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Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 9 Num. 18
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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FEVER RISES IN MEXICO
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By Jose Augustin Ortiz Pinchetti
(*La Jornada*, 9/16/96)
[Translation by Conspiracy Nation]
A ghost crosses Mexico: the ghost of violence. All the forces
of the old system have united in the holy crusade to pursue this
ghost: the government, the Pope, the Church, the businessmen,
almost all analysts and parties. But the ghost keeps extending
itself like a serpent and it is not a simple fantasm, it is a
reality. Its victims range from Indians fallen in the dust to
leaders whose assassins have remained unpunished.
Those who denounce the violence are correct. And also those who
maintain that violent revolutions have brought nothing good to
Mexico. But it is not enough to denounce the violence, one has
to discover its causes and try to remedy them if there is still
time.
In May of 1911, Porfirio Diaz gave up his position as President
of the Republic. He was not conquered by Madero's army which
captured Juarez City. What conquered him was the insurrection by
millennial bands which quickly overwhelmed the nation. Porfirio
Diaz knew what that was, because he himself had utilized violence
as a means to fight in favor of independence for his homeland and
afterwards to combat the legitimate government.
The great danger running through Mexico is not represented by the
guerrillas from the jungles of Chiapas and the arid mountains of
Guerrero, Oaxaca and Michoacan. If those centers were isolated
and destroyed, by no means would the danger be averted. If the
guerrillas remain committed they will act as the axis for other
millennial bands of gangs, armed groups, ex-policemen, rebels,
etc. As in the Revolution, they would be able to generate a real
whirlwind of violence that would destroy wealth and institutions.
At bottom, all violence is political because it is a means to
exercise power. In Mexico it has converted itself into a savage
response to equally savage institutionalized injustice. When
special interest groups have imposed upon the country an
intolerable burden of sacrifice, inequality and corruption, Why
does it surprise us that in the towns, the *rancheros*, and the
villages of Mexico the people begin to take justice into their
own hands? A great portion of the State security forces are
infested with drug trafficking. Important personages belonging
to the political and economic life of the nation have been linked
to it. Insecurity has grown, and violent crime has increased by
20 percent in 1996 alone. There is evidence of the existence of
well-organized groups that operate as part of extensive networks
with national and even international reach. How can we curse the
fever without attacking the infirmity which produces it?
Once again it seems we face the peak of an ill-fated cycle. As
Enrique Krauze has pointed out in an important essay he wrote
during the last years of the Salinas presidency, the plans for
modernization -- top-down, exclusive, inflexible, isolated from
political change -- not only concentrate wealth and accrue grave
social costs, but they lead to violence. At the close of the
19th century, the Spanish monarchy occasioned unrest, a faithful
copy of the French model of that epoch. Little by little it
became an instrument for augmenting the privileges and abuses of
the Spanish and Creole elite against the rest of the Mestizo and
Indian population. At the end of the 19th century, Porfirio Diaz
imposed a similar process, also inspired by foreign models. Both
initiatives ended in revolutions. Each one of them cost 10 years
of continued violence and hundreds of thousands of lives. The
destruction of material riches and of social peace which, in both
cases, had been an emblem of pride.
At the close of the 20th century, Mexico put in effect another
modernization plan substantially equal to what came before, blind
to political changes, orientated toward concentrations of wealth
and income. Why does it surprise us when the results begin to be
dramatically similar to those of past attempts?
The elites seem trapped by their own ineptitude, without
understanding what is happening. Not only do we suffer a crisis
of vision, it is also a moral crisis. The supreme value is the
preservation of power. The inability to see the future seems
directly related to the inability to learn from the past. One
cannot lead Mexico while ignorant of its history.
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et
pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9