Make Us Good Again

            It was Ignacio Allende's birthday a couple of days ago, and his home town, San Miguel de Allende "celebrated" the day with bands (those off-key military drum and bugle bands that thankfully exist only in Mexico). There was a big parade, military displays, and several fly-overs of military plane trainers. Allende, with Father Miguel Hidalgo and two others, were the authors, in September, 1810, of Mexico's revolt against Spain -- a revolution that took over a decade to complete. As is so often the case in Mexican history, heroism in a good cause precedes tragedy by only a few steps. Allende, Hidalgo, and the two others were caught (in different locations) and killed before firing squads, after which their heads were cut off and displayed for over four years on the four corners of the armory in Guanajuato. By 1821, the revolution was a success, but in Mexico success always seems to be blended with tragedy and, ironically, with defeat as well. Despite the democratic impulses and constitutional initiatives of Benito Juarez, Mexico's first native president, later in the 19th century, Mexico suffered from the internal forces of class, wealth and corruption versus the people. Externally, it encountered an aggressive U. S. under President Polk, which contrived a war against Mexico, defeated Mexico, and under the guise of "purchasing" New Mexico and Arizona and part of California, essentially stole the northern properties of that country. I have recently been given a red hat a la Trump with the message on top:  "Make America Mexico Again." The losses to the U.S. are never forgotten here.

            The worst was not over for Mexico. In 1910, Mexicans were again compelled to revolt against a corrupt Porforio Diaz government, and had to suffer U. S. meddling once again before establishing a democratic and more equalitarian nation. But the history of Mexico continues to be one of struggle -- a struggle against profound poverty, a struggle against a newly capricious U. S., a struggle for better health care (they have universal health care, at least, which is more than the U. S. can claim), and a struggle for better education.

            Tragedy and struggle are ubiquitous in this country. As the bands and the military organized to march in celebration of Allende's birthday, a protest of some 200 or so men, women, and children temporarily blocked their path, surrounded by a large and hostile police force. The protest had to do with an incident this last week just outside of San Miguel. Reports have it that the police were attempting to apprehend a fleeing criminal. They entered a compound and apparently engaged in a gun battle with someone. After the shoot-out, three children were found dead in the compound. Protesters suspect the police were somehow involved in the killings, but that was not the official version of events. Instead, the police arrested the father for the killings, after his wife accused him of the killings (she has since recanted that accusation). He now grieves in jail. Who knows if we will ever know the truth about this incident? But the double tragedy of this case is emblematic of the struggles this country always seems to suffer.

            What is the point I am trying to establish here? I suppose some might simply say that we should all be thankful that we have not had to live Mexico's history or through its present problems. I would contend, however, that we North Americans -- especially Americans -- have much to learn from the interrelationships of struggle, tragedy, and the humility that follows, with which so many Mexicans have lived over time.

            After the mid-twentieth century, we North Americans unconsciously assumed that a kind of inevitable social and economic progress would continue forever. Americans basked in the victories of WWII, and the positive international order they helped to create after the war. Americans also assumed even more unconsciously that the rationalism of the 18th-century Enlightenment, which they embraced in the American Revolution and through the establishment of the U. S. Constitution, would somehow continue forward as America's legacy to the world. And, North Americans generally assumed that the vast middle class created for a brief time in the mid to late 20th century would also last forever.

            All of these formerly solid foundations seem lost forever or appear badly crippled. Democracy still exists, in name, but money now controls politics almost completely, and instead of economic prosperity for people, the global economy, a fictive monster, simply feeds itself.

            What resources are left? A compelling desire for freedom and equality remains, but it is based more on a passive "freedom from" than an active "freedom for," while equality before the law has narrowed its focus to matters of race and sex and identity rather than matters of economic equality.

            In some ways, therefore, we might look at our future as a tabula rasa. Enlightenment principles are hard to re-establish (although they must be in relation to Climate Change, or what June now calls, World Wide Death). For Americans, popular mythologies need to put to rest as well. Americans must abandon the myth of exceptionalism. They must stop talking in terms of being the "leader of the free world." In short, they must begin to recognize the myriad of tragedies that they have encountered, especially since Vietnam. They need to accept the grief that the recent federal election has imposed upon them. Suffering and struggle must be seen as part of the American experience as it always has been in the Mexican experience. Americans must get out of the slumber of being politically ignorant and culturally arrogant. They need to become attentive and engaged on a continuing basis. Casual assumptions about a prosperous and free future need to be abandoned.

            The U. S. and Canada are not Mexico but without vigorous political engagement, economic inequality will continue to rise, plutocracy will increase, education (perhaps the most important advantage to Americans and Canadians) will decline badly, and our values will continue to be eroded. The answer, at least for me, is to be more attentive in all ways, not just in politics but in charity and thought and deed. It is to be outraged, and to say so loudly to all who will listen and to those who at first will not listen, when outrage is the proper response to events. For all of their setbacks and through all of the repressions they suffer either directly or indirectly, many Mexicans do not hesitate to express outrage. And, it is to be loving, kind and caring whenever it is necessary and however we can. These are my New Year's resolutions, and they will be hard to maintain, but if, in the long history of Mexico, Mexicans have continued to strive, I can at least make my own personal effort.