Ignoring the Present, Seeking Answers in the Past. The Formula for Destroying the Future

 

After the first round in which Flavio Bolsonaro won in Brazil, no one could know what would come next. The rest of the candidates aligned more with Bolsonaro than with Lula. Logic said Lula had everything against him. A candidate in those conditions does not recover so easily. But wait. Lula was still the president of Brazil and had the entire state apparatus on his side. He made concessions on labor issues because he was in office. He advanced payments of social programs because he was in office. He extended voting hours by two hours because he was in office.

Beyond the heroic narrative of the union leader who defeated the far right, the real story is different. The president of the world’s tenth-largest economy used the full power of the state to crush a young junior, spoiled and rude, with no political experience. Yes, the Bolsonaro name carries weight on the Brazilian right. But come on. Does it weigh more than that of a man who has been in power for two decades? Flavio should not have had even a chance, and yet he put Lula on the mat once. One can say that Facebook and X sided with Flavio. But Lula’s main weapon to overcome that first defeat was WhatsApp, which is also owned by Meta, just like Facebook. The reality is that Lula did not operate as a candidate. He operated as a president in campaign mode and still almost lost.

Flavio had no choice but to flee the country to complain to Trump. As if Trump cared. Trump already had enormous problems on his plate. Lula will be president of Brazil for the fourth time. He ran for the presidency three times. One can speak of his perseverance. One can also speak of his obsession with power and how personal his project is. When Lula left power and remained in the shadow of Dilma Rousseff, the project collapsed. Lula and Dilma wanted to sell the image of a first tier power and organized the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. The result was that Dilma was removed and Lula ended up in prison. Scandals involving the manipulation of budget figures and bribes put their entire project in trouble. One can speak of political persecution, yes. But the suspicion of corruption remains there, latent. With all that, Lula remains in power.

How can one speak of a progressive left when that left’s project in Brazil consists of nominating the same candidate three times and voting for him four times? That is as conservative as Viktor Orbán in Hungary or Vladimir Putin in Russia. I am not in favor of Flavio Bolsonaro. Nor am I in favor of Lula being president for a fourth time. Still less of thinking that the left governs in Brazil. Still less of believing that a progressive government holds power. Still less of accepting that a union leader confronted the global techno oligarchy and defeated it. Lula used the full power of the state to remain for a fourth time while campaigning for the sixth. That is pure conservatism. Two decades of Lula in power and there is no progressive project. There is Lula in power, period. And we already know he will once again run into the arms of China and, worse still, those of Russia, in an attempt to give oxygen to his “project.”

Flavio lost and perhaps took his “bad luck” to the United States. I do not believe in bad luck. I believe in bad decisions. Flavio made bad decisions at the end and made an even worse one by fleeing to the United States. Trump made the terrible decision of getting involved in a war in Iran under pressure from Israel. He made another terrible decision by closing ranks with Russia and leaving Ukraine in an even more complicated situation. Both conflicts drove up fuel prices, raised the cost of almost everything, and hit Americans in the pocket. And Americans did not forgive. From that point of view, Trump defeated himself. And that is worrying because I do not know whether the Democrats in the United States really understand why they won and what they must do now. What won was people’s anger over the blow to their wallets. The Democrats did not win. I cannot see what they have done differently. They are supposed to be the American left. Have they managed to deliver first class universal healthcare and education? No. Are they interested in doing so? I think not. In the specific case of the United States I do not see any great difference between left and right. To me they are the same. The only positive thing is that Trump and all that “MAGA” madness will lose strength and, with luck, disappear.

In Mexico the officialdom must be very happy about Trump’s stumble. But I do not know if there really are grounds for so much joy. Will a weakened Trump seek to improve his image with the average voter by approaching his northern and southern neighbors more amicably? No. Definitely not. I think Trump will try to generate as much chaos as possible over the next two years and see what advantage he can extract from it. That is Putin’s school. Putin is not the great strategist many imagine. He detonates chaos and moves quickly to extract some advantage. He does not know what is going to happen, but he knows what has already happened and that gives him an edge. While everyone is asking what happened, he is already one step ahead. It is more a tactic than a strategy.

Mexican officialdom eagerly awaited Trump’s defeat. They surely think a defeated Trump is less dangerous for Mexico. But the reality is that Trump has been closer to the Morena government than Barack Obama or Joe Biden. NAFTA began with the PRI government and the Republicans. The Democrats continued it, but those who started it were Salinas and Bush. So I am not sure that as a country we will do better with the Democrats in power in the United States. Once again it is chaos and moving quickly to see who gains the advantage.

The great problem is that in Mexico the officialdom is losing more and more room for maneuver. There are internal divisions like those in the old PRI, and that is more dangerous for the party in power than any external threat. If the PRI took more than three decades to move to the right, Morena is moving at accelerated speed. They were never of the left. They are like those who called themselves socialists in Germany only to attract workers while in reality being quite conservative. Once again they base their entire project on the mythical figure of the former president. There is in reality no national project beyond holding on to power at all costs. Yes, that makes them very conservative. High quality universal healthcare and education? Not even a thought. They neither want to nor can.

On the other hand, governing for barely eight years has worn them out at an accelerated pace. They have ignored their base, grew by striking deals of impunity with old mafias and caciques, and seek popular politicians from other parties instead of forming their own cadres. And that continues to divide and kill them. Their shift to the right will be complete by 2030. Yes, a PRI on steroids and accelerated. By 2030 the official candidate will be a policeman who wants to build more prisons, in the style of Bukele and Delcy Rodríguez. By 2030 the grandson of the man who operated the Tlatelolco massacre will come to power. By 2030 the son of one of the operators of the dirty war of the 1970s will come to power. And there will be a major rupture within the officialdom. Like the PRI in 1988. First as tragedy and then as farce. As Marx said. The purists will refuse to recognize the favorite candidate of Washington. A right wing man coming out of a supposedly left-wing party. And then everything will happen all over again. We have learned nothing and condemn ourselves to repeat the cycle.