Enrique de la Madrid will not be able to pretend to carry out a government like the one his father carried out at the time. Redaction would be impossible…
It happened last Sunday. With all his strength, Enrique de la Madrid Cordero has launched his candidacy for the opposition for the presidential elections that will take place in 2024. The candidacy goes on, even without the support of the PRI, which has been his party! The risk is very high that his opponents – who will surely have them – will begin to pejoratively disqualify him with the label of “neoliberal”. That, with the support of the type of government headed by his father, Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado, in the already remote six-year term 1982-1988.
Miguel de la Madrid has been the most misunderstood president of Mexico in the post-revolutionary era. The understanding of the government that he carried out must start from the disaster in which his predecessors, Luis Echeverría and José López Portillo, handed over the country to him. With sincerity, in his inaugural speech he denounced the tremendous crisis with which his administration began. Next, a government of sanitation, cleaning, reconstruction and disqualification of myths and obsessions was organized. Among them, the idea that the commercial opening would bring about the bankruptcy of the entire internal industrial plant. The task was immense and could not be completed in a six-year term that faced great additional difficulties.
Enrique de la Madrid will not be able to pretend to carry out a government like the one carried out by his father. The reissue would be impossible, because the circumstances are different and, above all, the problems facing Mexico are very different. But what Enrique can aspire to is to lead a government with the same mettle as the one presided over by his father. Starting with a commitment to telling the truth, something that has become very rare in Mexico in recent times.
The current situation in Mexico is very different from the one that prevailed in December 1982, when the government of Miguel de la Madrid took over from its precedent and very destructive López Portillo. But not all are divergences. A shared situation is that of the stagnation of the economy. Another, that of disenchantment and fracture of society in the face of failure and uncertainty. The challenge will have to be faced with great realism, with respect for the law, strengthening of institutions and courageous and appropriate solution measures. I have the intuition that Enrique de la Madrid knows all this. It is the inheritance of his father.
