Here in Mexico, journalists are sometimes, not infrequently, scholars. And not pedants, not all twisted up in social science jargon, but writers of limpid, honest, moving prose. And so is the case with Denise Dresser. Below she speaks about AMLO, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, PRD candidate for president in 2006. She offers much insight into Mexico. Translation is mine. The article first appeared in the journal Proceso on July 20, 2006, shortly after AMLO lostand was reprinted on the blog Contra López Obrador from where I retrieved it. It provides real insight into the thought of a moderate, modern, educated Mexican woman. It's interesting to note that at this point, more women than men in Mexico are graduating from universities and going to graduate schools.
I have always loved living in Mexico. Every day I give thanks that I live in a country with so much beauty, so much history, so much culture, so much life, so much dignity. Whenever I can, I say it: I am crazy in love with Mexico. I love its smells and flavors, its clearest regions and its darkest corners, is volcanoes and its valleys and everything in between. Life in Mexico for an upper middle class woman like me is, in many ways, enviable. I own my house and it is lovely; I send my children to a private school which is not very expensive; I own two used cars in good condition; I love my work and I can take care of my family with my income; I employ two people who help me in my house and I can afford to pay them; I take annual vacations and I'm saving to send my kids to university. I have the life I have always wanted, full of ideas and books and art and students and friends and the opportunity to write in Processo and a socially useful career. This my country has given me.
I am the product of the social mobility that still existed in the 1960s when I was born. Going from one scholarship to another I obtained a good education and with it I have climbed up the social ladder. In a country with 40 million poor people, I am among the privileged. Although I am, I realize every day that something is wrong. I would be able to use the sophisticated language of political science to explain it, but in this column I prefer to speak as a simple citizen. Something is very wrong when the people who work for me--the nanny and the chauffeur and the gardener--have no hope of being more than they are today. when they have no possibility of aspiring to something more because the country does not give them te chance. When sexenio after sexenio* one president or another gives them only more of the same.When they know that their children's lives will, in the best of cases, be a carbon copy of theirs. This precarious life, this stagnant, difficult life. This is what so many with whom I share the country suffer.
An for this reason, the 2nd of July [2006] I voted for Andrés Manuel López Obrador. I was one of those voters who was undecided until the moment I entered the voting booth, and once inside, I opted to vote for him for only one reason: I could not vote for a person who thought that the country was doing fine. I could not vote for a party that offered only more of the same. I could not be among those who thought that because the country worked for me, it was working well. But I voted with ambivalence, because throughout the campaign I always thought AMLO made the correct diagnosis, but that he did not have adequate solutions. That he fought for the good cause, but not with modern weapons. That he knew that the country wasn't functioning, but he had no coherent public policy proposals for improving it. He never convinced me....I remember having said: "Andrés Manuel, you are offering poverty with dignity. You are offering only a shovel for building a second floor." The poor deserve and need more.
Even so I thought that a victory for AMLO would offer the chance to shake things up; to level the playing field; to think about how to construct a country more just and less rapacious. And López Obrador didn't frighten me as he frightened other members of my social class. In fact, in meeting after meeting, in conference after conference, I found myself involuntarily serving as his defender. Because the arguments about his messianic personality seemed to me exaggerated. Because I thought too many of his detractors were just foaming at the mouth. One week before the election, I even published an article in the Los Angeles Times arguing that before they hate Lopez Obrador, the economic and political elites should hate the conditions which produced him: a socioeconomic system which concentrated wealth and had no incentive to distribute it more equitably.
But ever since election night, I have watched what Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been doing, and it unsettles me. It worries me. I see a man increasingly combative, increasingly confrontational, increasingly anti-institutional. I see someone who confirms, in every step he takes, all the bad that was said about him. someone who speaks of the monumental "crime" commited against the people of México [in the presidential election], but who has not been able to prove it was. Someone who on one day suggests voter fraud, on the next declares rather it was [la antigüita. I can't translate this.] Someone whose postions are so unclear--and frequently contradictory--that I lost confidence in him. Because I could not avoid it: I was trained in my PhD studies to examine evidence, evaluate data, analyze arguments. And those AMLO presents even today to support his case don't convince me. I've read all the the emails about the famous algorithm [having to do, I think, with vote counts] and I doubt it exists; I have examined all the irregularities detected up until the present and they don't sway me; I have heard all the condemnations of the State's handling of the election [meaning, I think, fixed by the state]" and I don't think we can say it was.
With what we know at this point, it does not appear to me inconceivable to think that López Obrador lost the election. This even in the face of all the multiplicity of reasons offered that the vote was wrong, an argument which we already are aware of; that people voted out of fear; that Vicente Fox interfered in the campaign; that third parties bought publicity; that the PRI governors supported Calderón, that AMLO himself made errors, although he refuses to accept he committed them. But in order to dispell doubts and restore lost confidence, I've supported the proposal to recount the votes, either partially or totally. If the recount reveals that López Obrador really won, Mexico will have to accept it. And the same if the opposite happens. This would have to be the deal on everyone's part, but especially on the part of the responsible left which wants to govern the country, not just divide it in two....
The most worrying thing is that AMLO doesn't appear to be thinking in this fashion. In declaration after declaration, AMLO is sounding more and more radical. And eveything he says suggests that in reality he is not looking for a recount, but for the election to be annulled. Now he doesn't want to win but to continue fighting. Now he doesn't want to show respect for the actual votes in this election, but to blow them up. Now he isn't looking at the next few weeks, but to the next few years. He wants to consolidate his base and become a political force for the long haul. He wants to lift the spirits of the ten million angry voters who support him although he may lose the moderates who voted for him. His role now is not to follow the rules of the game, but to break them. His role now is not to moderate in order to govern but to frighten in order to polarize....
And this is going to be a dangerous journey because it is once again following the route of division. His compass points to polarization. His map leads to radicalization. His destiny is to destroy first in order to reconstruct later. His journey involves destroying institution after institution, and this is what is happening currently with the IFE [Federal Election Commission which, incidentally, international observers including Jimmy Carter said was one of the cleanest and best around.] In acting the way he is, AMLO is putting people like me who voted for his cause in a difficult positon. He asks that we lose confidence in everything but him. He asks that we form part of what José Woldenberg has called a "community of faith," and that we put aside reason in order to be part of this community. He asks that we place all our faith in one man, when real democracies are constructed precisely so that this does not happen. He asks that we believe political operators like Jesús Orega and Leonel Cota and Fernández Noroña and Martí Batres whose path raises great doubts. He asks that we throw out the only credible political institution [IFE]which we have created, and that we join the crusade to discredit it.
And he leaves us with the following questions: If we throw IFE out the window, what other instrument is the country going to have for the peaceful transfer of power? If we can't ever have faith in our elections, what other process will represent the citizens....?
It hurts me even more to see that the other side doesn't have good answers either. The entrenched elites conduct themselves as they've always done: sabotaging, obstructing, postponing difficult solutions to ancestral problems. Paying for spots to promote their positions even though it is a violation of electoral law. Preserving their privileges, defending their properties....Those who hear the shouts of the Mexico that supports López Obrador and put their hands over their ears. Those who actually see the x-ray of the divided country that this election has brought about, and still believe it is enough to expand the Programa Oportunidades [an excellent program, by the way, but not in any way sufficient for the ills that beset the poor]. Those who produced AMLO and today don't know what to do with him.
Facing this scenario it is difficult not to suffer the sensation of orphanhood. Such despair. This sentiment Kazuo Isiguro describes so well in his novel, When We Were Orphans. This loneliness which happens when one finds oneself in the land of nobody, in the crossfire, without the pleasure of being on somebody's side, without anyone's support. Trying to fly the white flag among the bazookas. Trying to substitute the rigid party line with a citizen's reflections. Concerned to build a vital center where it might be possible to construct, converse, reconcile, institutionalize. To fight less for power and more for ways to better share it. To fight less for who won the election and more for the wounded country which both groups are dragging behind themselves.
*The six-year, nonrenewable presidential term.