36. MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN TO PRESIDENT LORENZO TERÁN
My very old and dear friend, the time has come to unleash the hounds of war. We can no longer put off the selection of the person who will succeed you as president of the republic. The return of our ex-president César León is a part in the well-oiled machine of our electoral democracy. And it’s not the only one. León is plotting with the president of Congress to declare you incapacitated so that Onésimo Canabal himself can take your place and push through the constitutional reform that will permit the re-election of, guess who, César León. On the other hand, a constitutional amendment requires time: It will take at least a year to get a majority vote either way from all the states in the federation. And that can only happen after the amendment has been passed by two thirds of Congress.
So César León must have another ace up his sleeve. What it is, we don’t know. And that, my friend, is our weakness. The constitutional reform has the whiff of a smoke screen to me. The real blow is going to come at us from another direction. Make no mistake about that. And be prepared.
Too much time, Mr. President, too much waste. You can be sure that as long as the pawn in this game, Onésimo Canabal, follows César León’s advice, León is going to give us a scare and end up with all the chips in his pocket. Which ones? I don’t know, I don’t know, Mr. President. The only advice I can give you, from my head and from my heart, is that you have to act. Now. Get ahead of the game. Set up separate meetings with your two aspiring successors, Tácito de la Canal and Bernal Herrera. Order them to tender their resignations, announce their candidacies, and launch their campaigns.
They won’t have any choice but to do what you say. And if they hesitate, just fire them. You’ll see how they listen to you, Mr. President. My feminine intuition tells me that this is all you have to do if you want to win this round against our very astute ex-president.
What have I always told you, Mr. President? Not making decisions is worse than making mistakes. Make a decision. Remember, there are no beginnings in politics. Only moments. And the ability to seize them before they’re gone. To be cunning, in other words. Cunning in what sense? you may ask. Well, your interior secretary has shown it in each one of the cases currently at hand. Either you deal with a problem or bury it. What you can’t do is leave a request to languish without rejecting or accepting it. You might say, rightly, that the lack of decisiveness in the case of the university strikes means that the problem is unsolvable. But that lack of decisiveness, you see, is precisely the solution: Let there be no solution, until all the parties are tired out. On the other hand, you’ve kept your investors happy with your policies, and the workers’ unrest has subsided because of need — their need to eat. Meanwhile, allowing the peasants a meaningless victory would be a defeat for the local bosses who’ve always counted on that eternal cannon fodder, the indentured agricultural slave. Very well. But what we’re facing now, Mr. President, is a strictly political test.
Who will succeed you in the 2024 election?
What forces can he rely on?
Who will challenge him?
And don’t ever let yourself wonder, Who will be most loyal to me?
Everyone, Mr. President, will betray you. Even — and I’m telling you this so that you see the extent of my frankness and my friendship— the man who’s my favorite for the succession. .
37. BERNAL HERRERA TO PRESIDENT LORENZO TERÁN
Mr. President, dear friend, I’m writing to you under these new and unexpected circumstances, which must feel somewhat natural to you given that you never respond to messages, only receive them. I suppose that you don’t allow anyone else to read them, so I’m going to be completely honest with you. None of your aides can say anything about the letters written to you because it would reveal their indiscretion and prove them unworthy of your trust.
I’m telling you this so that you’re not surprised by my honesty and sincerity. Let me be your mirror, my dear president. You already know what people say about you. Power makes even the ugliest person look attractive. But we all have an inner mirror of power and in it we can see ourselves fearful, tired, uncertain. When this internal mirror reverts back to the external, we run the risk of people thinking, Apathy, fatigue, uncertainty, fear — and even worse, This is what the president wants, this is his formula for holding on to the Eagle’s Throne. He’s an inert president who governs through inertia.
I’ve always told you that one has to avoid making one’s internal doubts visible. You’ll say that I’m blowing my own horn and painting a picture of the virtues that would allow me to succeed you as occupant of the Eagle’s Throne.
That may be so, Lorenzo. You may be right.
Nevertheless, I’m telling you a useful truth, not only regarding the imminent succession and the campaigns, but with respect to the three years you still have in office. You are no exception to the truth that every head of state must choose from many possible paths, that he’s always at a crossroads, pushed this way and that way by a number of different forces.
“Go this way.”
“No, better go that way.”
There’s no force more powerful than the interior force of the president himself. And yet this force is not so easy to identify, define, and act upon because the most insufferable thing about being president is the fact that everyone looks at you as if they could see their own destiny in your face. Especially cabinet members! Unfortunately, most of them believe that the president rewards loyalty more than ability.
I repeat: I have no desire to blow my own horn. I do not speak pro domo sua. I’m expressing myself hypothetically. Mexicans have a tendency to blame everything on “the system,” no matter what that “system” is. They never blame themselves, not as people and not as citizens. No, it’s always the fault of “the system,” and the head of that system is the president. One of the unwritten rules of our blessed system — since time immemorial, since the colonies — is that the accumulation of wealth while in power is permissible for one reason and under two conditions.
The reason — and it’s an unspoken one — is that everyone knows corruption “greases” or, if you prefer, “lubricates” the system. Corruption makes the system fluid and effective, unbothered by utopian hopes regarding justice or its lack thereof. In any case, Mexico has never had a monopoly on corruption. Remember, if you will, Operation “Clean Hands” in Italy, the Banesto and Matesa scandals in Spain, the alleged corruption of Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Germany, or the virginal Margaret Thatcher’s cronies in England, to say nothing of corporate corruption in the United States — the Enron affair, followed by WorldCom, and then Halliburton, etc., all of which may not have exposed President Bush (Junior, a totally clueless man, a ventriloquist’s dummy), but certainly exposed his inner circle and its links to the world of high finance and oil. .
Need I go on? The difference with Mexico is that, while in Europe or in the United States these things are punished, in Latin America they’re either rewarded or ignored. Let me give you another classic example, my dear friend and president. Let’s suppose that Mr. X is corrupt and he’s caught in the act. Is it wise to punish him for it? What should come first, justice or convenience?
A political system, whatever it is, must create its own taboos to protect the privileged and, more importantly, to protect society itself. Just as there’s no such thing as politics without villains, there’s no such thing as a society without demons. Sometimes the sins of the state must be either tolerated or disguised, not so much in order to protect the state as to protect society from its own diabolical powers.