Five images of AMLO in his farewell days

First image

“Closing the six-year term busy,” said a Mexican newspaper this Saturday Reform. It lists: “marches against Judiciary Reform, roadblocks, the fall of the peso, diplomatic friction and drug violence.” Anyone would add: don’t forget Reform in his wonderful story about the birds that shit on the pavement; and the children, who cry because their diapers haven’t been changed. And hail falls in the high areas and heavy rain in the lower regions. And that someone somewhere in the country feels sad because they had an accident in their car two days after the insurance ran out.

No one remembers the agony of a country that is sinking under your feet. That was the last year of all the presidents in half a century, at least. This is what was felt at the end of the six-year term of Carlos Salinas and it was felt for much of the period of Ernesto Zedillo, Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón, Enrique Peña Nieto.

Nobody is saying that Andrés Manuel López Obrador doesn’t close with a bang. But, although it causes stretch marks in the brain to think about it well, to analyze it well, most of the fronts it opens itself because it measures them , lets them evolve, governs them and closes them. And anyone who rejects or denies the above is denying themselves because for an entire term of six years they were against the President opening unnecessary fronts to “divide society,” to “polarize Mexicans.” That is, open fronts ruled.

Do we see López Obrador opening fronts or do we see a country that is sinking under our feet? This is the first, fortunately. They are fronts that he opens and controls. At least allow him that. And not because of intellectual honesty, but because it fits with what they have said, if they are opponents, throughout the six-year term.

Second image

Exactly that: observers of economic and political events in Mexico have focused in recent days on analyzing the different fronts that the President supports at the end of his mandate. Some say that the “radical” six-year term is coming to an end – which some see as good and others as bad – and others (and I) believe (we believe) that this is not true; that has been López Obrador throughout his political career and now, in his farewell.

You have to imagine it above the a ring. He is someone who has waited for this moment all his life. He will not let up on the last round just because it’s the last one. Quite the opposite. He’s a fighter, he’s on top a ringdo you want it to come off? Make no mistake: it does not come off: look for the knockout.

And keep looking for a better picture. There is a picture, or there are many pictures. Everyone has their own. But he won’t stop looking for a better picture; one where he is twisted in the middle with his fist directly on the chin of an enemy who is bleeding from his brow and nose.

He has several pictures and still wants one more. The last one is over round and he doesn’t give up. He doesn’t stop firing punches, even if it means letting his guard down. Boom, prosperity: to Norma Piña; prosperity, prosperity: for the economic elites led by Claudio X. González. Boom, boom: to the intellectuals, the academics, the media, and the rich smartasses and poisoners like Ricardo Salinas Pliego.

Third image

Analysts and opinion leaders say he has destroyed Mexican foreign policy; but never before has an Ambassador from the United States, as Ken Salazar has done, support the request of his host country. They tell him that he couldn’t with Norma Piña; We will see in a year’s time if the Minister President continues to head the Supreme Court and how each person remains in the collective memory. They say it destroyed the economy and that the Mayan Train, Dos Bocas, the airports or the Interoceanic Corridor are a pure waste of time and money; Those who predict a dollar is 30, 35 pesos say it; those who said we would lose our homes and our jobs; those who talked about closing churches, losing religious freedom and that even marriages – no joke – would be banned.

They throw things at him a ring as they threw them to Peña Nieto at the end of the six-year term. And Peña Nieto ran to his corner to hide in the bucket of water because of the blows given to him by the de facto powers. But López Obrador does not. They hit him and tease him more. They try to tell him not to throw punches in the last one round. It’s a bad idea. He is someone who has waited his whole life for this moment. And it’s not going to give them the pleasure of being cut loose in the end round just because it’s the last one. Quite the opposite.

They give him reasons to look for a new picture, a better picture, turning his waist with his fist directly on the jaw of an enemy who has been bleeding since 2018 and has not stopped bleeding, six years later.

Fourth image

Enrique Krauze says this Sunday that the dictator López has taken Mexico to the cave age. We are no longer a monarchy, as I had said days before: the very possibilities of society to organize have been destroyed by this Government. No stone is left unturned.

“The regression is huge. What time? To the Colony? No, because there were strong laws and legal institutions that protected society from power. To the era before the Republic was announced in 1824? No, because Iturbide tried to rule as a constitutional king. Where, then, has the destruction of the liberal and revolutionary legacy of the 19th and 20th centuries taken us back? “It has returned us to the most extreme times of our brittle wars,” he writes Reform.

This Mexico we are suffering, according to Krauze, is worse than that of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz in 1968; worse than the chaos that resulted from the “December mistake” with Zedillo. It is worse than the six-year terms of Luis Echeverría, José López Portillo and Miguel de la Madrid, of course, when there was no country, but an abyss under our feet. The Mexico we live in is worse than the 1994 of Carlos Salinas de Gortari and to finish soon, it is worse than the whole dictatorship (which he respects and promotes so much) Porfirio Díaz.

There is no greater wound for the country than the one that bleeds because of López. Not the one that left the gringos after taking over half of the territory, or when Benito Juárez ran across the country to escape the foreign invaders. López has promoted the Apocalypse, says Krauze, and it is not possible to know if he believes what he writes, but it is possible to guess that he does not.

Mexico is no longer a monarchy, as I said the other day. With the dictator López we returned – said one of Salinia’s favorite intellectuals – to the age of the caves. And wait because the reform “will end the judicial career, avoid judges, disrupt trials of all kinds, endanger the continuity of the T-MEC, devalue us in the markets, discourage investments and incorporate the only law the Government respects.” and its open or unspoken allies: The law of the jungle in which the dictator (we can now call him) will take the lion’s share.”

Krauze’s anguish is so great (remember his video days before the election, begging glassy-eyed young people for votes?) and I wonder if he will ever recover. Maybe a million dollar contract, or several, will ease his pain. But I doubt it. I don’t remember such deep sadness.

Fifth image

The idea that “the Republic is destroyed” is because the Republic they conceive is one that dispenses privileges even for breathing.

To make matters worse, someone who has received a life pension for 30 years wants to have worked for seven months! in the Supreme Court; someone who earns money in the Colegio de México, in the UNAM and in I don’t know what many other public institutions come out to shout that “the Republic is being destroyed.”

Shamelessly, Diego Valadés. He appears in public and shouts that López Obrador is destroying the Republic and wonders, correctly, which Republic he is referring to.

I am not saying that Diego Valadés, intellectuals, famous journalists and academics do not have the right to defend what they believe in. But they have to consider that a majority now see abuse (and the protection against abuse) as real bullshit.

I don’t think they are very democratic, but if they have any idea of ​​the term “democracy” they will agree that this new majority has the right to decide whether to pay for foreign schools for the children of the elite or not; if you continue to pay for their houses in Valle de Bravo or wherever; and their escorts and drivers, and their BMW cars, etc.

They have lived thinking that everything is free and that Mexico is an All-inclusive Republic. And yes, that is the Platonic Republic, but the majority no longer want to waste their lives working day and night to pay for silk sheets.

Because no, their privileges (“apapachos”, Héctor Aguilar Camín would define them) are not free. They cost someone or, rather, they cost us all.

“The Republic has been destroyed,” said Valadés, a man who, in a country with 50 million poor people, has been receiving a pension for thirty years that Ernesto Zedillo gave him for 7 months of work.

Anyone has the right to ask him, at least, which republic he is referring to.

Alejandro Paez Varela

Journalist, writer. He is the author of the novels Corazón de Kaláshnikov (Alfaguara 2014, Planeta 2008), Música para Perros (Alfaguara 2013), El Reino de las Moscas (Alfaguara 2012) and Oriundo Laredo (Alfaguara 2017). Also from the story books No Includes Batteries (Cal yr Arena 2009) and Paracaídas que no Abierto (2007). He wrote President in Waiting (Planeta 2011) and is the co-author of other journalism books such as La Guerra por Juárez (Planeta, 2008), Los Suspirantes 2006 (Planeta 2005), Los Suspirantes 2012 (Planeta 2011), Los Amos de México ( 2007), Los Intocables (2008) and Los Suspirantes 2018 (Planeta 2017). He was deputy editorial director of El Universal, deputy director of Día Siete magazine and editor of Reforma and El Economista. He is currently the general director of SinEmbargo.mx

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