Because a few people really don’t understand it.
Mr. Oliver made a half-baked video about the Mexican election, which is appropriate given what has been said about the Mexican elections by the foreign media.
You see, what the foreigners lack is an understanding of what a “pirruris” is. There is a universal truth in Mexico and that is that no one will leave the ballot offices satisfied, but we will leave in droves of threes: Those who are uncomfortable about Mexico’s situation, but uncertain how to change it, those who are comfortable about it but willing to make an effort to make it better, and those who are desperately in need for change.
I find myself in none of these groups because I am the 14%. I am a white dual citizen, my family has enough money to pay for private insurance, private schooling, private transportation, and live in a tower block with private security that all of us pay for. I am exactly the kind of person Obrador (Morena) targeted with his “pirruris” chants. I am exactly the kind of person who’ll never see workplace discrimination, and will have the fewest contacts with the police or the government for the better because I don’t get enthralled in their bureaucratic clusterfuck. In my entire life I’ve never had to report a crime, not only because I have never been involved in one, but also because I’m shielded from the corrupt machine that runs east of Benito Juarez, I’m shielded from the realities south of Ajusco, and the regionalistic racism north of the Tarahumara ranges.
I come at this election without a representative experience of Mexico. Like most pirruris do and like most foreign journalists have captured it. In a sense these people I’ve been clustered in will have to make a choice, as part of the 14%, and as part of the aptly named by Finntail “temporarily embarrased millionaires” that will vote for Anaya(PAN) or Meade(PRI): The establishment. We’re together the 45% of the nation that deem Obrador not necessary. But there must be something deeper than just being a Pirruris or not.
I am uncomfortable with all candidates because I think I have a vision for my country that is nonaligned with their thinking. I think that the solutions to the grave inequities and abuses of the people of this country are not found in reactionary policies or continuity of bad policies, I find them in unity,respect for one another and equal opportunity. Which is why I wrote this. Which I was going to post but the elections are just showing me this vision will not occur. Instead we’re going to push ourselves into a corner.
As a pirruris I’m not desperate enough to buy into Obrador’s bullshit but susceptible to being targeted by the establishment: As a Pirruris I’d be lying if I said I was blind to the abuses and inequities the people around me have benefited from. In that regard there isn’t a candidate that will faithfully execute their responsibilities as set up in the constitution. All of them have important handicaps that will hurt Mexico, be it Meade’s ties to a corrupt party, be it Obrador’s long unchecked history of financial mishaps and corrupted biases, or be it Anaya’s blindness to the desperation of the public and lack of experience.
I know that all of them are shit, and I am almost certain I will nullify my ballot because I’m not ready to accept the whataboutism that all campaigns have promised. Because in the end... nothing will change within the halls of congress or the offices of the national palace. Only we as a society will continue to segment ourselves, and only we will see how further separation will lead to problems bigger than we ever thought. Neither side is ready to give up their hypocrisies, and that is the formula for a bad government.
So lets talk about Miguel Hidalgo, shall we? It’s the borough I live in, it’s one of the richest, least unequal, most urbanized borough in Mexico City and right now we will have to choose between PAN in the shape of Margarita Fisher, and Morena in the shape of Victor Hugo Romo. VHR used to be the borough leader and I can assert that my employers at the small development firm will be delighted to see him win. VHR is good friends with members of our legal team, our construction contractor, and the unions that control the workers. If Victor Hugo Romo wins I will stand to win a lot more money, as a company we will be able to show fuck-all respect to urban planning laws, and gentrify entire areas. Unchecked, unburdened: unquestioned. Yet somehow, Margarita Fisher is being advertised as the choice for the richer citizens of this borough, how come? I mean, both of them will be terrible at their job because they’re burdened by their past actions.
Not a single politician in this country is devoid of a tail that could be stepped on by someone richer than them. Which is why the largest developer in the country, Arambuluzavala, is making a skyscraper in Polanco’s 3rd District under the blind eyes of the current PAN leaders in the borough. Despite both parties showing a continuation of bullshit, one party, Morena, is pursuing a road that will create more inequality, where PAN at least has the guts to admit their hypocrisies. But what is the moral difference between pleading guilty or innocent if you actually committed the crime?
Being in the situation I’m in, uncomfortably numb, I have battled whether I’ll want a continuation of a broken establishment that could be fixed or if I will aboard the campaign of a man that has belittled and demonized the achievements of my neighbors in hypocratic chants and will pursue an agenda that will culminate with benefiting them anyway.
In the end it won’t matter, in the unlikely off chance Obrador begins acting as if Mexico is Venezuela, I’ll leave, just like the hundreds of thousands of pirruris Venezuelans that left their nation as its demise began, I’ll be the one damming a corrupt leader from the comfort of the deep pockets, and the security of another nation that supports free speech. Same would happen if PRI commits fraud yet again and we erupt into a civil war.
In a sense the establishment is comfortable, but also naive to the true problems of this country. Which is part of why I’m torn because Obrador is
Mexico’s Trump, he is the man abusing of the poor to benefit himself, a man who has tried to mix race and class into national identity and who has made a larger than life personality centered around his unproven abilities to change the nation.
So, is Morena and Obrador not the establishment? Well, they say they aren’t, but in reality, people like VHR are well known as establishment insiders, so are all the PRI and PRD members that left their parties to join Obrador... I can’t blame Obrador for taking them, in the end you can’t govern without people to help you navigate through a 1.7 million employee federal bureocracy. But isn’t that hypocritical since he’s a longtime defender of draining the swamp of the political insiders he christened “Mafia del Poder?”
Trump and Obrador are the result of NAFTA and the inequities of the rich, the abuses of the captains of industry and the failings of unchecked neoliberalism. However they’re also the result of a con man that knew how to abuse his people, the result of a person that saw the grave desperation of a nation and connected it to impulsive decision making based on feelings of greatness that are not supported by factual difference to the targeted group. In the end, it’s a choice of two bad options for me, and it’s a choice that won’t really hurt me in the end because this country was designed and twisted into a shape meant to be abused by people like me. Which is why it will only be changed for the better if everyone in the country agrees to cut the shit and look for improving everyone’s life beyond their own.
But it is also a demonstration that, while Obrador’s voters are acting out of desperation, their desperation is warranted and show unacceptable truths of Mexican society. We’re all blinded by our zip codes, and in the end if we keep building walls to keep ourselves blinded to the situation of another person, we will never evolve to be a country of civil liberties, opportunity, and fairness or even justice.
We will never be our greatest selves or escape the shadow of nations we pretend to be on equal footing to. My nation will continue to be a racist, classicist, ignorant experiment until we all agree that enough is enough.
Who knows? Maybe I’m wrong and Peña Nieto was the last straw, and Obrador or Anaya or Meade will prove to be unifying, fearless executives that will do all in their power to change my country who will hopefully be ready, in six years, to have a bit less consequential elections. Maybe Obrador won’t be divisive and he’ll run an executive branch that will focus on unifying our nation. Maybe the candidates will be truthful. Maybe we will change solely because change sometimes is not consequence of good actions but of luck.
I just don’t feel like something good can come out of anything politically speaking here.