A Beetle in Teotihuacan

 A Beetle in Teotihuacan

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

The echo of the explosions at the Pyramid of the Moon not only shattered the age-old silence of the City of the Gods, but also definitively tore away the veil of ideological innocence that Mexico believed it possessed by right. The incident, perpetrated by a lone wolf, is presented to the public as the eruption of a narcissistic nihilism that, under the veneer of outdated mysticism, carried out a blood ritual in the heart of Mexico's indigenous heritage. A young man from Morelos, trapped in a profound alienation, decided to inhabit the body of a Nordic warrior to purge his resentments against modernity.

As analyst Carlos Ramírez has aptly pointed out, this event represents the irruption of far-right terrorism at a time when the struggle for the indigenous past has become the center of the national discourse. It is paradoxical that, while the presidency asserts sovereignty against the old Spanish empire, a lone wolf decides to desecrate the sacrificial grounds to pay tribute to a foreign cosmogony. Jasso, who signed his literary ravings as Vilhjálmur M. Marsson, was a collector of perverted myths for a worldview where politics is replaced by biological destiny and the mysticism of blood. Jasso's profile evokes the Thule Society, that esoteric organization that served as the ideological foundation for National Socialism. Like the members of that shadowy circle, Jasso fed on an identity-based desperation that sought redemption in runes and an imagined intellectual superiority. It is no coincidence that his motivations bear the shadow of figures like Heinrich Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg, architects of a racial religion that despised Christian humanism in favor of a bellicose paganism. Rosenberg argued for the need to replace old truths with a faith in blood, an idea that Jasso transferred to the Avenue of the Dead by identifying with the figure of Thor, the hammer of the gods, whose cinematic aesthetic he edited to feed his own superhuman image.

The date of the attack, coinciding with the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth and the Columbine massacre, confirms that Jasso operated according to a ritual calendar logic. For him, Teotihuacan was the perfect power node, a point of telluric energy similar to those described by François Ribadeau Dumas and Hans S. Bauer in their treatises on occultism and secret societies. Jasso saw himself as an initiate, a link in the chain of a spiritual elite that included Freemasonry, which he never truly understood. It is vital to clarify that Freemasonry, with its imperative of universal brotherhood and philanthropy, is the antithesis of nihilistic hatred. However, his rhetoric mixed Jewish-Masonic conspiracy theories with Thule Mysticism, an intellectual confusion that Oswald Spengler had already warned about in his work on the decline of the West when speaking of the final phase of civilizations, where rational thought is devoured by a new, magical, and violent religiosity.

This “spiritualism,” which some anthropologists have linked to Mexicanist movements or followers of national transformation, took a dark turn in Jasso’s work. Unlike the mysticism of Antonio Velasco Piña or the narrative of Patricia Zarco in "El séptimo cadete", which seek a spiritual reconnection with Mexican roots, Jasso filtered Teotihuacan archaeology through the German Black Forest and Goethe’s demon. His attacks directed at Canadian and American tourists demonstrate that his racism was not a loyalty to Hispanic culture, but rather a hatred of the liberal order of the North, a declaration of war by a “Vengeful Mars” against the materialism he considered decadent.

Mexico must become aware of the constant reality where young people, outside the productive system but imbued with an exclusive, esoteric online narrative, can become executors of imported ideological terrorism. The warning has been issued at the top of the pyramid: violence is no longer solely the domain of the cartels, which also employ youth armies, but has found a new breeding ground in the mystique of resentment. The lone wolf died believing the gods had chosen him, leaving behind the trail of a .38 caliber revolver and a historical void of attention. Faced with a lack of prospects and a future in a productive system that provides meaning, Mexican youth find in the mystique of hatred a territory where they can be "someone." In the eternal City of the Dead, an ideological mindset has crashed against the sacred past, reminding us that nihilism, when cloaked in myth, is the deepest threat to the soul of the nation.

AMLO and the Black Circle

AMLO and the Black Circle

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero 

Pablo González Casanova stated that populism constituted a double-edged weapon of protection for Mexico. On the one hand, it is a force that feeds the acritical attitude of most of the social movements and caciquile regions of the country to the point of almost bursting the fragile order. On the other hand, populism also constitutes an auxiliary factor for the armed forces in national defense against a probable foreign invasion, particularly from the United States.

The militarization of the country confirms that the National Army, a product of the Mexican Revolution, is the true force of governance in Mexico. The complaints about the facade that democracy guards in our presidentialism represent the modernizing liberal frustration that Western evangelical scholars have to experience as a permanent martyrology. Antonio Machado, Denisse Dresser, Jorge Portilla and Juan Linz confirm what Huntington establishes, Latin America is light years away from being Western. With few events in Latin America, it is immediately verified that presidentialism does not work outside the United States, well, almost in no country. Mexican authoritarian presidentialism will never be like US presidentialism. This does not imply a lack of attention in the operation, handling and security of the system. Outside the United States, presidentialism almost always ends in coups.

Mexico sheltered itself from the Latin American presidential dynamics thanks to an Official Party - understood by the concept of military corporatist capacity - that coerced the different political forces to solve the problem of presidential succession and public administration. It was not easy, the Army of the Mexican Revolution faced the imperialism of the Catholic Church and the United States. It did not win, but it did obtain a Pareto balance that provided meager national stability.

In a fictionalized way, Velasco Piña exposes the Mexicanism of the armed forces that develops into a populist and confused revolutionary nationalism, but with an authoritarian clarity that was executed many times to obtain the PRI pax.

The imperial presidency wants to return, although the Official Party no longer exists. Will the Black Circle be able to contain and coerce the PRI cliques that are dispersed in different political parties? Will the Black Circle be able to institutionalize, once again, an Official Party?

That militarism is an inevitable variable in the governance of extra-western countries is an axiom of political science. What militarism is talked about in Mexico regarding the Black Circle? During the PRIATO, the armed forces constituted a defensive bloc against imperialism that obtained a moderate colonialism. There are many coincidences between the Spanish Francoism and the revolutionary nationalism, but also great differences. With its flats, the colonialist pact of the Mexican Army gained greater independence than many cases in the Iberosphere.

The alternation elections caused a decrease in military power. President Felipe Calderón promoted a militarization of the country that ran aground in US geopolitics. Militarization during neoliberalism made Mexico like Colombia. In both cases, the war on drug trafficking has been lost, to the benefit of North America. Both countries are militarized, the Colombian army is more like a US occupation force; what should not happen in Mexico.

Revolutionary nationalism, the strange doctrine that justified the Army of the Mexican Revolution as the backbone of PRIATO, failed to consolidate after World War II. Over time, the centrality of the armed forces, caciquil corporatist populism, and the pragmatism of the ruling class, deteriorated Mexican nationalism, which with the political transition gave up even more. If Mexico is to be an authoritarian democracy, a justification for revolutionary nationalism is indispensable, so that the black circle preserves the legitimacy of organized violence.

AMLO confirms that the center of the Mexican political system is the Army, although it is also important to reflect under what circumstances. The positioning of the Army is done with the tutelage of the United States, it no longer seems the domain of an independent army.

Still, the United States is in total global decline. Mexico is in a position similar to that of the early nineteenth century when the Spanish empire imploded, orphanhood offered the possibility of autonomy and freedom, but the opportunity was wasted for lack of responsibility and cohesion, for lack of a national objective.

Perhaps it is true that the strengthening of the Mexican army is a necessity, the prince must take care of his weapons before his clothing. However, that the strengthening of the armed forces implies the strengthening of the people and not the occupation of the United States informally as occurs in Colombia.