Photo: Aurelia Ventura / Impremedia / La Opinión
“Tell them they are hurting themselves. That they have been deceived by the corporate ‘disinformation’ media and that attacking the current administration is like attacking the majority of Mexicans and Mexico. He also writes that attacking López Obrador is affecting his own family, whether they are from the working class, friends, and middle-class or low-income communities that in the last 40 years have been affected and condemned to a poverty from which it is almost impossible to get out honestly. It was not for nothing that people said: ‘he who does not compromise, does not advance’”.
The words of Don Isidro Mora, originally from Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, State of Mexico, are the echo of the clamor of millions of Mexicans who, like him, had to leave their country several decades ago due to the abuses committed by an economic model that promised a substantial spillover to all social classes from top to bottom; something that not only did not happen, but further privileged the classes that literally already had everything. Neoliberalism, in this sense, was the main generator of poor people and creator of involuntary migrants who saw their only salvation in the north.
Today, at the age of 63, installed since then in the city of Los Angeles, Don Isidro remembers, with his gaze lost in Placita Olvera, a painful event that occurred to his son of the same name after leaving his country when options ran out: “I lost my 17-year-old son when we tried to cross the Rio Grande. I did manage to cross it, but he was carried away by the current.”
Don Isidro has not been able to return to Mexico due to the lack of documents in the United States, although he does not stop sending his money to his wife and his three remaining children, all of whom are adults.
He remembers that in the 1990s, during the time of former presidents Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Ernesto Zedillo, he lost his job and, desperate to find another job, decided to come to the United States with his youngest son. But his little one couldn’t reach the shore no matter how much he yelled at her.
“They forget the pain caused by their decisions to privatize everything, run people off, and leave them without sources of employment,” explains Don Isidro. “We were not the only ones, thousands of families were affected, while the PRIANRD governments never cared.”
He adds that the worst thing “is that they still want to return to power, as if all the pain and poverty caused had not been enough.”
For his part, Don Rutilo Macías, one of Don Isidro’s older friends, explains that, in Iztapalapa, Ecatepec, Nezahualcóyotl or any other place with high levels of poverty and marginalization rates, having a university education no longer meant climbing the social ladder.
“Before they used to say —says Don Rutilo—, go to school so that you do well in life. But it’s not true, at least not if you were born poor and graduated in the last 40 years.”
He also explains that his son graduated in the 1980s as a Business Administrator and later found a job at Asemex, but when it was privatized in the 1990s, he lost his job and could never recover.
“If he had continued in that job, he would already be close to retirement and with a good retirement. But he could never settle in well, he tried to come to the United States, but they caught him twice and he decided to stay in Mexico instead. Today, at the age of 55, he still has to work almost 12 hours a day as a salesman to survive ”.
He adds that his son has worked all his life and is not an “asshole”, as former President Vicente Fox says. “That man is ignorant, I don’t know how he came to power. Of course, he does want his millionaire pension back. How little m…”.
The problem with your son is that, even if he reaches retirement age, he will not have a guaranteed pension, since he has worked independently; However, he hopes that with the social assistance of President López Obrador and what he can continue to send to his family, his situation will not be so complicated.
“Those politicians —from the PRIANRD— don’t know how they affected millions of families, and all because of the ambition to steal and let them steal with full hands,” explains Macías. “I stopped seeing my family, I missed my children’s birthdays and now several grandchildren’s, all because at that time the governments stole and let foreign companies steal. But what about the rest of the Mexicans?
He adds that even the qualifications of sell-outs and corrupt for those of the opposition in Mexico fall short, if one counts the damage they did to the people of Mexico, not only economically, but above all the pain caused by the death generated by violence and inequality.
“I hope they never come back,” he says categorically.
After a broad talk in Placita Olvera, in downtown Los Angeles, a place where they spent a good time enjoying the dances and the people who came and went, the immigrants said that they hope that Mexicans have woken up and in the 2024 elections they will not give a single vote to PRIANRD.
In their conversation, these two immigrants showed that they were clear that the struggle for power in Mexico is not between the left or the right, liberals against conservatives, but that the real struggle and the one that has always existed, they said, is the struggle of those above against those below. “There is no more,” they assured.
After more than three decades outside of Mexico, neither Don Isidro nor Don Rutilo lose hope of returning to their family.
Agustín Durán is the local editor of the newspaper La Opinión, in the city of Los Angeles.