The Desire For Change

Demand in Mexico for a drastic change of in economic and social policy, for a move away from the model that currently causes so much suffering, is louder than ever today due to recent public events. These latest events do nothing to stifle the intensity of the nation’s outcry. On the contrary, with every day that goes by the need for a radical transformation in the economy and in politics becomes more pressing, and we must move in the direction that the majority of society demands and requires.

The country’s needs for economic growth and social development cannot merely be satisfied by modifications to the democratic content of the political system or the electoral process, however necessary such changes may be. This is because political progress cannot be democratic if it fails to encompass the transformation of existing absurd economic and social structures, which should be designed to favour the interests of the great majority and to remedy the nation’s real difficulties.

This is something that the governing elites who have dominated Mexico and other countries over the last thirty years have refused to understand and much less to accept. The serious economic and financial crises that many European countries are suffering today, along with the United States and other highly developed nations, for example in the Middle East and Arabic countries, all have in common a policy of disregard for the human rights of their people, workers and social organisations. This situation favours the minute but powerful nuclei of economic and financial vested interests that hide behind the false and arrogant image of so-called market forces.

This kind of politics is one of the fundamental reasons behind the state of economic and social chaos that has prevailed in Mexico for at least the last three decades, with over 50 million people living in poverty, a contemptuous concentration of wealth and corresponding inequality, and brutal public insecurity fed by the inept war against organised crime. This war, if you look at it carefully, is clearly the brainchild of that antisocial and antinational politics based on the pretence of solving social conflicts using soldiers, prisons and repression, without dealing with the deep-seated causes of this explosion of delinquent violence.

For the last five government terms, firstly under the three presidents De la Madrid, Salinas and Zedillo, then under the National Action Party’s Fox and Calderón, Mexico’s powerful economic and political elites in have devoted themselves to pillaging the nation, showing not a trace of consideration or political shame. Without exception, any effort on the part of these governments or their corporate accomplices has been determined by the intention to favour the interest of a few instead of that of the majority. Mexico has slipped down this path, sinking further and further into disaster.

For me personally, and for the social forces we dialogue with, this desire for a radical change of economic and social model in Mexico is stronger than ever. Nothing and no one will make us renounce this right to true national progress. Political and judicial persecution have neither weakened us nor made us desist from taking this grand vision of historical progress forward, and they will never succeed in doing so in the future.

Our political behaviour has been determined by this task which truly liberates the strengths and the creative spirit of a population as intelligent and generous as Mexico’s. In seeking to free ourselves from the neoliberal strategy we have approached all political decisions that we come up against with full awareness of their risks and dangers, because this is the most important battle that can be fought in Mexico today.

Neither the demoralisation of some others nor the fear of change will ever be able to annul this effort. On the contrary, we have redoubled our demand for a path of fundamental progressive changes, and we will continue to do so, no matter what mediocre politicians or short-sighted businessmen might think of our social or political action, or what they might think in the future. What the nation urgently needs is to bring together all our will and strength to achieve a radical transformation in the unfair and antisocial model that currently governs the Mexican economy.

If other Latin American countries have achieved this, there is no reason why we should not  do the same, particularly since we were the ones who historically opened up this path in the region. Those nations, along with others elsewhere in the world, are freeing themselves from ideological and social yokes and beginning to walk in the proper historical direction for their people and their situations, regardless of the threats and dangers that they will come up against or are already experiencing.

Mexican politics should serve the major objective of freeing us from the wealth-concentrating economic and social strategy that oppresses us, prevents us from moving forward and stops us creating solid bases for real development, more jobs and rationality and justice in production and labour relations. It also prevents us from creating the conditions that would enable the economic, political and social dignity that all Mexicans deserve. In present terms no other task is more important than this if we want a future of progress, wellbeing and freedom.