The story is well known: at Christmas 1170, in his castle in Normandy, King Henry II, furious at the excommunications issued by Archbishop Thomas Becket against several bishops loyal to him, exclaimed: “Is there no one who can help me?” Free from this annoying priest? Upon hearing this, four noblemen traveled to Canterbury and assassinated Becket. When the scandal broke, the king insisted that he had never given the order, that it had all been a misunderstanding.
A similar staging of the same story is now taking place in Mexico. From the National Palace, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (who if he is not an absolute power seems to aspire to be), furious against his critics (almost all journalists, writers, intellectuals), commonly issues against them, with first and last names, expressions that could be “misinterpreted”. But he hasn’t done it once: he’s done it countless times, before millions of people.
The work is called “La mañanera”, which premiered on December 3, 2018. Every morning from 7 to 10 am, five days a week, the president simulates a press conference in which few independent journalists are admitted and rarely sometimes they are allowed to speak. As for the spokesman for the presidency, his main job is to prepare the questions and distribute them among the unconditional media. Who speaks is the president.
One of AMLO’s specialties is the attack to man. Five years ago, the writer Gabriel Zaid compiled a list of AMLO’s insults against anyone he despises or seeks to discredit. By then the list reached eighty, but now there must be many more.
López Obrador also commits defamation and slander. Anyone who criticizes him is part of a conspiracy that seeks to overthrow him. Everyone who criticizes him is corrupt who is only moved by material interest, has ill-gotten money or aspires to have it. The president encourages lynching, such as when he refers to his critics as “enemies of the people” and displays his personal data (tax documents, properties, photographs, videos) to reveal his economic status, whose origin he presents as something necessarily dark, unspeakable.
In the group of critics that he considers “enemies”, I have been one of the most attacked. He to date he has quoted me 298 times with insults, slander and defamation. Although AMLO is well aware of my criticism of each of the Mexican governments from 1970 to the present (amply documented in books, essays, articles, videos), he has accused me of having sold out to those governments and now conspiring to restore them.
López Obrador’s resentment stems from the publication of my essay “El mesías tropical” a month before the 2006 election (which he lost by a 0.58% margin). He has accused me of “driving the strategy” to defeat him; to “ask Biden to intervene to scold him” and thus favor the appointment of a US ambassador (he suggested it be myself) who plots a coup and assassinates him; of “wanting people to be suppressed”; of doing “enormous damage to Mexico.” He not long ago urged the public to help him find out where I live in order to showcase that investigation in the media.
The president maintains that in his attacks he is only exercising his legitimate right to freedom of expression. Mexican jurisprudence provides that public figures are subject to greater scrutiny than private citizens. That scrutiny can be harsh, aggressive, even offensive. And the threshold of tolerance before him must be directly proportional to his relevance in public life. For that reason, as public figures, all of us annoying critics of López Obrador are subject to that kind of treatment.
But the law is made to protect free speech, not for the government to stifle. AMLO attacks his critics personally from the headquarters of the Executive Power, and uses public resources to do so. Their messages and attacks are fully disseminated on television and the official media, which in turn multiply exponentially on social networks. The persecution exercised by AMLO seeks to inhibit freedom.
Are there legal ways to deal with it? In theory, yes. In practice, no. One of the hallmarks of the Mexican Constitution is the so-called Juicio de Amparo, which protects individuals against abuses of government authority. Appealing to this figure, the aggrieved could claim the affectation of various human rights protected by the Constitution, such as the right to due process and judicial guarantees, the presumption of innocence, the right to privacy or private life, honor or reputation , to freedom of expression, the right to disseminate ideas, the right of reply. We could even expect reparation for the moral damage that has been inflicted on us.
But the president does not respect the protections.
The aggrieved could go to the National Human Rights Commission in Mexico and then appeal, where appropriate, to international instances that could generate some form of protection. But in practice the Mexican CNDH is entirely subservient to the government. And even if an international organization issued a favorable opinion, the president would not abide by it either.
In full view of the world, AMLO seeks to destroy Mexico’s electoral system and set us on the familiar path of a one-party, one-man state. To put an end to democracy, freedom is hindered. We annoying critics are determined to point it out.
López Obrador said that watching the newscast by journalist Ciro Gómez Leyva could produce “a tumor in the brain” (December 14, 2022). The next day Gómez Leyva suffered an attack. The intellectual authors of the attack have not been discovered and, in all probability, never will be. The president declared that “it could have been a ‘self-attack’, not because he fabricated it, but because someone did it to affect us…”.
Perhaps it is only a matter of time before one of López Obrador’s critics is assassinated. At that point, the president will say that it was a plot to overthrow him or, like Henry II, that it was just “a misunderstanding.” ~
Published in The Washington Post11/IV/23.
