Naming evil to resist it | Article

Mario Luis Fuentes

In order to engage in a heartfelt and genuinely honest dialogue, it is necessary to be able to formulate sound arguments that are supported by relevant evidence and support; but much more is required of great humility and a calling to listen. The best interlocutors are almost always not only those who use didactic arguments, but, above all, those who have the ability to hear and understand what they say.

In Mexican politics, dialogue is interrupted almost everywhere. What deprives is an insult, a denunciation, a disqualification, a light adjective, and a refusal to listen to what others have to say. Perhaps most worryingly, the refusal to listen starts with the chief executive, who, as the “born head” of the Mexican state, should set the tone for the vocation and democratic virtue of dialogue.

In that sense, what happened in the week that ended with the Chief Executive’s refusal to talk about the five young people missing in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco, seems like a bad metaphor. The President did not want to listen to these questions, nor those that the members of the LeBaron family wanted to ask him at that time, nor did he want to listen to mothers and fathers of families who are looking for medicines for their daughters and sons; and seeking mothers or any group or collective that does not agree with their vision of the country.

We are confronted with a dangerous context of the widespread trivialization of evil and violence that is seen everywhere. And it is that it is impossible to speak differently about what is happening on the streets of the country and it is based on horrific cases such as the murder of Milagros Montserrat on the streets of Leon; or dismembered bodies found in refrigerators in Veracruz; or confrontations that escalated into real drone bombings in Michoacán, and it builds up and continues.

Everything circulates on social media; To paraphrase Jean Baudrillard’s title, everything confronts us with the transparency of evil: that mode of manifestation of violence in which the goal is twofold: on the one hand, to inflict as much physical and psychological suffering on the victims as possible; and on the other hand, to intimidate, threaten and frighten the audience, who remain undaunted, but at the same time in a kind of numbness in the face of daily sadism.

For this reason, the Performer’s position is confusing: his reaction to criticism for refusing to listen is to position himself as a victim; and this is the greatest possible triviality. Because he immediately resorts to the argumentative error of his imaginary moral superiority. “He’s not the one”; “He is morally superior to the rest of the country”and consequently, victims of violence fade into the background, because it is important to take care of them “primordial good essence”.

The problem with which this attitude poses us, apart from the interested critique associated with electoral logic, is that he represents the state; and by behaving in this way, the message is sent that, at best, the Mexican state is reduced to a kind of “Responsive Viewer”which testifies to the shameful violence committed daily in the streets, but which is not able to guarantee peace and security to its citizens.

Baudrillard states in the quoted text: “We are so afraid of Evil that we stuff ourselves with euphemisms so as not to designate the Other, misfortune, irremovable”. But the fact is, the author warns, that we are in renunciate societies, in which the opposite is true. The philosopher says: “We have become very weak in satanic, ironic, contentious, antagonistic energy; we have become fanatically soft societies or soft fanatics.”.

The fascination with watching videos showing beatings, mutilations or murders contains a level of perversity that is inversely proportional to the amount of cruelty that the perpetrators show towards the victims, which we must not forget that they are people, people of flesh and blood; and for that reason it is revolting that more and more often in this administration, and in state and municipal governments of every stripe, the frivolous refrain is repeated that “It’s gang litigation”; what material are they made of “calculations between criminals”; as if it were a softening, and not an aggravation, of the cruelty and violence that are spreading in society.

The philosopher Maria Zambrano warned with great wisdom: “Resentment is born from the fact that it is impossible, always works, to be heard”. That is why it is so serious that in politics the most elementary possibility is denied that the powers that be will listen to the victims. Because silence is imposed every time; Every time the National Palace turns away from the cries of the desperate, seeds of malice are sown that are unlikely to be reaped in the future.

The shadow of the ominous runs across Mexico from end to end; but this is not included in the criticism of the president. Thinking it this way is a big deal. Sinister in every deadly bullet; in each vehicle used for boarding and taking people out; what is ominous is the direct connection that criminal groups make to society through videos that seep and spread like flames at a gas station and send the message that no one is safe and that criminals can act in front of the silent gaze of those who formally exercises political power.

It is imperative that the President, apart from the specific issue, be willing to listen; learn from others; to practice the humility he preaches and to acknowledge that we are in the midst of a dark, extremely critical moment in which the perpetrators have decided to take a few steps forward and show us all that they are ready to use the most brutal violence. , and challenge the state as the sole owner of a monopoly on violence.

PUED-UNAM researcher