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.