Political ideals 2023/10/26 | Excelsior

What will become of Mexico? I think they are all stained and it is inevitable that they continue killing each other.

Alfonso Reyes

In current times it seems that history and philosophy, that is, memory and meditation, are disposable subjects. The sciences triumphed over the humanities. Everything is reflected in numbers, from electoral preferences or degrees of popularity, to levels of happiness.

In this sense, a paragraph by Jaime Torres Bodet is unavoidable to transcribe:

It was Vicente, then a friend and also rival of another of the seven wise men of his generation: Manuel Gómez Morin (...) In 1918 Lombardo Toledano alluded to the Sermon on the Mount and seemed imbued with evangelical socialism. Gómez Morin cited Lunacharski. In 1937 things had changed a lot. Lombardo admired Stalin and Gómez Morin exalted the power of the Catholic faith. I always had warm estimates for both of them. He was convinced of the sincerity of his attitudes. The line followed by each one could be debatable, but it was authentic.

What would these two illustrious Mexicans say today? To respond, I turn to another of our lights, Alfonso Reyes:

A people is saved when it manages to glimpse the message it has brought to the world: when it manages to become electrified towards a pole, whether real or imaginary, because life is woven from the real and the imaginary (...) I refuse to accept the history as a mere superposition of mute chances. There is a voice that comes from the depths of our past pains; There is an invisible ominous bird that still sings: tihuic, tihuic above our chaos of resentments (...) the remedy to our dissidence, the answer to our questions, the key to national harmony.

In other words, I believe that Lombardo and Gómez Morin, despite their disagreements, would give priority to their convergences. I venture three ideas.

1. Authenticity accompanied by benevolence. Our society is contaminated with myths, dogmas, demagoguery. Without an objective reading of our reality, we will continue to wander. How to get back to Mexico? The task is not simple. We require minimum consensus. Agreements, realignment of collective will, invigoration of brotherhood. There are authors who insist that the new paradigms must be normative, put emphasis on what should be, on recovering trust and credibility. That would be politics. Carlos Castillo Peraza defined it: “Politics is not aesthetic, but ethical, it is a permanent conflict between the effort to act rightly and a hostile environment.”

2. Improve human capital through training. This six-year term will fail, among other areas, in educational policy. From its beginning, there was noticeable disdain for this obligation that, despite its serious deficiencies, had had a certain continuity. Due to circumstances beyond the government's control, but also due to the lack of will to create comprehensive solutions, guided only by occurrences, repairing the damage to the professional training of the new generations will take many decades. The Mexican knows how to compete, those who return after having emigrated develop new skills, manifesting themselves in a better standard of living. We are doing something or a lot wrong, which prevents the deployment of the great potential of our people.

3. The defense of human rights is a priority. Here also what was done by previous administrations was interrupted in what, without a doubt, is the great issue of the 21st century: the dignity of people is the most fruitful political idea in the history of man.

In conversations with different groups about the topics noted, it is difficult not to incur commonplaces. As never before, the generation gap has widened. There is a widespread repudiation of politics and politicians, when what is most required is involvement in issues that concern us all. Let's do it. Let future generations not complain about our laziness in assuming duties.