It was as though I was Gracchus, the noble Roman who ran to the beach thinking that the approaching soldiers had come to free him, only to discover that they were there to kill him. Loyalties can be changed as quickly as coats. The man who was once my friend suddenly became my enemy in the space of half an hour. .
Very well, Mr. President, since you’ve asked me to speak frankly, this is my message to you.
Though you won the election, never forget that in the end you’ll lose your power.
I know what I’m talking about.
Be prepared.
The victory of becoming president eventually and inevitably gives way to the defeat of becoming the ex-president.
Be prepared.
It takes much more imagination to be ex-president than to be president. This is because you will inevitably leave a problem behind you, and that problem has a name: yours.
Mexico’s problems go back for centuries. Nobody has ever been able to solve them. But people always blame the country’s ills on whoever holds — and above all whoever has just given up — power.
That was my downfall. Perhaps it’s not the person but the job that’s to blame. How easy it would be to delegate from the first day. But it doesn’t work like that. It can’t. From the very moment he takes his seat on the Eagle’s Throne, the president must prove that there’s only one voice in Mexico — his own. That was the meaning of the Aztec emperor’s name, Tlatoani, god of the Great Voice. That is what our position as occupiers of the Eagle’s Throne demands of us: to claim the Great Voice. The only voice.
Naturally we have the power to sack an incompetent (or disloyal) minister. But in the end, all responsibility ultimately falls upon the shoulders of the president. Sometimes we’re offered champagne. But more often we’re forced to drink something bitter. We all hope to be judged not for the errors committed during our last few days in power, but for the virtues of the previous six years, and there are always a few. Rarely, however, does it work out like that, I warn you with all due respect.
Besides, intentions count for nothing; only results matter. And since you’ve granted me permission to bring up the subject of the presidential succession that already looms large given the accelerated nature of our new democratic system (those of us from the old PRI always managed to keep our horses locked up in their stables until the last minute before the race, but that was another racetrack, and the jockeys were all too fat), the one thing I’ll say is that in the old days, once the candidate had been selected — as late as possible, I insist — the incumbent virtually became an ex-president.
One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is that the succession process still takes place primarily in the mind of the man who occupies the Eagle’s Throne. There, inside his head, he ponders who among all the possible heirs to the PRI’s hereditary republic has the strongest grass-roots support, the greatest loyalty among labor and peasant collectives, and the most favorable position in the polls.
Oh, Mr. President, shall I tell you the truth, the nitty-gritty? Public opinion isn’t worth shit. The notion that X is a viable successor because he’s tremendously popular only works against the incumbent. It’s conceivable that, once in office, without debts to anyone but the voters, the popular president will cut off all his obligations to the outgoing president. What you want and hope for is Y, because he has your support and no one else’s, because he’s trailing in all the polls, because when he succeeds you he’ll be indebted to you. Because, as a result, he’ll be the most loyal of the lot.
Oh, Mr. President. A big mistake. If you select the man who owes you the most, you can be certain that he’ll betray you in order to prove that he doesn’t depend on you. In other words: He who owes you the most will feel under the strongest obligation to exercise his independence or, to put it bluntly, his disloyalty. Political cannibalism occurs everywhere, but only in Mexico is the public corpse seasoned with two hundred different kinds of chili pepper — from the tiniest piquín to the big and delicious stuffed poblano, to say nothing of the jalapeño, the chipotle, and the morrón. The great ritual act of a new president is the killing of his predecessor. Prepare yourself, Mr. President. Watch your back. Very few will stand by you in defeat as they stood by you in victory. There and only there will loyalties be tested and proven. The only opportunity or virtue left to us is the very difficult one of trying to be the best ex-president we can, repressing the desire to complain, overlooking all the damage done to our allies, forgetting about the insults, and above all showing our loyalty to the new head of state. I warn you in advance: This is the most difficult part. We’re inclined to feel rage, hatred, resentment, to hatch plots and vendettas. We feel the inevitable temptation to play the Count of Monte Cristo. A big mistake. If the pain of exile (voluntary in theory but compulsory in practice) is compounded by the desire for revenge, we’ll ultimately lose all sense of reality and begin to invent an imaginary country where everything continues exactly as we left it when we descended from the Eagle’s Throne.
Mr. President, the most serious advice I can give you is that even if you feel persecuted, simply pretend nothing is wrong. Allow your very visible loyalty to be the most subtle and elegant vendetta of all. I assure you that I did everything I could to put it all behind me and I very nearly succeeded. I lived out my exile in Switzerland reading volume after volume of ancient history because the most enduring lessons regarding the exercise of power are those offered by Plutarch, Suetonius, and Tacitus. Chief among the stories they tell, Mr. President, is that of the nobleman Sabinus, murdered for his alleged disloyalty to Caesar. Sabinus’ dog, the story goes, refused to move away from his master’s body, and even put food into his mouth. Finally Sabinus’ body was thrown into the Tiber, but the dog jumped in after it and kept it afloat.
“Kill the dog!” the guard ordered.
Such are the extremes of loyalty, Mr. President. Count on mine.
16. NICOLÁS VALDIVIA TO MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN
If Tácito de la Canal is as slippery a snake as you suspect, my dear lady, then unfortunately I haven’t been able to provide any more evidence to support that claim beyond his obsequiousness with superiors and his cruelty with inferiors. The president’s chief of staff has been very careful to maintain a facade of exemplary humility. He lives in Colonia Cuauhtémoc in a tiny two-room apartment with a kitchen, a stairway landing that smells like cat piss, furniture from Lerdo Chiquito, and piles of old magazines. A monk, if you will, with no other luxury than that of power for power’s sake.
Well, then. Finally I’ve come up with a bit of evidence that is inconclusive in and of itself but which could open the door to greater mysteries.
You know, my mistress María del Rosario, it’s like one of those books our grandmothers used to give us. On a page with a picture of the inside of a home there’s a little window that allows us to see the garden on the next page, which in turn has a gate that opens onto a third page, and then that third page opens onto a forest that leads the eye all the way down to the water’s edge, where a boat waits to deliver us to an enchanted island. And so on. It’s like the never-ending story, isn’t it?
Well, having been transformed into a Versace model and duly instructed by yours truly, our little Doris led Tácito to believe that now that she was such an elegant, modern woman, she would not object to, let’s say, a more intimate sort of relationship with him. As surely as Tácito is a satyr, so was the god Pan’s machinery set in motion, and little by little — duly instructed, once again, by me — Doris, who needed only to break away from her sinister mother to blossom, began to toy with Tácito, putting him off, making him take her out to restaurants at first, and then to bars, to the Gran León dance hall so she could show off her tabaré dancing, but never to any motel, much less a hotel room.