three buttons


Perhaps the most serious thing about the times we live in is our loss of amazement at certain public events, statements or as a result of poorly planned and worse executed works. I offer three buttons that show what I say.

one. During the week, the President decided to launch himself against two journalists who, in exercising his right, made him uncomfortable with their criticism and accusations regarding government acts. Víctor Trujillo (Brozo) and Carmen Aristegui, were the cause of presidential anger. Both responded properly and as professional journalists that they are. In both cases, they reiterated their position that they would not change their editorial line and in the case of Brozo, they even dared to remind him that, given the news and discoveries of the past, he had had the courtesy of warning him so that they were not surprises given by the back.

In this regard, however, public opinion has already got used to it. We know that the president speaks ill of those who do not think like him. He does the same with Aguilar Camín, with Krauze or with Loret de Mola. The problem is that tacitly and, despite the fact that with his tirades he reduces the presidential investiture to an alley brawler, we take for granted something that should be a scandal in any liberal democracy. In summary, we are already used to a way of using power, in defense of the AMLO person and we do not demand restraint, nor real delivery of results in so many areas in which the president is incapable of delivering concrete things.

two. They have begun to circulate on social networks, videos that account for the ecocide, which is meaning the construction of the Mayan Train. Not only are the trees that have been felled not replanted, but sadly they are piled up to one side of the construction site to dry in the sun or, in the case of precious wood, to be sold who knows by whom and who knows what is done with that money. The President lies, and we have made that part of our daily landscape. The lie has become a way to justify the uncomfortable, the irrefutable and the general ineptitude of the government. With this I do not mean that other governments have not lied, what is surprising in this case is that the lie is done with cynicism, with the awareness that there will be no consequences. There are none in general on the part of the weakened political opposition and there are none on the part of the general population. The lie, in short, has crept into our daily lives and by dint of its presence we have learned to shrug our shoulders and let our lives walk as if nothing could pass through the sieve of what is verifiable, of what is true, of a minimum of shame before the collective judgment.

3. During the week we learned that the secretary of education was calling on teachers to express their opinion on the study plans that the SEP wanted to implement, which in particular intend to remove the neoliberal words from the study plan, such as: competence, resilience , efficiency, goals by objectives and others.

This discussion is not new. In the study plans of the high schools and the University of CDMX, which I had the pleasure of reviewing then (2001), it said in one of its introductory paragraphs. What it is about is forming cadres contrary to the prevailing neoliberalism. At that time I was personally able to speak with the head of government and remind him that the secularism guaranteed by our constitution is not only against religious matters, but also includes ideological views. What was also healthy, for the country, that we all thought differently. The head of government then turned to the secretary of social development and criticized her for the paragraph remaining there, visible and verifiable. As if I had discovered a homicide in which the entire city government was involved.

The paragraph was left there and the academic result of the high schools and the university is sadly unfortunate. Both for its terminal efficiency, and for the quality of the students.

Society has remained silent on this. We have also become resistant to the imposition of a vision of the world. Perhaps it is due to something that a Venezuelan businessman once said to me at the beginning of Chávez’s term: “Look, Miguel, we have spoken badly about our political class for so long that we have destroyed it, to the point that now only one man occupies everything” nothing more, but nothing less either.

Miguel Gonzalez Compean

Lawyer, political scientist and economist

guest column

Essayist and interested in legal and justice issues. currently professor at the Faculty of Law of the UNAM.



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