September 16 For this I pass a very good article I received by mail. As I understand it from the renowned Mexican academic and journalist Denise Dresser. Do not stop reading it and wondering, "Am I the type of citizen that my country needs?"
Greetings.
Call to speak ill of Mexico
DENISE DRESSER
And in the dark times will there be singing? Yes
There will sing the dark.
- Bertolt Brecht
few days ago, President Felipe Calderon criticized critics and called to speak well of Mexico: "To speak well of Mexico, Mexico has the advantages ... is the way to build precisely the country's future." And from there, following their own urge, went to welcome because the rate of homicides per 100 thousand inhabitants is lower here than in Colombia, Brazil, El Salvador and New Orleans. Mexico's advantages become clear when we decide to speak good of the country, he said.
write now to ask-reader or reader-to do the exact opposite of what the President demands. I write now to remind you that stoicism, resignation, complicity, silence, and the passivity of many explain why a country as majestic as Mexico has been as badly governed. It is the duty of every citizen, as pointed Günter Grass, living with his mouth open. Speak well of the rivers clear and transparent, but to speak ill of the opaque political and cheats, speak well of the standing trees and lush but speak ill of the twisted and corrupted institutions, speak well of the country but speak evil of those who have pocketed .
The job of being a good citizen of the commitment to call things by their name. To discover the truth but there are so many bent on hide. To tell the corrupt who have been, to tell you should leave the abusive of being, to tell those who have plundered the country who have no right to continue doing so, to look to Mexico with the honesty you need, to show that we are better than our politicians and we have the government we deserve. To live permanently anchored in outrage, criticizing, suggesting, shaking. To raise the measuring stick. To become the author of a language that tries to tell the truth to power. Because there are few things worse-as Martin Luther King warned that the appalling silence of good people. A citizen needs to understand that the higher intellectual obligation to pay tribute to your country through criticism.
Now, being a good citizen in Mexico is not an easy task. Implies tolerate insults of those who will require that you pass the high, when you insist on stand there. Implies resist teasing those around you when you admit that you pay taxes, because they consider a moral obligation. Often leads to the feeling of despair at the omnipresent power of the media, gerontocracy union, employers resistant to change, determined to protect their privileges.
Yet I think there is great value in the spirit of ongoing and constructive opposition versus the easy accommodation. There is something intellectually and morally powerful dissent from the status quo and lead the struggle for representation voiceless in their own country. As noted by the writer JM Coetzee, when some men suffer unjustly, is the fate of those who witness their suffering to suffer the humiliation of the witness. Thus it becomes imperative to criticize corruption, defend the weak, challenge imperfect or oppressive authority. Thus it becomes essential to continue denouncing the houses of Arturo Montiel and false passports to Raul Salinas de Gortari and the lies of Mario Marín, and Carlos Romero Deschamps abuse scandal and the Green Party and the dead children from the nursery ABC and the five million more poor people.
is not playing the role of complaining and whining or erected Cassandra in that nobody wants to hear. This is not conducting a routine review, monochromatic, predictable. More like a good citizen seeks to keep aspirations alive the eternal truth and justice in a political system that makes fun of them. He knows that his role should be a pointed, sharp, questioning. Knows that corresponds to the tough questions, to confront orthodoxy, dogma face. It knows it must be assumed as one whose purpose is to represent the people and causes that many would rather ignore. He knows that all human beings have a right to expect certain standards of decent behavior on the part of government. And know that the violation of those standards should be detected and reported: speaking, writing, participating, diagnosing a problem or an NGO founded to deal with it.
Being a good citizen in Mexico is a vocation that requires commitment and courage. Is having the courage to believe in something deeply and be prepared to convince others about it. It is an ongoing challenge of half-truths, mediocrity, political correctness, mendacity. Is to resist co-optation. It's living and producing small earthquakes and shaking shocks. Living generating discomfort. Living in constant alert. Living without guard down. Life altering, millimeter after millimeter, the perception of reality in order to change it. Living, as suggested by George Orwell, telling others what you do not want to hear.
Who endorses the office of dissent are not looking for material progress, of personal advancement or a close relationship with a deputy or a delegate or a mayor or a Secretary of State or a President. They live in this place inhabited by those who understand that no power is too great to be criticized. The craft of being uncomfortable does not bring privileges or recognition, or prizes, or honors. You become the person that nobody really knows whether it should be invited, or employee of a magazine to which we cut advertising.
But the critical citizen must possess a great capacity to resist conventional images, the official narratives, justifications powerful television or circulated by Presidents cheerleaders. The task that touches touches-you-just to expose the alternative versions and unearth the forgotten. It is not an easy task because it involves standing always on the side of those who have no one to represent them, writes Edward Said. And not romantic idealism, but by the commitment to join the rescue team of a country hijacked by governors venal and corrupt union leaders and rapacious monopolist. Although the voice of the critic is a lonely, acquires resonance to the extent that is able to articulate the reality of a movement or aspirations of a group. It is a voice that reminds us what is written on the tomb of Sigmund Freud in Vienna, "the voice of reason is small but very persistent."
Living well has a unique advantage: freedom. The sheer pleasure of thinking for oneself. That leads you to see things not just as they are but by what came to be that way. When you take on critical thinking, do not perceive reality as a given, immutable, unchanging, but as a contingent situation, the result of human decisions. The country's crisis becomes something that can be reversed, which can be altered through decisive action and intense public debate. Criticism becomes a way to provide hope for the country as possible. Speak ill of Mexico becomes a way of sucking the country better.
This is a vital position is extremely useful but unorthodox in a changing but very slowly due to the complicity of its inhabitants and their rulers. Because there are so many who start from the premise that "this is Mexico." As parts of inevitability. As parties to the agreement. Octavio Paz put it well: "If we are not all stoic and impassive, like Juárez and Cuauhtémoc, at least try to be resigned, and patients suffered. The resignation is one of our popular virtues. More than the brightness of our victories we moved our fortitude in the face of adversity. "There is our conformity with corruption when it is shared. Our tendency to compare ourselves down and congratulate ourselves, as does Felipe Calderón, because at least Mexico is not as violent as the city of New Orleans.
Given this tendency to conformity, I invite you to speak ill of Mexico. A part of citizens who refuse to accept the shared logic of "at least". A fully exercising the craft of critical citizenship. Those who raise a mirror for a country to see itself as it is. To those who say "no." Those who resist the arbitrary use of authority. To those who assume the challenge of free intelligence. To those who think differently. To those who say that the emperor is naked. Those who are involved in causes and issues and movements larger than themselves. To those who in times of great ethical dilemmas not remain neutral. Those who refuse to be spectators of injustice or stupidity. To those who criticize to Mexico because they are tired of what Carlos Pellicer called "the splendor absent." Those who sing in the dark because it is the only way to illuminate.
