Most voters cast a ballot in the hope that they will be better-off with a particular candidate. The July 1st, 2018 Mexican presidential election represents the complete reversal. The Mexican electorate accepts that things are NOT going to improve in their own lives no matter which party might get into office – instead, they want the everyone else to share in their misery.
The triumph of Andrés Manuel López Obrador was a victory of resentment and retaliation. López Obrador’s win signals the rise of an electorate with a grudge.
The Mexican poor know that they are not going to get anything out of the rich; no matter how much the tax structure might be altered by elected officials, the upper class always finds a way to avoid levies. There is only one thing that the lower class can do to affect the economic elite and that is to make sure that everyone in the country goes without. The poor know that there is no way for the government to control rampant violence – but what the lower class can do is to spread that crime into the gated communities of the elite. Up till now, the Mexican upper class has been largely unaffected by the drug violence; the election of López Obrador will change all that – not by stopping the slaughter, but by making sure that all social classes will suffer equally.
I generally cross the Mexican border a couple times a month. I always enjoy discussing Mexican politics with taxi drivers; if anyone can know what it going on it a city, it will be these underemployed chauffeurs. Like a proctologist, the taxi driver has his finger on the vitals of the body politic. When I was in Nogales, Sonora, a few days ago, the gentleman driving my cab mentioned that he holds a master’s degree in sociology; he blamed the ruling elite for his inability to find an “appropriate” and “acceptable” career. He told me that, with the election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, “the rich are going to feel what it is like to be poor.” He was voting for López Obrador as a way of “getting back” at the economic elite. Between cussing and cursing at other vehicles, the driver insisted that the election was all about “making the rich feel what he has had to go through.” Talking with the marginally employed Mexicans along the frontier, I get the impression that the 2018 Mexican national election is all about settling scores.
And there is no politician on earth filled with more resentment than Andrés Manuel López Obrador. This socialist candidate is the perennial loser in Mexican politics – he has been defeated so many times and he refused to accept his losses so often that the Mexican media knows Andrés Manuel López Obrador by his initials. Born into an impoverished family in the rural state of Tabasco, AMLO has long nourished a hatred of the moneyed elite. There are two types of socialists: there is a sort of selfish collectivist who owns nothing and actually believes that a wealth redistribution might benefit him personally – and, at the opposite extreme, there exists a resentful communitarian who just wants to get even with the upper class. López Obrador is the embodiment of just such a “tiffed-off” socialist. Just as some men are said to have a dark cloud follow them, AMLO goes about in a perpetual huff.
No matter the political affiliation, most Latin American politicians share one curious physical feature and that is a fair complexion. Elected officials usually display far more European genetics than their electorate. Indeed, AMLO’s own maternal grandfather was a Spanish expatriate, not an indigenous Mesoamerican. Strangely enough, the more pale-colored the skin, the more the politician will claim to identify with the mestizo masses. But that affinity is merely fabricated and formulated for political reasons; Mexican political elites invariably wed and reside only amongst their white-skinned equals. The closest a Latin American politician ever gets to the masses are the criadas cleaning their mansions.
In 1994, AMLO ran for governor of the state of Tabasco – he lost and disputed the results. In 1996, he blocked access to oil wells as a protest against pollution that was supposed to disproportionally harm and harass indigenous people; there is a famous publicity shot of him in blood-stained clothing – but all that street theater amounted to nothing. In 2000, López Obrador was elected by the residents of Mexico City to govern the capitol district – his one and only previous electoral win. In 2006, he ran for president of Mexico on the Party of the Democratic Revolution ticket; he lost, and then organized a street occupation of Mexico to protest the results; his sympathizers proclaimed AMLO to be the “legitimate president of Mexico,” but his legitimate presidency fizzed out in a few weeks. In 2012, he ran for president of Mexico for the second time around; he lost yet again – but, true to form, refused to accept the unwanted and unwelcome results. AMLO takes every political reversal as a personal rebuke.
In the 2018 election, AMLO abandoned the Party of Democratic Revolution and ran under the auspices of the Morena Party (oddly enough, the Spanish word morena is also used to describe a darker-skinned woman – reinforcing that subliminal linkage between political elites and indigenous populations). The Mexican masses have been increasingly plagued by a stagnant economy – and the lower class has been inexplicably preyed-upon by the drug cartels. The Mexican electorate has reached a point of exasperation – and AMLO has tapped into that frustration. The 2018 election was a vote of vexation.
Unlike American politicians, Mexican politicos generally try to keep their campaign promises. The only trouble is that these programs tend to peter away. The astute observer of Latin America calls it a “promise fade.” These campaign pledges only remain in force for a brief time, but like everywhere else in the world, these socialist policies always create the exact opposite of what was originally intended. This “paradoxical effect” is well-known in medical practice, but the same process is just as noticeable in Mexican politics over the last few decades.
Take the North American Free Trade Agreement for example: NAFTA was supposed to better the lives of ordinary Hispanics; instead, the multinational agreement devastated the livelihood of millions of lower-class Mexicans. NAFTA allowed the importation of cheap American corn which destroyed the livelihood of millions of Mexican family farmers, and the Interior Ministry then urged these newly impoverished campesinos to immigrate to rural America in order to send remittances back home. At the same time, NAFTA encouraged investment in Mexican factories solely designed to assemble cheap goods for the American market; the low-pay and long-hours in these maquiladoras tended to be more attractive to female workers, making the male head-of-household increasingly superfluous – and causing these surplus laborers to migrate to American cities.
The election of AMLO is not going to improve things, but merely follow this same pattern of disappointment. With the election of López Obrador, we can expect the Mexican government to encourage its newly dispossessed citizens to sneak across the American border in order to find work. Indeed, one of AMLO’s campaign promises involves making the Mexican diplomatic service a sort of advocate for illegal aliens. Even though the prediction is obvious, the prophecy of increased migration is no less inevitable. When the socialistic policies of Andrés Manuel López Obrador unsurprisingly fail, we can expect increasing illegal immigration to the United States. Without a physical wall (and with ever increasing Leftist subversion within America itself), we can expect the American government to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of migrants.
The rise in power of López Obrador has already and immediately caused the value of the Mexican peso to decline against the American dollar. AMLO has promised tariff retaliation against American imports, and as these monetary policies come into existence, we can expect a further drop in value of the peso. With the prospect of a currency collapse, the Mexican middle class will be pressured and persuaded to join family members in the United States, contributing to the already untenable levels of immigration to America. With every 10% drop in the value of the Mexican peso, we have seen another million Mexican citizens to migrate to the United States.
In an attempt to reduce some of the violence caused by drug cartels, we can expect the Mexican government to offer some sort of amnesty to the drug traffickers. The Mexican ruling class and the drug cartels will form a strategic alliance – these elites will come to realize that they have more in common with each other than with the impoverished and underprivileged masses. The practical result of this gradual, growing incorporation of drug traffickers into the Mexican government will be the rescinding of military-cooperation agreements with the United States. The elimination of current American clandestine intelligence gathering among the migrant hordes will be one of the first arrangements to be revoked. For the average American citizen, there will be increasing numbers of Latino gang members on the streets of U.S. cities. Expect more of the current narco violence to appear in the barrios of American cities.
I was talking to a long-time acquaintance in the border state of Tamaulipas a month ago. She told me that she didn’t know anything about the other candidates – Andrés Manuel López Obrador was getting her vote because, “We are going to hell but you rich guys are going with us.” She insisted that it is high time that upper class learns what is it like to “live in fear.”
In many ways, the 2018 Mexican election is a foretaste and forerunner of politics in the age of the internet. Voting is all about feelings, not fiscal policy. Not a matter of political platforms, but personal passions. The Mexican election is a harbinger and herald of what is to come in mass democracy: the ballot is not about advancing an agenda – but getting even.
In an election, the most base and basic human instincts will always triumph in the end. Politics is all about punishment. If you cannot redistribute the wealth, at least you can always retaliate against the rich. Even if voting for the most socialist candidate might not result in you having a superior life – at least you can make damn certain that everyone else has an equally shitty existence.
The triumph of Andrés Manuel López Obrador was a victory of resentment and retaliation. López Obrador’s win signals the rise of an electorate with a grudge.
The Mexican poor know that they are not going to get anything out of the rich; no matter how much the tax structure might be altered by elected officials, the upper class always finds a way to avoid levies. There is only one thing that the lower class can do to affect the economic elite and that is to make sure that everyone in the country goes without. The poor know that there is no way for the government to control rampant violence – but what the lower class can do is to spread that crime into the gated communities of the elite. Up till now, the Mexican upper class has been largely unaffected by the drug violence; the election of López Obrador will change all that – not by stopping the slaughter, but by making sure that all social classes will suffer equally.
I generally cross the Mexican border a couple times a month. I always enjoy discussing Mexican politics with taxi drivers; if anyone can know what it going on it a city, it will be these underemployed chauffeurs. Like a proctologist, the taxi driver has his finger on the vitals of the body politic. When I was in Nogales, Sonora, a few days ago, the gentleman driving my cab mentioned that he holds a master’s degree in sociology; he blamed the ruling elite for his inability to find an “appropriate” and “acceptable” career. He told me that, with the election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, “the rich are going to feel what it is like to be poor.” He was voting for López Obrador as a way of “getting back” at the economic elite. Between cussing and cursing at other vehicles, the driver insisted that the election was all about “making the rich feel what he has had to go through.” Talking with the marginally employed Mexicans along the frontier, I get the impression that the 2018 Mexican national election is all about settling scores.
And there is no politician on earth filled with more resentment than Andrés Manuel López Obrador. This socialist candidate is the perennial loser in Mexican politics – he has been defeated so many times and he refused to accept his losses so often that the Mexican media knows Andrés Manuel López Obrador by his initials. Born into an impoverished family in the rural state of Tabasco, AMLO has long nourished a hatred of the moneyed elite. There are two types of socialists: there is a sort of selfish collectivist who owns nothing and actually believes that a wealth redistribution might benefit him personally – and, at the opposite extreme, there exists a resentful communitarian who just wants to get even with the upper class. López Obrador is the embodiment of just such a “tiffed-off” socialist. Just as some men are said to have a dark cloud follow them, AMLO goes about in a perpetual huff.
 |
| AMLO |
In 1994, AMLO ran for governor of the state of Tabasco – he lost and disputed the results. In 1996, he blocked access to oil wells as a protest against pollution that was supposed to disproportionally harm and harass indigenous people; there is a famous publicity shot of him in blood-stained clothing – but all that street theater amounted to nothing. In 2000, López Obrador was elected by the residents of Mexico City to govern the capitol district – his one and only previous electoral win. In 2006, he ran for president of Mexico on the Party of the Democratic Revolution ticket; he lost, and then organized a street occupation of Mexico to protest the results; his sympathizers proclaimed AMLO to be the “legitimate president of Mexico,” but his legitimate presidency fizzed out in a few weeks. In 2012, he ran for president of Mexico for the second time around; he lost yet again – but, true to form, refused to accept the unwanted and unwelcome results. AMLO takes every political reversal as a personal rebuke.
In the 2018 election, AMLO abandoned the Party of Democratic Revolution and ran under the auspices of the Morena Party (oddly enough, the Spanish word morena is also used to describe a darker-skinned woman – reinforcing that subliminal linkage between political elites and indigenous populations). The Mexican masses have been increasingly plagued by a stagnant economy – and the lower class has been inexplicably preyed-upon by the drug cartels. The Mexican electorate has reached a point of exasperation – and AMLO has tapped into that frustration. The 2018 election was a vote of vexation.
Unlike American politicians, Mexican politicos generally try to keep their campaign promises. The only trouble is that these programs tend to peter away. The astute observer of Latin America calls it a “promise fade.” These campaign pledges only remain in force for a brief time, but like everywhere else in the world, these socialist policies always create the exact opposite of what was originally intended. This “paradoxical effect” is well-known in medical practice, but the same process is just as noticeable in Mexican politics over the last few decades.
Take the North American Free Trade Agreement for example: NAFTA was supposed to better the lives of ordinary Hispanics; instead, the multinational agreement devastated the livelihood of millions of lower-class Mexicans. NAFTA allowed the importation of cheap American corn which destroyed the livelihood of millions of Mexican family farmers, and the Interior Ministry then urged these newly impoverished campesinos to immigrate to rural America in order to send remittances back home. At the same time, NAFTA encouraged investment in Mexican factories solely designed to assemble cheap goods for the American market; the low-pay and long-hours in these maquiladoras tended to be more attractive to female workers, making the male head-of-household increasingly superfluous – and causing these surplus laborers to migrate to American cities.
 |
| The blessings of NAFTA |
The rise in power of López Obrador has already and immediately caused the value of the Mexican peso to decline against the American dollar. AMLO has promised tariff retaliation against American imports, and as these monetary policies come into existence, we can expect a further drop in value of the peso. With the prospect of a currency collapse, the Mexican middle class will be pressured and persuaded to join family members in the United States, contributing to the already untenable levels of immigration to America. With every 10% drop in the value of the Mexican peso, we have seen another million Mexican citizens to migrate to the United States.
In an attempt to reduce some of the violence caused by drug cartels, we can expect the Mexican government to offer some sort of amnesty to the drug traffickers. The Mexican ruling class and the drug cartels will form a strategic alliance – these elites will come to realize that they have more in common with each other than with the impoverished and underprivileged masses. The practical result of this gradual, growing incorporation of drug traffickers into the Mexican government will be the rescinding of military-cooperation agreements with the United States. The elimination of current American clandestine intelligence gathering among the migrant hordes will be one of the first arrangements to be revoked. For the average American citizen, there will be increasing numbers of Latino gang members on the streets of U.S. cities. Expect more of the current narco violence to appear in the barrios of American cities.
 |
| Socialism is not the redistribution of wealth, it is the redistribution of poverty and misery. |
In many ways, the 2018 Mexican election is a foretaste and forerunner of politics in the age of the internet. Voting is all about feelings, not fiscal policy. Not a matter of political platforms, but personal passions. The Mexican election is a harbinger and herald of what is to come in mass democracy: the ballot is not about advancing an agenda – but getting even.
In an election, the most base and basic human instincts will always triumph in the end. Politics is all about punishment. If you cannot redistribute the wealth, at least you can always retaliate against the rich. Even if voting for the most socialist candidate might not result in you having a superior life – at least you can make damn certain that everyone else has an equally shitty existence.
__________________________________________________
John Grauerholz is an irredeemable and incorrigible border-crosser. When Mr. Grauerholz has had his fill of the Third World, he releases social Darwinist rants under the pseudonym “Mr. Mean-Spirited” at the website: https://mister-mean-spirited.blogspot.com/.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your comment will appear after it has been checked for spam, trolling, and hate speech.