The debate has been healthy for three main reasons. First, because if we start from the premise that a new political regime is opening in Mexico, it is positive to discuss – and understand its distinctive features, formal and informal norms and balances of power. Second, because those who want to build a more fair, democratic and equal country, we must understand what were the rescued aspects and the skinny points of the transition to democracy, in order to use these learning to propose viable and inclusive future horizons.
Third, because the magazine number unleashed an intergenerational discussion, plural and deep arguments, as it was not seen long ago in this country, where the public debate had focused on the sayings of the mornings, the short -term observations and personal attacks. In the pages of Nexos Young people such as Alexia Bautista, María Guillén, Fernanda Caso, Julio González, Hugo Garciamarín, Nicolás Medina Mora and more experienced analysts, such as Ariel Rodríguez Kuri and Alberto Olvera. Voices such as Ciro Gómez Leyva, Héctor Aguilar Camín, Agustín Basave, Blanca Heredia, Luis Carlos Ugalde, Jesús Silva-Herzog, Carlos Bravo Regidor, Karla Motte and Vanessa Romero They spoke with energetic replicas to the texts of the magazine.
Thus, analysts of every political sign have participated in this debate. Within the framework of this controversy, the academic Guadalupe Salmorán published an interesting criticism of my text “Democrats of unique meaning” . I respond in the remainder of this column.
Salmoran argues that, for the sectors with a critical vision of the transition, “there is not much to regret” for the recent government actions that mining democratic values, such as freedom of expression and constitutional controls. Simplifying my central argument, Salmorán warns that, for whom we criticize the transition, “Mexican democracy would be little more than a ‘meta -barriva’ imposed by the elites, a story reproduced by the urban middle class, unable to root in the popular sectors. A failed promise that, for not having met its objectives, can be undone without greater duel.”
In my essay, I explain that the transition was a process of transformation in the political culture of the middle classes and in the ways, norms and mechanisms to participate in the public sphere. Let’s put that aside for a moment and continue with the caricature of Salmoran. Following its decaffeinated version of my argument, I answer that two things can be true at the same time. The democratic transition, in effect, built an institutional scaffolding that allowed the celebration of fair and transparent elections, the installation of counterweights and surveillance mechanisms to presidential power, the dispersion of the power of the State in different autonomous bodies and a multi -party and plural political system. However, that is why it ceases to be true that the political culture and the discourse of the transition did not take traction between the popular classes.
And it lacked traction not because the political culture of popular classes is anti -democratic, but because the regime emanating from the transition to democracy put in the background the most urgent needs of the subaltern sectors and because the promise of political participation was fulfilled at the level of election – which is something fundamental, as Pallerán says – but not in a more inclusive public life in other ways (such as, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example, for example,, for example, for example, for example local and municipal governments).
Moreover, if in truth, as Salmorn proposes, we have the purpose of understanding the transition to democracy as a “historical process”, history does not separate politics economy and does not distinguish between intentions and results. We like it or not, the transition to democracy was created along with neoliberal reforms, which resulted in greater concentration of wealth and inequality.
