The Last Chance

Recent decades have brought losses for Mexico in development, national dignity and social justice. These losses have touched by the whole nation, its people and Mexico’s modern history. I would like to paint a positive picture, but no other conclusion can be reached given the circumstances, not even with the most optimistic of attitudes.

It is enough to look at the number of Mexicans living in poverty: over 50 million. And the number of the rich and very rich, who barely exceed 300 families, and among them, the 30 supposed owners of Mexico. Or the numbers of dead and disappeared in the absurd war on drugs trafficking, who between them amount to over 150 thousand people. Or the rates of unemployment, with over 14 million job losses across formal and informal employment. Or levels of corruption, both inside and outside government, that are difficult to calculate but reach hundred of billions of Pesos. Or equally, the real loss of the rule of law in fundamental areas such as the impunity under which all sorts of crimes are committed, both common law and white collar crimes executed by well-off people who break the law and are even congratulated for doing so.

Or the figures for Mexican migrants to the United States who go in search of the work they are unable to find here, who number more than 30 million people according to dramatic real-life evaluations which include both previous migrants and those who are leaving today, who together constitute a new migrant country. This is on top of the losses of opportunities to positive human development, which equally can be measured in millions. A truly bleak panorama.

The last decade in particular has been harmful for Mexico and for Mexicans. No one with even the slightest awareness of social reality can suggest that these last twelve years have brought progress and economic and social development. On the contrary, all the evidence and real-life hard facts show us that we face a serious national disaster under the conservative governments led by the National Action Party. What Vicente Fox’s government did and what Felipe Calderón’s continues to do is to devalue the public sector and seriously damage the country’s image abroad, bombarding the population with dishonest fantasies about the real state of the economy, with the complicity of the most powerful media outlets that are duly aligned with what they falsely call a national project. They infuse all their messages with the fear of change, an irrational fear of things being better, but true transformation can only be achieved by ceasing to reject the new and by fighting for a fairer model of economic and social policy.

The best way that we Mexicans can move forward, if we are to change the way things are, is simply via legal means and especially by way of elections, bravely standing together to rebuild our country instead of being scared of change. In 10 days we will cast our votes. Contrary to what some surveys have exaggeratedly claimed, this election is not yet decided. It was not decided beforehand when the possible presidential candidates started campaigning, nor is today, faced with the evidence of new public demonstrations which have been recorded among voters, in large part in response to this new media campaign which would have us believe that the 1 July election has already been won by a wide margin.

But in this strategy of injecting insecurity and uncertainty into society, such adjustments to electoral preferences are not registered by the media who prefer nothing to change in our country and want everything to carry on like it is today. They no longer even play at Gatopardo, that is the practice of always making small changes so that everything remains the same, instead they invent and broadcast, veiled by very dubious surveys, when the massive popular vote has not yet taken place.

This is our last chance. The last one we have to replace a mistaken vision that would hold us on a path to ruin. Either Mexico regenerates itself or we are in for an even darker, more destructive and bleaker period than that of recent lost decades. In these elections, like in none ever before, the country’s future is truly at stake. Either we fearlessly decide our own destiny and choose the path of profound change in the country’s political, economic and social structures, or the interests of a few will hold the huge majority in a state of fear. This is essentially what is at stake in the national debate and at polling stations.

Faced with this outlook, all that remains to be said is that enough is enough of Mexicans being manipulated. We were previously manipulated through the buying, coercion and co-opting of votes, today it is through the manipulative use of television and other media, which answer to the interests of those individuals who want Mexico to carry on with its ruthless exploitation of human labour, low salaries, growing unemployment, insecurity and the impunity of the powerful people and their criminal acts. Mexico must change. It is unacceptable that we should elect the bad guys because they are familiar and the good guys are forgotten because they spring from the conscience of a people who have taken on massive challenges in the past and have overcome them, always with new hopes for a better future.

We muse lose the contemptible fear of change. Over 2 thousand years ago, the Roman poet Horace said: He who lives in fear will never be free. Today, we Mexicans are facing our last opportunity. Either we change the path to disaster we are on, or we will destroy our great country even more.

Agents of Change

12 years ago, in 2000, when the PAN (National Action Party) came to power, all Mexicans asked themselves if in that election they had made the right decision for the future of Mexico, having lived through a period of inefficiency and arrogance under the PRI (Industrial Revolutionary Party) government.

Now, 12 years later, the major error that we made in electing a conservative, reactionary party full of incompetent, mediocre corrupt politicians with no social, legal or moral sensitivity is blatantly clear.

Mexico is currently experiencing one of the worst periods in its history. Widespread corruption, neglect of the population’s problems and needs, rising unemployment, both open and hidden, with 14 million people out of work, and an absurd war on organised crime that lacks strategy, vision and alternatives, is condemned to failure, and has meant the death or disappearance of over 150 thousand people.

It is now clearer than ever that Vicente Fox Quesada, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and their accomplices and collaborators never had an adequate strategy or any nationalist interest in putting Mexico and Mexicans first.

For them it is simply a case of unreservedly handing over the country’s natural resources, since today over 25 percent of the country has been given away in concessions to mining companies and the extractive industry who monopolise and speculate with land to their own ends. The servile appeasement of foreign and national business interests and the loss of sovereignty mean nothing to these governments. What is more, they believe and are convinced that they have acted correctly. They have no shame, but this does not bother them, and they try to convince the population by using the media to contaminate the minds of Mexicans.

The cynicism that prevails in government prevents them from seeing that they themselves are the origin and the centre of the wrongs of these 12 years, with their boundless personal ambition and their lack of principles and values. Even more importantly, however, is the constant violation of the state of law and the perversion in the application of justice for their benefit and that of the people who act in complicity with them, businesspeople, organic intellectuals, unethical media, unscrupulous politicians and all the flora and fauna of corruption. As a consequence, we now see the destruction of the national system, as well as the negation of a future filled with hope, justice, dignity and happiness for current and future generations.

But today, thousands, even millions of students and young people who are prepared and conscious, who have woken up and are disillusioned with the current situation, have denounced these abuses that have built up over time. Their expression of dissatisfaction has coincided with that of the unions and free workers who have been fighting for democracy for many years and demanding an end to the impunity surrounding the serious and profound violations committed by governments in the last 30 years.

This new movement of young people in society must grow stronger every day, demanding a radical move away from this economic and social model that exploits the population and our country’s natural resources.

They can certainly count on the unconditional solidarity of the majority of independent, democratic and respectable intellectuals and journalists, of the working class in rural areas, in industry and in services, of honest politicians and businesspeople in Mexico and abroad. Nonetheless, they must absolutely not lose their drive, enthusiasm and true desire for change and transformation towards a fairer, safer, freer and more democratic society.

Together, we and those young people are the new actors and agents of change. Let us not lose the drive or the opportunity so that in six years, if we get there peacefully, we will not feel the same regret of not having correctly chosen the government that we need. Let there be no repetition of the negative and contemptuous statement that the people gets the government it deserves; that is an insult to the intelligence and the moral and human integrity of the Mexican people.

Young people burst onto the public scene when they quickly deduced from the positions of the political parties in power and their allies that those people saw the electoral process as a simple exercise that would conclude with the announcement of their supposed victory. Their enthusiastic participation is a warning that this will not be the case, because students are demonstrating strong morals and values that have not been seen for years, which must be used to build an element of fundamental stimulus for all social and political forces, and for the members of society who long for substantial change.

Listening attentively and calmly to the call of young people is, right now, a priority for the whole country, so that we might obtain the results proposed by this sensitive sector of Mexican society. They want no more blood to be spilled, no more violations of the state of law, no more attacks on their own future and the future of all Mexicans.