The last visit of President López Obrador to Badiraguato, Sinaloa, has had several readings and interpretations.
The most notable have revolved around the two axes that dominate the entire national narrative.
The presidential trip is the apotheosis of solidarity with those who have the least, or it is the palpable demonstration of his alliance with drug trafficking in general and with the Sinaloa cartel in particular.
As in so many other things, the existing polarization leaves few spaces for reflection.
Either you are with the President in everything and for everything, or you are against him with the same roundness and scope.
Beyond these binary simplifications, there are aspects of the visit that deserve more serene consideration.
Especially, because of what it implies in legal and symbolic terms, not only of the event itself,
I do not think I am exaggerating if I affirm that with the visit to Badiraguato, President López Obrador redefined the borders of the Mexican State.
I am not referring, of course, to the modification of the limits of the states of Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa.
Nor to the adjustment of the vertices, sides or angles of the so-called "golden triangle".
I refer to the delimitation of this polygon as a new space, characterized not by what is produced in it or by the criminal actions that are carried out in it, but by the condition of those who inhabit it.
For "good and hardworking" people.
As it could not be otherwise, it is very likely that, in such a wide geographical space, people with these characteristics actually inhabit.
However, there are also those who for decades have dedicated their lives to committing crimes.
When the President renamed the area and its inhabitants as he did, he was necessarily referring to the activities carried out in that space and by those people.
If there is no need to mention those who behave in accordance with the provisions of federal, state and municipal legal norms, in fact those who contravene them were alluded to.
In other words, in the words of the President there was a clear recognition that the people who are dedicated to crime in that area of the country are "good and hard-working."
By proceeding as he did —and regardless of the reasons that motivated him—, the President constituted a border for that region of the country.
He established some limits to state action on the identified area.
If, indeed, the people who live there have the indicated moral condition, for what reason would they have to face the reproach of the state?
For what reason, in other words, should the conduct of the persons referred to in the abstract by the President be considered illegal?
By setting the borders as he did, the President created, in the first place, a space of extraterritoriality with respect to the legitimate claims of a total territorial presence of the Mexican State.
With his words he tried to give legitimacy to what happens in a specific geographical space, as if in that place, the corresponding legal norms should not be applied or, at least, as if those that would mean as criminal the conduct of the “ good and hard-working people”.
The borders established by the President not only lead to the exclusion of state action, but also make it possible for these people to be the ones who determine by which rules many of the behaviors of the population that lives there will be regulated.
What will be considered a crime or misdemeanor, for example,
Another of the implications of the resignification of the “golden” space has to do with the possibilities of action of crime itself.
On the one hand, of course, because the constituted extraterritoriality means a limit for state authorities, but not for those who inhabit it.
The fact that the State is not going to act within the spaces inhabited by “good and hard-working” people in no way implies that they are going to limit their actions to the space that has practically been recognized for them.
Probably without realizing the scope of what he said and did, the President has established what was called a “sanctuary” in the old law.
An impenetrable space of refuge for those who acted outside of it.
The delimitation of the space for “good and hard-working” people generates other problems that, surely, President López Obrador did not take into account either.
Why limit that rating to the inhabitants of one area when there are other people with the same attributes in other regions of the country?
Those who live in Michoacán, Tamaulipas, Guanajuato or in any other state or region are surely wondering why the moral condition of those who, in principle, could be their adversaries or competitors is not applied to them.
If, in fact, some group were placed in this demanding situation, its options are not difficult to imagine.
Given the disadvantage that the existence of the sanctuary would imply, he could try to fight not only the rival group but also the authorities that made it possible.
could also
In a very evocative meaning, in the Dictionary of the Royal Academy it is read that the border is the "boundary of the State".
I think that when President López Obrador reconfigured the “golden triangle” as the space inhabited by “good and hard-working people”, he delimited the new state limits very well.
Beyond the fact that the space had its own history and its own customs, the President established it as a space of extraterritoriality.
He, with his words and actions, gave it a new meaning, not so much because of what was done there, but because of what could be done in the future.
He ended up giving existence to the negation of the general model of coexistence that we have democratically tried to establish.
@JRCossio
subscribe here
to the
newsletter
of EL PAÍS México and receive all the informative keys of the current affairs of this country
Exclusive content for subscribers
read without limits
subscribe
I'm already a subscriber