Why did you do it, dear lady, what infinite cruelty, what evil compulsion drove you to make me share the vision that I believed was incomparably mine with another peeping tom, another voyeur like myself, standing a few meters in front of me, whose presence was revealed by the rustling of branches, normally an imperceptible noise but thunderous to my sensitive, lovesick ears? Why? Why that intruder into a vision that I thought belonged to me, or us, you and me alone?
Who was the other voyeur? Was he a random intruder? Does he know your habits, my dear mistress? Did he, as I did, keep a date that you had made with him, a rendezvous befitting—forgive me if I offend you—a professional courtesan, a high-class whore? Can you tell me the truth? Can you at the very least save me from being a vile, pathetic peeping tom, a madman, a deceived lover?
6
BERNAL HERRERA TO PRESIDENT LORENZO TERÁN
I write to you now, President Terán, to wish you the best of luck in your annual address to Congress, now rescheduled for early January in light of the current national emergency, so that you, with a courage I admire, will be speaking before the president of the United States delivers her State of the Union address. The White House’s reaction to decisions you made over Christmas and the San Silvestre holiday—to keep the price of oil high and to call for an end to the U.S. occupation of Colombia—can only be described as punishment. I don’t, however, recommend that you use those terms when you make your address: Instead, stick to the pretext of an international communications collapse. Well, don’t say “the system collapsed,” first of all, because that kind of wording will bring back unhappy memories of the old-fashioned frauds committed under the PRI’s “perfect dictatorship,” which we have finally put behind us. And secondly, because “collapse” is the kind of verb that has an unpleasant way of turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy, to use an expression coined by our cousins to the north. Instead I recommend that you avoid any criticism of the U.S. government, and that you present this as a temporary technical mishap in the global satellite-communications network, caused by an unforeseen reaction to the duplication of digits at the start of the present year, 2020. A sort of delayed but likely follow-up to that Y2K phenomenon that had everyone in a panic before the year 2000, when all the computers in the world—personal, governmental, at banks and airports, public, private—were supposedly going to go haywire when their systems went from “19” to “20.” It doesn’t matter if they don’t believe you tomorrow, as long as they buy the story today. Use it. You have nothing to lose. Just don’t mention the U.S. government, Mr. President. Talk about a simple technical malfunction. Forgive me for being so repetitive. More than a reminder to you, these things I write are like little memos to myself—you know how I am. In your great wisdom and trust, I ask you to understand and forgive your old friend. Next: Make sure to touch only very lightly on the topics of Colombia and the oil prices, and focus instead on our domestic problems. I know that some members of the cabinet—mainly those so-called technocrats—will blame things on me as interior secretary. They’ll say I’m out to profit from the situation. That I’m positioning myself—forgive me for being so blunt, but you and I are more than just superior and underling, president and trusted employee; we’re old friends, and I always think of us like that—for the presidential succession that will happen in less than three years, etc. You know me, and you know that I’ve always advised you with two things in mind. One, I am your loyal colleague, and two, I put the interests of Mexico above all else. I wouldn’t be interior secretary if I weren’t able to equate those two things. Loyalty to Mexico and loyalty to the president. Having established that, allow me to reiterate with the greatest conviction that the major problems we need to address swiftly and wisely are the three strikes going on as we speak.
First, the students who are refusing to pay registration fees or take admission exams, and who are presently occupying various buildings on the university campus.
Second, the striking workers at the factory in San Luis Potosí that is majority-owned by a Japanese corporation.
And third, the protest march led by peasants at La Laguna who are calling for restitution of the lands promised to them by President Cárdenas’s agrarian reform, lands which have been wrested from them little by little by the corrupt local bosses in the north.
My recommendations, Mr. President, are as follows:
Ignore the students. They can keep on occupying the dean’s office and every other university building until hell freezes over, for all we care. With the students, anything but repression. Never forget the 1968 massacre in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, and how, believing it had achieved some kind of triumph, the system in fact committed suicide that day by sparking public outrage, collective anguish, and, in the end, the demise of authoritarianism and the single-party system, in addition to eternally disgracing the president at the time and forcing his successors to distance themselves from him, the “butcher of Tlatelolco,” even when it meant defying economic logic. Result: We floundered from crisis to crisis, all because we killed some students. Just let the situation sit and rot. All those students brimming over with solidarity today will come to their senses and think of their careers tomorrow.
Let us remain calm, Mr. President. More imperturbable than Benito Juárez.
Now, with regard to the striking workers at the car factory who are demanding outrageous wage increases and dare to compare their salaries to those of their counterparts in Japan, break the strike by force and announce to the world that Mexico welcomes foreign investment with open arms. We have a massive supply of cheap labor, we ’ll all end up winning. As for the disgruntled workers, they’ll be happy if you give them a free movie theater and a decent hospital.
You might argue that police intervention in San Luis Potosí would work in favor of the inveterate local boss Rodolfo Roque Maldonado, but I would argue that the mere deployment of forces on our part would intimidate Maldonado and get those clever Japanese on our side. It’s a risk, no doubt. Consider it, Mr. President. After all, we don’t want to play around when it comes to our bread and butter. Remember the old Pedro Infante song? The wife’s given two pesos for rent, phone, and electricity. Ah, the nostalgia for those pre-inflation days. Anyway, a little money is better than none, and the families of the San Luis workers won’t put up with their men not bringing money home. Foreign corporations will see that the authorities here are willing and able to defend foreign investment. How else did the Asian tigers make all their money? Just ask the ghost of Lee Kwan Yu. Singapore is a safe place because they cut off your hands if they catch you stealing. In addition, my dear president, a show of force in the region of San Luis Potosí will also serve to subdue the local bosses who take advantage of the vacuums in the regional power structure created by our drawn-out transition to democracy. I know I’m repeating something I’ve just mentioned. Forgive me for belaboring the point. But we have often granted democracy only to lose authority, creating pockets of anarchy filled by an endless string of local bosses and the forces they command: Maldonado in San Luis, Félix Elías Cabezas in Sonora, “Chicho” Delgado in Baja California, José de la Paz Quintero in Tamaulipas.
And finally, Mr. President, pay attention to the peasants in La Laguna. Use the situation to revive some of those agrarian causes that our pragmatism has forced us to drop. Give your government the support of the rural masses that our enemies—the aforementioned local bosses, for starters—have always manipulated through isolation and ignorance, counting on the fact that our hands would be tied by our proximity with the U.S., as if democracy and authority were incompatible. You know my watchword: authority yes, authoritarianism no. Take advantage of the situation to stick it to the local bosses. The domestic business sector in the north will thank you for it, because they know better than anyone that poverty is the worst investment of all and that a starving peasant can’t buy food in the supermarket or clothes at the local Benetton.
As for the one topic that secretly concerns us the most
, the murder of Tomás Moctezuma Moro, my advice is to leave it as it is, as a secret that is convenient for us all.
Mr. President, I sincerely hope you’ll consider my advice in the spirit of patriotism and support with which I offer it. “This,” said a German philosopher, “this,” the word “this,” is the hardest one to say. Very well, Mr. President, that’s what I urge you to do: Do THIS. Say, dare to say, THIS.
Postscript: I enclose the memorandum that I asked Xavier Zaragoza to write, explaining the communications breakdown.
MEMORANDUM
Our modern communications system has suffered a grave paradox. On the one hand, we have striven to become part of the largest global communications network in existence. On the other, we have wanted to monopolize access to information for our government’s benefit. To attain the first goal, we handed over the management of television, radio, telephony, as well as wireless communications, the Internet, etc., to the Florida Satellite Center and the so-called capital of Latin America, Miami. Our hope was that this decision would ensure our global access to communications. We turned our worldwide operations over to private companies such as B4M and X9N, in search of maximum efficiency and maximum range. What we did not know, however, was that these private companies upon whom we depended were, in turn, dependent upon an infrastructure controlled by the U.S. Defense Department. Nor did we know that the Florida Satellite Center was under the auspices of the Pentagon, which controlled the system’s effectiveness or lack thereof, as well as its real, potential, and planned crises, through exclusive access to the synchronized orbits of a number of fixed satellites located 40,000 kilometers above sea level. The precursor to this was the Y2K crisis of the 1999–2000 new year, the so-called “millennium bug” that was thought capable of causing a breakdown in the global communications system, when the computers programmed according to the digits “19” jumped to “20.” The panic, as we now know, was nothing more than the Pentagon’s way of reminding everyone of its ability to decentralize information in the event of an attack on the infrastructure, or to voluntarily destabilize the system, while claiming to be under (nonexistent) attack. The Mexican national mistake, then, was to take the plunge with our eyes closed and with the hope of rapidly globalizing our communications by latching on to an operation we didn’t control ourselves, while politicizing communications internally to thwart the democratic, pluralistic use of these media. The restored PRI government of 2006 opted for external modernity through Florida and internal anachronism through an official monopoly of the grid. Governments are organized vertically. The grid, on the other hand, works horizontally. President César León decided to verticalize all internal communications, which meant that unions, local bosses, universities, local governments, and civil society in general were all deprived of access, while the government’s most favored businesses and, fatally, the entertainment industry were granted horizontal communications access. A lot of Big Brother. No Big Strikes (actually, we haven’t avoided them, we simply declare them null and void; the main thing is to make sure that no one strike senses any kind of emulation or support from another strike). The point is that, while the world’s systems started out small, grew rapidly, and delivered value, the Mexican government started out big, grew slowly, and delivered garbage. Domestically, we restricted ourselves to a narrow portal. Internationally, we exposed ourselves to a massive portal. Thus we became doubly vulnerable. The United States has now cut off our big portal, affecting every aspect of our communications, not just external but internal as well, given that the latter, negligible as they were, also depended on the Florida Satellite Center. The hypothetical Y2K bug was simply replaced by a so-called Y2020 bug exclusively affecting Mexico, as a way of punishing the country for opposing the U.S. military occupation of Colombia and for supporting the rise in oil prices determined by OPEC. It is known as “Operation Cucaracha.” And as you know, Mr. President, according to the ditty, the cockroach can only walk if it’s got something to smoke—marijuana, weed, Fu Manchu chocolate. . . . “20/20” is the term gringos use to describe normal clarity of vision at twenty feet. But the thing that really separates our two countries is a border 1,200 miles long. Draw your own conclusions, Mr. President. And think about how long we’ll be able to pacify the Japanese investors at Coahuila—although, of course, it’s been said they have their own secret methods of making themselves understood.
7
MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN TO NICOLÁS VALDIVIA
Did our date the night before last upset you? Did you feel humiliated by the way I turned you into a voyeur? Don’t lose your patience or your temper. Show a bit more tenderness, my darling, more fairness, more sympathy for your poor friend. I did have a life before we met, you know. And you, my good Nicolás, would like to think, as in that old song, “that the past doesn’t exist and that we were born the instant we met.” That’s not how it is, I’m afraid. I’m older than you. And if you’re going to reproach me for the life I lived before we met, you expose yourself to a number of things. First, various surprises. Some very unpleasant. Some a bit more palatable. Second, you’re going to burn with jealousy of all the men who were once my lovers. And third, you’re going to grow impatient with the time frame I have in mind for you and me.
“Why them and not me?”
Of the three possibilities, only the second one appeals to me. Women—and I’m no exception—adore being the object of jealousy. It fans the flames of passion. Fires up the long cold wait. And ensures the most glorious erotic culmination. But let me get to the point. You’ll see. Now I’ll be a voyeur with you. We’re going to sit down together here in my living room, side by side, and we are going to examine and discuss my version of last night’s presidential address. I got someone to film the event, with an emphasis not so much on the president and what he said but rather on the faces of the people in the audience, so that you can get to know the politicians that govern us.
First let me quickly dispose of the president of Congress, who responded to the address. His name is Onésimo Canabal and he is minor in every way: past, present, future, physical size, political stature, and moral fiber. He’s one among thousands, but today he feels himself unique. How will he ever learn the truth? Nobody will ever tell him. He’d have to hit himself over the head to find out how stupid he is. But then, most idiots go to their graves without ever knowing what imbeciles they are.
Let’s move on to the cabinet, sitting in the front row of the congressional chamber.
The interior secretary, Bernal Herrera, is my friend and confidant. He has experience and solid common sense. He’s aware that order has its limits, but that disorder is boundless. His political balancing act consists of avoiding endemic disorder and the extreme evils that feed it: hunger, demoralization, public mistrust. Herrera knows that chaos provokes irrational actions and facilitates political adventures, which eventually prove to be misadventures. Bitterness opens many wounds, and gives them little time to heal. Herrera, then, is a man who promotes three kinds of laws: laws that can be enforced, laws that will never be enforced, and laws that give people hope, whether they are enforceable or not, whether they are more for the future than for today. He is our best government minister and politician.
The foreign affairs secretary, Patricio Palafox, sitting next to Herrera, is another experienced man, idealistic but pragmatic. He understands that we happen to live next door to the single great superpower in the world, and that we may be able to choose our friends but we can’t choose our neighbors (just as we can’t choose our relatives, as inconvenient as they often are). Palafox is good at working closely with the gringos, but he’s especially good at making them see that Mexico is also a democracy and must pay attention to its own public opinion. Sometimes, he tells them, we can’t go against public opinion, just as the U.S. can’t, either. Unfortunately, however, they tend to stick to that principle at all costs. The U.S. always operates according to polls, congressional opposition, or opinions in the national press, and the execut
ive branch only gets its own way insofar as its ideas jibe with all these factors.
We, on the other hand, pay a high price for our independent decisions—this has been proved in the case of Colombia. We found ourselves forced to support the new president, Juan Manuel Santos, and call for the withdrawal of the gringos from the country. It wasn’t enough that we caved in on trade agreements, antiterrorism measures, votes of support in a number of international organizations, and the protection of Mexicans unjustly imprisoned and even sentenced to death in the U.S. All it took were two panic buttons—Colombia and oil—to elicit this cruel, draconian response from Washington: cutting us off from all communications, leaving us in the globalized world’s equivalent of a desert.
Nevertheless, you won’t see the slightest concern on Secretary Palafox’s face. He comes from a very old family that has lived through three centuries of turbulent Mexican history. Nothing ruffles him. He has nerves of steel. He is every bit a professional, even though there are always a few spiteful people around who say things like, “Secretary Palafox’s unassailable serenity is not the result of his blue blood, but of his hard-earned reputation as a poker player.”
It seems that Palafox’s training grounds were not the halls of Versailles but rather the gambling halls, those rooms full of cigarette smoke, dim lights, and card tables. The kingdom of chance, so to speak. And tell me, my lovely protégé, how does one reconcile necessity with chance? That’s the great unanswered question of all time, says my dear friend Xavier Zaragoza, misleadingly nicknamed Seneca—I, for one, have learned more from him than I ever learned from studying political science. If you want to know more, have a look at yesterday’s paper: There is a marvelous article by don Federico Reyes Heroles, his reflections on turning sixty-five.