Not only in Mexico but throughout the world, it seems that modern states are undergoing a reconfiguration. It seems that the State that is foreshadowing the future has decided that security and justice do not correspond to it and is abdicating that primary obligation.
In the case of the Mexican State, we observe the construction of a fictional character that we face as if he were the absolute bad guy who has to be fought with his counterpart, the absolute good guy, often represented by a soldier. But this construction in itself is also an indication of the State’s abdication of its responsibility, because it has returned to grant these functions to the most primitive of its conception, which are the armed forces.
This abdication, in turn, allows the irruption of social actors who become de facto authorities who resolve conflicts in social life and who, in general, are perpetrators of various forms of violence, from physical to economic, from organized crime to extractive companies.
This idea was expressed this Tuesday afternoon by the social activist Jacobo Dayán, as moderator of the table “What to do in the face of the tearing of the social fabric?”, the first of 14 sessions of the cycle “Criticism in its labyrinth: what do?” organized by the Inés Amor Chair in Cultural Management, whose first meeting was attended by the social anthropologist, historian and essayist Claudio Lomnitz and the philosopher, writer and professor Enrique Díaz Álvarez.
Lack of regulatory capacity
“One of the things that seem important to me for criticism in today’s Mexico is to realize (of) that one of the places we should address is the State. We must get rid of bad habits regarding criticism of the State, because we have a kind of criticism in a common sense, for example, corruption as the source of all problems. But corruption is almost always a symptom of something and not a cause. It is frequently a symptom of the State’s lack of regulatory capacity,” said Claudio Lomnitz.
Historically, Mexico has a relatively weak state, and when you have relatively weak states, there is a lot of corruption. So, to say that corruption is the problem and I, because I’m honest, I’m going to be able to solve it, is really kidding the country”, Lomnitz expands.
The author of “The torn social fabric” (Editorial Era, 2022) stated that the presence of “more State” is necessary in some areas, but it is also necessary to define from the social strata where its presence is required in all senses, including Of course, the strong economic investment.
“But there has not been a similar investment in the justice system, and there is not a functional justice system in Mexico because there is not enough State. So, you put the military on that because a military man can always adduce reasons of State, he can machine gun people, kill people and do whatever, and he has a space for extralegality, but what he is marking there is precisely the lack of administration capacity ”.
alleviate polarization
The migrant is the figure of the scapegoat of the absent State, the expendable subject, who can be murdered with impunity without committing homicides, declared, for his part, the philosopher Enrique Díaz Álvarez.
“This is worrying at a time when there is a crisis of openly xenophobic, racist discourses (…) the migrant is to blame for the lack of work, insecurity, for everything (…) and populism, especially from the right, He is an expert in mobilizing certain affects, such as hatred, fear, and it works for him. From this perspective, part of the tearing of the social fabric has to do with this social polarization”.
Now, how to mobilize other types of emotions from a democratic and emancipatory perspective? Díaz Álvarez opined: “if we intend to alleviate polarization, we have to think together and recover that forgotten third principle of democratic value, which is fraternity, without appearing stale or naive”.
