Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Given Morena’s current internal breakdown, it is not surprising that it bears a striking resemblance to the disfigurement of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), but at an accelerated pace. All the processes of conflict, corruption, and personalism in Morena are happening more quickly than in the PRD. What is striking is that exactly the same thing is happening to them.
Morena was born in the PRD, entered into contradictions due to personal aspirations and transformed them into political differences, and broke with its origins. First came the personalities, and then the political program was adapted. The essential similarity between the PRD and Morena is that they did not emerge from a political program different from those that already existed, but rather from caudillo-style leaderships seeking to differentiate themselves. Then came the political program. Or, to put it another way, the leader was the program.
The National Democratic Front, made up of the Mexican Socialist Party, the Popular Socialist Party, the FCRN, the Democratic Current of the PRI, the Mexican Workers’ Party, the Movement Toward Socialism, National Revolutionary Civic Association, UNIR, among others, united, not ideologically but politically, around the figure of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and a shared longing to “return to the good old days” of Mexico.
This conglomerate of parties never had a common ideological vision, but instead shared a political platform of common causes, such as democracy, free elections, and equality. But beyond that, they were not ideologically united. The only thing that united them was Cárdenas’s leadership. That is why they called him the Tlatoani. He was above all the ideological differences of the members of the new party, the PRD.
The leader was the program, not an ideological proposal. After the leader, they were united by a set of causes, but beneath all the paraphernalia, significant differences remained. The first major difference was the relationship between capital and labor. Some supported capital and others supported labor, thus expressing an irreconcilable ideological difference. Another difference was the relationship with power: some favored negotiation, others advocated confrontation with the system. A third difference was that some believed they were fighting to gain access to positions of power, while others maintained that the destruction of the bourgeois state was the true purpose of the movement.
The PRD was the product of the convergence of social and political sectors dissatisfied with the situation in the country, especially electoral inequality. But in reality, apart from the search for more electoral opportunities and political positions, they had very little in common. For the time being, in ideological terms, little united them except the cohesion provided by the Tlatoani. Therefore, the PRD created an internal political culture that had one basic rule: they were united by their cohesion around whatever the Leader, the Tlatoani, and, finally, the Moral Leader said, when he was no longer the Real Leader. Their ideological differences were real, but the stakes for power were enough incentive to hide their true, profound ideological differences. The platform remained one of free elections, democracy, and equality. Who could be against that?
After his third defeat in a presidential campaign, Cárdenas was quietly displaced from the role of Leader to that of Moral Leader. Andrés Manuel López Obrador displaced Cárdenas and took his place as Real Leader, although he never was, nor will he ever be, a Moral Leader. AMLO is a Real Leader. He achieved this change in leadership by becoming head of the Mexico City government after reaching a secret political agreement with President Ernesto Zedillo.
With AMLO, the second era of a political party began, whose raison d’être was to follow the Leader and, therefore, to make the Leader the party’s political program. The PRD went from being Cárdenas’ party to López Obrador’s party. In both cases, the program came after the Leader’s assumption and coronation. The 2006 election turned AMLO into a crusader. It forced the party to believe a lie (that he had won the election) and to create a myth: that of the Leader who had been robbed. In the minds of PRD members was the idea of the 1988 fraud, where Cárdenas had supposedly won, not Salinas.
But the real victim and victimized person was now López Obrador. The PRD’s historic mission was to right and correct this political evil concocted by evil forces. The history of Cárdenas had to be left behind. Now the PRD’s real feat began in 2006, not in 1988. In fact, to put that chapter of history behind them, the author of the 1988 fraud, Manuel Bartlett, was anointed as another hero of the “Mexican left,” turning Cárdenas’s election into a minor footnote in history. Indirectly, AMLO wanted to continue diminishing Cárdenas’ influence, ensuring his control over the party and its narrative.
Above all else, AMLO’s purpose was to consolidate his role as party leader and, therefore, the bearer of its program. But there was a problem. Being in the role of governor, both in Mexico City and several other states, and with a strong force of deputies and senators, the PRD was internally clashing with ideologically conflicting interpretations imposed by reality. The “democratic” political program was no longer enough to hide their differences. And power had a powerful corrupting effect. Personal business deals began in earnest. The Mexico City government generated dozens of new rich people, owners of expropriated land and buildings that were given away among members of the factions that made up its functional structure. The idea that there were “moderates” and “radicals” in the PRD became apparent. Businesses came and went, as did political alliances between corporate social groups, elements of the private sector, real estate, and criminal actors.
When AMLO broke with the PRD and formed Morena, it was based on exactly the same party model. Now he is the Leader and can say with certainty that he is the only Tlatoani. There is no more Cárdenas. He is the Leader and the program. But with the same virus implanted at its core, absolute obedience to the Leader is because, in reality, there is no shared ideological conception. And what Morena is proving today is that once the leader is removed, the party without a program does not know what to do or how to behave, because the unifying cement—the leader—is crumbling and there is no replacement in sight. And in such a macho and misogynistic party, a woman will never be the leader. Perhaps an administrator of other people’s assets, but not even of her own.
Morena is a party that will destroy itself from within because, even though they are still together, they disagree on how to deal with the country’s crisis, given the shady dealings of all its leaders (in lowercase letters) and even less so given the commitments they have made to organized crime, which they all know perfectly well, and about the United States. Money flows freely through their hands. They are clumsy with their newly acquired money, as were René Bejarano and Carlos Imaz, the two precursors of rampant corruption in the ranks of the “Mexican left.” Back then, there were two or three of them. Today, there are thousands in the ranks of “progressivism” who do business based on power and enrich themselves without blushing, thinking it is their acquired right.
The political authority of the Tlatoani can no longer unite them, because he is busy trying to save himself and his family. And the two women who lead the movement do not have the political or moral authority to impose the new order with their voices. Even less so in a movement based on a Tlatoani, not on an ideology. Even less so to a party ruled by men accustomed, like the Tlatoani himself, to using women as a smokescreen to achieve their own goals.
For these reasons, concepts such as Bonapartism or Caesarism do not seem applicable in the case of Mexico today, given the precariousness and instability of the regime that currently sustains the country. Instead, it would seem that we are in a transitional stage in the battle between a fragile and underdeveloped democracy and a regime subordinate to foreign powers, with hints of authoritarian rule, but all within a framework of permanent instability.
The problem is that Morena’s rapid decomposition will lead the country into a major crisis. The truth is that Mexico, under these conditions, is very vulnerable to external pressures. And given the precarious state of public finances, coupled with the pressure of rampant crime throughout the country, a hurricane-force political crisis can be anticipated in Mexico. The outcome is uncertain, and the path ahead is likely to be very turbulent.
ricardopascoe@hotmail.com
@rpascoep
Further Reading: