Reforma: René Delgado*
Translated by Joel Cloke
He’s already arrived, he’s already here and the great unanswered question is: how is he going to fulfill his mission?
The question comes from Pope Francis's itinerary for his visit. He’ll walk the ground where the country oozes and summarizes corruption, poverty, inequality, official and violent crime and where people, drugs, and arms are products of trafficking...in short, where the country bleeds and is hurt, causing pain and anger.
He’ll walk the ground of Indians, migrants, victims, criminals, traffickers, corrupt men, accomplices, incapable men, cowards and, above all, that of a place where people don’t have an answer to the longing and relief for their uneasiness. All of this with the purpose of leaving a message of hope, which requires mastery: denouncing the injustice, the lawlessness and the idleness in the host’s house with enormous strength and great delicacy.
What an art it is to accurately choose words in order to say what needs to be said, nothing more and nothing less. Saying prayers because hope comes first before discouragement and because the message, at the end of his mission, may not be transformed into a seed of discord greater than that of the prevailing one.
For whatever reason, Vatican diplomacy was more able than Mexican diplomacy, and the papal tour is going to tour the alley in which the country is stuck
There’s no place-besides, maybe, the basilica of Guadalupe-where words can find rest. Even in the meeting in the Cathedral of Mexico, where Pope Francis will speak [he spoke there yesterday] with the Mexican ecclesiastical hierarchy, there are issues that are difficult to talk about if, in reality, they want to tackle them. There the princes will be who have closed their eyes and pretended that the church has nothing to do with everything that has happened inside and outside of it.
The State of Mexico, Chiapas, Michoacán y Chihuahua [where the Pope is going] are emblems, par excellence, of the alley in which the country is stuck and the great representative of the catholic church decided to tour them. These states symbolize the great regions and the little corners of the country where marginalization and ancestral poverty, criminal impunity and unbeaten political cowardliness, lack of security, and the lack of respect towards life and integrity have lived and continue living, as well as the trafficking of the worst expressions of inhumanity. Where thousands of disappeared people ask for recognition.
It does not stop being paradoxical that, just twenty-four hours before the papal declaration stated that he will speak strongly about human rights, criminal brutality has taken the lives of 49 in a jail, where crime rules and not institutional authority. Going to a prison in Juárez, after Topo Chico, takes on another meaning and relevance.
A politician going to Rome and taking a beloved photo with the Pope is not the same as the Pope coming to Mexico and taking a photo, here, where the absence of political commitment with the community can be felt. It’s something fundamentally different.
Hence why the little flags and banners, the repainting of stadiums, the installation of fiber optic cables and the painting over of daily reality with watercolors, in short, the showiness and the protocol made by politicians to welcome Francis could end up being the scenario where this lack of commitment by a government with its leaders is pointed out and, in this, all the political parties are involved.
More than one politician will have a cross to his lips in the coming days, praying with secular zeal that nothing happen. Despite the helpful speech about change, transformation and action, the real motto of the last three administratons has been absurd: the best that can happen is that nothing happen. Effort has not been made to do what’s necessary so that things can happen, but rather in managing the inertia.
In a few days we’ll see how Pope Francis is going to fulfill his mission based on the expectations made since the announce of his visit. If his message of hope moves and generates another attitude and action or if Wednesday night it vanishes right after his plane to Rome takes off.
The key to the result of his visit will be figured out starting Thursday morning. When once again the value of the peso against the dollar and the price of oil will be seen with fear. When legislators tackle the issue of a single police force in each state without a government of institutions. ... When it’s announced what will be done with PEMEX, the State's productive company that is neither a company, nor productive, nor of the State.
When the office of the Undersecretary of Crime Prevention continues to be empty. [the former head, Arturo Escobedo, resigned in the face of an investigation that he may have committed electoral crimes, vote buying, while head of the Green Party]. When they understand what it means when a mother, showing what they did with her son, says because they sent her “little parts of his remains” [the burned and pulverized bones of one of five young people disappeared in Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, on Jan. 11]. When TV and radio licensees close ranks in order to throw out the politically and electorally determined communication model that affects their earnings. When it will be seen whether or not the debate about the legalization of marijuana is a mere simulation.
When the casino owners start their campaigns for the umpteenth time to be given the law that lets them run their businesses as they want. When crime resumes its daily activity, recognizing new areas of opportunity for its industry. When political parties rush to unleash the dirty election war to conquer the palaces[of twelve state governments], where they want to exercise non-power. When those aspiring for the Presidency of the Republic [in 2018] run wild. When the administration notices the size of the economic, political, and social crisis that is coming at them and, facing that, acts as if it were just a tropical storm.
Francis leaves Wednesday night, Thursday morning the country will be the same.
As for now, the Pope already arrived; he’s already here and the question is how is he going to fulfill his mission. Whether, in reality, after touring the alley where the country finds itself, his message of hope is a drop from the ocean of mercy that he desires in the face of the river of misery, violence, hunger and persecution. Spanish original
He’s already arrived, he’s already here and the great unanswered question is: how is he going to fulfill his mission?
The question comes from Pope Francis's itinerary for his visit. He’ll walk the ground where the country oozes and summarizes corruption, poverty, inequality, official and violent crime and where people, drugs, and arms are products of trafficking...in short, where the country bleeds and is hurt, causing pain and anger.
He’ll walk the ground of Indians, migrants, victims, criminals, traffickers, corrupt men, accomplices, incapable men, cowards and, above all, that of a place where people don’t have an answer to the longing and relief for their uneasiness. All of this with the purpose of leaving a message of hope, which requires mastery: denouncing the injustice, the lawlessness and the idleness in the host’s house with enormous strength and great delicacy.
What an art it is to accurately choose words in order to say what needs to be said, nothing more and nothing less. Saying prayers because hope comes first before discouragement and because the message, at the end of his mission, may not be transformed into a seed of discord greater than that of the prevailing one.
For whatever reason, Vatican diplomacy was more able than Mexican diplomacy, and the papal tour is going to tour the alley in which the country is stuck
There’s no place-besides, maybe, the basilica of Guadalupe-where words can find rest. Even in the meeting in the Cathedral of Mexico, where Pope Francis will speak [he spoke there yesterday] with the Mexican ecclesiastical hierarchy, there are issues that are difficult to talk about if, in reality, they want to tackle them. There the princes will be who have closed their eyes and pretended that the church has nothing to do with everything that has happened inside and outside of it.
The State of Mexico, Chiapas, Michoacán y Chihuahua [where the Pope is going] are emblems, par excellence, of the alley in which the country is stuck and the great representative of the catholic church decided to tour them. These states symbolize the great regions and the little corners of the country where marginalization and ancestral poverty, criminal impunity and unbeaten political cowardliness, lack of security, and the lack of respect towards life and integrity have lived and continue living, as well as the trafficking of the worst expressions of inhumanity. Where thousands of disappeared people ask for recognition.
It does not stop being paradoxical that, just twenty-four hours before the papal declaration stated that he will speak strongly about human rights, criminal brutality has taken the lives of 49 in a jail, where crime rules and not institutional authority. Going to a prison in Juárez, after Topo Chico, takes on another meaning and relevance.
A politician going to Rome and taking a beloved photo with the Pope is not the same as the Pope coming to Mexico and taking a photo, here, where the absence of political commitment with the community can be felt. It’s something fundamentally different.
Hence why the little flags and banners, the repainting of stadiums, the installation of fiber optic cables and the painting over of daily reality with watercolors, in short, the showiness and the protocol made by politicians to welcome Francis could end up being the scenario where this lack of commitment by a government with its leaders is pointed out and, in this, all the political parties are involved.
More than one politician will have a cross to his lips in the coming days, praying with secular zeal that nothing happen. Despite the helpful speech about change, transformation and action, the real motto of the last three administratons has been absurd: the best that can happen is that nothing happen. Effort has not been made to do what’s necessary so that things can happen, but rather in managing the inertia.
In a few days we’ll see how Pope Francis is going to fulfill his mission based on the expectations made since the announce of his visit. If his message of hope moves and generates another attitude and action or if Wednesday night it vanishes right after his plane to Rome takes off.
The key to the result of his visit will be figured out starting Thursday morning. When once again the value of the peso against the dollar and the price of oil will be seen with fear. When legislators tackle the issue of a single police force in each state without a government of institutions. ... When it’s announced what will be done with PEMEX, the State's productive company that is neither a company, nor productive, nor of the State.
When the office of the Undersecretary of Crime Prevention continues to be empty. [the former head, Arturo Escobedo, resigned in the face of an investigation that he may have committed electoral crimes, vote buying, while head of the Green Party]. When they understand what it means when a mother, showing what they did with her son, says because they sent her “little parts of his remains” [the burned and pulverized bones of one of five young people disappeared in Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, on Jan. 11]. When TV and radio licensees close ranks in order to throw out the politically and electorally determined communication model that affects their earnings. When it will be seen whether or not the debate about the legalization of marijuana is a mere simulation.
When the casino owners start their campaigns for the umpteenth time to be given the law that lets them run their businesses as they want. When crime resumes its daily activity, recognizing new areas of opportunity for its industry. When political parties rush to unleash the dirty election war to conquer the palaces[of twelve state governments], where they want to exercise non-power. When those aspiring for the Presidency of the Republic [in 2018] run wild. When the administration notices the size of the economic, political, and social crisis that is coming at them and, facing that, acts as if it were just a tropical storm.
Francis leaves Wednesday night, Thursday morning the country will be the same.
As for now, the Pope already arrived; he’s already here and the question is how is he going to fulfill his mission. Whether, in reality, after touring the alley where the country finds itself, his message of hope is a drop from the ocean of mercy that he desires in the face of the river of misery, violence, hunger and persecution. Spanish original