“Being loyal is the greatest courage…”
Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla
It’s not easy, of course it’s not easy, did anyone say it was? be in circles of public power and stop being.
Once, years ago, a Man with capital letters, Don Ernesto Álvarez Nolasco, guide and mentor, explained power to me like aqua regia that measures the metal a person is made of. His penetrating gaze, his silences and his words chiselled and chiselled a lot of thought in me. We did not always coincide, however, even in differences, respect and affection increased.
Antonio Rodríguez, his compadre, a great art critic, showed him a vision of the world that he generously shared. The ethics and aesthetics gathered in his thought formed an exceptional politician who did not bend to break, the winds of life did bend him and he retraced his steps forcefully again and again, as necessary to show us, -at least to those of us who wanted to learn- that being stubborn is not so bad, that you can live in mediocrity and even below that level and that you don’t lose your dignity if you don’t want to, but you have to be brave.
The political reform and the educational reform of the 70s and 80s of the 20th century in Mexico were a constant topic of conversation. The one closest to Don Jesús Reyes Heroles, of that closeness several anecdotes that I remember in solitude, when he shared with me he did not imagine what he sowed in me.
Don Ernesto was the first “feminist” I met, in 1986, and he told us: “I don’t think women are there to darn socks, you have to share the spaces of power.” He taught me simple and complex things, for example, to say “based” and not “based”, also his favorite poem, song of deep life, which I read to him every time I could and it was good to remember it, Teilhard’s theories of Chardin, Jesuit and paleontologist, but above all our conversations could not do without the theme that has always united us, the party.
I miss it, you don’t know how much, now that in the midst of the chaos some forget why you are a militant, what you are a politician for and the great social commitment that being one implies. What am I going to do to him? I learned that one must have shame and be loyal at the beginning. That politics is to serve and not to be served and that one is worth being, not having.
I do not judge. Who am I to do it? I only ask that the oblivion be complete so that it does not hurt to think that they join, so that they are happy with the election. Shared images of destroyed houses, assaults at dawn, kidnappings and infamies still hurt me. Delivered the municipality, the state and the country to dark intentions that pervert territories, communities, spreading the poison that cancels the future. The slow death of economic activities and the untidiness in public administration. What postulates are they going to defend? What notion of homeland retains your memory? Poor Mexico that we don’t want to take care of.
We cannot give up. If I have one thing clear, it is that this immobile apathy that becomes an accomplice will not be forever. That the leaders must learn to be opposition or leave space for the construction with dignity of politics as an engine of social change. Always to improve and underpin the values of democracy. Keep laughing, just remember that without that there is no reason to be.
Read more: López Obrador in Sinaloa
Postscript. – Let’s keep an eye on the conflict in Europe and Asia, Ukraine hurts. Putin shows an imperial Russia. Let’s look at ourselves in that mirror and take care of our institutions.
#Loyalty