“I have come looking for the heart of the people, and before starting this political contest, I did not consult how many powerful people would support my candidacy (…) We have our unmatched moral strength, and we cannot be defeated by anyone.
“The people have already evolved, and are determined to make use of their rights and freedoms…
“Since this political movement began, two classes of interests have fought: material interests and moral interests: a group of men who have gathered around the Public Power, occupying high positions, directed all their efforts to satisfy their ambitions, accumulating riches (…) and when the people began a democratic movement to designate a representative who would receive power, the men of that group believed that the people of the Republic would give them their trust and leave them in power. They wanted to reach the people, and the people rejected them, because they had not faithfully fulfilled the mission that had been entrusted to them, because instead of taking care of administrative morality, and dignifying the country, they dedicated their efforts to improvising fortunes.
“That is why we continue the fight, braving the wrath of the reactionary press, who have seen with deep pain how their candidates have already failed…
“The agents of reaction spread the alarm, because laws are enacted that they apparently consider bad, and because they affect the old customs, they oppose them, supposing them to be harmful.
“The reaction that represents evil does not contract to exercise its action within the limits of our borders, and allies itself with the great material interests beyond our country…
“It is reaction, the constant insult of the press subsidized by the residues of the conservative element, and in many of the States of the Republic to protect the interests of the groups that have paid for it.
“Mexico is not a field of exploitation or conquest.
“The material interests inside and outside the country, accumulated mostly under the protection of granted privileges, moved their newspapers and took action with all the elements they had against a government that broke with all established precedents and provoked, by saying of them, a social derangement. Editorials from the reactionary press were read every day distorting the truth and misrepresenting the facts…”.
Do these words sound familiar? Although many doubt it, they were not pronounced by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador but by Álvaro Obregón during his campaign to be re-elected as president of Mexico in 1928, which confirms that there is nothing new under the sun. Populists have always said almost the same.
I hope that AMLO never thinks of being inspired by other words of Obregón, like the following ones that he pronounced to justify his betrayal of the Maderista slogan of “Effective Suffrage. No re-election”:
“The so-called “anti-reelectionists” invoke the name of Mr. Madero allegedly to save a political principle, forgetting that Mr. Madero is consecrated as an apostle, and that apostles in political matters do not exist.
“In the neighboring struggle, the false ‘anti-reelectionism’ will be the mask of the conservative party, and of the revolutionaries allied to it.”
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Opinionist, columnist, lecturer, media trainer, 35 years of experience in the media, micro-entrepreneur.