From the Sierra Morena, descending like Fidel Castro and Manuel Fraga
Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero
The manifest rupture of the dominant coalition in the Fourth Transformation and the departure of López Obradorism to the Old World, particularly Spain, resonates with an echo that is neither of the Revolution, nor of the indigenous peoples, nor of Juárez's liberalism. It is the echo of the "homeland of the Creole," which Severo Martínez captured in ink and which today, with crushing irony, seems to be the true roadmap of the progressive national left. Martínez taught us that the homeland was not forged by the mestizo, nor by the indigenous, but by the Creole minority who, clinging to their Spanish heritage and colonial privileges, built a nation for themselves, on the backs of those below.
The relationship between Fidel Castro and Manuel Fraga at the end of the Cold War is a case of "realpolitik" and, at the same time, of the Hispanic Creole connection. Fraga and Castro, despite being on opposite sides of the political spectrum (post-Franco Spanish conservatism and Cuban communism), shared
a defense of Hispanic heritage. Despite being a communist leader, Fidel Castro was a fervent defender of the Spanish legacy in Latin America. For him, Cuban identity was a "wonderful mix of Spaniards, Indians, and Africans." Unlike the indigenist current of other leftist movements in the region, Castro viewed mestizaje and the Spanish legacy as central elements of national identity, a heritage to be defended. This stance, which remained firm even during the height of the "Day of Indigenous Resistance," directly connected him to the Hispanist vision of the Spanish right, which also defended Spain's legacy and culture throughout the world.
Loris Zanatta, in his work "Fidel Castro, the Last Catholic King," establishes him as a leader who defended morality and tradition, a "king" who legitimizes himself through Catholic tradition and morality, seen as a manifestation of the persistence of the colonial legacy in contemporary politics.
Marcos Roitman criticizes the lack of an authentic ideological identity in Latin America. The region's political and cultural elite have become "cipayos" of their own identity, prioritizing their connection to the Spanish "motherland" over the construction of a genuinely Latin American political project.
The presence of Beatriz Gutiérrez Mueller in the Motherland, legitimized by the intellectual and academic circles that now don't know where to place their radicalism, triggers a lack of clarity about one's own identity and a tendency to take refuge in the former Ibero-American metropolis.
In the end, Lopezobradorism and the Fourth Transformation did not seek a Marxist utopia, but rather the reaffirmation of a Hispanic, autocratic, and paternalistic worldview, where the caudillo stands as the defender of morality and tradition, a "king" who guards the "mother country" against the evils of the world.
Lopezobradorism is committing the same capitulation that Roitman criticized: Hispanic criollismo, exemplified by Fraga and Castro, the Morena elite is behaving like a "sepoy" of its own identity, a "criollo" who, unable to build a truly Mexican project, prefers to surrender to the Spanish lordly life. The true "flight to Spain" is not political exile, but ideological. It is that of the officials and intellectuals of the 4T who, unable to generate their own model, are forced into internal colonialism by their populist incompetence.
The rupture of Lopezobradorism and pragmatic defection go beyond the Fourth Transformation. In the end, the gachupines that Roitman denounces are not those who come from outside, but those who have taken root in the thinking of those who, in their supposed struggle, have been unable to escape the "homeland of the Creole" or the scepter of their own "Catholic king."
