The Mexican electoral campaign is already sliding down a slide towards June 2 and the leading candidates do not spare gestures to demonstrate the support they have. As happened in February with the visit of both candidates for Pope Francis in the Vatican, Xóchitl Gálvez has once again come forward in the photo of him with the intellectuals, academics and artists who have wanted to show his sympathy for the coalition project opposition. Four days later, a similar meeting received the ruling party Claudia Sheinbaum with choruses of the president. The cream of the intelligentsia shows their preferences openly and without many nuances. If it is necessary to wear the team’s shirt, they wear it, they say with their gesture.
Both entourages have been well nourished, with no shortage of scientists, artists, writers, journalists, academics. Those of Gálvez seemed taken from the list of adversaries that the President of the Government usually displays in his morning conferences. And sometimes there are so many attacks on the academic and cultural world that come out of the National Palace that it seems that there would not be any left to support the Government party. But there is something for everyone.
The demonstrations of both teams are in line with what both candidates proclaim: those of Gálvez have repeated that the country is in “danger of authoritarian regression” and criticize the violence that spreads throughout the country. Those from Sheinbaum claimed in their speeches the democratic consciousness and progress that guides the trajectory of the candidate and her party. A fine analysis, like the one usually done by the intellectuals who have appeared in the photos with the candidates, may not prove completely right either to those who accuse risks for Mexican democracy, or to those who defend that the country is on the path of Denmark. But in the campaign there is no time for niceties.
In Mexico, where thousands of attendees at rallies are still herded, that is, they are transported there by the party’s caciquile forces, no one can say that in this case those who gave their support to the candidates are minds that allow themselves to be carried away by the halter. The historian and essayist Enrique Krauze, Spanish Orders History Prize winner, the renowned philosopher and novelist Héctor Aguilar Camín and the writer Ángeles Mastretta, among many others, wanted to support Gálvez’s conservative project. Elena Poniatowska, Prince of Asturias award winner, astronomer Silvia Torres and historian Lorenzo Meyer were signatories of the document in favor of Sheinbaum, which brought together more than 900 personalities from the Academy and culture in general.
Mexico, like the United States, is not a country where culture falls mostly on one side. Those who opt for one project are as renowned as the other. It would be a different thing if the intellectual world were asked specifically about some of the parties that support the candidacies, such as the PRI, in the case of Gálvez, or the Verde, in that of Sheinbaum, both with more animosity among the population than esteem. But the polarization of the country does not open much room for finicky in this latest electoral journey. Practically the entire campaign has been an ‘either with me or against me’.
The opposition parties have allied themselves without looking for ways to counteract the enormous push of Morena, the party in Government, highly favored in the polls. And on the other hand, it has been the president, catalyst of animosity, who has not allowed dissenters alongside him. That is the reason why during this long campaign, there were many who feared that certain sectors that, a priori, They should be with a figure like Sheinbaum, a scientist and academic, they could flee in another direction.
The cuts haven’t helped either. Science, cinema, music, culture in general have seen how the austerity policies of the six-year term, also crossed by a demanding pandemic, took a toll on their disciplines. For those who complained, López Obrador has had several of his recurring phrases: “for the good of all, the poor first,” is usually one. He has accused them of going right and forgetting about the people, or has called them fifis [burguesitos]. The middle classes that many of these intellectuals embody have not fared well in the Obradorist mandate.
In large cities, as in the case of Mexico City, Morena’s candidate, Clara Brugada, has used a good part of her speeches to convince everyone that the middle classes will also be an object of well-being if she wins the elections. Once the polls close and the results are analyzed in detail, the possible damage to the candidacy of Sheinbaum and Brugada due to disagreements with the intellectual class will be known. And how much of that discontent Gálvez has managed to attract to his ranks.
Some of those who criticize certain policies of López Obrador with science and technology, with the arts or academia, or simply those who did not share, even though they were related to the party in Government, the president’s attacks against the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), to give one of the most famous examples, may still be willing to build the “second floor of the Fourth Transformation”, as López Obrador’s movement has been called. But this time with another person in the command chair: one of his class, a doctor in Physics and a deep cultural background. Or as Xóchitl Gálvez sums it up when he criticizes his opponent: “When you were 10 years old when you went to ballet class, I worked to earn a living.” Whoever sits on that republican throne feels like it, the intellectuals have already taken their positions.
Subscribe to the EL PAÍS Mexico newsletter and to the channel electoral WhatsApp and receive all the key information on current events in this country.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#cultural #academic #world #joins #polarization #Mexican #political #moment