Day and night we are inundated with political proselytism and counterfeit smiles of ersatz men and women who — retouched and embellished — promise that as of June 2, when presidential elections take place, we will reach Mexican Nirvana.
Polychromatic political propaganda that, subsidized with our taxes, dizzies us to the point of nausea and crawls like the pseudopods of a gigantic amoeba permeating all the spaces of national life.
We pay to see those frozen grimaces of unknown faces that without knowing us swear us unconditional love; we pay to listen to those sweet voices and catchy songs that shamelessly spit deceitful promises. Pinocchio’s father’s face, poor Geppetto, would tumble off in shame.
We pay for those faces eager to be recognized to get into our homes, from the radio, television, social networks. Every six years history repeats itself. Billions of pesos thrown away to pimp empty smiles and cloying verbiage.
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The déjà vu of political campaigns invades us again. But the truth is, they have never gone away since they all campaign even while governing.
These are the songs of sirens.
Yes, you can, they claim, now there will be social justice in Mexico they assure us. Poverty will end. We will no longer be killed in cities, towns, and on the roads across the entire country, from Tijuana in Baja California to the Lacandon forest in Chiapas.
They promise that if we give them victory there will be no more disappeared; no more femicide; never again another Ayotzinapa — where it seems local authorities colluded with drug traffickers to kill 43 youngsters studying to be schoolteachers. Corruption will end by decree, and those who cannot see it must be blind.
Education and health services will be the best in the world, they tell us. The military will return to their barracks, the Narcos are cool, and you just have to hug them, as our President has been telling us for six years, while almost 200,000 Mexicans have been killed.
They promise that they will take care of Mexico’s amazing biodiversity, and they will no longer devastate jungles and mangroves. There will be clean water for everyone, air pollution will be a thing of the past, and protected natural areas will be a priority.
They promise that we will enter fully into an energy transition to take advantage of clean power and electricity will be cheaper and more accessible to all Mexicans. They will take climate change seriously, will give science and technology the place they deserve in the design of public policies. Indigenous peoples will finally be an integral part of national life and decision making.
That journalists and environmental defenders will be protected, even though more are murdered every year. That they are repentant, now we must believe them, and once again we trust them with our souls, our taxes, and the care of our families. Mexico will be a Wonderland!
Lying with impunity in politics and campaigning is acceptable because voters have short memories. Politicians lie compulsively to hide misdeeds, to benefit illegally, to be loved, to gain power. They lie knowing that we do not really believe them, they lie until they drown, drunk, in the vomit of their own deceptions.
The sight of candidates for public office at all levels who, these days in Mexico, lie in real time, is pathetic.
During a recent presidential debate, the two leading candidates raised the level of verbal violence. Claudia Sheinbaum from the ruling party Morena labeled her opponent “corrupt†and Xochilt Gálvez from the opposition PAN-PRI-PRD parties responded that you are a “Narcocandidate.â€
And after the elections, the streets will dawn full of the garbage of the false wrinkled smiles of the political charlatans. Until the next elections come and they continue to lie to us, and we keep on believing them and letting ourselves be mesmerized again with their siren songs.
Omar Vidal is a Mexican essayist and regular editorialist for EL UNIVERSAL, Mexico’s leading newspaper and also for Mexico ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Daily. Previously, he was the head of the World Wildlife Fund-Mexico and a senior official at the United Nations Environment Programme. He has also published a few books and about 50 scientific papers. He has lived in Sonora for many years, but now lives in Mexico City.