Middle class. The Latin American Dreyfus
Diego Martin Velázquez Caballero
Responsibility against the middle classes for the failure of government projects is common in Latin America. It is always thought that those responsible for the national unrest are represented by the oligarchies; But sooner or later political groups blame the middle class. Neither the left nor the right create policies for the middle classes because they feel they are far from their fundamental values. In countries where liberal modernization is late and the authoritarian and / or statist path is presented as the only path, this social group is identified as alien and, on many occasions, expelled. Socialists, capitalists and Nazis, they despised the middle class. Populist regimes eventually drive out the middle classes. This has happened in Cuba, Chile, Venezuela, the USSR and Nazi Germany. Precisely the criticisms that the president accused as unfair, racist and classist towards his political model, it seems that he now implements them against the middle classes.
From some vantage points, the situation is serious because targeting this social group constitutes significant discrimination and cancels Western-style modernization. The middle class represents a culture, values, ethics and liberal sense different from the marginal and upper classes.
During the neoliberal era, it was considered that belonging to the middle class implied receiving a kiss from the devil. Indeed, in countries like Mexico, it is the main unprotected group of modernizing national projects. It only counts on itself. Their lack of spirit, nationalism, defeatism and capacity to drag themselves towards the rest of the population are accused. Nothing is understood about the importance of having a large middle class for stability and democratic consolidation. Democratic nations have focused on consolidating and expanding the middle classes.
The middle class is not to blame for anything. They are in a chain of dissatisfaction throughout the country because he has been the main missionary of Western modernization and, perhaps, one of its main victims. The middle classes suffer from the multiple modernizations that Mexico proposes to inhibit westernization and conflict. For several years, the middle classes have been the silent collaborators of the different modernizations and they have all been badly off. When you look at the way the middle class has historically been humiliated throughout history, you find the meaning of populism. Authoritarians have sent them to milk cows, cut sugarcane, get off the production line, teach literacy, delouse, vaccinate, demarcate land, emigrate ... and they always go. Latin American projects oscillate between social extremes, but have never been directed towards the middle classes.
AMLO's attack on this social sector is a sign of the capitulation of the 4T against the national oligarchies and the United States. The president's anger with the middle classes is because they do understand that Q4 is gibberish that does not integrate or evolve anything. The president does not choose a liberal or socialist modernizing route, he is opting for the path of informality, corruption, cheerleading, cacicazgo and lax that US imperialism imposes on us. The United States speaks through AMLO: "A country like Mexico does not need professionals or people with graduate degrees. North America, Europe and Asia, yes. We do not want a Japan on the other side of the Rio Grande."
In Mexico it is necessary to say, honestly and brutally, if integration with the United States can be formally. That was the route of the Asian Tigers. While Latin American social sciences promote pobretology, in other latitudes the importance of training sectors trained and finding economic gaps for international competition is being analyzed. Asian neoliberalism managed to emancipate itself from the United States thanks to the formation of a working, innovative and skilled middle class. The informality that so much money and wealth generates also develops a number of unquantifiable evils. This gangster capitalism is responsible for America's decline and world Balkanization. The isolationism of the Republicans tried to lessen the situation, the Democrats want to take it to the extreme.
The middle class constitutes a positivist righteous desire, perhaps it is the arrival point of the modernizing utopia. In spite of everything, it is the one that represents the evolution and development of a country, it is the one that can take charge of complex modernization processes. The presidential declarations have been unfortunate and painful as they only show the search for scapegoats because the 4T fails to establish itself. There are no political projects for the Latin American middle class, Western modernization fails and everything is conducted as the social extremes and imperialism want it. A Mexico like the one today is only convenient for the United States, the national oligarchy and the usual powers that be, that is the president's pain.
But the middle classes are also indispensable in shaping national development. The empire must do the foresight to understand the urgency of consolidating in Mexico a middle power that contains the enormous migratory waves, informal, violent and non-Western that are coming.
