stuck in the past

President López is stuck in the past and, for this reason, he is incapable of even thinking about the future of Mexico beyond 2024. He is the President of the Republic, he is the Head of State, but he is clearly not a statesman who look for a promising future with increased well-being for future generations of Mexicans. The signs that he lives in the past are many; here some.

Politically, he wants Mexico to return to those years of “PRI glory” with an almost omnipotent president, without institutional counterweights and with an electoral system that guarantees, even through fraud, the permanence of his party in power. Continuing with the institutional destruction undertaken since the beginning of his government, the electoral reform, “Plan B”, is a regression to the eighties of the last century; It is an attack on democracy, a demolition of an institutional arrangement that cost a lot to build to give electoral certainty. If it is not invalidated by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, it will mean, for practical purposes, the end of equity in electoral contests; we would return to the time of state elections, so the winners would lack legitimacy, making governance impossible with a clearly negative impact on the economy.

Historically, as I pointed out in these pages two weeks ago, the president lives stuck with a resentment towards the United States, one that borders on hatred. He showed it again when, on the occasion of the bicentennial of diplomatic relations between Mexico and the United States, in the letter he sent to President Biden he highlighted the war interventions and the loss of half of the national territory. Biden’s letter, on the other hand, highlighted the future gains from increased cooperation between the two countries. The contrast is dramatic.

Another aspect that makes us see that he lives in the past is his insistence on putting pre-Hispanic cultures, mainly the Aztec and Maya, as the greatest thing that has happened in what is today Mexico, a glorious time according to him that ended with the conquest, the same one that continues to claim Spain. It is surprising that he admires cultures that technologically remained in the Neolithic, in the Stone Age, and that he despises science and scientific knowledge, as well as technological advances that have allowed a longer life expectancy accompanied by greater material well-being for the population. This contempt for science and technology is evident in his educational policy, where the emphasis is not on knowledge, but on ideology and indoctrination.

Linked to the above, the president is truly convinced that, as in the Neolithic, agricultural production must be promoted with traditional and, therefore, obsolete techniques. His ideal would seem to be that of the peasant sowing the cornfield in small tracts of land and with native corn seeds, without insecticides and pesticides. He believes that this would be enough to produce all the corn that is demanded, without even considering that a hectare planted in this way barely produces 500 kilos compared to a production of 10 tons per hectare with modern production techniques. The sugar mill economy that he admires so much only guarantees hunger and poverty.

One more is his energy policy, he is convinced of a supposedly glorious past supported by two government monopolies, Pemex and CFE, and hence his foolishness in punishing private participation in the energy sector. A glorious past that only exists in your mind and that by trying to carry it out has negatively impacted investment and growth

Another indicator of his ties to the past is his insistence on returning to those years, the 1960s, when the economic development policy was based on import substitution. He does not miss an opportunity to affirm that for a matter of national sovereignty it is necessary to “produce what we consume”, which shows that he has a notoriously mistaken concept of sovereignty and the factors on which it is based and how it is strengthened, as well nor does he understand why international trade generates net profits. In the aforementioned letter that he sent to Biden, he brought the proposal to implement a policy of import substitution to all of America; surreal, kafkaesque, nonsense.

Finally, yesterday that the Argentine soccer team won the world championship, President López tweeted: “Argentina: for professionalism, justice and by divine mandate.” As he is, he surely thought that justice was done and God punished the French because in the 19th century they invaded Mexico and supported Maximilian. No doubt he is stuck in the past.

Twitter: @econoclasta