José Steinsleger: AMLO: halfway there

“AND

n this time, in the which happens precisely what one could not imagine, and in which what one can no longer ‘imagine’ will happen […]in this noisy age, reverberating with the chilling symphony of news-provoking facts and news-blaming facts…” (Karl Kraus, magazine Die Fackel, number 404, Vienna, 12/5/1914).

Well. In this age when taking sides is associated with skewed it and tell the truth with the mere opinionI’m looking for a printed t-shirt that says: It is an honor to be with López Obrador.

Sorry. I feel sorry for the heavyweight (and heavyweight) journalists who claim to be independent of each other. Aristotelian-sounding thing coolor typical of respectable analysts who bathe in holy water and propose what never existed: the right balance.

All this comes from the pleasant reading of Half waya book published by AMLO in September 2021, and that reminded me of the acid opinion of that Austrian journalist who was… against journalists.

Let’s specify. Against liberal journalists who, not to go far, in Mexico and Latin America degrade the profession fabricating facts that cause the news, and of news that are to blame for the facts. Thus, in his book, AMLO puts in its place the ever present conservative thought. Let’s see:

“We were also clear that it was even convenient to define without half measures those who during the neoliberal period pretended to be liberals, independents, democrats, but who in reality, as Melchor Ocampo said, were only more awake conservatives.

Add: Although the great philosopher Karl Marx argued that history repeats itself in a caricatured version, he pointed out that the same situations and processes are presented in its different episodes, that one constant is the cohesion of the elites or dominant classes, which resort to whatever in order to maintain or regain power, including ideas of supposed intellectual and racial superiority ( Half way, Planet, p. 176).

But if we go back to the Valladolid controversyfamous debate that in 1550 confronted the defender of the Indians, Bartolomé de las Casas, with his enemy Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, we will see that nothing has changed in the minds of the conservatives (awake or not).

The American historian Lewis Hanke (1905-93), points out: that in 1553, the council of Mexico hired the Latinist Francisco Cervantes de Salazar to write a treatise against some of the doctrines of Bartolomé de las Casas.

The Latinist -writes Hanke- “had a very low concept of the Indians (less somber and devastating than that of Sepúlveda), since Cervantes de Salazar admitted that in all nations there are good and bad elements; some who are leaders and others who only have the capacity to obey, thus illustrating Aristotle’s doctrine. Those of this last group, very numerous in Mexico, are naturally serfs, although both can be called barbarians..

Hanke clarifies: “Not even the Mexico City council supported the view that the Indians had no culture or place in the structure of the Spanish government in Mexico. For example, on October 3, 1561, he recommended to the king that six of the 24 city councilors should always be Indians, in order to ensure the uniformity of prices in all parts of the city and promote in it ‘the union and conformity’ of Indians and Spaniards” ( Racial prejudice in the new world, SEP/Seventies, 1974, p. 132).

In his mornings, AMLO never tires of explaining the meaning of the Fourth Transformation (4T), preceded by the independence struggles (1810-21), the Reform movement (1858-72), and the Revolution (1910- 17). For this reason, and just as it is logical that the right wing demonizes the President, it is disconcerting to understand certain left wing groups that close ranks with them.

Faced with the ideological confusion we are experiencing, AMLO prefers to speak of liberals and conservativesinstead of lefts and rights. And it is that with the Fourth Transformation, Mexico has been recovering principles that savage capitalism (neoliberalism) believed to have buried: justice, independence, sovereignty, dignity.

Passing the comb to the presidents of Latin America and the Caribbean (in office), Andrés Manuel stands out as the only one that the empire listens to and respects. Although, behind closed doors, he detests it through the hegemonic media. He left them, then, with a link –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp7QQ_XDPlg– in which you can see how the rogue press works.