Austericide or moralicide?

A protest in front of the accident site, this Wednesday in Mexico City.CLAUDIO CRUZ / AFP

With the painful tragedy suffered in the Mexico City Metro, the word austericide has gone viral on social networks. Some opposition politicians began to use it some time ago to denounce the damages that in their opinion cause the austerity measures of the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Since the crash of Line 12 last Monday, in which at least 25 passengers died, the word exploded in public conversation. The perfect epithet to associate the economic policy with which they disagree with an execrable crime: austericide is associated with words such as genocide, patricide, infanticide or assassination, among others.

Unfortunately for such convenient political use, at least for the opposition, the word actually means exactly the opposite of what those who wield it suppose.

Austericide is defined as killing austerity and does not refer, as is to be led to believe, to the real or supposed damage caused by austerity.

Those who are against budget cuts would have to promote austericide, that is, seek to kill austerity, if we stick to their definition.

I will be told that it is only a questionable use of the word, the least important given the magnitude of the tragedy.

But words matter;

they matter a lot.

Especially when trying to turn a strategy against waste and corruption into a crime against humanity.

For the rest, the idea that the Q4 government is dismantling the State or worse, strangling society by reducing public spending is a myth. In reality, public spending has increased under the new government, although the criteria for distribution have changed dramatically. The federation's budget in 2018, Enrique Peña Neto's last year, was 5.3 billion pesos; The following three, with López Obrador, the budget amounted to 5.8 billion in 2019, 6.1 in 2020 and 6.3 in 2021. Discounting inflation, in 2020 it increased in real terms 0.3% compared to the previous year, although for this year it decreased in the same proportion (-0.3) due to the fall in GDP of more than 8% in the previous period. In other words, the weight of public spending relative to the rest of the economy grew during the crisis.Accusing the government of austericide is not only a grammatical nonsense but a falsehood.

What has happened, and a lot, is a change in the criteria for the allocation of resources. And in that case, the opposition's questioning is perfectly legitimate because ultimately it is about public money and its mode of distribution involves an idea of ​​a nation with which one can disagree. But that's another thing. The blanket has not shrunk as reported, simply the priorities of what it should shelter or uncover have changed. Spending decreased in the high bureaucracy, in advertising to the media, in the Presidency and the General Staff, in subsidies for nurseries and a very long etcetera. It increased in direct transfers to the elderly, women and youth, public schools, public security and the armed forces, employment in rural areas, and other equally long etcetera.Part of what was eliminated was lost by what we call “civil society”, part of what was increased was won by what the workers call the people. In both cases, they are people, harmed or benefited, although generally the latter are of more humble social extraction (not always, of course).

Certainly there are budget changes that produce damage. There is the shortage of medicines to exemplify it. However, it seems to me that it has more to do with fighting corruption than saving a few pesos out of the sick. More than an issue of misguided austerity, it is about public actions that were badly valued and worse planned and whose disproportionate and unexpected effects should have led to a timely adjustment.

Is the metro tragedy the result of irresponsible cuts in maintenance budgets?

So far the head of Government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, has said that such items have not decreased.

The investigation will have to prove it, as well as whether the accident involves acts of corruption during construction, irresponsible management in the last ten years or, flat, a mixture of all the previous ones.

The summary trials have not waited for any investigation, as might be expected in the context of the political polarization that we are experiencing and in the case of an electoral year, in addition to involving the two main candidates to succeed AMLO (Claudia Sheinbaum herself and Marcelo Ebrard, current chancellor and acting mayor when the work was built).

They have all tried to bring water to their mill. The poisoned dart of the supposed austericide is part of the battle to turn the tragedy into a final and implacable assessment of the Government of the 4T and its criteria in relation to the budget. But the same can be said of the counterpart. The government has responded with no less political opportunism. The president was defending his dolphins, also summarily, even before mentioning the need for an investigation, as if the loyalty of the president was with his officials not with his citizens, something unfortunate in a case like this that involves those who less have. It is not only about the direct victims and their families; what happened will have a permanent effect on millions of people who every day are forced to take the subway between pushes,ventilation problems, long waits in tunnels. Now they will also have to do it under the stress of knowing they are in danger of death.

AMLO spent more time denouncing the alarmist coverage that the media made and their possible intentions than to show solidarity with the victims, let alone explore solutions to prevent a recurrence of this type of tragedy, as would have been expected from the person ultimately responsible for the the country's public administration.

He used the terrible accident, like his counterpart, essentially to attack his adversaries.

Such is the mutual animosity of the two poles that dispute the public arena, that for the sake of their war they have left behind their responsibilities as political actors.

Solidarity with those who suffer, dignity or ethics have taken a backseat.

It seems to me that what is in view is not austericide but a "moralicide" in public life.

@jorgezepedap

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