Conservatives, unite for God and family, Trump calls at summit

Arturo Cano

Newspaper La Jornada
Sunday November 20, 2022, p. 8

Donald Trump’s first words on the CPAC Mexico screen were to thank Eduardo Verástegui. Then, the newly reincorporated Twitter said: “It is very important for conservatives across the hemisphere to unite to defend God, the family … We have to secure our borders and dismantle the criminal cartels that violate our people.”

Attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) had been on their feet since they saw Trump appear on the screen, clapping and shouting happily. Trump continued in the image: “We need to stop the spread of socialism and not let it continue to drive us out of our region or our lands… And thank you again, Eduardo, for your outstanding leadership.” Trump left and Eduardo Verástegui entered the scene amid shouts of president, president.

Before Trump, the CPAC Mexico had shown the image of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on the screen, when a few days ago he referred to this meeting and spoke of fascists, racists and corrupt conservatives.

Regardless of the good manners that have prevailed between Trump and López Obrador, Verástegui went squarely against the President authoritarian socialismwhich applies a far left cultural agendawhich has launched a fierce attack against the values ​​of the Mexicans, who cancel Christmas births.

The former actor also spoke of militarization, that the President seeks to dismantle the INE (which is internationally respected) and attacks on freedom of expression. And he summed up: with López Obrador there is more poverty and more corruption.

Shortly before, it had started low: thank you mr president, but thanks, naturally, went to Trump. Because for López Obrador he had another deal: Now leave the mornings, now forget your popularity. Chavo del Ocho was more popular and he never wanted to govern.

God, country, family. The three words were the most heard in the two days of the CPAC, a movement that emerged in 1974: the opening was a speech by Ronald Reagan.

The first edition in Spanish –actually, in Spanish, English and Spanglish– of the CPAC is an ocean of insurmountable contradictions that are resolved with a slogan: yes to life (no to reproductive rights), and with a conviction: the time has come to stop denying or being ashamed of what we are, defenders of God, country and family. What does it matter that one of our life lines is the evil of the globalismat the same time that we seek a global movement against socialism?

the names of evil

Stated socialism? The speakers who parade clarify: evil has various names: communism, socialism, progressivism, feminism… It doesn’t matter: evil has various names for deception.

The Bolivian Eva Sara Landau, resident in Las Vegas, came to Mexico to give form to evil and asked the Mexicans for forgiveness because “AMLO received here the narcopolitical Evo Morales”.

With oratory worthy of an evangelical pastor, Landau summarized the pride of this conference: Vox in Spain, the Bolsonaristas in Brazil and, of course, Trump. And he also referred to a general conviction in this space: the right does not lose, the left wins. It is one thing to lose an election or have a difficult victory due to lack of electoral support, and another thing is to lose an election due to the standard practices of fraud with which these criminals win the races.

At times a kind of competition seems to take place over who says the expression that is most committed to the truth, which phrase is the best to make it clear that here is the true right, the one that does not want to agree but to destroy communismthe one that does not play in the center, because that is a merchants wordas Hermann Tertsch, a Vox MEP, says.

In this fraternal duel of phrases, the Republican Mercedes Schlapp, owner of the CPAC franchise with her husband Matt, refers to President López Obrador: “Start talking about fascists… Leftists always use those kinds of names to accuse us of something that we are not”.

They point us to what they aresays Colombian senator María Fernanda Cabal, a star in the conservative firmament, judging by the shouts of approval it provokes. The iron hand against PetroThey call it.

Cabal has phrases for giving and sharing: A mythomaniac, a megalomaniac, a narcissist becomes terribly dangerous when he comes to power. left is persecution and burning of churches, torture of opponents, abortion disguised as a right, humanization of animals and dictatorship of minorities; progressives seek turn youth into promiscuous youth, with desires turned into rights.

Towards the end of the meeting, the attendees receive another presidential, the Argentine Javier Milei, who makes a long intervention full of commonplaces, but wrapped in the phrasing of an economist who comes down from the pedestal to explain to mortals. It is summed up in one sentence: They are very far from being God, that’s why the only thing they (the socialists) can do every time they mess with the economy is hurt.

a catholic party

Is there right in Mexican politics? That was the name of one of the tables. Two speakers, Elsa Méndez and Carlos Leal, former PES deputies, joined the former actor’s idea: a Catholic party is needed.

There is neither need. A conservative movement is urgently needed that is above the right and the leftsaid Juan Iván Peña Neder, a longtime PRI member, a fleeting ally of Elba Esther Gordillo and her Redes Sociales Progresistas party, and now the leader of a binational version of the Republican Party.

A party that appeals to the national fervor for the family and the fact that 90 percent of Mexicans are Catholic. That, and targeting the middle class that is not submitted to the pantry vote (applause).

What will it be like in the streets an eventual candidacy of Verástegui? A rough idea: in October 2021, the former actor was a star in a march against the decision of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN), which declared the criminalization of abortion unconstitutional.

The march, that October 3, 2021, focused its batteries against the SCJN, which in September of that year ended the prison for women who aborted. Verástegui was the center of attention and a hero of that protest.

A large blanket was spread out along the Paseo de la Reforma. It showed the faces of Hugo Chávez, Lula, Evo Morales, Cristina Kirchner and, in the center, López Obrador. Above the faces, the message: They think like Marx, rule like Stalin, and live like Rockefeller. socialist hypocrisy.

With blankets like this they will return. Accompanied by phrases like the one that Verástegui released in his speech: We are the majority (and we have to) build the real alternative.

Then he looked at the sky and shouted: Live Christ the King! Live!The entire audience accompanied him.