Why is the fight for a more equitable society endless? Who is opposed? Why does it seem so difficult to achieve even though most people need it? Or, in any case, who benefits from having more than 50% of the Mexican population in poverty or extreme poverty?
In Mexico the economic power (the oligarchy) has always benefited directly or indirectly by keeping the majority of Mexicans with the minimum to survive. They, in complicity with the political class and the corporate media, have been in charge of maintaining a large part of Mexican society with few or no resources, without hope, without a voice, and ready to migrate to the United States; all this as a result of fraud, looting of resources, impunity, massacres and repression that have allowed the illicit enrichment of a few.
According to the newspaper El Financiero , currently “Mexico is the second country with the most millionaires in Latin America, only behind Brazil, and has at least fifty people with more than 500 million dollars. ”
Something that is striking is that at the beginning of Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s administration, millionaires in Mexico could be counted on their fingers, while migration to the United States began to increase by millions of people and the minimum wage began to rise. lose their purchasing power, moving from 12 to 82 on 40 years, despite the three increases that have taken place in the current government (more than 50% in three years). Currently, the minimum wage in Mexico is about seven dollars for eight hours of work per day.
So it is not surprising that in Mexico there are more than 60 millions of people living in poverty or extreme poverty. There are people who still live without drainage or electricity, while on the other hand there are politicians and journalists who live with great luxuries, yachts and apartments in Miami or in Europe.
Journalism and politics, perverse combination
I mention these two public activities because they are supposed to be disciplines for service and not for inexplicable personal enrichment. Having money and luxuries is not bad, but only if it can be justified with work and income, as is the case with businessmen and women. The problem is that the communicators who serve political and economic power, in addition to public servants, are not originally businessmen; in general, they start working without many resources and end up millionaires. How can this situation be explained, if not by fraud, embezzlement, complicity, looting, leonine businesses, etc. ?
Let us not forget that those 50 millions of poor in Mexico did not arise by spontaneous generation, but as a consequence of a savage capitalism that intensified at the end of the 80 with Salinas de Gortari. With the neoliberal period that this former president represented, public industries began to be privatized, to pass into the hands of a few, just as the concession of natural resources continued. So far, that policy has generated inequality unmatched in Mexico. What happens is that the private initiative only did what it knows how to do: obtain juicy profits, but only for themselves, for politicians, owners of corporate media and some communicators. All this, while the media, far from investigating and criticizing, worked with them and very occasionally reported a conflict, an abuse, but in general they justified politics, business and fraud.
That is why the fight of those below has become endless. In those days, even when there were massive protests where people were marching and shouting, if the media didn’t cover it, it was as if they hadn’t happened. Unfortunately, the people below do not have many resources to bear and show their disagreement for several days, and in the end it all vanished. That was the same old story.
Decades passed in Mexico and nothing changed. There were elections, and although the people voted, there were no changes. First, because the political power controlled the results of the elections, and if they had to do fraud they did it, there was no problem, they had in the bag the media that, in a synchronized way, came out to shout the “triumph” of the PRI or PAN and that was enough. The writer Mario Vargas Llosa called this system “the perfect dictatorship” in the years 90 years of the last century.
Echoes of electoral fraud from 1988
I remember in 1988, when everyone thought that engineer Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas had won the elections thanks to the massive vote he was obtaining, suddenly “the computer system fell”, in such a way that when it was reestablished, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Carlos Salinas de Gortari, had won. At the head of the Ministry of the Interior, by the way, was Manuel Barttlet Díaz , who is now part of the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and who has dissociated himself from said allegation, accusing Salinas, Diego Fernández de Cevallos and Felipe Calderón, whom he has described as “criminals” and “fraudsters” for having burned electoral packages.
This is how it was styled in those times. In 2006 they wanted to unleash and put López Obrador in jail, but they could not. Even later, former President Fox himself declared to a media that he had participated so that López Obrador did not win the presidential elections of 2013 .
But in 2018 things changed: a massive vote gave the victory to López Obrador and, now, for the first time in many decades the people had a president on their side.
The problem is that the political power of before changed the Constitution with the complicity of politicians and the silence of the media. And it wasn’t just one time. In addition, the judiciary was floated. That meant that even if laws were passed in Congress, there were always judges who could stop projects that protected private initiative, even with contracts approved with bribes, such as the Energy Reform of 2013 during the government of former President Enrique Peña Nieto, considered the most corrupt in the history of Mexico.
Press ‘chayotera’ vs. AMLO
On the other hand, the corporate media are against President López Obrador because removed almost the 70% of the funds they received annually in past six-year terms . That infuriated them, as well as some of the media owners, since they also have businesses in other industries and have forced them to pay taxes or correct contracts that were an abuse for the people of Mexico.
Likewise, many supposed intellectuals who also lived off the treasury, are upset because now they cannot live off the budget of the people. That is why they do not miss an opportunity to attack the current administration. The problem is that they do not criticize the Fourth Transformation of the president with solid arguments, but on many occasions they invent, tell half-truths or manipulate the context or information to misinform or confuse audiences.
A clear example of the abuses and fraud is the Energy Reform that was approved with great fanfare in the government of Enrique Peña Nieto, but now there are even videos that prove that there were millionaire bribes for legislators to approve said proposal that, far to help the Mexican people, what it did is that it finished privatizing and destroying Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), as well as the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).
Another example of how some lie journalists was the recent case of Raymundo Riva Palacio, who has said that AMLO lies more than Donald Trump – something humanly impossible. But the columnist recently published in El Universal that the president had “set free” the drug trafficker Héctor, El Güero , Palma that he had “exonerated” him from the crime of organized crime and “acquitted him of everything”; He even said that the drug trafficker almost left with “an apology” from the government. The truth is that AMLO did not allow his departure, it was an order given by a judge in Jalisco. The president stopped the order and first made sure that El Güero Palma did not have any other crime that deserved him to remain in jail. Despite everything the columnist said was a lie, he never apologized and his column remains public as if it were true in El Financiero and other Mexican media.
These are just two of hundreds of examples that reveal the intense struggle that those above have, those who have always had everything, to stop AMLO and his 4T. While those at the bottom, who have already come to power, struggle —without resources— to maintain and support López Obrador in the presidency, who has opened channels of aid to the poor —more than 50% are women—, low-income students and senior citizens, in addition to a large number of projects carried out at Nacional level. All this in the midst of a pandemic and without debt, as their predecessors did.
Unfortunately, the strength of those at the top, although now they are opposition, is superior. And with all the corporate media on their side, they have a chance of returning to power, especially if those at the bottom divide, fight and become confused by the daily bombings of the corporate media.
next June 6, election day, will be decisive to know if those below will have until 2024, the last year of López Obrador as president, to celebrate with open arms, or if they will have to continue fighting indefinitely as they did until 2018, against the powers that be who seek not to lose their privileges, live off the public purse and keep forever that more than 50% of Mexicans in poverty, for them to continue living in the midst of a plenitude of privileges.
Agustín Durán is Metro editor of the newspaper Real America News , of the Angels.