Progressivism, Social Mobilizations, and the World Cup

Progressivism,Social mobilizations, and the World Cup

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

The recent social upheaval that shook Mexico during the World Cup, characterized by a choreography of protests that simultaneously challenged the neoliberal pension system, drug-related violence, patriarchy, global capitalism, and, stridently, Zionism, was not an anomaly in our political history, but rather the reactivation of its most archaic codes. The bewilderment sown by the deliberate absence of the President of the Republic from the opening ceremony, coupled with street mobilizations where genuine demands were diluted by provocations sponsored by the progressive regime itself, revealed a subtle strategy. Far from being an ungovernable explosion, the staging of a Mexico transformed into ungovernable chaos and a living monument to resistance against FIFA and the North American axis operates as a calculated geopolitical retreat mechanism. This dynamic, which draws directly from the traditions of Echeverría and Cárdenas embedded in the very fabric of the Mexican left, uses mobilization not to liberate, but to discipline. Beneath the masquerade of emancipatory and decolonial rhetoric, what truly persists and consolidates is the refined method of internal control that anthropologist Claudio Lomnitz termed antisemitism without Jews and, sometimes, without antisemites.

To unravel this cultural labyrinth, it is imperative to understand that Judeophobia in the Ibero-American context does not conform to the parameters of European biological racism, but rather functions as a sociopolitical technology inherited directly from the tribunals of the Holy Inquisition. In the mental architecture of the Habsburg Model, theorized by Howard Wiarda and Loris Zanatta, society is conceived as an organic, unanimous, and corporate body that must be preserved from any external contamination. In this theological-political matrix of national Catholicism, the Jew ceases to be a demographic or flesh-and-blood reality, becoming instead a metaphorical abstraction: the absolute symbol of dissent, the bearer of the virus of modernity, free trade, empirical science, and democratic individualism.

Historically, as Daniela Gleizer and Pablo Yankelevich document in their study of state racism in Mexico, accusations of Judaization or complicity with foreign agendas have served to purge and proscribe internal elements that attempted to break the monopoly of the colonial elites. This occurred with the liberal scientists of the Porfiriato and with the first social reformers; the religious stigma operated as a civil excommunication indispensable for safeguarding the status quo.

In the era of the so-called Fourth Transformation, this inquisitorial apparatus has been secularized and rebranded as anti-Zionist political correctness. When radical factions of the official progressive movement saturate the public sphere claiming that the international financial system, global sports institutions, and North American geopolitics are rigidly controlled by Zionism, they are not conducting a serious materialist or economic analysis, but rather resurrecting the old myth of a synarchic conspiracy. This outlandish cry of aggressive radicalism precisely fulfills the function of what nineteenth-century German sociology termed the socialism of fools: a crude simplification of the contradictions of capital that, instead of questioning the real structures of production and local corruption, personifies oppression in an invisible and absolute enemy.

By channeling social frustration toward this global phantom, the regime shields its own shortcomings and legitimizes the systemic rejection of liberal democracy, institutional capitalism, and economic integration with North America, presenting them as colonial traps set by the enemy.

When artists or opinion leaders of the cultural progressive movement adopt discourses in which Zionism is blamed for all global ills, they often do so from a legitimate empathy with causes like Palestine, but with a profound lack of historical rigor. Lacking nuance, they end up validating narratives that essentialize the Jew as the universal oppressor, unwittingly falling into the same prejudices that the most reactionary right wing has used for centuries.

The ultimate paradox of this phenomenon is that, while proclaiming a break with the neoliberal order, the use of abstract Judeophobia deepens and perpetuates internal colonialism. The Creole elites of Catholic nationalism and the political bureaucracies inherited from the old revolutionary nationalism do not attack the actual members of the Mexican Jewish community, with whom they maintain pragmatic economic alliances, but rather wield the stigma like an axe against anyone who tries to push Mexico toward an open, competitive modernity guided by the rigor of science, the market, or democratic freedom.

State anti-Zionism functions today as the great guardian of stagnation; it is the ideological checkpoint that punishes merit, demonizes institutional dissent, and justifies a hegemonic authoritarianism that returns us to the mental autarky of the viceroyalty. In the end, the folkloric mobilizations surrounding the World Cup and the rhetorical boycott against Western powers were nothing more than a modern-day version of colonial processions, a political charade designed to convince the population that isolation and poverty are mystical virtues in the face of external corruption. As long as the inquisitorial pyre of public discourse continues to burn the promoters of material progress, Mexico will remain trapped in the Habsburg labyrinth, condemned to stagnation by the crushing weight of its own myths.

Mexican migration and social stability

 

Mexican migration and social stability

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero 

Mexican paleoconservatism constitutes an ideological and political current deeply rooted in traditional, nationalist, and religious values, whose historical function has been the defense of a status quo based on social, cultural, and economic hierarchies.

This force, which governs both nostalgic right-wing and populist left-wing movements, operates under a logic of control, centralization, and systematic rejection of enlightened modernity.

Its clearest manifestation is the resistance to transformations that promote inclusion, legal certainty, and merit, preferring instead to preserve traditional power structures that favor local political bosses, clientelism, corporatism, and a veiled pigmentocracy inherited from the colonial caste system.

This current has developed control strategies that bureaucratize and inhibit any attempt at democratization or profound social change.

The persistence of this model is underpinned by a de facto and invisible power where the Catholic hierarchy and certain economic elites act as the articulators of a vision rooted in mysticism and submission.

Under this scheme, even academic spaces and universities, which should be bastions of modernity, often operate as conservative fiefdoms that perpetuate retrograde views of knowledge and shield privileges.

In the political sphere, paleoconservatism uses anti-globalization, chauvinistic, and pro-life rhetoric to mask a rentier colonialism, where the elites manipulate faith and tradition to keep society docile, even justifying poverty as a sign of cultural purity or divine inevitability.

It is at this point that the farce of ideological polarization—which Mario Vargas Llosa categorized as the true idiocy of Latin America—is revealed as a mechanism of controlled demolition.

Contemporary populism uses the rhetoric of sovereignty and cultural resistance to accelerate a process of Argentinization: the deliberate destruction of the productive apparatus and technical institutions to impoverish the country, allowing the Creole and clerical elites to retain absolute control of what remains.

Just as the dictatorship of Francisco Franco represented the culmination of a social degeneration that rejected the Enlightenment to freeze the feudal structure in Spain, Mexican paleoconservatism seeks to anchor society in a perpetual Middle Ages of dependence, guilt, and submission to the strongman or the pulpit.

Faced with this institutional hijacking, the phenomenon of mass emigration to the United States emerges as the disruptive and material factor that can pull Mexico out of its medieval lethargy.

By crossing the border, the Mexican migrant severs the umbilical cord of paternalism and local political bosses to land directly in the dynamism of the American Old West.

This environment, characterized by a harsh but meritocratic liberalism, compels individuals to embrace the values ​​of autonomy, private property, and respect for the law.

The assimilation and emergence of Spanglish and North American Mexican identity do not represent a loss of identity, but rather the birth of a popular republicanism that no longer aligns with the homeland of the criollo (a term referring to someone of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry).

Millions of Mexicans are experiencing in the North the legal and economic modernization that their elites denied them in the South.

Managing this massive migratory phenomenon, in line with the advantages of the trade agreement, demands that political leadership act with the courageous honesty to recognize that Mexico's future is tied to the success of the West and the North American bloc.

Implementing policies of genuine political representation for the diaspora, creating a Secretariat for Migrants, formalizing cross-border employment through technical certification, and transforming consulates into active legal defense agencies are essential steps.

The common people have already decided the course with their feet; now it is up to the State to formalize the pragmatic North Americanization to break, once and for all, the chains of paleoconservative backwardness.

Terminator. Made in PCR

 Terminator. Made in PCR

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

The farce of cultural purity has been the historical anchor that keeps Mexico in a medieval limbo. For generations, the Hispanic and Catholic ideology industry has constructed a narrative of victimization and false pride that, according to Mario Vargas Llosa's scathing diagnosis, constitutes true Latin American idiocy. This rhetorical Matrix, shared by both the folkloric left and the reactionary right, uses polarization to conceal an uncomfortable truth: attachment to the colonial, clerical, and collectivist heritage is not sovereignty, but rather the survival mechanism of a Creole elite that prefers to reign over the ruins of an impoverished country rather than submit to the rules of technical and inclusive modernity. In this scenario of paralysis, while the elites play at ideological simulation, the real Mexico has begun to refound itself from below, crossing the border and embracing an irreversible civilizational mutation.

The migratory phenomenon to the United States is not simply an economic flight, but an existential transmigration. Upon crossing the Rio Grande, Mexicans do not lose their identity; they shed their feudal ties and immerse themselves in the pragmatic liberalism of the American Old West. Thus, Spanglish and Mexican-American identity are born, a popular and bilingual republicanism that no longer fits the molds of the Creole homeland. The millions of compatriots who today speak a mixed language, who demand legal certainty, and who understand the value of individual effort over clerical cronyism, are operating under liberal and meritocratic values. This diaspora represents the great catalyst for a Mexican-American identity that has discovered that material well-being, access to credit, and legal security are preferable to the abstract dignity preached by armchair nationalists. The evidence is compelling, and utilitarian pragmatism doesn't lie: the Mexican-American experience demonstrates that deep integration offers a return on life infinitely superior to ideological isolation.

To understand the magnitude of the opportunity Mexico risks due to its cultural shortcomings, one need only critically examine the global landscape. The contemporary dilemma is not absolute autonomy, but rather choosing a smart subordination that yields dividends for development. Those countries that dared to adopt North American economic and technical security structures, such as South Korea and the Philippines, managed to break the cycle of underdevelopment and become manufacturing and democratic powerhouses. Even intermediate and criticized models like Puerto Rico enjoy living standards and institutional stability that would dwarf the reality of the average Mexican. Attempting to emulate the path of isolation or Third World neutrality is a recipe for collapse. In the midst of a new Cold War, the American train is not an optional choice, but the only escape route before falling into the productive "Argentinization" of Argentina or the predatory extractivism of authoritarian Asian capitalism.

It is here that current geopolitical reality demands a bold analogy to decipher the role of President Claudia Sheinbaum. In the Terminator film saga, the fate of humanity is not decided by a bureaucrat of the Anglo-Saxon establishment, but by Dani Ramos, a young working-class Mexican woman destined to lead the resistance against the machines. Today, Sheinbaum finds herself facing the same existential challenge: the advance of the Terminator manufactured in China, an economic and authoritarian titan that seeks to devour Western markets and turn peripheral nations into enclaves of debt and raw materials. To believe that Beijing or the BRICS schemes will come to rescue Mexico is criminally naive. China has never had a real interest in our development; it sees us as an economic province of Washington. If Sheinbaum aspires to save the nation's viability, she must assume the role of Dani Ramos in the face of the Asian threat and become the leader of the manufacturing and technological resistance of the North American bloc.

To achieve this feat, the governor would have to execute an epistemological break with the old nationalist left and adopt an essentially Mexican-American mindset. This implies defending Mexico's cultural richness internally, but operating with the coldness of a Wall Street technocrat externally. It means understanding that the country's future hinges on the supply chains of microchips, semiconductors, and North American logistics, and not on proclamations of Hispanicity or stale anti-Americanism.

It is essential to leave behind the trauma of the nineteenth century and accept that geography is destiny. Embracing pragmatic Americanization means closing the institutional gap described by Francis Fukuyama, Daron Acemoglu, and James Robinson, transitioning from an extractive and feudal system to an inclusive and modern one. True courageous honesty for the second phase of the Fourth Transformation lies in admitting that Mexico's future is chained to the dollar and the success of the West. The train is moving, migration has already laid the tracks, and all that remains is for the political leadership to have the courage to board the train of modernity.

North America: the cage of the Mexican economy

North America: the cage of the Mexican economy

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero 

Why can't Mexico get off the American train? The favorite narrative of Mexican nationalism is as predictable as it is harmful.

Every time tensions with Washington escalate, the inner circle of invisible power—those corporate and political elites who operate to maintain Mexico as a modern version of the Habsburg Model—pulls out the worn-out script of diversification.

They tell us, with a flippancy bordering on irresponsibility, that the solution is to look toward Beijing or Moscow; that, supposedly being one of the world's leading economies, we possess the strength to emancipate ourselves from the American production chain and access the global market autonomously.

It's madness.

A populist fantasy designed for domestic consumption that clashes head-on with the country's arithmetic and social reality.

If Mexico truly possessed that economic capacity and structural strength, it wouldn't exhibit the glaring inequalities that fracture the country, nor would it depend on the systematic expulsion of its own people to keep domestic consumption afloat.

The truth is harsher and less glamorous: Mexico has voluntarily chained itself to the United States, and today, it is the only path left to avoid collapse.

It is necessary to scrutinize the figures of self-deception with objective data.

The myth of self-sufficiency crumbles when one observes the phenomenon of migration and its real impact.

It is true that demagogues on both sides of the border often distort the variables: there are not 60 million undocumented immigrants in the United States; the total population of Mexican origin is around 38 million, of whom approximately 5 million lack legal status.

However, reducing the problem to a discussion of visas is to ignore the depth of the tragedy.

The real tragedy is not the legal status in the north, but the economic prostration in the south. Remittances are not a macroeconomic achievement to boast about on official platforms; they are the barometer of the Mexican state's failure. In rural communities across the vast majority of the country's states, dependence is absolute: in the most vulnerable segments of the rural population, practically one in three households survives thanks to the dollars earned in the fields of California, the kitchens of New York, or the construction industry in Texas.

The Mexican economic model functions, in essence, like a gigantic Porfirian-era hacienda for human exports.

The inner circle of power prefers to maintain this status quo because migration acts as the great social safety valve.

It allows for the merciless exploitation of the indigenous and mestizo population, denying them decent wages, security, and local opportunities, knowing that the surplus labor will ultimately finance social peace from abroad.

Remittances are, paradoxically, the subsidy that workers in the U.S. pay to the Mexican elite so that nothing changes.

It is the perfect mechanism for perpetuating inequality without triggering a revolution.

To think that China or Russia will replace this symbiosis is to misunderstand how geography and the global economy work.

Mexico is not an autonomous middle power; it is a critical, but subordinate, link in the North American market.

Eighty percent of its exports go north.

Its infrastructure, value chains, and legal treaties are all intertwined with the North American ecosystem.

Flirting with extra-hemispheric autocratic powers is not a strategy; it is geopolitical suicide that Washington will not tolerate and that the markets will punish immediately.

The alternative to deep integration is not sovereignty; it is chaos: a genuinely closed border and a massive return of capital and people.

Without the safety valve of migration and with stagnant binational trade, the Mexican social fabric would tear apart in a matter of weeks.

That void wouldn't be filled by the State; it would be filled by drug trafficking and organized crime, which already control entire fiefdoms of the national territory.

We would go from being an integrated economy to a large-scale failed state, a hacienda set ablaze by its own demons.

Robert Pastor was right, and it's time for the Mexican inner circle to accept it without the national complexes of the 19th century: Mexico's future lies not in utopian emancipation, but in the acceleration and democratization of North American integration.

It is necessary to move from maquiladoras and the export of cheap labor to a true economic community with clear rules, social cohesion funds that close infrastructure gaps, and realistic binational migration policies.

Mexico will not find its salvation in the Silk Road nor in the delusions of grandeur of a paper sovereignty.

Our destiny is inextricably tied to the north. To deny this is not patriotism; it is complicity with backwardness.

The great mistake of the Salinas technocracy was assuming that the success of the first Mexico would automatically pull the second along. It didn't.

North American subsidies (via remittances and export demand) are the only thing preventing internal inequality from triggering a violent social explosion.

Mexico is condemned to North American integration because geography is destiny.

Any attempt at emancipation toward Eurasian powers is not sovereignty; it is a discursive charade to keep the country's radical base happy while, behind the scenes, trade agreements with Washington continue to be signed.

The American train is the only one that passes through our station; getting off it is not an option, it is the abyss.

While the ideologues of the so-called Fourth Transformation theorize in universities about the discovery of China, joining the BRICS, and a budding romance with the Russia-Beijing axis, the real economy reminds us that Mexico has no room to maneuver.

It's not a question of sovereignty; it's a condition of strict and absolute dependence.

Data from the Bank of Mexico dismantles any narrative of diversification.

At the end of last year, Mexican exports reached a record high, but 83% of those shipments had a single destination: the United States.

To pretend that Mexico can flirt with a geopolitical alliance with China while ignoring the USMCA is to misunderstand the basic rules of global trade. If the Asian Dragon has any place in the Mexican value chain, it will only be under the strict rules of origin dictated by Washington.

Anything else is just rhetoric for the consumption of the party faithful.

In the classic Arabian tale "The Tale of the Two Who Dreamed" from One Thousand and One Nights, a man travels to distant lands in search of treasure, only to discover that the wealth was always buried in his own backyard.

Mexican populist progressivism makes the same mistake, but in reverse: it seeks a utopia of development in China's totalitarian state, when the reality of our survival is knocking on the door of our northern neighbor.

The true engine of social stability in Mexico is not government assistance programs, but the small, everyday money that sustains the fabric of the most forgotten communities.

The flow of remittances is the true buffer against poverty, directly supporting one in three households in the country.

If the Donald Trump administration were to carry out its threats, the socioeconomic collapse of the states with the longest history of emigration would be unprecedented.

The dilemma of Mexican foreign policy allows for neither ambiguity nor calculated silence.

Continuing to fuel the falsehood of populist sovereignty, while drug trafficking and institutional corruption spread unchecked, is playing with fire.

Neither China, nor Russia, nor the BRICS have sent a single screw to turn Mexico into the Ukraine of North America.

Alignment with North America is not a moral capitulation; it is the only viable path to guarantee economic viability and improve the social conditions of the population.

This disconnect between aspirations for self-sufficiency and productive reality is also evident at the local level.

In the state of Puebla—home to the Puebla Group—for example, institutional efforts to boost competitiveness, such as the development of the new CU2 complex at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP), focused on engineering and exact sciences, the development of the Olinea vehicle, and the Ciudad Audi automotive cluster, illustrate a profound structural challenge.

While these initiatives are born with the legitimate purpose of spurring innovation, in practice they face serious implementation difficulties, plagued by bureaucratic problems, a lack of effective connection with the formal labor market, and accusations of patronage that limit their real social impact.

In contrast to the rigorous industrial and educational planning that characterizes Asian powers, local projects in Mexico often lack the ecosystem of legal certainty and transparency necessary to increase regional productivity.

Would the Beijing politburo allow such a waste of resources and talent on its own soil? Of course not.

The only thing that saves Mexico from its tremendous planned inefficiency is the United States.

Economic vulnerability is exacerbated by the imminent review of the USMCA.

This process will not be a mere formality; Washington is coming to the negotiating table with a markedly protectionist stance, demanding stricter labor oversight mechanisms, even more restrictive industrial rules of origin, and review clauses that reduce long-term certainty for investments.

For Mexico, any neglect at this negotiating table or a potential collapse of the trade agreement would imply a paralysis in the balance of payments that the formal economy could not withstand for more than a year.

Mexico finds itself at a crossroads where economic dependence on the United States is not an ideological choice, but a condition of survival imposed by the very realities of its geography, economy, and social stability.

The key to understanding this situation can be simplified with a simple analogy, like that of the apples, sticks, and balls, which brutally reveals the vulnerabilities we face.

Imagine that Mexico produces ten apples to sell on the global market.

The reality is that eight of those apples are consumed by our neighbor to the north, the United States.

The other two are distributed among Europe, Latin America, and other countries.

China barely buys a bite of one apple.

This means that if the United States decides to close the door or impose high tariffs on our exports, Mexico will be left with eight apples rotting in its yard, without a nearby buyer or enough money to absorb all of our production.

China, for its part, won't cross the Pacific Ocean to buy those apples, since it produces its own cheaper fruit and has a domestic market that satisfies its needs.

The Mexican economy is closely linked to that of its northern neighbor, and this dependence isn't a matter of patriotism, but of economic logic: no one else has the proximity, the size, or the purchasing power to sustain our production.

The second element of this relationship is the support that props up our budget.

In a rural community, the table that represents the economy of many families in Guerrero, Oaxaca, or Michoacán is held up by three pillars: what they grow, government social programs, and remittances sent from the United States.

The reality is that if remittance income is eliminated, social stability collapses, because that money is crucial for people to be able to eat, pay for medicine, or maintain their homes.

Social programs, while valuable, are not enough to cover all basic needs.

Most of the country's income comes from the wages of those who work in the United States.

Without that source, millions would fall into abject poverty within weeks.

The third element is the network of organized crime, which controls a large part of Mexican territory.

The legal economy, with its factories and maquiladoras (assembly plants), can only be sustained if the United States keeps its market open, if the factories continue operating, and if remittances arrive without interruption.

If the U.S. economy shuts down, those factories close, and unemployed young people become easy prey for drug trafficking, which offers a quick and dangerous escape.

This dependence creates a vacuum that organized crime is ready to fill, delivering the country into chaos and lawlessness.

Photo EFE

These three elements demonstrate that Mexico's economy is in a kind of cage from which it cannot escape without facing almost certain collapse.

The United States economy is about twenty times larger than Mexico's, and in a scenario of rupture, Mexico could not sustain itself on its own.

China, which has a huge trade surplus with Mexico, will not act as a lifeline; its interest is in selling, not subsidizing.

The border with the United States, which sees over two billion dollars in daily trade, would be a wall that would halt all of Mexico's productive capacity.

The idea of ​​absolute sovereignty, without integration with North America, is a dangerous illusion.

Mexico is an appendage of the United States; for our country, attempting to separate would be tantamount to death.

The Messiah, the Bishops, and the Caesar

 The Messiah, the Bishops, and the Caesar

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

The current crisis of governance in Mexico has ceased to be a matter of domestic politics and has become the epicenter of a geopolitical reconfiguration.

The State has exhausted its traditional mechanisms of mediation and is heading toward forced integration under Washington's aegis.

The Messiah narrative, embodied in the figure of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, represents the last gasp of a sovereignty that, paradoxically, has deepened the structural ties between political power and organized crime.

Like its predecessors, the current leadership has been unable to sever the umbilical cord with the powers that be, allowing the metastasis of drug trafficking to reach high levels of territorial control.

The Catholic Church has not been a mere spectator, but a historical intermediary that has skillfully woven networks of social containment where the State has deserted.

However, this mediation has crossed the line from pastoral care to organic complicity.

The infiltration of drug trafficking into ecclesiastical structures has created a social fabric where the sacred and the profane are blurred to legitimize the criminal order.

This symbiosis has failed in its primary objective of maintaining social peace, leaving a void that can only be filled by a larger external force.

The US presidential power, after years of observing the decline of its neighbor, seems ready to act according to a national security logic.

Friedman and Huntington had warned about the disruptive potential of an out-of-control Mexico.

Brzezinski's vision suffered from an alarming lack of perspective by underestimating Mexico's demographic and cultural power, focusing his attention on Arab fundamentalism while the real challenge was brewing in its own backyard.

Today, the rampant corruption and violence in Mexico represents a more existential threat to the United States than any insurgency in the Middle East, due to the porous nature of a border that no longer separates two nations, but rather two interconnected realities.

The outlook for Mexico points to a radical transformation: ceasing to be the American Sicily, an enclave of tolerated but contained illegality, and becoming the New Puerto Rico.

This process would not necessarily come about through a military invasion, but rather through a systemic intervention justified by the collapse of Mexican institutions and the pressure from the 50 million Mexicans residing in North America.

This demographic segment, weary of the ineffectiveness of governments in their country of origin, is beginning to look favorably upon an intervention by the Caesar that imposes the order that the Messiah and the Bishops could not.

Mexico's demographic capacity, far from being a barrier for Washington, becomes the social base that would legitimize a de facto external administration under the premise of regional survival.

The American war economy requires a minimum level of stability to guarantee its supply chains and nearshoring, which clashes head-on with the entropy generated by drug trafficking.

The failure of the social mediation of the Mexican Church and State opens the door to a technocratic and militarized protectorate.

Mexico faces the definitive loss of its autonomy in exchange for a peace imposed from abroad, marking the end of an era of pretense and the beginning of a new political geography where sovereignty is a luxury that institutional failure can no longer afford.

The survival of transnational criminal organizations in the face of an imminent intervention by the American Caesar would depend on a radical transformation: from being a collection of violent fiefdoms to becoming a para-state actor with strategic utility.

If drug trafficking groups in Mexico were to seek independent survival in the face of forced integration, their only path would be to mutate into a counterintelligence and territorial control entity serving Washington's national security interests, emulating the pragmatism of the Sicilian Mafia during Operation Husky in 1943.

In the logic of power, narco-politicians are now toxic assets that justify foreign intervention.

By promoting the capture and extradition of these figures, criminal organizations would eliminate the pretext of a narco-state that the Capitol uses to invoke forceful measures.

This "offering" would allow these de facto groups to present themselves as the only interlocutors capable of pacifying the territory, replacing a civil bureaucracy that Washington already considers failed and deeply infiltrated.

Mexican drug trafficking should shift its business portfolio to align with the United States' existential priorities: fentanyl and Chinese influence.

Just as the Italian mafia guaranteed the security of ports in New York and facilitated landings in Sicily to counter the Axis powers, Mexican groups would have to unilaterally eradicate the production of fentanyl and chemical precursors from Asia.

By assuming the role of guardians of American public health and a barrier against Beijing's economic penetration in the Mexican Pacific, these organizations would transform from a "terrorist threat" into "irregular allies."

Controlling migration flows and monitoring the infiltration of agents from adversary countries at the border would become their new currency.

To avoid being devoured by the American military machine, these organizations would have to demonstrate that their total eradication would create a power vacuum that could only be filled by chaos or hostile foreign powers.

By presenting itself as a state-sponsored mafia that protects the interests of the USMCA and expels the influence of Arab and Chinese capital, Mexican drug trafficking could aspire to survive under a regime of conditional tolerance.

Intermarium of Silence

 Intermarium of Silence

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

Jean Meyer writes about Andrea Ricardi's work in Confabulario of El Universal (May 3, 2026). The review of Pius XII and his role during the Holocaust, while attempting to nuance the image of the pontiff, fails to avoid oversimplifying a much more complex reality: the structural ambiguity and lack of a clear and consistent stance on the part of the Catholic High Hierarchy regarding totalitarian regimes. It even calls into question the vast body of Jewish historiography on the Holocaust, the German people, Eastern Europe, and the role of Catholic nationalism.

The historical trajectory of the Intermarium Project, which seeks to consolidate an anti-communist bloc and, in many cases, aligns with the interests of the Church, reveals that this ambiguity was not an isolated incident, but a deliberate strategy that has endured over time.

The Church, in its eagerness to maintain its power and authority, has shown itself willing to collaborate with or remain silent in the face of any power that is favorable to it, regardless of whether it comes from a Nazi state, a drug-trafficking state, a corrupt political boss, the Soviet Union, China, or other dictatorships. The Church's "ambiguity" is not a mistake, but a tactic that has facilitated its survival.

This attitude shows that the Church's true stance is not the defense of human rights, but the preservation of its own power structure.

The history of the Intermarium Project and of Catholic nationalism in general demonstrates its adaptation by evading the ethical and moral commitment that the religion itself preaches; it should come as no surprise that, ultimately, the Church has proven to be more loyal to its institutional interests than to the values ​​it claims to promote.

In this sense, the discussion surrounding Pius XII cannot be limited to his silence or isolated actions, but must be framed within a broader logic: that of an institution which, in its quest for survival, has often preferred ambiguity.

From the perspective of the work *Intermarium: Evangelio Anticomunista* (Intermarium: Anti-Communist Gospel), these discourses can be understood not as isolated accidents or prejudices, but as components of a power strategy that seeks to maintain a hegemonic order and resist changes that threaten its legitimacy.

Catholic-rooted anti-communism in Mexico, or in Latin America, can be considered a microphysics of power that operates at subconscious and symbolic levels, and which has a great potential for escalation if it is not confronted with a critical review of its roots and functions.

This structure and its organizational intent are key to understanding the dynamics of power and resistance that still dominate in these contexts today.

Anti-communism is a form of Judeophobia that operates on different levels: not only as an individual attitude, but also as a “structure of resistance” that reinforces an exclusionary identity.

In the Mexican context, this Judeophobia without Jews is a way to maintain a discourse of victimization and confrontation with an external or internal enemy presented as a “virus” that must be combated to preserve the purity and authority of traditional Catholic institutions.

This mechanism of institutional sacralization, which seeks to keep society in a state of dependence and obedience, also explains why in Mexico, as in other countries with a history of strong religious influence and authoritarianism, these narratives remain functional.

The strategy is not only about religion, but also about how these ideas are articulated to defend certain privileges and an order that, in reality, seeks to perpetuate itself by constructing enemies and delegitimizing questioning.

The Catholic Church can generate a more progressive Vatican Council III than the previous one, but the task is to put theory into practice and end the feudal practices and inertia of an authoritarian and, at times, totalitarian culture.

Political Science as Cosa Nostra

Political Science as Cosa Nostra

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

Political science in Mexican public universities is not only at an existential crossroads; it inhabits a morgue of empty concepts. The spirit of Emilio Uranga, that philosopher of the Hyperion who dissected the ontology of the Mexican only to then surrender himself to the arms of absolute power, seems to have returned in a degraded and cynical version. Today, the university "intellectual" no longer seeks to explain the world, but rather, in an act of pure nihilism, decides to kill everything: the transition, democracy, and science, in order to make a final pact with the regime in power. The intellectual's suicide is not Socratic but Machiavellian.

This attitude, which some mistake for pragmatism, is in reality criminal cronyism. It is the literal application of Mario Puzo's maxim: when the law is an obstacle and institutions are empty shells, "it's better to have a godfather than a father." The political system, seen as a mafia of clans, has infiltrated academia, transforming the political scientist into a consigliere whose sole function is to grease the wheels of external power into university autonomy. It is not revenge against neoliberalism; it is the natural reaction of someone who, seeing that their library no longer serves to wield influence, decides to burn it down to heat the coffee of the new despot.

To rescue the public university from its current drift toward insignificance, it is imperative to transmute the discipline: to move from the exegesis of complaint to the engineering of solutions. In a Mexico where democratic indicators are languishing and the State is fragmenting in the face of disorder, the ability to solve complex technical problems is the only real shield against servitude.
The rescue plan must be based on data literacy and a humanist technocracy. The political scientist of the future cannot be a mere spectator at book fairs or an identity manager who negotiates their entry into government as an infiltrator; they must be an architect of evidence-based public policies. The country doesn't need more rhetoric about "the people" while water stress collapses cities or organized crime audits the economy.
We need professionals capable of handling econometric models, understanding critical infrastructure, and auditing the algorithms that currently govern popular will.
The university must banish the academic kitsch that celebrates mediocrity under the guise of
"social conscience." A return to the rigor of the applied sciences in the social sphere is fundamental, where the study of democracy is complemented by cybersecurity, supply chain logistics, and environmental impact assessment. Institutional recovery demands that internal administration cease to be a public relations agency or a prize for the "godfather" of the moment, and instead become a highly complex laboratory.
Each seminar on Uranga's theory of power must be balanced with a workshop on big data analysis. Only in this way will the graduate cease to be the "intellectual gardener" of the elites—or the government informant—and become the technician who diagnoses and repairs the fractures of the State. True university autonomy is not defended with slogans sold to the highest bidder under the sophistry of political science for the grassroots, but with the technical excellence that makes the professional indispensable for the functioning of the country.

The attitude of the intellectual who colludes with power to infiltrate his own house—the university—is a symptom of a larger pathology: the belief that politics is merely a succession of betrayals and patronage. This view, inherited from a misunderstood realism, is what has killed faith in the democratic transition in Mexico. If the political scientist surrenders to Puzo's logic, he admits that science is dead and only the court remains.

If the political scientist educated in public schools does not learn to master the tools of technological modernity, the system will devour him without remorse, or worse, turn him into another cog in the machine of corruption. The salvation of the Mexican public university lies in its capacity to produce minds that not only understand the world but also possess the surgical skill to transform it in the face of the blindness of populism and the voraciousness of disorder. Political science must cease to be the study of "who owes whom." to become the design of "how we make this work."

Mexico no longer has room for "Urangas" who justify authoritarianism out of resentment, nor for "Godfathers" who trade scholarships for loyalties. We need a political science that is, above all, a technical defense of freedom.

Political science is currently experiencing its darkest hour, the victim of an intellectual suicide perpetrated by those who, in the name of a supposed popular exceptionalism, have decided to dismantle the ladder of abstraction in order to sink into the mire of sentimentalism. The Mexican case is the most alarming symptom of this regression: what some casually call the political science of the downtrodden is nothing more than the capitulation of rigor to the sultanate. Sartori warned that when language is corrupted, politics is degraded; today we see how systemic analysis is replaced by an outdated liberation theology that, under a Marxist-Maoist veneer and a sloganistic anti-Zionism, ends up legitimizing the most archaic structure of power: the patrimonial system of local bosses.

This shift toward illiberal populism is not progress, but a return to the Americanized Sicily, that mafia republic where the law is not a general and abstract norm, but a fickle pact between factions and powerful interests. By embracing the idea that deprivation exempts one from modernity, the regime's intellectuals have created a perfect alibi for authoritarianism. The argument of poverty becomes the foundation of voluntary servitude, where the citizen is reduced to a corporate client and the ruler to a sultan who despises political science because technical truth hinders his arbitrary will. The political science of the downtrodden is, in reality, a political science for the elite, since it grants the populist elite the divine right to govern without checks and balances, under the pretext of a historical debt that is never settled, only managed.

The disdain for technocracy and institutional liberalism has left the State defenseless against Hobbesian disorder. While the university classroom is lost, the narco-state and institutional failures deepen, precisely because the engineering of solutions has been abandoned. However, the most compelling evidence against this exceptionalism of poverty lies not in treaties, but at the border. The millions of Mexicans who cross into the United States or Canada do not change their human essence; they change their incentive system. It is not culture that condemns Mexico, but the extractive institutions that populists today defend as sovereignty. The Mexican who prospers in the north demonstrates that the problem is not our inability to be modern, but an elite that prefers to govern a poor sultanate rather than a republic of free citizens. Political science must recover its surgical vocation and abandon the exegesis of complaints. If we are unable to transmute resentment into technical excellence, we will remain trapped in this academic simulation, watching the country crumble while street prophets celebrate the ruins in the name of the people. True autonomy and the only shield against the mafia republic lie in the rigor that populism so fears.