the human face

Polycrisis and polycriticism, as the beloved philosopher (Tuti Pereira) liked to call it. “A cascade of crises (…) that threaten the fulfillment of the objectives of sustainable development”, as pointed out by the executive secretary of ECLAC, José Manuel Salazar, when presenting at the UNAM the most recent report of the Commission “Towards the transformation of the development model in Latin America and the Caribbean: production, inclusion and sustainability” (2022). But now more: foolishness and myopia of the powers; rampant egoism when it comes to addressing profiles and basic coordinates of the social issue; seas of lack of protection of entire communities, rivers of tears and blood. And, these days, a lot of sweat without an emulator of Churchill appearing to give a sense of history and hope to what seen from the front is only a tragedy.

Our country has encountered the most painful expressions of human despair, always ready to translate into pain for the thousands and millions of migrants who only seek to get away from the criminal horror and terror imposed by hunger and cold. Homeless, with just a few crumbs, we see images that belie the discourses of “immaculate” progress: the march from Tapachula of thousands of people, of emigrants who “do not seek or want to challenge the president” and his government, only demand ears for their message and genuine willingness of power to establish an exchange, an elementary dialogue, without which there can be no deliberation that offers passable routes to an already hellish circumstance, aggravated by criminal groups throughout the national territory.

There are thousands, there is talk of more than four thousand, but there may be many more, who testify to the cynicism and nakedness of powers corrupted and possessed by selfishness and the greed for quick and easy profits. Humans reject our pretended discernment and presumptuous rationality when we deny immediate and obvious evidence, and choose to “not look” at what bothers us. However, whether we recognize it or not, those contingents that march without ceasing through the roads of Mexico are showing us the urgency of restoring among ourselves the essential nucleus of rationality and compassion that governs reflexes and feelings while demanding that the qualities and attributes that distinguish us from the rest of the species and make us singular, are put into play to make our understandings, mediated by politics, solidary.

Think and act in an emergency, with the greatest possible rigor; never again to the bloody episodes of Ciudad Juárez, San Luis Potosí, San Fernando…

Our position in the face of international migration, in which our countrymen form centuries-old ranks, is a shame, an ignominy that will not be washed away with scapegoats. Much less with foolish manipulations of the facts and their aftermath.

We urgently need to build an elementary, political and moral coherence. Of the authorities, firm and clear attitudes; from all of us, a sustained claim that can begin to (re) weave a supportive and committed policy.

Faced with embarrassment, it is not possible to claim a “cold” distance that can easily become defiance or (self) victimization. Those millions of people, anonymous marchers who, accompanied by children and wives, the elderly and the disabled, throw our ancestral failures in our faces: those that draw our inequalities and plunder; those that outline a helpless labor situation, an abandoned health, a cornered education.

The migrant caravans have exposed our serious inconsistencies, the depth of the moral and political crisis that afflicts the State: bureaucratic negligence; the fragility of all political forces to face a situation that clearly overwhelms them. The excessiveness of the news media that turn suffering into cynical fun.

Emigration should be a reason to rethink the urgent need for an effective reform of the State, to make it a social State and committed to justice. What is not.

2023-04-27 09:13:36


#human #face