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The world Claudio X and Cia

Claudio X. Gonzalez presents the Unid@s platform ahead of the 2024 elections, on October 11, in Mexico City.Daniel Augusto Sanchez Moreno (Cuartoscuro)

I met Claudio X. Gonzalez after an article in which he criticized him. It is shocking to speak in the first person in a text of this nature. I hope I am excused for starting my weekly delivery in this way, I try to be transparent with the readers so that what I say is judged with knowledge of the facts.

On that occasion he had branded the entire teaching profession in Oaxaca with unfair, pejorative and absolutist terms. I said so in my text, in which I commented that an initiative like Mexicanos Primero would go nowhere if it followed in the footsteps of a leader who vociferated binary sentences, where the entire teacher coordinator was bad by definition, and legitimacy was not taken into account at all of their democratic demands and that not all teachers are like some leaders.

After the column was published, he called me. He thanked me for my criticism (that almost never happens, the opposite is usual) and invited me to lunch. At that appointment, a few days later, he asked me to expand on my arguments. He listened attentively, and took notes on one of those little white cards that he always carries with him.

I saw then and I see today in him a well-intentioned person. We then worked together for four years and in that period he fulfilled what he offered to the MCCI team of journalists: freedom and support for us to investigate any actor and any act of corruption that we wanted. It was an exceptional period, not without differences and discussions, but in the end, the journalists of that time published and said as much as we wanted.

One day – in the midst of a pandemic – he called me to invite me to his house. After breakfast he told me that he was leaving MCCI because he wanted, from “civil society”, to help create initiatives to participate in politics, because he was worried about the drift that the Lopez Obrador government had taken.

I told him what I believe today: that civil society would lose (lost) an asset, and that politics would not gain much, since it was a world that neither knew nor was going to recognize its efforts. I wished him all the luck in the world, and said goodbye to him. For two years we only spoke at length on another occasion, at a meal in a public place in which he asked me to help him contact a person prone to AMLO. I reveal this because contrary to what his Twitter distills, the one I met was someone who was interested in listening to people with whom he did not necessarily coincide.

This week he, and another group of respectable people, introduced a new political initiative. This lacks not only originality, as Carlos Puig wrote days ago, but what is essential: they do not understand Lopez Obrador or the politics of Mexico today. And they do not do enough to correct those shortcomings.

Whoever has to read a book written from spite to intuit that Mexican politics (and other latitudes and all times) is done with a lot of black money is, to say the least, a fool. The opposite, knowing that, does not have to make us cynical, but we must distinguish: journalists are dedicated to trying to prove what we know, not to spread gossip or suspicions (although we do the latter on too many occasions).

The abundance of money from obscure sources in politics is such a common fact that some scholars of the phenomenon of corruption even give it rankings. The Duartes of the world kept money for themselves, others use similar amounts for “the cause”, not necessarily for their patrimonial benefit, although they end up taking advantage of the trip. Gray corruption, some call it.

Those who hold political power in Mexico today have assumed, practically without embarrassment, that they are part of a movement where the end justifies all the means with which they budget. If in this regard the PRI were the kings of simulation, if the PAN members turned out to be prudes who later became prostitutes, the morenistas are quasi-cynical in this area.

That is why Claudio was right 8 years ago when he believed that an organization had to be founded to study and denounce corruption and its evils. Civil society can and must subject power to accountability. But becoming a politician is something else, one that does not necessarily imply corrupting yourself, unless you ally yourself with unpresentable people.

The first episode of Claudio and Gustavo de Hoyos’ participation in politics went terribly wrong.

Va por Mexico ended up empowering the PRI, which will now help President Lopez Obrador take down the electoral institutions that gave us alternation (and the militaristic vocation of these Calles heirs, not to mention). So boasting that this initiative managed to take the absolute majority away from Morena in San Lazaro in the intermediate rounds is an act of naivety. But, for the record, they made an effort to give Alito a democratic patina.

They would have, I think, to account for it. Say what the folksy man promised them, what they agreed on, what he asked of them (money, for example?), and what they learned from the farce. Because, and I told him privately, you can’t be an activist and a politician at the same time. Politics is done from activism, without a doubt, but negotiating electoral issues with parties is not activism: it is politics. Dirty, murky, filthy, shiny, patriotic, noble, mean, but political.

So the first thing that some of those who present themselves as United owe Mexicans today is the same thing that has always been demanded of today’s opposition: self-criticism. Transparency and accountability, which are a permanent demand from civil society, become very difficult things from politics.

Without this first step, any new effort will have little credibility. They allied themselves with Alito despite the fact that every god knew what the folksy man is like. Today you can not change your suit without first offering an explanation about it. If the episode had gone well, if the opposition front continued, another rooster would crow. No way not to hold accountable those who hold accountable. And, in addition, ask them to clarify if Alito’s PRI (because today there is no other, Ruiz Massieu, Beatriz Paredes or Osorio Chong are not representative) will be his ally again in the State of Mexico, Coahuila and other upcoming electoral appointments.

However, the demarcation is not the most important thing with respect to the United States. Respectable and correct as their concern for the progress of the country and for the government outbursts, each one more unexpected than the previous one and to show there is the dismantling button in the Ministry of Economy, it is necessary to question whether this group finally has a territorial strategy. Without that, they will neither undermine Lopez Obrador nor lay the foundations to become, after many years, an influential force.

President Lopez Obrador will use the entire government – ​​starting with himself, going through the secretaries of state (that is, because we have to question whether we even have one or one at the level of the Mexican state) and ending with the so-called government officials. the nation—to win every elective office on the line for years to come. It goes far beyond cash: positions, material resources, official times and public budgets at the service of the party.

In fact, in the previous paragraph I misused the verb tense. It is not “will use”. It is “use”, or better yet: AMLO “has used” the presidential power to prioritize aligning the government apparatus with the sole objective of increasing positions and retaining those they already had.

Morena’s political clienteles are permanently dozens of party members turned bureaucrats. They are given money and support, which are undoubtedly necessary for a large part of the population, but more than an act of justice, it is a mechanism for holding wills that must be used in elections.

There is a permanent crusade in the country to remind the beneficiaries that it is Lopez Obrador who they have to thank for charity (my term, but a description of the intrinsic attitude of the presidential dispensation). And in the future whoever he says in states and in the Federation.

Lopez Obrador has conquered a territory. He has done it with public money today from the government and before with public resources from his loyalists in different administrations; but even before that she had seduced him with permanent messages where the resentment of those who, for decades, have received the crumbs is aroused. Today they also receive them, but sweetened with the taste of revenge.

In the short term, no one will be able to take that territory away from the president. And even less those who do not propose such an undertaking.

The front initiatives are the best news for Lopez Obrador. Because instead of thinking about going to the base and starting to build what, in the not too near future, could be a new national organization with representation in each and every one of the municipalities, they appeal to the half that Andres Manuel leaves them, with what empower and legitimize the president.

There are those who think that it is not necessary to criticize those who dare to do things. It would be worse to let them believe that with their usual paid flat pages in Reforma or similar newspapers they are speaking to Mexico. Nothing more wrong.

That Lopez Obrador abuses the state media for a partisan cause should not make us forget that if his message was not correct, all that enormous propaganda effort would be unsuccessful and not as successful as it is today.

Andres Manuel likes media like Reform because they help him to show the partiality of those who see the past with uncritical eyes, of those who have unequivocally renounced plurality. And he likes to put together lists of opposition people who will then put on the coat, play the game, increase the scope of his diatribe, legitimize daily acts to divert attention. And so every week. What will it take for them to ever learn?

While Palacio entertains what they call the red circle, while the PAN still does not assume that it is the opposition that is viable —provided that it gets rid of its Jorge Romeros and soon defines a solitary route—, while citizens and politicians from other eras and origins do not go to the conquest of the territory that counts, in addition to what they call the middle class, as long as they do not follow the route of the PAN members and leftists of before the eighties, who risked physical and resources in tours throughout the country to undermine to authoritarianism, as long as they don’t leave the pavement chilangofrom their weekends in Valle or from the culture of the undersigned, they will continue to be (the majority) very well-intentioned people who, paradoxically, are very utilitarian for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has the Mexico that counts eating from his hand.

Source: EL PAIS

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