Last Tuesday there was a panel on violence against the press, organized by FIL Pensamiento in Guadalajara. Four of the five speakers (Alejandra Ibarra, Daniel Moreno, Leopoldo Maldonado and Sandra Barba) spoke about the local context in which the murders of journalists are committed and go unpunished, about the hostility of the presidential discourse against media outlets that publish unfavorable information to their cause, about how complicated the work of civil society organizations dedicated to documenting and denouncing attacks has become, and about media polarization, the “depluralization” of audiences, and the difficulties of doing journalism in the midst of from so much bitterness The result, as was to be expected from the subject, was a detailed portrait of a panorama of harassment and very serious adversity.
The fifth speaker was Jorge Zepeda Patterson. As he wrote in his column published a couple of days later, in his turn he indicated that he had disagreements with “some attitudes” of López Obrador but, due to how critical the other speakers had been, he felt “obliged to defend the meaning of the flags of the 4T in favor of the unprotected and to explain the nature of many of their political strategies”. I was there and I heard him do just that: deviate from the subject to justify the government and insist on his good intentions, although without taking charge of the data or the arguments that his tablemates presented. That, however, was just the unfortunate beginning. The most exorbitant came later.
In his column, Zepeda released the following “in-depth reflection” on the matter: “How is it possible that 20% of exposure time (one of five panelists) is offered to a vision of the country that is supported by two thirds of the population, according to surveys, and 80% of the exposure time to the opposing versions that represent the other third? Zepeda complains that in the FIL there is an “imbalance” in favor of the “conservatives” (this is what he calls, using the language of the morning gentleman, all those who do not agree with him) and explains it as the result of a “disagreement” between the authorities of the University of Guadalajara and the president.
In the end, Zepeda slips that “in theory there would be coincidences between a government that seeks to favor the popular sectors and a public university committed to its community” and ends by lamenting that in the face of “the construction of a better country for the majority, in which committed to the obradorismo, it is “absurd that a social and cultural project like the one of the University of Guadalajara lives with its back to the hope of change that the majority of Mexicans harbor.”
Let’s see.
This year, more than 2,000 publishing labels from 49 countries attended FIL Guadalajara, there were more than 600 book presentations, 240 literary forums, 68 academic forums, 238 artistic, musical and professional activities, 22 awards and tributes… But, Based on the composition of a panel of five people, Zepeda concludes that there were too many critics and few defenders of the government. In addition, he issues invitations to a wide variety of instances, each with its criteria and agenda, for events on all imaginable issues. Would the Zepeda formula to avoid so much “conservatism” be, then, to concentrate the definition of all the guests and topics in a central committee that distributes them according to a representation formula proportional to the votes obtained by the president or to his levels of approval, so that its majority is always reflected?
The truth is that FIL Guadalajara has never been characterized as a space aligned with the current political majority. In fact, it has been a space for criticism of all governments: the whistling tears through the ceremonious silence from the back of the halls, the booing fills the auditoriums, the complaints even come from the authors who sit at the tables decked out with long tablecloths. . So much so that among the attendees it is still remembered among malicious giggles that in 2011 Peña Nieto was simply unable to name three books that would have “changed his life.” Five years ago, the then head of Conaculta, Sari Bermúdez, was booed; and the same thing happened to Calderón: “You are a spurious president!” a woman shouted. Long before, José Saramago prefaced one of his critical comments to power: “It seems that it is my fate, every time I arrive in Guadalajara, I have to say something that the Mexican government will not like.” Immediately she corrected former President Zedillo: the EZLN thing in Chiapas was indeed a war.
