The Mexican intellectuals have been some weird bugs in the configuration of political praxis: they are presented as figures above the ideological conflict, but in reality they have always been part of the apparatus-structures of cultural domination of the PRI regime. Only two of them were able to establish their distance from the Prince: the Marxist essayist Jose Revueltas and the poet and essayist Octavio Paz.
The more than 250 men of letters, social scientists and humanist technicians who asked for a vote in favor of the opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez Ruiz crossing the electoral ballots PRIhe BREAD and the PRD They went from the halo of reflection to militants of the center-ultra-right alliance that represents the standard bearer of the opposition.
The intellectuals who signed the letter on Monday only confirmed that October 1972 statement by Octavio Paz in the introduction to number 13 of the magazine Plural dedicated to the topic of “Mexico 1972. Writers and politics”: “the history of literature modern history, from the German and English romantics to the present day, is the story of a long unhappy passion for politics.
Although it appears as one of the two pivots of the letter of adhesion from intellectuals to the presidential candidacy of PRIANREDE, the historian Enrique Krauze has been a victim of what we could consider as the curse of Paz, because her militantly electoral behavior in favor of a candidate who represents the interests of the Mexican political right of the PAN does not comply with the strict specifications that the author of the imperial presidency defined in a text about intellectuals and the fascination of power that he published on February 5, 1996 in the magazine Proceso:
“No poet princes, no avatars of Cihuacóatl, no court lawyers, no theologians of revolutionary dogma, no court counselors, no roosters that want corn, no holdouts by the gut, no signatories of tacit pacts, no budget scholarship recipients, no luxury ambassadors, nor ministers without (or with) portfolios, nor first class travelers on “redila planes”, nor paid tinkers, nor ideologues, nor spokespersons, nor regulars. The mission of intellectuals is not to govern, but to criticize.”
Krauze reduces the role of intellectuals to voting for a candidate who represents the interests of the Salinista PRI – not the Cardenista -, the Calderonista PAN – not Gómez Morin – and the PRD of Echeverista Jesús Ortega – not the Neo-Cardenista. -. Given the opportunity to become a Machiavellian advisor to Princess Xóchitl, Krauze reproduces the role that Héctor Aguilar Camín played as an advisor to the neoliberal project of Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Or, also in these reaches of history and if Gálvez Ruiz wins the elections, Krauze would be the Carlos Fuentes of the Prianist regime as Fuentes was of President Echeverría, a settling of accounts of the contradictory history of intellectuals.
The deployment of intellectuals in favor of Gálvez Ruiz would be a second historical betrayal of their role as part of political praxis: in 2000, the intellectual left abandoned the candidacy of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and joined the right-wing campaign of Vicente Fox Quesada; Now, militant intellectuals are subordinated to the conservative ideological project of Claudio X. González in the figure of the candidate Gálvez Ruiz.
It remains for the study of the relationship of intellectuals with power – based on the reasoning of Octavio Paz – the political militancy of Enrique Krauze: in 2018 he organized a political operation – Operation Berlin – to actively combat the presidential candidacy of Andrés Manuel López Obrador and now, together with his nemesis Aguilar Camín, he leads a campaign to turn intellectuals into the Pied Pipers who pull votes in favor of Xóchitl’s candidacy, which after the debates continues to have an average of more than 20 points below the official candidate Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo.
Mexican intellectuals supported the students from afar in ’68, but in reality all their behavior has been in the logic of the “unfortunate passion of politics”, such as Aguilar Camín and Carlos Monsiváis who were key pieces of the president’s ideological bloc Gortari salt flats.
And in Julien Benda’s critical model, intellectuals betrayed their role as critical thinkers of reality – central theses of Daniel Cosío Villegas, Octavio Paz and Krauze himself – to become a neocorporate sector of the PRIANREDEX bloc.
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