Military, the spirit of the times

What days we are living: Guacamaya Leaks, resignation of Tatiana Clouthier and approval by the Senate of the permanence of the armed forces in security tasks until 2028. A bombardment of topics that show several things: the little confidence that can be had to politicians, the seriousness of accusations and revelations that in other countries would have caused resignations and that are treated here as gossip, the speculation about the departure of a woman who was vital in the campaign and who seemed to dissolve in the Ministry of Economy.

Militaristic authoritarianism advances while the deputies of MORENA are alarmed because the deputy María Clemente García, also a brunette, uploaded a video giving a fellatio to a man. A moral command will decide their punishment, but in the meantime, why don’t we check the deputies’ computers where we will surely find loads of pornography? Why don’t we check the morality of the PRI and PRD senators who two weeks ago had sworn that they would vote against the militarization of the country or the morality of López Obrador who lies every day? And what about a Secretary of Defense who gives expensive gifts passing Republican austerity through the zone of fellatio? They screw us Mexicans and Mexicans. So why this false morality due to the declaration of our Mexican Cicciolina: “I am a deputy and a whore”? The traitorous senators prostituted themselves and no one has thought of passing them through the moral police of the “Lower” House (and it is). The longer their tail, the easier it was to bend them.

Perhaps the best of these days were the Nobel Prizes for Medicine, Physics, Chemistry and Literature. With its usual baroque language, the Swedish Academy explained to us (that is to say) why they had been awarded. The winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine stands out, Svante Pääbo, paleogeneticist and part of the Neanderthal genome project, a didactic scientist who makes us forget for a moment the educational disaster we are experiencing in Mexico. Also Annie Ernaux, the sixteenth person from France to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature who, as soon as she learned of the award, turned off her cell phone and declared that she is concerned about the advance of the extreme right and the diminution of women’s rights. Macron was left wanting to talk to her. The good, outdated Nobel laureates who obliquely acknowledge the absurdity of a world at war.

Let’s move on to the “locks” suggested by Ricardo Monreal so that the continuity of the armed forces in security tasks will be approved. A series of mechanisms for parliamentary control, accountability, evaluation and supervision of the tasks of the military, marines and elements of the National Guard were established. It includes regular reports and a bicameral commission. Also a procedure for the Federation and the governments of the entities to establish mechanisms for the strengthening of the state and municipal police. A set of good intentions on paper and no chance of fully fulfilling them.

The “locks” were born dead and those who gave their approving vote know it. Here the Latin can be applied: victa pugnaci iura sub ense iacent. The problem with the armed forces is that they have failed to contain insecurity and now, as has been said here, they are being used as a means of political control. If this was bad, the papers revealed by the Guacamaya hackers reveal an army that watches and knows, but does not intervene to prevent deaths and kidnappings; that it monitors journalists and human rights activists with the previously vilified Pegasus program; that he is more busy making confidential reports on governors, mayors, local and federal legislators, state prosecutors and candidates than fighting organized crime; that it is opaque in the management of works such as the AIFA or the Mayan Train; that does not address complaints of sexual abuse committed by superior officers to subordinates or civilians. Like icing on the cake: a commander who politically attacks the enemies of his boss López, who plays politics and helps to “convince” the PRI.

These are the armed forces that will “take care of us” until 2028. It is foreseeable that they will use that time to strengthen their political and economic position, to impose conditions on whoever occupies the presidency when AMLO leaves (if he leaves).

Says Annie Ernaux: “We choose our objects and our places of memory or rather the spirit of the time decides what is worth remembering. The writers, the artists, the filmmakers participate in the elaboration of that memory.” But, I would add, sometimes we do not choose the objects that remind us of the spirit of an era; They are imposed on us by disastrous political decisions and betrayals.