compared to 42% who see themselves as “people”. In its desire to preserve and nurture the loyalty of the population above any other value or objective, the government has chosen to impede the growth of the economy, because, as the previous president of Morena once said, a poor people will always be loyal, but that sentiment withers as people prosper. Consequently, it is better to bet on permanent poverty.
• But the above does not solve one of the key enigmas: the frequent distance that exists between organized civil society with respect to ordinary Mexicans. No one who has observed the contrasts between the demonstrations organized by the government and those of civil organizations can doubt that there lies not only a contradiction but also an enormous challenge. The very low turnout in the State of Mexico election speaks for itself.
• Nor is it possible to close one’s eyes to the smallness of the Mexican political class, its lack of vision or the inability of the opposition to perform its crucial functions. The opposition leaders, now that their arrogance and incompetence have been exposed in the State of Mexico, cannot deny the obvious: that they have failed to act as the opposition to the institutional destruction led by the president. The citizenry has been losing one counterweight after another, remaining only protected by a harassed Supreme Court. The sum of arrogance, corruption and insignificance has left Mexicans observing how the only objective of the opposition is an embassy…
• When one listens to leaders of countries that really aspire to progress, the contrasts with Mexico become all the more visible -and painful. It is not worth talking about places like Singapore, where the clarity of vision is impressive, but India, a nation infinitely poorer and more complex than Mexico, illustrates what is possible. The vocabulary used by officials as well as businessmen, political and social leaders speaks for itself: investment, productivity, social mobility, trust and predictability. Mexico has everything to adopt a similar catalogue, but worries about the little things always win out.

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -deliberate, contrived and dishonest- but the myth.” This is how Kennedy characterized the indisposition to advance and prosper. It would seem that he was referring to the Mexico of today…

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Luis Rubio

Order and disorder, argues Robert Kaplan,* comprises a dilemma not dependent on the individual, but on their lived experience. It took England 700 years to evolve from the Magna Carta to women’s suffrage, with many exceedingly violent struggles along the way. Democratic traditions, as illustrated by the so-called Arab Spring a little more than a decade ago, cannot be established overnight. Mexicans who lived through the epoch of the seventies’ financial crises entertained a conception of the world very distinct from those born in the era of alternation of political parties in the presidency, something inconceivable in post-Revolutionary history, although seen as a natural occurrence today. Contrasting experiences that explain distinct perspectives concerning the way the current government conducts domestic affairs.

During the past four decades, explains Fernando Escalante,** the country underwent two great evolutions, neither of these successful. The first evolution entailed the passing from the world of legitimate impunity that enjoyed social support because it was effective and yielded results in terms of economic growth and social peace, i.e., governability (but it ended because its viability ran out), to an inconclusive transition based on democratic forms and market mechanisms as a factor of economic organization: “the administrative rationalization of elections and depoliticized markets.” That “transition regime” was successful by many measurements, but was accompanied by undesirable consequences, such as diverse inequalities that were not resolved because an effective system of justice and the Rule of Law were never consolidated. Instead of bringing to a close the world of complicities and impunity in order to construct a foundation of security and justice for all, that regime implemented a centralist vision over a country that was increasingly larger, diverse and disperse and for which solutions from above would not work: rather than strengthening them, they weakened the local authorities and opened the door to the universe of extortion that has become generalized at present.

The second evolution took place recently, but one toward a new era of lack of definition. “To say populism, authoritarianism, the return of the PRI, is to say very little.  Among the facts herein, there lies a blatantly statist rhetoric hand in hand with the weakening of the State… the aspiration to historical transcendence… that contrasts with a disconcerting lack-of-project.” The description that Escalante offers spells out the opacity, the electoral manipulation, and new spaces of intermediation. In sum, the search for the return to the broad margin of impunity that the old political class used to enjoy. The model that the present government has been building brings face to face the formal economy (requiring more State) with the informal (requiring more politics), but responds to contrasting circumstances in distinct regions of the country and societal strata. The implicit contradiction between these two worlds leads to a growing responsibility in the hands of the Army, in parallel with a systematic diminution of the capacities of the State. Escalante concludes his argument in ominous fashion, citing Leonardo Sciascia, stating that this pertains the “order of the mafia.”

Now that Mexicans find themselves in sight of the process of presidential succession, the question is, what is comes next.  However much the President picks up the pace in an attempt to confer formality on his preferences and decisions through a hurried series of legal initiatives, it is reasonable to question whether the present moment is sustainable: that order of the mafia to which   Escalante refers and that, I might add, is sustained more by the skill of the person to keep alive the attention of the population than to the functionality of his government. Could the individual who succeeds the president maintain the status quo?

Order and disorder, two sides of the same coin and two contrasting circumstances, both always present in daily life. Those living in the formal economy cannot avoid numerous encounters with the extortion, impunity and violence with which more and more Mexicans are assaulted; those living in economic informality are up against systematic barriers to their development not only due to the self-same factors of violence and impunity that the entire population endures, but also because of the encumbrances that the formal world imposes upon it in an expansive manner.  The success of the Mexican Tax Administration Service (SAT) in matching invoices with payments to close ever more spaces of tax evasion constitutes an  unassailable barricade for informality, the latter paradoxically the president’s social base.

I return to the beginning: experiences lived over time determine the perspective held by each of us with respect to the present moment. For those who lived through the growth and stability era of stabilizer development, the violence and informality of today result in being intolerable threats to development; contrariwise, for those who grew up in the eras of alternation or political parties in the presidency and violence -two unfortunately inseparable factors- the notion of stable and systematic growth becomes an unachievable chimera.

Whosoever wins, the next president will be unable to circumvent these contrasts: he or she will have to find a way to reconcile them, a new social pact that presses toward the formalization of national life.

*The Tragic Mind; **México ayer y ahora (Nexos, abril 2023).

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 Luis Rubio

Everything was going well when the madness began. The desire to transform had been limited to eliminating obstacles that did not enjoy greater popular recognition and expanding cash transfers to favorite clienteles. Both steps responded to an impeccable logic: if it does not enjoy legitimacy, it can be eliminated at a minimum cost, and the funds derived from this act would make it possible to expand and consolidate the sources of support. Indeed, polls show that the political cost of eliminating entities, institutions and funds, even for such fundamental things as the health sector, has been minimal. Perhaps that led the president to consider that everything is possible and that the only limit is the imagination.

In fact, there are many things that required (and still require) to be modified and that had not been possible to a large extent due to the ability of various interest groups to hinder governmental action: unions, businessmen, politicians. No one can have the slightest doubt that there are immense items of waste in public spending; that bureaucratic inertia inevitably leads to demanding more resources instead of raising productivity and improving results; and that there are various items in the public budget that have the opposite effect to that originally conceived. The way opposition party leaders behave given the federal resources they receive by law is a good example of this, but that is another issue.

Without prior commitments, President López Obrador had everything in his hands to carry out that transformation that he promised but which was later reduced to nothing more than concentrating power and destroying sources of potential counterweight to the presidency. Many of the major impediments to the country’s economic growth and development could have been removed, opening huge opportunities for the future. That didn’t happen. And now the panorama is clouded by measures that allow anticipating increasingly complex and conflictive scenarios for the budding succession process.

The last few weeks have witnessed the willingness to tempt fate, even without acknowledging it. The attacks on the Supreme Court of Justice and especially on the minister president do not cease and are now accompanied by decrees that entail, at least in political terms, a clear spirit of contempt. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Immediately afterwards an expropriation, in this case of the trans-isthmian railway. These two examples constitute a huge escalation with respect to the already sour and aggressive tone of the daily presidential morning rants. And there are still fifteen months to go.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist governments of its satellites, the head of the Hungarian party, Karoly Grosz, coined a lapidary phrase that begins to seem like a prediction of what is to come in Mexico: “The party was shattered not by its opponents but -paradoxically- by the leadership.” Right at the moment in the political cycle when Mexican presidents traditionally tried to consolidate what they had achieved and prepare for the final leg, hoping to avoid the turmoil and potential crises that accompanied many presidential transitions, President López Obrador raises the tone and undertakes a new onslaught on more and more fronts.

The objective is clear: to win the presidential elections at any cost. The obligatory question is obvious: if things are going so well, why so much circus? Or, in plain terms, why run the risk of unleashing forces that could later prove unstoppable at this stage of the game, opening more fronts every minute?

There are two speculative possibilities: one is that there is no such certainty of winning, which would require doubling down. The other is that the ease with which the president has managed to advance his agenda throughout these past five years has led him to consider that anything is feasible and at a low cost. The Japanese thought something like that in World War II and ended up committing hara-kiri.

The problem lies not merely in the unhinging of the traditional limits of Mexican politics (which, by the way, do not have to be immovable), but in the aggressiveness of the strategy just now when the inexorable vulnerabilities of all presidential transitions begin to ascend and, with them, the risks of ending badly. Suicidal instincts seem to have been unleashed.

Ortega y Gasset said that “This is the most serious danger that threatens civilization today: the intervention of the State; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State, that is, of spontaneous historical action, which in the long term sustains, nourishes and drives human destinies.” The path taken in recent days not only takes Mexicans away from civilization to bring the country closer to tyranny, but also leads to potentially critical situations, just the opposite of what has motivated the president since the first day of his term.

If the course is not altered, the country could find itself, in the least of cases, facing a constitutional crisis that could well be exacerbated if the election does not go as the president wishes. Interesting times, as the Chinese would have it.

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