Madness (A Mexican Editorialist's View of Lopez Obrador -- Translation)

http://www.reforma.com/ ^ | July 28, 2006 | Ezra Shabot ( translated by self )

[StJacques]

The Organic Intellectuals¹ incorporate themselves in the masses who blindly obey slogans without measuring the consequences. They are losing the election and reason.

The struggle for power has characteristics which on occasion result in the loss of reason and in an abstraction of reality typical of totalitarian thought. Defeat in an enormously competitive electoral process poses a challenge to the institutions of democracy, but also to the temper and responsibility of those politicians who, feeling themselves sure winners, come to be obligated to confront an adverse reality. The candidacy of Lopez Obrador was under construction as far back as 2000, when his triumph in the capitol of the country was combined with Cuauhtemoc Cardenas's spectacular defeat² and with that concluded his dominance over his party.

All of Andres Manuel's management at the head of the Federal District was guided by the logic of his presidential candidacy. The criticism of Fox, the construction of the Segundo Piso³ of the outlying freeway together with a good dose of corruption on the part of the builders, his defense in the face of the video scandals,⁴ the support for art dealers converted into beneficiaries of the capitol budget, and the scorn for the law in his personal immunity from prosecution case,⁵ each and every one of these events had in AMLO's mind one single objective: the Presidency of the Republic. Little by little, he was moving on the spaces within his party, converting the subject of the videoscandals into an instrument fit to ruin his Cardenista⁶ opponents, especially Rosario Robles.⁷

In one form or another, Andres Manuel converted himself into the only factor of power within and without the PRD. The clumsy strategy of the Fox government to confront the subject of his personal immunity from prosecution, not only reinforced the popularity of the Tabasqueño,⁸ it also opened the doors of a process of great risk to Mexican society as a whole: the construction of a cult of personality and martyrdom as a personal political project. From this moment on, the separation from reality was produced step by step. The theory of conspiracy was replaced by the fundamental principle of the political struggle in which adversaries do everything possible to discredit each other, until finally arriving at an agreement from the results obtained in elections.

The forces of good, constructed around Lopez Obrador, time and again confronted right wing conspiracy, Salinas,⁹ the rich headed by Roberto Hernandez,¹⁰ the communications media controlled by the privileged (with the exception of La Jornada, which daily expresses the purity of the truth revealed by the Caudillo¹¹) who, in a secret agreement, jointly planned the destruction of the representative of the poor. This line of thought, which recalls the logic of Nazism and Stalinism, has its climactic point in the moment in which the presidential election went adversely for the Caudillo for less than a percentage point.

In this moment, when prior conspirators are uniting themselves with pollsters, the IFE,¹² public officials and the PRD's own precinct representatives, none of the communicants are prepared to repeat the order of electoral fraud, and very soon the Electoral Tribunal [will be added to their number].

The masses summoned to the Zocalo capital square, inflamed by the discourse of the Caudillo who speaks, always ask and receive the response adequate to their desires, entering a process of being driven totally mad. Within this phenomenon of collective delirium are incorporated those Organic Intellectuals incapable of discerning between reality and their own desire, and who, lacking the most minimal feeling of criticism, are united in the choir of believers prepared to offer up their consciences for the cause. In this scenario there is no place for accepting any responsibility. Those who physically attacked Calderon¹³ did so, because of the guilt of the right's own candidate, who does not accept the vote by vote recount, or because they were infiltrated agents of the enemy.

These were the same arguments of the Nazis when they burned the Reichstag and blamed the Communists. The madness has arrived and it could destroy us.

Ezra Shabot
Reforma
July 28, 2006

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Translator's Notes:

¹The term "Organic Intellectual" originates in the writings of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who saw them as intellectuals who "grow organically" within a social group and who become spokesmen for that group. The author uses the term derisively.

²In the Mexican presidential campaign of 2000, the PRD's candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas made an unexpectedly poor showing and Lopez Obrador was elected Governor of the Federal District, which made him Mayor of Mexico City.

³The Segundo Piso (Second Stage) is a raised freeway built around the periphery of Mexico City, which did much to alleviate the horribly congested traffic in the capitol.

⁴In 2003 Rene Bejarano, a member of Lopez Obrador's campaign team, was filmed accepting money from an Argentine businessman in an apparent bribe. This video is up on the web at the Google video site.

⁵In 2004 the federal Attorney General's office asked that Lopez Obrador be stripped of the official immunity he then enjoyed as a high elected official to permit the government to prosecute him for ignoring a court order regarding a suit brought over public expropriation of land. If he had lost his immunity he probably would have been forced to sit out the presidential campaign under Mexican law. Lopez Obrador brought significant public pressure to prevent this removal of immunity, or desafuero, and forced the Fox administration to back down. He went unprosecuted.

⁶Supporters of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the 2000 PRD presidential candidate.

⁷Rosario Robles is the ex-Mayor of Mexico City, serving from 1999-2000 after Cuauhtemoc Cardenas stepped down to run for the presidency in the 2000 election. She was a founding member of the PRD in 1989 and was widely assumed to be the heir apparent to Cardenas after his defeat in 2000.

⁸Lopez Obrador is from the Mexican state of Tabasco, on the Gulf Coast.

⁹Carlos Salinas Gortari, President of Mexico, 1988-1994, once exiled but returned to Mexico after Fox became President, once again became a force within the PRI and was accused by Lopez Obrador of conspiring with Fox to have him stripped of immunity in the matter of #4, above. See the article at GringoUnleashed for more.

¹⁰Roberto Hernandez built a personal fortune in the 1990's by buying Mexico's largest bank, Banamex, after which he sold it to Citigroup.

¹¹The Spanish term Caudillo, which translates as "leader" or "head," is frequently used in its historical sense to refer to a dictatorial strongman. It was often used to refer to Francisco Franco, e.g.

¹²The Federal Electoral Institute, which handled both the preliminary and secondary vote counts of the presidential election.

¹³The virtual winner of the Mexican election, Felipe Calderon, was physically molested coming out of a meeting over the past week by Lopez Obrador supporters, leading to the enhancement of his personal security.

[StJacques]

Ezra Shabot, author of the above article, is an editorial writer for the Mexican newspaper Reforma, a university professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and a Mexican radio commentator. The above article was published yesterday in the Reforma newspaper, which is only accessible for subscribers, but you can read a reprint of the article from a Mexican blogger's site where it was posted.

I regard the above article to be a very powerful opinion that "hits the nail on the head" as forcefully as any analysis I have ever read of AMLO and his followers. If Lopez Obrador and company should succeed in tearing Mexico apart, no one will be able to say that nobody saw it coming. Ezra Shabot sees it very clearly in my opinion.

[StJacques]

A Mexican post-election ping for you all.

Anyone wishing to see other articles I have translated for the board on the Mexican post-election controversy can use the forum's "keyword" search option with the unique keyword -- STJTRANSLATION

[dirtboy]

The masses summoned to the Zocalo capital square, inflamed by the discourse of the Caudillo who speaks, always ask and receive the response adequate to their desires, entering a process of being driven totally mad.

Driven totally mad - that describes Democrats in this country as well after 2000.

[BunnySlippers]

He's clearly not going to leave gracefully. It will messier than Gore but I hope non-violent.

[StJacques]

I hope it stays non-violent too BunnySlippers, but I have my doubts.

[GeronL]

interesting.

[Kitten Festival]

Thanks for a terrific and valuable translation!

[StJacques]

"Thanks for a terrific and valuable translation!"

You're welcome Kitten.

[trek]

"Driven totally mad - that describes Democrats in this country as well after 2000."

The similarity you observe is no accident. The international left is very well organized. The other pattern to observe is that wherever the leftist candidate does win democracy is finished. Witness Venezuela and Bolivia. The chances of Hugo and Evo ever being removed by an election are ZERO!

[mjolnir]

Thanks again for the great translation and analysis!

The author is very impressive--- this is a great analysis not just of Mexico and ObraGore right now but in its intellectual foundations and actual historical concrete results of the dark side of populism. Have you read him before? Do you know any other good conservative columnists in La Reforma?

After I read its wiki entry and went to the Reforma website, it occurred to me the paper was one of the new institutions that will hopefully make Mexico be able to withstand the phenomenon the editorial describes.

[StJacques]

I have read more than one of Ezra Shabot's pieces at http://www.mexicoenpeligro.blogspot.com/. The individuals who run that site have posted a number of extremely interesting articles from the Mexican press, along with their own very well-informed individual commentaries. I first discovered them about three weeks ago after Googling a search for information on Venezuelan activists present in Mexico working for Lopez Obrador and I have been returning to the site ever since. The guys who run the site have a genuine passion for what they are doing and I am most impressed by their "real world" understanding of the dangers the radical left pose for Mexico. As for the Reforma newspaper, I do not subscribe to it, which is what would be necessary for me to follow Shabot's commentaries at great length, but I have been able to glean little bits and pieces beyond what I have read at the blogger's site I just listed by Googling a search that returns quite a bit on the guy. He's evidently very well known and maintains a rather high profile.

Do understand that even though I began my "Mexican election watch" as someone who was more informed than the average American, I have been undergoing an educational process all my own as I continue to monitor it. Learning about Ezra Shabot has been part of that process. I expect to learn more as I proceed.

[Valin]

Ping

[Shuttle Shucker]

Even the Leftist Washington [com]Post is attacking ObraGore now:

http://www.mexiconews.com.mx/19544.html

[Shuttle Shucker]

There they go in protest at the nation's capital this afternoon, like the creeping crud of tax leeches that took over Washington D.C. long ago:

[happygrl]

I confess that I know little of the intracacies of Mexican politics.

But hasn't Mexico already fallen apart ?

The transfer of such a large part of their population to the US would seem to indicate that it has failed its citizens.

Granted, it could be worse, if a violent reaction comes to pass.

But aren't the so-called Conservative politicians in Mexico only postponing the day of reckoning for this disfunctional nation?

[StJacques]

"But hasn't Mexico already fallen apart? . . . aren't the so-called Conservative politicians in Mexico only postponing the day of reckoning for this disfunctional nation?"

Mexico is actually just taking off after a ten year plus period running from the late 1980's to around 2000 when runaway inflation destroyed the purchasing power of so many lower and middle class Mexicans that very stringent national measures had to be taken to bring it under control. This is the underlying explanation as to why something in the neighborhood of ten plus million Mexicans immigrated to the U.S. over the past twenty years or so. Their national economy has been enjoying steady growth for the last five years or so and conditions are improving but they are at a crucial turning point in this election.

AMLO and the Mexican left want to take this new increase in the cash revenues for the Mexican national government -- the rising cost of oil is helping their cash flow as well -- and use it to subsidize consumer electrical and gasoline expenditures. That will only be a band-aid and, frankly, once a process like that starts it never ends. It will also leave Mexico dependent upon American cash inflows and will aggravate the immigration situation here because paying money out of the national treasury to the poor and middle class will stunt Mexican economic growth, which will cause more of them to leave for the U.S. since there will be insufficient opportunities to keep them at home. Calderon wants to take the new national wealth and build infrastructure (roads, communications, municipal improvements like sewerage, water, etc.) as well as underwriting the development of an expanded financial sector to permit Mexico to grow on its own, without the need for foreign capital investment. It's the age-old left vs. right debate, AMLO and the Left want to finance the lifestyle of the poor and lower middle class from the national treasury, while Calderon and the Right want to finance Mexican economic growth by creating an infrastructure such as one would expect for a modern economy.

If AMLO and the Left overturn the results of the recent election, it will be a disaster for both Mexico and the United States. We have a lot riding on this, both in terms of our very advanced economic relationship with Mexico -- they are our #2 supplier of foreign oil and the nation with whom we enjoy our best export surplus -- and with regard to our problematic immigration situation here in this country. Without the development of increased economic opportunity in Mexico, we will never be able to address the problem of illegal immigrants here.