Public Education in Mexico: Business, Skills, and Health

 Public Education in Mexico: Business, Skills, and Health

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

The actions of the Secretary of Public Education, Mario Delgado, have generated controversy between the conservatives and reformers of the Fourth Transformation. This could be seen as a healthy debate between subordinate groups and the pragmatic alliances of the current government, or as a clear sign of how López Obrador's administration continues to set the pace for Claudia Sheinbaum.

Public education in Mexico undoubtedly has an enormous task when it comes to nutrition; however, there are also other discussions that are equally important. The educational reform of the Fourth Transformation has not been implemented or materialized in a minimal way; there are only basic ways to understand what type of education and culture Morena seeks to promote among Mexicans.

Although dialogue between the Secretary of Public Education and the business sector can be considered a basic form of negotiation in democracies, the truth is that the Fourth Transformation, like any government, diminishes the mechanism of collective participation for decision-making. It is true that participatory democracy has its drawbacks; bureaucratic specialists must make decisions immediately; however, Mario Delgado's haste and his particular management style demonstrate that negotiations go beyond lobbying. Beyond the setups, debates, and generating public opinion, some suspicious individuals observe the construction of Mario Delgado's presidential candidacy with the patronage of outside sectors, as has occurred in various spheres where he participates.

Crony capitalism continues in full swing in Mexico, and this appears to be Mario Delgado's strategy. Public space is rented to the highest bidder, and academic content is of little importance. Faced with the challenges of the immediate future—China and the United States—this indicates that public officials are thinking about many things, except how to organize a problem and respond effectively to society.

Welfare scholarships have been important in supporting a large portion of Mexican students; however, they benefit the traditional business sector as the last link. Couldn't the Mexican government be more concerned with providing a public education that guarantees the increase in skills and competencies to face the dystopian world being posed by Donald Trump?

The López Obrador left is calling for strikes and mobilizations to demand compliance with the elimination of junk food in public schools; the importance of this issue is undeniable, but the development of technical and scientific skills for the future is more important. International indicators indicate that there are many academic problems in Mexico's public schools, and this is part of a debate that must one day be taken seriously. Mexico cannot continue to ignore the implementation of a homogeneous and functional educational reform, democratically and consciously constructed. When politics is removed from the educational issue, it will make an enormous contribution to Mexico's problems.

Political Entrepreneurship

 Political Entrepreneurship

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

According to Maurice Duverger, partisan perspectives in electoral systems with a majority tendency lean toward bipartisanship or bipolarism. Probably from this perspective we can understand Pedro Kumamoto's action to associate his independent political formation, as well as the embryo of a political party that he tried to form, with the National Regeneration Movement.

Political factionalism in Latin America has come to generate a phenomenon known as political entrepreneurship and which, before the connotation involved in the economy, implied the construction of partisan institutes, clubs, gatherings, organizations or movements to exercise a veto or blackmail capacity in the political system. Factionalism and political entrepreneurship are conditions that distinguish Third World political systems. In the case of Latin America, there are unique nations in terms of the number – more nominal than real – of political parties that come to exist. Both elements also make up a weak public administration and a state regime hijacked by different factions.

In Mexico, before the formation of the PRI, the number of political parties reached thousands and political movements such as Maderismo promoted such a number of expectations that, upon taking power, they were simply impossible to meet.

Guatemala, Peru, Colombia, Argentina and Brazil have been the spaces of study regarding political entrepreneurship, the consequences of the high fragmentation that the party system reaches is noticeable in the type of governability and institutionality that subsists in the political regime.

The loss of power in the PRI generated the departure of the multiple tendencies that made it up and the phenomenon of bleeding does not seem to stop now in all political parties. Morena summons multiple tendencies, factions and political entrepreneurs because it is the party in government, it is true that there is a manifest transfer of currents, tendencies, caudillismos, cacicazgos and factions towards its organizational content; However, National Regeneration has not been able to develop the level of political institutionality that the PRI had and it is difficult for it to contain such a level of political entrepreneurship when the wind blows against it. Factionalism and political entrepreneurship are the ideal breeding ground for pragmatic opportunism that most damages a society.

Some political scientists propose the need for more draconian electoral laws to close the door to so many fallacious organizations that seek to disguise themselves as political parties to exercise patrimonialism; However, others consider that participation is necessary to stimulate leadership that coheres and generates social capital. The truth is that the crisis of political parties seems to have no way out in Mexico and the world. The French case provides evidence that well-designed electoral engineering is not enough for mythomaniacs like Emmanuel Macron to come to power. Politics increasingly poses ethical dilemmas with enormous consequences because political organizations have been emptied of their content and a way to replace them has not yet been discovered. Everyone looks at Xavier Milei with sympathy, but no one wants to be under his insane rule.

Morena and Kumamoto establish a strategic alliance that can be beneficial for both actors and the state of Jalisco; However, in other entities and at the national level, some candidates and alliances will condemn Morena for immediatism. Political parties do not seem to have a solution, the old discussion of parliamentarism versus presidentialism is still waiting for the moment to be raised when the party crisis is terminal. And we will turn again to France to discover that even a double-engine government is insufficient to contain traitorous politicians. At the time.