Reforma: Jorge Volpi*
Sep. 14, 2019
Other people, all the others, are always enemies in disguise, full of darkness and evil intentions. However flattering they appear to our face, no matter how much they insist on their good intentions, no matter how much they protest their honesty or solid principles, we know that all this is nothing but a facade to camouflage their schemes and their covert agenda. Behind their smiles, a knife or a pistol is hidden without fail. The handshakes, followed by those entwined hugs, demonstrate no transparency or openness, but the baroque need to protect our backs. In short, in Mexico we should all watch out for everyone, all the time.
The distrust, which Othón Canales [noted Mexican chemist and business administrator] repeated to me a few days ago, is the essential rule of relations in our country. According to it, it is impossible to believe that the person with whom you are about to close a deal or do business, with whom you are about to establish a political agreement or an alliance, or whom you will hire or from whom you will buy goods or services, is not trying to cheat you in some way. From the outset, in Mexico, we assume that our partners or our representatives are perverse competitors who do not hope for our satisfaction but just show one another their faces. Assuming the opposite, that there is a willingness to cooperate and obtain mutual or equitable benefits, puts us on the side of the naive or - of course - the jerks, precisely those who will always take be taken advantage of by others.
This way of behaving socially, which we could perhaps trace back to the period of Spanish Colonialism, regulates all our actions and is reflected in the enormous difficulty in reaching an agreement even on the most basic issues. Human beings, it is true, are programmed to protect ourselves from others - that is the genetic substratum of selfishness - but, over the millennia, evolution has also designed among us patterns of mutual cooperation indispensable to understand our success as a species. It seems as if in our country we have decided to do without them, anchoring ourselves in the purest distrust of others. Betrayal is dominant.
And if we can't trust even our neighbors, how could we trust in our government? The irresponsibility and corruption of our elites, and in particular of our politicians, have taught us the opposite. Whoever can take advantage of his position does so, and almost always - given the unfortunate state of our justice system - with total impunity. How do we survive like this, in this jungle, where no one trusts anyone and everyone just wants to get away with something? It has resulted in creating expensive, heavy and obtuse monitoring systems - our vaunted transparency - that has really only served to further hinder any process, contract or business, without eliminating corruption at all.
It is easy to understand, in these terms, the distrust the López Obrador government has towards anything from the past. The reasons are obvious and no one could deny them: in all places where someone could prosper or enrich themselves at the expense of the public treasury, he did so, taking advantage of the fissures and impunity. Hence the disdain with which this administration has treated all bureaucrats or all civil society organizations, assuming they must pay for being sinners. The terrible thing is that the solution was not to implement a Distrustful Republic, eliminating all the programs where there was corruption instead of cleaning them up, but to create mechanisms that guarantee trust between us for the first time. The first of them is an effective and, most of all, reliable justice system. This is the great pending task.
Reforma only allows subscribers to access its articles online.
*Jorge Volpi is the author of the novels In Search of Klingsor, The End of Madness, It Will Not Be Earth, The Devastated Garden, Dark Dark Forest, The Shadowweaver and Memorial of Deception. He has published collections of his essays such as Contagious Lies, Bolivar's Insomnia and Reading the Mind. In 2009 he won the José Donoso Prize from Chile for his work as a whole. His books have been translated into 25 languages. @jvolpi
Sep. 14, 2019
Other people, all the others, are always enemies in disguise, full of darkness and evil intentions. However flattering they appear to our face, no matter how much they insist on their good intentions, no matter how much they protest their honesty or solid principles, we know that all this is nothing but a facade to camouflage their schemes and their covert agenda. Behind their smiles, a knife or a pistol is hidden without fail. The handshakes, followed by those entwined hugs, demonstrate no transparency or openness, but the baroque need to protect our backs. In short, in Mexico we should all watch out for everyone, all the time.
The distrust, which Othón Canales [noted Mexican chemist and business administrator] repeated to me a few days ago, is the essential rule of relations in our country. According to it, it is impossible to believe that the person with whom you are about to close a deal or do business, with whom you are about to establish a political agreement or an alliance, or whom you will hire or from whom you will buy goods or services, is not trying to cheat you in some way. From the outset, in Mexico, we assume that our partners or our representatives are perverse competitors who do not hope for our satisfaction but just show one another their faces. Assuming the opposite, that there is a willingness to cooperate and obtain mutual or equitable benefits, puts us on the side of the naive or - of course - the jerks, precisely those who will always take be taken advantage of by others.
This way of behaving socially, which we could perhaps trace back to the period of Spanish Colonialism, regulates all our actions and is reflected in the enormous difficulty in reaching an agreement even on the most basic issues. Human beings, it is true, are programmed to protect ourselves from others - that is the genetic substratum of selfishness - but, over the millennia, evolution has also designed among us patterns of mutual cooperation indispensable to understand our success as a species. It seems as if in our country we have decided to do without them, anchoring ourselves in the purest distrust of others. Betrayal is dominant.
And if we can't trust even our neighbors, how could we trust in our government? The irresponsibility and corruption of our elites, and in particular of our politicians, have taught us the opposite. Whoever can take advantage of his position does so, and almost always - given the unfortunate state of our justice system - with total impunity. How do we survive like this, in this jungle, where no one trusts anyone and everyone just wants to get away with something? It has resulted in creating expensive, heavy and obtuse monitoring systems - our vaunted transparency - that has really only served to further hinder any process, contract or business, without eliminating corruption at all.
In recent terms, the epitome of this distrust of our politicians is due to the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto [president, 2012-18]. If the old PRI regime was characterized for decades by its extractive nature, Peña Nieto perfected the system so that corruption became a true state policy, as evidenced by operations such as the Master Scam [in which government contracts and payments in the millions were made to fake corporations], which made into a rule what had been a more or less secret practice.
Reforma only allows subscribers to access its articles online.
*Jorge Volpi is the author of the novels In Search of Klingsor, The End of Madness, It Will Not Be Earth, The Devastated Garden, Dark Dark Forest, The Shadowweaver and Memorial of Deception. He has published collections of his essays such as Contagious Lies, Bolivar's Insomnia and Reading the Mind. In 2009 he won the José Donoso Prize from Chile for his work as a whole. His books have been translated into 25 languages. @jvolpi