Revolution Rocks?

Though in a different context to what happened a century ago, Mexico's living an era of social dissatisfaction and partition. The idea of a revolution woos the mind of those who would like to see or of those who are in fear of a true coming of social equity within the country. But, and that’s where this context differentiation is notorious, today’s discontent is not shared by a large number of those who are afflicted by the strangling and invisible hand of globalization. Reckon firstly that 10 percent of Mexico’s population already lives in the U.S. The cynical eye might think that this is a twisted plan to recover the territories lost to the U.S. in the mid 19^th Century, or that Vicente Fox’s platform of social benefit and economy activation dwelled in exporting cheap labor to the aforementioned regions. That’s one of many factors opposite to early 20^th Century Mexico. In those days the only exiles were leftwing intellectuals who actually developed plans and even movements to throw out then dictator Porfirio Díaz. Today Mexico’s intellectuals living abroad are, mainly, getting their “market” education (mere managerial training) in U.S. and European institutions to later come back and manage transnational interests and set commercial-friendly policy. At the same time, the poor and the lower middle class are mentally devoid or alienated from their condition chiefly by the system’s agenda setters: mass media. It is easier and more comfortable to stay home and watch girls in miniskirts kissing fly guys on every telenovela (soap operas) than acquiring vital information for the development of national processes and democracy, if such a thing exists. TV and news corporations (information as a product and not as a tool, hence marketable) shape the mind of millions and present us a show in which the bad ones are always those complaining, suffering, dying, and fighting for their rights. They fight their wars but their wars always win. The shapeless monster of public opinion keenly attacks our desire of belonging and in just a split second Mexico’s all right and those victims of injustice only want to create havoc and disturb the minds of the good Mexicans. Religion also plays a factor contrary again to what happened in the early 1900’s. Mexico is almost 100 percent catholic. A superstitious society cannot progress when a superstitious party holds over the reigns of the nation. Hence any idea of community progress or social good, which are more Christian than Christianity itself, seems to hit hard the mind of those safeguards of morality, values, and tradition. Finally, parsing history is crucial to weigh the chances of another revolution. The Mexican conflict of 1910 was heavily promoted and seen as a chance for many bourgeoisies starving for more power than the one Diaz gave them. Today, the only “right” distribution we find in Mexico is in the power allocation. A hundred years ago, people watching the revolutionary movement talked about a regime change as they did in 2000 when Vicente Fox won the presidential election and ousted long-standing PRI from the highest seat in the nation. Here is where we probably find one of the few, if not the only similarity with the social movement of a century ago. There hasn’t been a shakeup in the old structures. In 1910, those ministers who saw their compadre Diaz step down welcomed the new president just to change offices: the people was betrayed. Today, six years after the well publicized change to “democracy,” Mexicans keep on seeing the same faces and the same consortiums applying the law of the few over the majority. There’s no room for a revolution where Sunday soccer is more important than voting: There’s Football nations everywhere.

Aqui está "El Cuerpo de Julián"