From Monday to Friday he stands there, in front of his cheerleaders, he smiles satisfied, mockingly. It seems that nothing worries him. His opponents of him? No, they don’t disturb him. They are disorganized, disjointed, full of problems, without much credibility. They are not even determined to start the search for candidates for the presidency. They have many options and they have none.
Are you worried about the Biden administration’s reaction to all the hustle and bustle surrounding your failure to attend the Summit of the Americas? It’s hard to believe. As long as the US government is interested in Mexico being an increasingly better wall against migration to the north, the situation can be managed.
So are you worried about his popularity? No way. All the surveys place it above 50% acceptance, hence the smile of the cat that ate the mouse. Even the poor ratings that the surveys make about his economic management, the fight against organized crime or his unfortunate phrases pampering criminals do not reduce his rating.
What do the corcholatas bring an underground lawsuit? That’s also no cause for alarm. Finally, all of them are unconditional. All things considered, they are a kind of clone of his, without their own discourse or different proposals, as he likes. He will be able to settle the lawsuits when the time comes to designate a successor.
How much of your cabinet is paralyzed, lacking coordination? Well, that is the result of the fact that he does not have concrete agreements with some secretaries and secretaries. Weeks and sometimes months go by without them being able to bring up specific issues. He only lives for stardom, to be loved by his people, the good people of the town. He attends to those who can serve him to shine, to make fun of his “adversaries”, to break rebellious companies, to do free work, such as soldiers and sailors.
The obvious corruption of relatives and officials and the inefficiency of his government do not torment him. At first he was worried about him, but he already saw that they have almost no effect on his popularity. Houses and apartments in Texas, bread bags full of money, unexplained properties and deposits, shady contracts do not seem to bother people. Could it be that deep down corruption does not matter to them?
Organized crime worries him a bit, but finally the pact with them seems to be working: he doesn’t meddle in their business and they don’t challenge him. From time to time he makes arrests and seizures, but nothing to fight head-on against the cartels and gangs. He believes that, over time, territories and businesses will be divided and violence will decrease, at least the violence that affects his image. The death of journalists and activists makes him a little uneasy, but with one or two weekly shows reading the arrests and convictions of a handful of wretches, he is safe from criticism.
It is in his interest that his great works come to fruition and appear to work well. There is always a way to pressure companies and state governments to bend to his wishes.
But there is something that worries him, something that can erase that smile: inflation and the bad situation of the microeconomy. From his point of view, this is more serious than organized crime or the massacre of people and femicides. The recovery that it proclaims does not reach the bottom despite its social programs and inflation reaches everyone and has a frustrating and annoying effect.
He is convinced that his long-awaited old party, that of the gentlemen like Echeverría and López Portillo, collapsed, but not because of the massacres of ’68 and ’71 or the dirty war. No, that didn’t beat him. His old party was eroded by disloyalties, so he cares more about loyalty than honesty or efficiency. But, above all, the economic crisis and inflation during De la Madrid caused discontent in the north of the country and later throughout the republic.
He knows that inflation wears down governments, that the lack of good jobs and possibilities for small and medium-sized businesses creates resentments that later leak to the polls. If you add insecurity to this, you have the breeding ground for a fall. Just thinking about it gives him nightmares; all his glorious struggle in opposition, all his magnificent literary work, all his heroic anecdotes, his advice, his good Christian intentions at risk of being lost to inflation.
That can not be. Regardless of what it costs (and it is costing) he will not let it happen lest the anodyne opposition wake up and take advantage of it to open the eyes of the citizens and erase his Legacy.
