President López Obrador concluded yesterday a process that had begun with the century, the distancing, now practically brought to a break, with the engineer Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. A political rupture, but above all it can be explained by the way of understanding the power of López Obrador: those who disagree with him are adversaries, he is part of the conservative oligarchy, even though his last name is Cárdenas Solórzano and he was the man who fathered his career politics.
Without Cárdenas, López Obrador would not be who he is. It was Cárdenas who opened space for him in what was then the National Democratic Front and would become the PRD, after the 1988 elections, in which López Obrador, who had just resigned from the Tabasco PRI, did not participate. Cárdenas took him in and helped him launch himself as a candidate in the state. He supported all of his campaigns in the entity and made him president of the PRD, even with the opposition of many of the party leaders at the time.
Cárdenas won Mexico City in 1997 and soon after returned to support him, again with the opposition of other leaders, including Demetrio Sodi and Pablo Gómez, the current head of the UIF, who maintained that he did not comply, which was true, with the residence requirements in the city to be a candidate. A negotiation with President Zedillo’s team allowed him to participate and Andrés Manuel won the city with an intense operation by Cárdenas and who was then the city’s interim head of government, Rosario Robles.
Since then, the distancing began, first in details and forms, then in real politics, in the background. The PRD was divided before the Fox government and more than one party militant joined the new president’s project. Cárdenas propelled Rosario Robles, whom some saw as a presidential prospect around 2006, as president of the PRD. The clash with Andres Manuel, who was seeking that position from Mexico City, was inevitable and worsened with the entire case of the video scandals. Robles was left out of the PRD, López Obrador was a candidate and since then he had clearly distanced himself from Cuauhtémoc.
The following years and the logic of power of López Obrador only deepened that distance. The way of assuming the political struggle of Cárdenas after the 1988 elections, and that of López Obrador after 2006, largely defines them. Cárdenas, whether you agree with him or not, was always a man open to dialogue, he always built his options for the left based on a democratic conception of it, hard, but not exclusive. He never maintained that in the country only his path was valid and whoever did not follow it was an adversary disqualified as an oligarch and conservative, much less would he have dared to demand, as was done yesterday, that they take sides because “it was time for definitions.” .
Cárdenas clarified that he shares a path of dialogue and agreements but that he is not part of Mexicolectivo. It doesn’t matter. It is unfortunate to see many of the cadres of the current administration who were born into politics at the hands of Cárdenas, now consider him an enemy: what a lack of political honesty, sensitivity, true historical sense.
Esquivel did not plagiarize
On Monday, El Universal published the audio by which Edgar Ulises Báez acknowledged before a notary public and from what is understood before some envoy from the National University, that he had taken parts of Yasmín Esquivel’s thesis to write his own in 1986. There they are the audio, photos and filming that confirm it. It is also confirmed that on three occasions Báez lied to a reporter from a media outlet who interviewed him and before whom he denied the plagiarism and the notarial visit that had already taken place shortly after Guillermo Sheridan published the information that Esquivel had plagiarized Báez on December 21.
On December 22, a few hours after that publication, Minister Esquivel, as we recalled here last Friday, gave me an interview in which she assured that she had not plagiarized, that her thesis had been written since 1985, a year before the de Báez, and that he had not received it until 1987 because he had not finished his social service that he carried out in the Coyoacán delegation. Now not only does Báez’s recording ratify that information, but we have also been able to see, and it is certified by an expert, the capitular of Esquivel’s thesis, approved and signed in 1985, we have seen letters from his synods about the thesis and the examination professional, copies of his social service in Coyoacán and the recognition of the teacher Martha Rodríguez Ortiz, his thesis director, that it was she who gave Esquivel’s thesis to Báez and other students to guide them on its writing.
When in those days of December, shortly before the election of the new presidency of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, for which Esquivel was a candidate, the minister requested the right to a hearing to show her evidence, neither the UNAM nor the FES Aragon, where he studied, accepted it, and made Esquivel indirectly responsible for plagiarism. Public opinion condemned it almost unanimously.
But it turns out that everything was false: that the plagiarist was the then student Báez and that Esquivel had a way of verifying that his thesis was prior to Báez’s. Now, more than a month later, he will apparently have the right to a hearing that he requested then and that had been denied.
I may or may not agree with the different positions that Minister Esquivel has adopted throughout a judicial career of more than 35 years, but it is a matter of simple intellectual honesty to recognize that she was right, that she did not commit any plagiarism and that this grievance should be erased.
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