Tatiana Clouthier got tired of living in two worlds.
Or in three.
The one who believed that he could help build with Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the one who with his collaboration, active or passive, has been destroyed day by day since the electoral victory of 2018, and the one who from outside sent him messages of the flagrant contradiction between his illusions and efforts, on the one hand, and the reality of Mexico in times of AMLO, on the other.
She was exhausted from trying, from running into a wall.
And for that, exhausted from so much running around the sideline asking for the ball to try to be part of a goal, from so much seeing how her team scored epic own goals, she finally resigned this week.
There is no perfect team, nor dressing room without fights.
Tatiana knew it but she learned it the hard way when in the starting lineup of the lopezobradorista team, and in a more than offensive position, their leader placed Manuel Bartlett.
The former police keeper of PRI authoritarianism, the face of the culture of patriotic fraud that crushed the illusions of her father el Maquío's generation, would be side by side with her in the cabinet.
Three decades after the fall of the system, at the time of the rematch with a Clouthier, it was not Doña Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, her health already withered by then, but Bartlett.
Little life, what bitter tests you put on your warriors.
Tatiana, daughter of her father and mother, did not remain silent.
Loyalty to the Clouthier.
Loud as they are, so much so that even between siblings they air things in public, she said what many think, inside and outside the cabinet, that Bartlett is always a bad idea.
The game had not started and the Sinaloan migrated to Monterrey better asked for her change.
She went to the president's B team, she went to Congress.
She became a deputy.
But Andrés Manuel is not told no many times.
If Tatiana previously disdained being an appendix in the Interior, if she took refuge in San Lázaro when Bucareli's undersecretary declined, halfway through the six-year term she knew that she could not reject the invitation to head Economy, an important ministry wherever it is in the AMLO government.
The daughter of an apostle of business, the sister of businessmen, the adopted daughter of the business mecca of Mexico, the friend of the businessman and amlista Alfonso Romo, put on the shirt that on one side said "with AMLO yes", and that on one side the other promised, and with the Economy too.
That's where her headaches from triple schizophrenia began.
We wanted to change to Mexico, Tatiana.
We wanted the poor first, yes, precisely because a Clouthier also said so, this Clouthier.
We dream of a new and fairer economy.
And a sovereign relationship with foreigners who invest here.
And that whoever wanted to start a business, national and foreign, did it, and that the Government neither steal nor hinder nor corrupt (even if it allowed to corrupt) the one who undertook.
What the Maquío dreamed, and what she thought her boss wanted from her.
But did her boss really want that?
In his third presidential attempt, during months of pre-campaign and campaign, López Obrador was strict and even intolerant when crushing in the locker room the team with which they had to add, that the hour of victory was approaching, that they had to start thinking about what they would be a government, in that they would have much more than a movement, that they would command the country.
In meetings that the applicant held with his collaborators at that time, the order was precise.
Goodbye to the incendiary preparatory speech of the class struggle, moderation in the words, precision in the gestures that telegraphed that they did have the stature of sights for inclusion, the temperance to negotiate and add, the spirit of tolerance.
Be careful with the one who lets out residuals, nothing to sharpen the knives of revenge.
Tatiana and Poncho Romo were part of the funds of the checks issued based on that credibility that a six-year term of madness, nonsense, outbursts, sectarianism, and populism would not begin.
But a week after the victory, the former candidate himself sent the new signal.
In those conclaves he drew how they would have to stand on the field: it is time for the economic power to see that we have all the political power, was the instruction given to the team.
From there to the cancellation of the Texcoco airport there was only one tris.
And with that snap of the fingers, López Obrador discredited Romo's word and questioned Tatiana's interlocutions.
That decision four years ago is the background to Tatiana's resignation this week.
Forty-eight months is a long or short time to understand that the dreams of the one who was appointed campaign manager in 2018 and the true wishes of the winning candidate that year were not compatible?
Especially since in the two-thirds of the six-year term that had elapsed, Texcoco was only the beginning of similar measures.
Despite this, when Tatiana was appointed, she believed that her boss wanted her to help stimulate the economy.
She did not want to see that it was impossible to square the monstrosity that she received: the law is the law and AMLO does not comply with the USMCA, which in turn discourages investment.
He failed to ask or he failed to listen.
Ask the secretariat to which he arrived in January 2021 how much they were taken into account, how much the president wanted to find out, soak up, understand that Mexico is much more than the squares of its towns, its gaps and remote places, much, much more than National Palace.
How many factories had López Obrador gone to in his first two years?
To one per month?
Not even one a month?
One per quarter?
Cold, cold...
He missed hearing what is deafening.
His boss decapitalized secretaries and regulators.
His boss transferred any negotiation, any dispute, any paperwork, any paperwork, to the Palace.
What sector do they want?
Telecommunications?
Energy?
Foreign trade?
The president has photos of a cabinet, parity or not, of an operetta: they and they, most of the time, are only supporting actors.
He who sings in all acts of any matter is one and only one.
You know who.
That's what we said in the campaign, right, Tatiana?
Great advertising invention.
Nor do we have to name it to know who we are talking about.
But he liked it too much: almost nothing contains who or name requires.
Despite the evidence, Tatiana, like others in the cabinet, like not a few outside of it, wanted to continue reconciling her three worlds.
No way to back down, we have to help the president to be what we wanted even though he shows that he is neither interested nor wants what we wanted.
How heavy nostalgia is when we don't let it go.
We wanted a Mexico where the military was not exactly what it is now: irrepressible.
We wanted a Mexico, a country, yes, that for the good of all the poor first, but not poor people dependent on social programs, but with support, possibilities and freedom to progress.
Maquío would have signed it.
Tatiana tried.
Andrew sabotaged it.
Tatiana came and went carrying balls.
Businessmen were looking for her and she sweated bringing issues to the president.
She sweated from trying so hard, she sweated from enduring the revire of that, not Tatiana, not that either, and again not this.
The time came when she herself said to her interlocutors: I'm not even going to try that, I already had enough scolding.
In a prelude to the relegation playoffs, Mexico received a chance to avoid being penalized for violating rules.
There were 75 days to reverse the score, to find an agreement, not to go to penalties.
And just when we're in that overtime, Tatiana turned to the bench and said: Get me out of here.
If the most enthusiastic, if the one who had nothing to play for but her prestige and dialogue with her original and adopted countrymen, throws in the towel, are we about to get a good result in the T-MEC?
A player enters the court who does not suffer the rigors of contradiction.
Raquel Buenrostro, architect of the mess that condemned patients to not have medicines and bearded vultures from the SAT, will be happy in Economy.
Because he will do what his boss asks no matter what the country asks or requires.
So in the Treasury as a senior official, so when collecting taxes until last Thursday, so when pressing businessmen from now to the next campaign.
Thus, it does not serve to stop inflation, much less to speed up production, or to trigger investments.
The simple life of those who comply because they alienated their conscience, whatever their name is, Raquel or Marcelo or Claudia.
Proud, in 2019 Tatiana published her memoirs.
We made history, said the title.
Perhaps it was a bit premature, and quite enthusiastic, to headline with that boast the adventures of a campaign, the details of a political alliance between a woman from Sinaloa and a man from Tabasco.
Did we make history, Tatiana?
The story of a country that stopped growing even before the pandemic.
That of the families with children with cancer and the victims of violence ignored in the Palace.
That of Bartlett and Rocío Nahle empowered and sucking the science budget.
The one with the trenezote and the military airport, not even the president's.
However, and to be clear, it is not Tatiana's fault.
Believing is not a sin.
Better late than never to abandon the ship of the hardliners, the inflexible, the sectarians, the
masiosare
.
Don't go to hell, Tatiana.
In other words, you already left in a sense, you are no longer where you thought you were going to serve;
Now don't go somewhere else that doesn't work either.
The tribune that helps is not the one that tries at all costs to annul the referee, win with cheats, intimidate opponents, win without convincing.
There is more to the world than the past that was not, than the present that turned out lousy.
There is more Mexico than that of lopezobradorism.
Many Mexicos, as you could see in the Economy office.
Many Mexicans, different and legitimately different: many of those that after mass and Sunday ice cream, your father worked hard to teach you and your brothers, perched on a guayín, in places far from the wealthy neighborhoods of Culiacán, to that they would not forget how small the privilege is.
The Maquío is still valid.
Echeverrist behaviors of the current six-year term have vindicated him.
There is a lot of history to be done.
Surely in some small part of those pending tasks, the thunderous Sinaloan voice of this Clouthier will soon be heard again, who has much more career than a seat among the fans of a team that is very, very short on resources.
subscribe here
to the
newsletter
of EL PAÍS México and receive all the informative keys of the current affairs of this country
Subscribe to continue reading
read without limits
Keep reading
I'm already a subscriber
