”The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was his last, most essential order.”. George Orwell, 1984
Who you gonna believe? What do your eyes show you or the president of the republic? Andrés Manuel López Obrador has no doubt: only the president can be believed. Yesterday he was asked if his morning security meeting had addressed the tema of the videos that show how criminals in Acapulco beat drivers of public transport to force them to report their movements and allow them to collect floor fees. “Not that issue today, we are dealing with others, but we are facing the problem of extortion and insecurity problems. What happens is that everything now magnifies it[n], they make it very big. When there was a narco-state managed by Calderón, by García Luna, silence. That's just how conservatives are, very hypocritical. “They are silent like mummies and shout like criers when it suits them.”
Are the videos that show public transport drivers in Acapulco being beaten by criminals really magnified? I don't see how what can be made “very big” It should in principle be a real national scandal. The matter is not resolved, as the president stated, converting “extortion into a serious crime.” Security forces must protect transporters.
But it's not the first time The president asks us not to pay attention to what our eyes see but to what he tells us. Just on March 1, he recommended that Mexicans not pay attention to the videos of the “false pseudo-environmentalists” that exhibited the environmental damage caused by the Mayan Train: “Do not watch the videos because they are specialists in montages.”
The truth is that neither the videos of the contamination by the Mayan Train piles nor those of the criminals who beat public transport drivers in Acapulco for not obeying their instructions have been denied. There is no indication that they are a montage or have been modified in the slightest detail. But for the president the issue is very simple: if reality does not adapt to the ideal world in which he lives, then reality is wrong.
Its candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, acted correctly when, when signing the Commitment for Peace of the Mexican Episcopate and the Society of Jesus this March 11, she expressed “out of honesty and consistency” her differences with the document. She rejected “the pessimistic assessment of the current moment” and the view that “fear, helplessness, distrust and uncertainty prevail.” He pointed out that in 2018 there were 36,685 homicides, which is the correct figure reported by the INEGI, and in 2023 a total of 28,264, which is a little less than those reported by the Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection, but in any case it is a figure realistic. It is also real, however, that López Obrador's six-year term will close with nearly 200,000 homicides, the highest number since we have systematic and comparable records.
The best way to resolve differences on public policy is to display and discuss reliable information. And yes, videos can provide important elements to understand reality. For the president, however, it is very easy to resolve all questions by disqualifying those who express them. Thus, he has referred to all those who defend an idea different from his own as conservatives, hypocrites, corrupt, traitors to the country, forgers and a thousand other adjectives. It is his style and it has given him good political returns. But now he is reaching a limit in questioning videos that document uncomfortable realities.
The law
Of course The police officer who killed the Yankee normalist Khotan Gómez Peralta and escaped must be prosecuted. The law is the law. But are they also going to sanction the normalistas who vandalized the FGR offices in Chilpancingo yesterday and injured four members? There are photos and videos to identify them. But no, of course not. In those cases we don't get the story that the law is the law.
#Videos