Let me tell you something, Nicolás. There is nothing I want more than to be the companion of a politician whose personal passions don’t concern me. I can save you from the perils of love. With me you don’t have to pretend, like you had to with your Mexican Dulcinea, María del Rosario Galván.
It’s difficult to assume power knowing that it’s impossible to exercise it in a calm and objective fashion. Power is always subject to passion, pleasure, pain, love, fear. You know, I’m enormously impressed by the amount of knowledge and experience you’ve managed to acquire, coming from where you come from. No wonder you’re always quoting those Greek philosophers. “Power is a slave to everything else.” (Protagoras? Nice name. If you and I ever had a baby. .) But I live for my own destiny, and for the years I have left. I have no dynastic pretensions like your friend “Dark Hand” Vidales and his Nine Evil Sons. I can’t wait to see how you settle things with him! But as for me. . I don’t have to subject myself to the terrors of marital intimacy. I don’t need a man. I’d lose my independence. I’d squash you, don’t you see? Protagoras Valdivia Tardegarda? Or just plain old Protagoras Lavat? They could be names from a Joaquín Pardavé film comedy. Now there’s a name: Pardavé. No! Nicolás Laxativa!
With me you won’t run that risk. I’ll protect you from all the snares, Nicolás. I’ll protect you from others and I’ll protect you from yourself.
I like the cold, efficient, practiced way you make love to me. They say all young women are beautiful. Not me. I think I’ve learned to make up for my lack of beauty with talent, and to make my personality more attractive than my ugliness. I want them to envy my personality, not my face.
And you, handsome? Who’s really handsome when the time comes to uncover his soul and confront his truth, his secret, his transgression?
How fortunate that you and I have no intimacy to remember. We have no shared moments of laughter, confiding, cuddles. None of that nonsense. What we have is politics.
What we have is the determination to keep you in power for longer than the three years granted by law. Three years. That should be enough time, if we play our cards right, to amend the constitution and allow for re-election. Enough time if we keep up the legalistic energy and practical flexibility. If we choose the right sacrificial victims— Galván and Herrera (I don’t know if that sounds like a trademark or a comic strip). If we maintain the facade of seriousness and credibility. Proceed with caution, Nicolás. Remember that folly has destroyed more Latin American governments than ineptitude or crime.
A Mexican witch discovering the bones of a disappeared congressman in her garden, except that they turned out to be the bones of her grandfather, or something like that. (It was a long time ago.)
An Argentinian witch making decisions for a cabaret dancer who rose to the presidency. (That was a thousand years ago.)
Argentinian, Brazilian, Peruvian presidents publicly airing their marital conflicts.
An Ecuadoran president dancing to rock music and hula-hooping in public around the male member of a certain gringo who’d been castrated by the voracious Judith of Quito.
All this against the very real backdrop of widespread corruption, international loans that end up in Swiss bank accounts, intimidation campaigns, torture, all those Vladimiros and their vladi-videos. . How is Latin America ever going to be respectable? How can Latin America avoid derision, scandal, condemnation, humiliation?
With discretion, Mr. President. With liberty and democracy. With the horizon open to opportunity. In the great words of the greatest political genius of the modern age, Bonaparte: “Let the path be open to talent.”
A person is allowed to have a shady background. If you’d like some consolation after reading this rather unconsoling letter written by a friend who always finds consolation in the truth, here are two more police records for your perusal.
SCHICKELGRUBER, ADOLF, known as Hitler. Born in Braunau, Austria, 1889. Corporal in Great War. Vagrant on streets of Vienna. Taken in by Shelter for the Homeless. Joins extreme right-wing organization. Gains followers with impassioned anti-Jewish and anti-Marxist rhetoric. Participates in beer-hall putsch, Munich, 1923. Tried for treason and condemned to two years at Landsberg Prison, where he writes Mein Kampf. Obsessed with Aryan racial superiority and elimination of Jewish parasites. DJUGASHVILI IOSIV VISSIARONOVICH, known as Stalin, Koba, Soso. Born in Gori, Georgia, 1879. Imprisoned Irkutsk, 1903, Volgoda Camp, 1908. Assault on State Bank, Tiflis, 1907. Gives anti-Semitic speeches. Calls Jews “circumcised Judases.”
I’ll spare you the sordid details of the more advanced careers of these two tyrants. Suffice it to say that their backgrounds were not only humble, but criminal, yet this wasn’t an obstacle to their ascent. All they had to do was fabricate new personalities. How was a bum called Schickelgruber going to dominate Germany and the rest of the world? How was a bank robber called Koba going to dominate Russia and the rest of the world? How was a little Catalan thug called Nico Lavat going to become president of Mexico?
Yes, a person is allowed to have a shady background. The presidential sash is like detergent. It cleans and makes everything gleam. The Eagle’s Throne elevates, true, but “nobody can sit higher than their own ass,” as they say. You’re no worse than Menem or Fujimori. You know what depths Hitler and Stalin emerged from, and they had more power than you’ve ever dreamed of, Mr. President. Much more.
But they were careful to eliminate those who paved their way. Hitler’s co-conspirators in the Munich putsch. Stalin’s communist comrades after the death of Lenin and despite Lenin’s warnings (“Comrade Stalin has unlimited power at his disposal and I’m not sure he will exercise it well”). Now do you see why I’ll never take a shower in your bathroom?
Very well. Fiddlesticks, as our grandmothers would say. Let’s bury the hatchet, Mr. President. The simple truth is that politics is a barbarian feast. Every Aztec sinks a dagger in the chest of his Tlaxcaltecan neighbor and vice versa. And there we are, you and I, sitting high up above the banquet, gazing down as our tribes of aboriginal Attilas beat one another to death. You and I, my dear Nicolás, apostles of restraint and mediation.
Restraint, Nicolás. If you want to gain an enemy, show him that you’re sharper than he.
Discretion, Nicolás. Never allow your unavoidable acts of illegal authority to become public.
Modesty, Nicolás. Let us only be satisfied with the best.
Power is a terrible sum of desires and repressions, offenses and defenses, moments lost and won. We bear the secret arithmetic of our accounts. And I must repeat: We cannot allow the things that should remain secret to become public knowledge. Even if the secret is a relative one. It’s stupid to think that something that’s happening to one person isn’t happening to anyone else. Every single thing that happens is happening at the same time to millions of other people. Never forget that. Protect the secret. But remember our strength. We’re all humans, and we’re all the same. Our presidents and our cabinet secretaries often forget this fact. But we’re politicians because we’re not the same as everyone else. What wretched consolation, I know! And what an irritating paradox!
Inevitably, you’ll arouse envy. Everyone wants to be close to the president because everyone wants to enjoy his privileges. Now we’ll have to act alone, my dear. Turn everything to our advantage. But careful when it comes to our weaknesses. I say this as a woman. Women hate one another, you know that, and they’re very good at learning to hide their hatred. But men love one another and learn to disguise their affection. Our virtues are our weaknesses, in both cases.