2023: subtract and add

In the year 2000, catastrophic predictions at the beginning of the millennium aside, we hoped not to repeat the horrors of the 20th century. With September 11, 2001, many hopes collapsed along with the twin towers, a tragedy exacerbated by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, to ​​which new destruction of countries and lives has been added due to external incursions and internal conflicts, a pandemic that it still does not cease and, in 2022, the Russian imperial nightmare in Ukraine. Subtracting from peace and adding to violence and suffering seems at times the fate of the new century in the international arena, proof that the powers have not learned from history neither restraint nor prudence.

In Mexico, since the year 2000, the hopes of achieving a harmonious coexistence and a reliable government have traveled the slide of the “democratic transition”, the ill-planned war “against the drug”, the remake of the old-new PRI and the turned off rocket of a government that aroused great expectations and has been, if not a total fiasco, a source of disappointment for many. In little more than 20 years, the aerostat of democratic hopes, despite the constant citizen work since the 1990s, has been losing height.

Past disappointments – which partially summarize the daily experience of millions of people – do not, however, mark a fatal path. If life can be read like a novel, action can lead us through new threads and challenges. Even though the image of history as a pile of ruins (W. Benjamin) suggests a non-time paralyzed between past and future, the imagination can open gaps towards a less hostile landscape.

Faced with a year that from the first day –and the second– presents risks and difficulties in the national political sphere, asking ourselves what we have in excess and what we lack to preserve democracy, move towards a less thorny coexistence and achieve a more just society can be a starting point to state desires and purposes without falling into catastrophism or wild illusion.

We have plenty of violence, discrimination and exclusion. It is urgent to stop the accumulation of disappearances, intentional murders and femicides, which already exceed amazing numbers: 109,000, 32,000, 3,200; reduce the numbers of families in poverty and extreme poverty; reduce the impunity that facilitates the growing murder of journalists and defenders and leaves victims of sexual and vicarious violence out in the open while filling the jails with presumed culprits who are adding years without sentence. We need less demagogy, less lies, less stigmatizing, dangerous and polarizing speeches, less corruption, omissions and complicity, from rulers and officials and from those in society who prefer to continue in the game of power and money.

Instead, we lack peace; not the peace of the graves, nor the false peace of resignation and fear. A peace that implies not only the absence of war but the will to build together, the search for harmony. It is urgent to unite voices for equality from diversity, add actions and practices against discrimination and arbitrariness, stop contributing to the burden of degrading stereotypes of gender, ethnicity and class that (with or without a polarizing discourse from power) contribute to maintaining an unfair status quo, already intolerable. Continuous criticism of the official discourse –which often reproduces what it says it hates– is not enough. Pointing out other people’s mistakes without self-criticism can be sterile. Adding to a constructive (self) criticism proposals, programs, ideas is today an urgent task of the “opposition” (if it wants to be a government), of institutions, companies, organizations and people, if we want to successfully challenge the dangers of runaway authoritarianism, the institutionalized illegality, dehumanizing poverty, murderous machismo, criminal violence, institutional violence, the cesspool of impunity. Let’s choose to prevent, not regret; listen, don’t assume; dialogue, not disqualify.

For a 2023 with less fantasy and more determination, less fatalism and more trust in citizen action.

lucia.melgar@gmail.com