The first question is: what does it mean to be on the left? The dispute over the meaning of this term began in revolutionary France in 1789, when the more liberal groups, those who argued that the king should only have the right of veto, but not of decision, took the seats on the left in the National Assembly. , while the Conservatives sat on the right. A second important question in Mexico today is whether Andrés Manuel López Obrador is really a ruler of the left.
The first left-wing thinkers and politicians were liberals. They defended free markets; they opposed the privileges and monopolies of kings and nobles; They promoted equal rights for all and the democratic election of rulers. In contrast, the conservatives advocated preferential treatment of the nobility; and in Mexico, also one of benevolence towards the “inferior”, such as the indigenous people, who wanted to lock them up in reserves under a system of uses and customs. The left later focused on reducing poverty, and later on inequality, which are different conditions.
López Obrador’s political movement first presented itself as leftist, although in reality he has rarely defined himself as such. In fact, he disqualifies “conservatives” and “neoliberals”, confusing them, despite their differences. He himself has characterized himself as a “humanist” or even as a “Christian”. His policies as ruler have not been leftist. His prudence in public spending is conservative; his respect for free trade, reflected in the signing of the T-MEC, liberal; his efforts to concentrate power, eliminate counterweights, and to militarize the country, from the right.
Those who have traditionally represented progressive positions in Mexico reject that López Obrador is from the left. In an article in El Universal, the former president of the IFE, José Woldenberg, asked those who were his companions on the left: Do they really want the military to be in charge not only of national security but of a thousand other tasks? “Are you not alarmed by the systematic disqualification of media outlets and journalists critical of the government?” Don’t they blush when the president takes a picture of the Sacred Heart to face the pandemic or when he affirms that feminism, environmentalism or human rights “are nothing more than an invention of neoliberalism”? Woldenberg concludes: “The left mobilized in favor of equality and democracy. It cannot now validate the construction of an impoverishing authoritarianism”.
Other representatives of the left have also questioned the government of López Obrador. In 2021 Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas declared: “I would hardly say that we have a leftist government, no matter how much they say they are leftist.” A few days ago he pointed out in an interview for Proceso that, to face insecurity and ungovernability, the government continues to apply the “same medicine” for decades. The anthropologist Rober Bartra has declared: “I am a voice that comes from the left and I affirm that the AMLO government is right-wing populist.”
Does it matter if the government is left or right? I do not think so. José Ortega y Gasset wrote: “Being on the left is, like being on the right, one of the infinite ways that man can choose to be an imbecile: both are, in effect, forms of moral hemiplegia.” More important would be to know if we have a good government. There, I fear, the result has been negative.
The law. The INAI answered what we already knew: that the law does not give it the power to investigate a private citizen. AMLO knew it, but he still made the request. Now we will have to be attentive to the reprisals that the government can take against the INAI for having acted in accordance with the law.
“Power is like a violin. It is taken with the left and played with the right. Edward Galeano
#AMLO #left