GENERATION-ZOTA Notes from the Ground Dr. Lenin Torres Antonio
GENERATION-ZOTA
"The end justifies the means," and the supreme end of politics, in that sense, is power.
Constantly changing cell phones, that day he had a brand-new SIM card. Without having memorized all his contacts yet, he relied on a physical directory. Used to searching with just one hand, he dialed the number of the go-between for those with money and media power. As soon as the man answered, he told him it was urgent to meet, that he was waiting at the usual place, and that he would be there in a couple of hours.
His assistant asked for instructions. As soon as he hung up, Alex told him to prepare the most discreet vehicle. Swiftly, the aide ran down the stairs and, already behind the wheel, asked the boss if they were going to the “apartment” of one of his “little secrets.” Alex, settling into the passenger seat, confirmed with a nod.
The chameleon paled in comparison to the cross-dressing of that political leader: baggy denim pants, a blue T-shirt, and over it, an unbuttoned checkered shirt. His prole disguise was completed with a Yankees baseball cap.
Passing by UNAM, he recalled his attempts to study law. He confessed to his aide-confidant that he almost finished the degree, despite his absences and low grades. But the retirement of one of the Law School directors ruined his plans, so his university studies were cut short. Laughing, he added that at least he finished high school, “unlike that PAN colleague.”
He didn’t have a good memory—except for money matters, where he flaunted genius. Between chats, he alternated phone calls, mainly via WhatsApp. In one, enraged, he yelled at the man handling his finances for failing to make a timely transfer to a friend who wrote the articles published in several digital newspapers.
The apartment was on the other side of Mexico City, so it took at least an hour to get there. As soon as the driver parked the modest 2006 Golf, Alex got out and climbed to the third floor. He opened the apartment and the first thing he did was set up and turn on a hidden video recorder inside a vase, to leave evidence of the conversations and avoid later claims that he lied or broke his word. In reality, he placed it to have an ace up his sleeve in case of any contingency requiring a threat to expose collusion among fortune-tellers.
Like Alex, the link to economic power arrived on time. Seeing the door open, he walked straight into the living room and found the former all-powerful president of the Intercultural Reconciliation Party, better known as “El Pistolita.”
Without even greeting, they got straight to the point: the envoy from economic power carried a 30-kilo suitcase—Chinese-made! He opened it and said that inside was what they agreed upon to continue the “dirty war” against the “damn leftist pigs.” If more was needed, no problem. But he also warned that if Alex failed again, he’d better find a place to go into exile, because they would expose all his filth, especially now that even the Judiciary—he said—had become ideological.
Alex handed the envoy a document from the real power: the 1% economic elite that controls more than 50% of the GDP globally and locally, including major mass media corporations: TV Zapoteca, Tele Divisa, Radio Reformula, among others in Mexico.
The document detailed all the dirty war strategies against the MORADOS, mainly against their leader Don Peje, now apparently retired. He knew that the reactionary and ravenous right “never gets enough,” and that his disciple faced the toughest period, since the revolutionary movement he started—the vindication of the Mexican Revolution based on social justice—affected major national and foreign interests. Therefore, destabilization attempts would be constant during her government, as the right, regrouped in a common front, would not relent.
The disciple, seasoned in student struggles and social movements, and after taking an intensive revolutionary course accompanying him on the journey that wrested power from that vile, classist, and ignorant right—at least in terms of culture, which is no guarantee of honesty and humanism—was underestimated by an opposition stuck in the marketing era: one that believed everything was about beautifying a human product as a candidate and pairing it with electoral fraud and a good publicist to maintain control of public power. Despite this, she managed to contain the attacks of a deranged right, desperate to return to the budget trough. Even the Pejeist president has been building prestige and some respect as a leader, especially in trade negotiations with the northern neighbor, whom she stopped cold in its attempt to meddle in Mexico’s affairs and operate its drug war on Mexican soil—a war killing its own citizens.
Unable and unimaginative to present a national project to compete with Pejeism, the right remained faithful to a perverse, fascist strategy: focusing on trivial issues to implant them in the collective unconscious.
In this context, Alex presented to the power elite his plan to emulate the recent youth movement that toppled Nepal’s government for censoring social networks and, taking advantage of the assassination of Uruapan’s mayor, Carlos Manzo, call for a violent march against the federal government.
He named the mobilization “the march of fallen hats,” aimed mainly at Generation Z. For this, he hired foreign companies and operators dedicated to manipulating social networks. He even ordered his “jack-of-all-trades” to hire a professional shock group known as the “mafufos from La Lagunilla.”
The submissive, gray assistant received the mission to organize them, provide money, and everything necessary to turn the march into a scenario provoking repression by Mexican security forces. To fulfill the task, he turned to a childhood friend, “El Pitufo,” in charge of recruiting the toughest and craziest for the operation.
Alex, intelligent but clumsy and ignorant, adopted a narrative of “political persecution” to hide his record of corruption, inexplicable enrichment, influence peddling, and illicit practices during his time as public official: mayor, governor, deputy, senator, and now boss of a small former political party that once held power for more than eighty years. His brain couldn’t handle more, and he resorted to provocation once again.
Despite spending a fortune—and pocketing a good chunk of the “fifí revolutionary tax”—Alex gathered fewer than 20,000 attendees: mostly “mature youth” over 50 and a small number of young people who, when interviewed, couldn’t explain their presence or the march’s objectives. The event failed, but local and international media exploited it to discredit Mexico’s democratic Pejeist government. The next day, in eight-column headlines, right-wing media published the most grotesque and sordid photos to reinforce the narrative that Mexico “was burning.”
Thus, appealing to the Enlightenment as a political-social model—democracy, rule of law, freedom of expression, human rights, diversity, and plurality—the political narrative boasts a theoretical foundation that in practice clashes with a reality inspired by Machiavelli and Sun Tzu. Politics ceased to be the “debate of ideas” and good governance from ethics to become the “art of keeping or gaining power.” Today, Machiavelli and his Prince, along with Sun Tzu and The Art of War, stroll serenely through this “era of emptiness,” lecturing.
The modus operandi of parties and the political class is the same: apply strategies to achieve or retain power. Particularly, the PRIAN right and the economic-media elite act without memory, pretending to appear as benevolent democrats and defenders of the rule of law. However, just look at their history to recognize that they are “those thieves who broke into our homes and stole everything,” and today they present themselves as if they weren’t the same white-collar criminals who caused the degeneration of politics and the public crisis that Mexico still faces in terms of security and social justice.
The absurdity of this opposition’s attempt to return to power is full of twisted, ridiculous, and perverse scenes. They don’t care who they drag down to achieve their goals; and if they have to resort to violence, let us not doubt that they will. After all, for them, the end justifies the means.”
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