Advice for the gullible Mexican citizen

Proceso (8-23-2013) By Sabina Berman

Translated by un vato for Borderland Beat

MEXICO, D.F. (Proceso)-- The good, gullible citizen, he of good faith, unending like the ocean, should not twist his mouth when he learns that Mr. Raul Salinas de Gortari has been tried again and found innocent.

Not even when the judge adds that the poor man has been the victim of injustice. Nor when the judge confides and explains that his fortune, accumulated during the six year administration of his brother, President Carlos Salinas, and calculated in the hundreds of millions of pesos, was obtained in such a brief period as a result of "brilliant" entrepreneurial  activities, which the judge does not specify, much less could demonstrate.

Above all, he should not make his own connections. To think, for example, that with the return of the PRI to the Presidency, the style of impunity from the past has returned. An impunity granted from the Highest Power: a stick for rebels, and, for the faithful, a license to steal.

No, none of this twisting of the mouth. The gullible citizen must reserve that expression until the moment that he learns that this financial genius, this particle of God incarnate where air is transformed into dollars, this Higgs Boson, where ambition is transformed into bank accounts in the Cayman Islands,  will not be appointed to head Pemex, so the country can prosper thanks to his ability to perform miracles.

Neither should the good gullible citizen connect that exoneration with the Energy Reform. He should not laugh bitterly when, a week after the exoneration, president Pena Nieto explains that the invitation for investment in Pemex does not mean its privatization, not even partially.

On the contrary, he should believe that the same government that exonerated the genius Raul Salinas, is, with respect to reforming the operation of Pemex, not lying or covering up with words actions harmful to the Country. That this government is simply not capable of malice.

He should interrupt doubts, this good gullible citizen. Against these doubts, he should raise a small portrait of Mr. Arturo Montiel and expect that they will vanish. Or lift with both hands a small statue of Mr. Humberto Moreira, to show it to these doubts. Or a small bust of the "Gober Precioso" ["Precious Governor" of Puebla, Mario Marin Torres]. Or of the Green Boy [Nino Verde, Jorge Emilio Gonzalez Martinez, President of the Green Party].  Or....(insert here the names of powerful untouchable crooks). "Back, malignant suspicions, vanish!!"

The good gullible citizen should then drink a potion to forget: he should hypnotize his rationality with a high dose of TV advertisements in which a child (that is, the incarnation of of the gullible citizen's innocence), shows his hands stained with black tar, if not stained with corruption.

Oh, and about that oh! so ugly word: the gullible citizen should then eradicate the very word "corruption" from his vocabulary.   

He should believe that such a thing does not exist in Mexico and the leader of the petroleum workers' union, the honorable Romero Deschamps, and his hundreds of millions of dollars, and the $2 million Ferrari that he gave his son, and the apartments in other countries that he gave his daughter, as well as the number of workers on the Pemex payroll, twice more than is needed, twice the size of the Exxon payroll, are not corruption, neither is the milking of petroleum pipelines, nor the diversion of funds to the PRI, nor etcetera and etcetera.

And, in continuation, the good gullible citizen should do what a majority of our political "experts"  are doing: dress like a Swiss, with leather shorts, or as an Englishman, with a tweed coat, and with the limpid spirit of a mathematician or a watchmaker, analyze the pros and cons of the Energy Reform, in purely market terms.

As I said, this is what a majority of political analysts are doing, these graduates of very high class institutions, they downplay the significance of the corruption, and for that reason, their predictions are very respected in the first circles of Power, although they never get it right.

But getting it right is not the objective: the good gullible citizen should know that the objective is a noble peaceful coexistence. 'I don't see others' thievery and I wait for my turn to steal from the Nation'. Or, if that is not possible, to steal from my partner. Or to kidnap my neighbor. Or to extort a fellow citizen. Or to "disappear" whoever is bothering me.

The good gullible citizen should understand that this is how corruption grows, from the top down, but he should never speak its name, because everybody's corruption is nobody's in particular, it is now a culture, a clouded way of life, confused, it is the death of meritocracy, the exaltation of injustice, the fog in which the good and the bad are indistinguishable, and where words no longer mean anything. A culture of fog, yes, but one that we are proud to call our own.

And lastly, the good gullible citizen should show great deference towards his superiors in power.