Echeverría and the Nomenklatura
Diego Martin Velazquez Caballero
After the death of Luis Donaldo Colosio and the failure of his project of social liberalism, Carlos Salinas de Gortari blamed the nomenklatura and, specifically, the faction of Luis Echeverría Álvarez for sabotaging the modernization of Mexico. Over time, Vicente Fox's political impotence was also pointed out by his collaborators as activated by the Echeverría Álvarez device. In reality, more than Echeverrism, Salinas – and other analysts involved in modernization – proposed this political clique as a scapegoat to justify the enormous difficulties involved in transforming our country. Problems that even the LEA itself faced and that it resolved with an authoritarianism similar to that of the CSG; though both failed.
Mexican despotism is explained by a colonialist structure that unites, in the form of muégano, patrimonialism, corporatism, cacicazgo and corruption. The Latin American anti-liberal regimes must face the enormous challenge of forming Nation States in order to modernize; on the authoritarian, liberal or socialist path.
Echeverría and Salinas were more similar than dissimilar, only that the first was the socialist path implemented by the North Americans and the second, the neoliberal path implemented by the Americans. As well as the joke that the Nazi scientists that the gringos had were better than the Nazi scientists that the Soviets had.
Latin American anti-liberalism, populist or capitalist, left or right, liberal technocrat or socialist technocrat, reflects the colonial model of Spanish colonialism where the different castes remain united in a dynamic space, but without consciousness of fusion. The castes in Latin America are united, but not concentrated; and therefore there are no nations. The rulers and the people only understand each other in the conservative-authoritarian key that inhibits any attempt at social change.
Echeverrismo is a window that allows us to understand the colonialism of Mexico with respect to the United States. In addition to this political clique, other social conglomerates, nations and characters; They also benefit from ruling the social control of the country.
Most Mexican presidents have had to behave like Luis Echeverría, including resorting to violent, authoritarian and public control measures to control some groups for the benefit of others. Sometimes it is thought that this is the least cost, compared to a military intervention by the Superpower, as has occurred in other Latin American latitudes.
In the end, Salinismo turns into Echeverrismo, mortar bogeymen who, more than individuals or cliques, represent a culture, the anti-liberal one, but which always ends up linked to North American imperialism to guarantee social control and modernization; for a moment.
The common denominator of these authoritarian, psychopathic and violent trajectories is represented by anticommunism and the national security of the United States, elements that social analysts and alternative groups in the country must begin to understand better.
The destiny of Mexico is ineluctably connected to the United States and, because of them, various social groups have benefited from characterizing weak or marginalized groups -sometimes more Mexican than others- as evil, ungovernable, communist, narco-satanic, indigenous, etc.; causing the authorization of the Yankee Empire for the exercise of violence and budget spending.
To avoid the Echeverrías and Salinas, relations between Mexico and the United States – as Robert Pastor rightly says – have to change, be more original and authentic. The Mexican oligarchy continues to offer itself as "Polkos" who can order the Comanche territory, but they make things worse every time; until the Union Army and Ulysses S. Grant come along. Güeritocracia supremacy has residence in Madrid or Rome.