The Redemption Committee

Morena is at that perennial focus of the left wing polemicist’s pen – a critical juncture – its leadership apparently set on replicating and deepening the error South Africa’s tripartite alliance (ANC, SACP, COSATU) made when it set-up the Truth & Reconciliation Committee following apartheid.

What one sees now is Morena in government and as a party presenting itself as The Redemption Committee, cautiously seeking historical Truth when it’s safely distant enough (‘68, the Dirty War, narrow areas of organized crime group activities that the Americans feel inclined to prosecute), but hesitant to pursue Justice: neither with the military, not from the criminals of the business class who still profit from the privatizations of the past 40 years and now can call ad hoc meetings at the National Palace, certainly not from government figures of the neoliberal period, nor the former PRIAN politicians who have found candidacies and positions in Morena.

It’s entirely true the Fourth Transformation is targeted by US imperialism, bedeviled by the legacy of neoliberal plunder and forcible underdevelopment, but very little of these factors necessitate Morena welcoming into the party and movement so many internal enemies: they certainly don’t justify a government secretary paying half the monthly wage of a Mexican worker to attend a far-right gala in Polanco honouring the US ambassador, to listen to not-so-veiled threats telling Mexico to stay in line or else.

The proper response at this juncture would be for Morena to heal thyself (the admissions committee announced by Morena’s National Council this weekend is a good step, although by not applying it retroactively it significantly rewards the early-bird opportunists*), and then immediately establish a National Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Committee, where the truth of the crimes of the last 40+ years are revealed, where criminals would meet justice, and only then, advance on a path of reconciliation.

The Fourth Transformation governments have excelled when they focus on the material concerns of the working population of the country: raising the minimum wage, providing financial help to the poor, students, the elderly, small producers, food sovereignty; they have stumbled when they indulge themselves in a mushy-headed pseudo-Christian doctrine of pluralistic redemption, evident in pious sermons about second chances, cynically deployed to paper over dark political pacts with former PRI, PRD and PAN politicians. It would more honest to outright sell indulgences. (Can anyone honestly explain what PVEM is or why it exists without recourse to political clans and affiliated businesses?)

No Morena leader ever explained why a fiscally incompetent, probable gangster and right winger like Rubalcava, with no technocratic experience in public transit whatsoever, was handed the Mexico City Subway as a personal fiefdom, preferring to speak of second-chances, but the analysts and figures in the Fourth Transformation mediasphere are at least willing to say “politics is what it is,” and expound on the virtues of pragmatism… By which they mean to say they have engaged in corruption. (Now if only Rubalcava’s rumoured vote-buying pyramid scheme had actually delivered the Mexico City borough of Benito Juarez to Morena! PAN, the bluest expression of the real estate cartel remains in control today.)

Morena talking-head (and now co-head of Morena’s new membership evaluation commission) Epigmenio Ibarra’s idea that what has bedeviled Latin America’s left from political success is an unwillingness to open its doors to figures from other political tendencies and forces strikes one as bizarre historical illiteracy when Mexico is full of half of Correismo seeking exile from political persecution in Ecuador after Lenin Moreno handed over the country to US imperialism; when it has not been yet a decade since Dilma Roussef’s Vice President Michel Temer took power in the coup in Brazil, when El Salvador President Bukele (who came to politics via his capitalist father’s entry into the FMLN) has become the preferred contractor for US imperialism’s offshore concentration camps…

Pious sermons can be tolerated by the people in common struggle, but when Morena politicians with substantive office budgets and lengthy summer holidays who drag their heels on implementing a 40 hour work week make them, or newly minted party Presidents who’ve given themselves raises deploy them on their well-financed but poorly viewed podcasts, people begin to grumble. Bad-faith grumblings of the Parliamentary cretin in response to any criticism rankle. When the same excuses that were used by Calderon regarding his relationship with Garcia Luna are deployed today to defend another politicians’ ignorance of his Secretary of Security, foundations are weakened: building a third floor becomes less likely.

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A degeneration by the Fourth Transformation is not written in stone: President Sheinbaum’s very high approval ratings and a supermajority in both legislatures gives the executive significant leeway, there is a public appetite for a Plan Mexico with a strong public character and further nationalizations, almost everyone agrees on the need to diversify international trade partners, Paco Ignacio Taibo II seems keenly aware of how the flanks have been opened and what must be done (and certainly the militancy does), the INFP remains a potentially powerful site of political education to deliver on the promises of a revolution of consciences, and it’s entirely possible the new judiciary which arrives in September can both rid the country of the scourge of the pay-to-escape amparo system of injustice, but strengthening the Fourth Transformation and the country it governs requires Morena engage in criticism and self-criticism while advancing the popular program that rightfully won so many adherents. Or perhaps Morena will, like the PRD before it (and even to an extent, the PRI) be left behind by the actual movement of Mexican working people, who – not content to let their expectations die in their own disappointment and the cynical intrigues of politicians – will move forward with a new political instrument.

*Closing the door on future crooks and opportunists while refusing to look at current crooks and opportunists just reinforces an existing monopoly position.