Roger Bartra: "López Obrador is a manual right-wing populist"

Roger Bartra, in the garden of his home in Mexico City, in a file photo.Monica Gonzalez / El País

The axolotl, a species of giant tadpole that inhabits the Valley of Mexico, is an amphibian that has fascinated biologists for its regenerative capacity: it regenerates a part of its tail or a severed leg, as well as a damaged portion of the brain or from the heart.

It is an animal, described the Mexican anthropologist Roger Bartra, "stunned and focused on regenerating himself" that is "incapable of escaping from its larval stage."

More than three decades ago, in

La caula de la melancolía

, the intellectual made the axolotl a critical metaphor for Mexican identity, a being trapped in that nostalgia for returning to a lost mythical homeland.

In his new book,

Return to the Cage

(Debate, 2021), the author takes up that metaphor to describe the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

"There is an attempt to return to the old revolutionary, authoritarian and extremely corrupt nationalism," Bartra (Mexico City, 78 years old) tells EL PAÍS by videoconference.

For the anthropologist, the president of Mexico intends to return to a “pre-neoliberal situation” that he places in the 1960s and 1970s in Mexico, under the Government of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

“This proclaimed Fourth Transformation, which is compared to Independence, the Reformation, or the Revolution, has nothing to do with it.

Despite the enormous noise that López Obrador is making, there is no such great transformation, ”says Barta.

The doctor in Sociology from the Sorbonne in Paris and emeritus researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), one of the most critical intellectuals of the current administration and a former member of the Communist Party of Mexico, writes: “We will have to wait to see if effectively the axolotl canon is being regenerated or we are experiencing a terrible but temporary setback ”.

Question.

What is López Obrador's personal style of governing?

Answer.

I speak of the irrational style of governing rather.

That style is mainly focused on an exacerbated nationalism, very stale, with very cheesy tones.

The president dons various masks.

He wants to put on the mask of the leaders of the Independence of Spain, then he puts on the mask of Juárez, of Madero ... it is a completely false game.

The one that he uses the most is that of Juárez: moderation, austerity, mediocrity ... There is a pure mask, but no reform of the depth of those made by President Juárez in the 19th century.

Nothing equivalent to the reform that expropriated church assets or confiscated ecclesiastical properties.

Q.

You describe him as a right-wing populist, how do you define populism and why is López Obrador a populist for you?

R.

Populism is not a political ideology, nor is it a specific political strategy.

It is a phenomenon of political culture.

It implies a strong, charismatic, authoritarian personalistic leadership, a character who assumes that he represents the interests of the people.

In that, the case of López Obrador is completely classic, it seems to be taken from a political theory manual.

He is a reactionary populist.

We can compare it to the reactionary populist currents in Europe and the European environment, such as Turkey, and of course, to the great populist that we unfortunately had here next to us, which was [Donald] Trump.

One of the most ignominious things that has happened in Mexican politics is that López Obrador went to help Trump to Washington in his campaign for re-election.

If we add to that that he tried to build a moral constitution that ended up in an ethical guide, we can understand this picture well: that we are facing a right-wing populism.

Another facet of this reactionary character is economic policy.

It is an attempt to return to the economy of the 1960s and 1970s in Mexico, a strongly nationalized, yet mixed economy, but with a clearly right-wing ingredient, which is austerity policy and the denial of advanced and progressive tax reform. .

And if we add that it is militarizing the country, that is one more reason to be alarmed.

Q.

Do you think López Obrador would recognize himself in this description?

A.

No, of course.

He constantly labels himself as left wing.

And if we see the program of his party, Morena, the word left appears only once and in passing.

He calls himself a liberal and everyone else who disagrees with him is conservative.

Q.

Do you rescue something from your management?

A.

Sure.

I am not trying to make a list of hits and misses.

Surely, my list would be more mistakes than hits.

But, for example, raising the minimum wage seems like a success to me;

expanding what is paid to the elderly seems to me to be fine.

Anyway ... but my book tries to understand what kind of government this is, what is its true orientation.

And that's where I enter into this discussion about whether it is a government of the left or the right.

Traditionally, a good part of the international press, although now less, considered that the López Obrador government was left-wing.

This is a right-wing government.

Q.

In your new book, you write that understanding why López Obrador won is a mystery.

Why?

A.

It did not seem too promising, but surprisingly not only did he win but he swept.

His supporters have attributed that to his charismatic character, the tremendous strength of his proposals, etc.

I believe that this

electoral

tsunami

, as it has been called, is largely due to the fact that the PRI government of Peña Nieto sponsored that victory.

There are three clear elements in this regard: first, the PRI launched a candidate, José Antonio Meade, who from the beginning could be seen to be a born loser;

secondly, it disqualified with a criminal complaint López Obrador's strongest contender, Ricardo Anaya, from the PAN, who later turned out to have no basis;

and thirdly, different instances of the PRI channeled the vote towards López Obrador through different unions and governors.

Cover of 'Return to the Cage' COURTESY

Q.

In the book you say that regeneration is impossible, but that it opens the possibility of dangerous outcomes.

What do you mean?

The danger is not that a restoration may materialize.

Historically, since the classical restoration, the French classical model, that has not happened.

Societies do not return to their old situation.

What there are are strong restorative-oriented movements that are considering restoring the old regime, and that is something that is clear in all of López Obrador's rhetoric.

It is evident that he wants to return to that pre-neoliberal situation, a golden age, of growth, of goodness.

In reality, it was a hell of repression and authoritarianism, of misery, of disease, of violence.

You were going to jail for any reason.

Restoration is not possible and a dangerous situation may arise in which a crisis looms that involves considerable political disorder.

I fear that political tensions will lead the president and his group to make decisions that are even more disastrous.

Not because they lead us to a regime in the style of [the former president of Venezuela, Hugo] Chávez, because things are not going that way, but to a general disorder.

Q.

How important are the June elections going to have?

R.

López Obrador and his party are facing the three great parties that agreed and achieved the democratic transition in the time of President [Ernesto] Zedillo.

If you like, a transition full of problems, contradictions and inconsistencies, but those of us who have lived through the previous despotism really celebrate this transition and are very frightened by this aggression against the space of democracy and the transition, which has not yet finished consolidating after 20 years old, she is very young, she is embryonic.

López Obrador's party wants to liquidate these remnants of the democratic transition, the parties and the autonomous institute, the INE, which is the main instrument that was created for the transition and which is another of the black beasts of this president.

Q.

You consider the alliance of the PRI, the PAN and the PRD “sensible”.

Why do you think so?

R.

I see it as a natural reaction of the parties associated with the democratic transition, which see a serious danger.

Of course they are parties that have very different ideological differences and historical trajectories.

The most uncomfortable part, without a doubt, is the part of the alliance with the PRI, because the PRI is precisely the symbol of everything that brought down the democratic transition.

It is a game that I hate what it represents.

But the PRI, like all parties, is a very fragmented party and there are apparently some sensible ones.

The PAN is the traditional party of the right, a very backward, Hispanic and religious right, but it has a liberal side.

And the PRD, what has remained, is an apparatus party, small, very beaten, but in some way it is the little that remains of a certain reformist social democratic left.

I am not very optimistic about what they can achieve because it is a very difficult alliance.

These three parties, as horrible as they may seem, represent the democratic transition and must be defended despite themselves.

P.

It seems that it is any option before López Obrador.

R.

There are sectors in Mexican society that do have that kind of desperation.

There is this idea that any alternative is better.

But I think that what is mainly there is the idea that things must be rebalanced and that the best thing would be simply for the Government not to have an overwhelming majority in the chambers, and to force it to negotiate.

Q.

What diagnosis do you make of the Mexican opposition?

The Mexican electoral opposition is those three parties.

In addition to the Citizen Movement.

But later there is a great citizen mobilization, which has different manifestations.

One is channeled through the mass media.

There is an important opposition there, a criticism of intellectuals, journalists, analysts.

The other great opposition citizen movement is the feminist movement, which a little more than a year ago achieved a truly impressive demonstration, which I believe marked the moment of López Obrador's break.

The problem is that the opposition is very plural, very varied and there is everything, even the crazy extreme right, like these from Frenaa, who believe that López Obrador is a communist.

Q.

What option do left-wing voters have?

R.

The left is marginal even in the PRD.

It is no longer said in the PRI and the PAN that they are right-wing parties.

The left is marginal in Morena;

it is non-existent in the PT.

The left exists as a diffuse mass of citizens who are not organized, who are in any case a minority.

In Mexico, citizenship is basically right-wing and conservative.

Q.

What does López Obrador gain by confronting feminism?

R.

I do not think he wins anything, I think he loses, but he is not aware of that.

He responds to a kind of institutional machismo and doesn't even realize it.

It gains nothing, but it does express the nature of its government, of its conservative thinking.

He boasts that parity has been achieved on many levels, which is very important.

But the problem with machismo is something much deeper.

Much more needs to be done.

Here it has not even been achieved what the women's movement in Argentina has achieved, which is an abortion law.

The government has objected.

The legalization of marijuana is something that has dragged on for two years and that ended in a quite ridiculous legalization that does not even compare to the legalizations that have already occurred in different States in the United States.

P.

The president has also faced the intellectuals, the press, the environmentalists ... why?

R.

Because there is an irrational style of governing.

It is irrational to confront the feminist movement, the women who massively fight for equality and their rights.

It is irrational for a politician to stand up and fight by cursing the most prominent intellectuals in this country.

Most of us critical intellectuals have been insulted by the president.

The mass media: the president has the idea that the opposition is basically in the mass media and not in the opposition parties.

I don't know if that's true, but he believes it and despises the parties, including Morena.

P.

What will mark politically the next few years?

R.

I think that the remainder of the six-year term is going to go through several critical moments.

One is imminent: the next elections are in June.

Depending on what happens there, the country is going to go one way or the other.

If Morena and the president achieve an overwhelming majority, they will continue what has been happening and the tensions will be more hidden, the opposition will have enormous difficulties.

In any case, there will be a second critical moment when the referendum for the revocation of the mandate occurs, at the beginning of the year 22. And the rest of the six-year term will be marked by a tremendous internal struggle within the official space to reach the presidential candidacy of Morena , which promises, because of the advances they have given us, to be very bloody and very difficult.

And of course all the rearticulation of the opposition.

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