In this first stance of a three-part series, the critic Julio Albar explains why he thinks Mexico is
suffering a denationalization. With this collaboration, Julio starts with his weekly column in San
Diego Red.

The upcoming December 1 st , the incoming government will receive just the ruins of the country.

Even if the advocates of the economic model are scandalized by Lopez Obrador pointing out
that Mexico is bankrupt and they strive to convince us that we are better than years before, the
truth is that a large portion of the population never had the alleged benefits of free market.

On the contrary, the only thing millions of Mexicans received was bad news: wage
deterioration, growing precarity of general labor conditions and more impoverishment in the
future, as a result of the draining of natural resources. CEPAL (for its acronym in Spanish)
recently pointed out that Mexico is living in a growing economic inequality; an unusual
concentration of wealth.

On the other hand, in spite of the dominance of official discourse throughout last decades, the
chronic deterioration of institutions has sped up: The President and all of the State and local
executives, legislatures, the judiciary, the armed forces and security services, are some of the
government and State agencies that have been severely affected by their ability to solve social
issues, therefore the decline in its credibility.

In many cases, a lack of political will, abuse of power, and suspicions raised by the country’s
corruption, are added to the already existent impotence and incapacity of the people.

As if this were not enough, the picture described above is exacerbated by the wave of violence
unleashed by the government of Felipe Calderon with the political party PAN (For its acronym in
Spanish), declared war blindly and irresponsibly to drug trafficking, after an inaccurate
diagnosis, it faced its consequences.

Subsequently, in the light of some clear outcomes, irresponsibility has turned into crime, since
the government openly accepted the evident violation of the most basic Human Rights. The war
started by Calderon and continued by Peña has led to the death, disappearance, and
displacement of thousands of people.

The war itself, appears to attune all the ills that affect the country: powerlessness,
abandonment, indecisiveness, corruption and State complicity; deterioration, apathy and in
some cases, social dissolution.

All of these elements together, plus some more that will go unmentioned for the lack of space,
make Mexico different, for the very first time in many years; we’re experiencing a grave state of
denationalization.

This is not just only the loss of national heritage into the hands of foreigners, the decay of all
those constituents that make this modern invention called Nation: the control of a territory,
fully exercise its sovereignty, both derived from the provision of security and decent existing
conditions.

But also, and perhaps this is the most important component, as it is the one on which the latter
are based upon, is the provision of a sense of belonging for those individuals who might not
share the immediacy of vicinity, blood or cultural bonds.

National identity, as understood by Jose Maria Arico, was not the main idea linking an specified
territory with an established identity, but the that brings together the history, culture,
psychology, ancient social stratifications, intellectual heritage, ethical and religious, habits,
traditions, language, literary and social forms.

It is an inseparable ensemble of elements that carry the different forces and parts of modern
society, they establish a communal area of dispute.

The Nation is a politically constructed community, that makes other’s accomplishments and
hardships like their own, as distant and alien as they might seem. That sense in Mexico has
been damaged deeply.

The assassinations in Acapulco do no shock those who do not live there, the bodies hanging
from the bridges in Monterrey look like scenes from a movie to those who are not locals.

The expression of indignation exists, but it is not generalized. Victims and their relatives, artists,
writers and people in general have courageously manifested their discontent, but truth is that
this has only been supported by the bulk of society in rare occasions. The reactions to hardship
seem to be blocked by a mixture of fear, estrangement and lack of empathy.

It is hard to believe that all these cultural richness and social density, that delighted many
anthropologists and sociologists, is showing today serious signs of dissolution; that there is so
much paralysis in the land of Zapata and Villa; that the State – primary agent in social living
since the period of Cardenas and during much of the last century –has been fully overshot and
shows daily its impotence against criminal gangs; that, in the land of Rivera, Orozco and Alvarez
Bravo, there is so little complaint and public expression against actions and unrest.

Maybe that’s why, given the extreme gravity of the situation we are facing, the question with
greater political urgency weight to ask is: why Mexicans do not ask how we got to this
situation?

How was all this possible in one of the few countries in Latin America that, despite its
integration problems, had reached advanced degrees of state development, cultural cohesion
and social organization?

The political action of MORENA (for its acronym in Spanish) with López Obrador at the head,
has cracked the neoliberal common sense and, with this, enabled social reflection. Perhaps,
that is so far his greatest achievement. From December 1 st , his task will surely aim to recover
the Nation.

Julio Aibar has a Bachelors degree in Psychology, a Masters in Social Theory and a PhD in
Political Science. He has previously been a researcher and professor at FLACSO-México, and is
the author of the books Lázaro Cárdenas y la Revolución Mexicana (Le Monde Diplomatique),
Vox Populi. Populismo y democracia (coord.), Autoritarismo o democracia? Hugo Chavez y Eco
Morales (cocord.), Una lectura crítica del neoliberalismo (cocord.), México: entre el
desencuentro y la ruptura (cocord.) y El helicoide de la investigación (cocord.).