The book that provoked AMLO’s anger

In an unprecedented abuse of power, with a baseness and a lack of scruples that perhaps had not been seen in the recent history of Mexico, in absolute violation of the Personal Data Protection Law and as the starting signal for a petty and brutal campaign of harassment and defamation, the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador released last Friday a file containing personal and private information of the president of Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, Maria Amparo Casar –as well as her family.

It was hard to believe, even regarding a president who has no qualms about going from ruin to ruin to carry out his political revenge. It was also the response to the recent appearance of a book by Casar, “The dots on the i’s. The legacy of a government that lied, stole and betrayed” (Debate, 2024), which will weigh like a stone in the image that López Obrador wishes to leave for history: a sum of verifiable, recorded, unobjectionable data that proves the process of destruction and erosion of democracy that the government of AMLO.

The democrat, the humanist, the descendant of Morelos, Juarez, Log and Lazaro Cardenas who has dedicated more than three thousand “morning” to exalt his person and his place in History, who has dedicated between two and three hours a day to lying about the true state of the country, who has left an audiovisual record of the way in which he twists, falsifies and invents, that muddies discordant voices through slander and defamation, that has insulted the members of the other powers, that has attacked counterweights built over half a century, that has turned hatred into the watermark of its government, that has vilified civil society organizations, as well as international organizations, which has wasted money from the nation in whims and occurrences without a future, which has pushed aside scientific knowledge: this character is fully portrayed throughout 229 pages that do nothing but gather public information to organize it in a horizon that suddenly reveals the history of the six-year term.

Casar is gathering clues about what the country experienced between December 2018 and December 2023. The story of a six-year term that did not recognize errors, negligence nor acts of corruption, the history of a government in which there is no one responsible for the biggest mistakes, and that continues to blame previous administrations while defending and protecting his loyalists, who know they will never be investigated:

“Segalmex, Pemex, Dolphin, Line 12, CFE, AIFA, Mayan Train, SEPInstitute and migration agents, SedenaLeaks, Ministry of Health…”, lists the political scientist.

In the administration of Lopez ObradorCasar writes, they deprived “(de)institutionalization, illegality, impunity, (mis)information, incompetence and inconsistency.”

Each of those I’s is unraveled in the book’s chapters: the deliberate weakening of institutions through their elimination or replacement, through their capture or financial strangulation, as well as through damage to their reputation: of Conacyt to the CIDEof the CNDH to the CREfrom the Supreme Court of Justice to the Cofece, the IFT and the Inai, from the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power to the INE.

A modus operandi, writes Casar, that has allowed AMLO concentrate power and govern with as few restrictions as possible.

He “Don’t tell me that the law is the law” and the constant violations of the Constitution that have allowed the president to give free rein to his authoritarian impulse under the pretext of embodying the voice of the people and to establish himself as the power of the powers. The impunity who has surrounded his brothers, his children, his relatives, and those close to him (there is the diversion of more than 15 billion pesos in Segalmex, which ended with the exoneration of Ignacio Ovalle because ““They are good people” that “He let himself be fooled by evil PRI members, used to stealing”).

The “morning” and the world of “the other data” that have allowed López Obrador to enlarge the spaces of opacity and misinformation, and create a own narrativethrough the resource of issuing in these years more than 100 thousand false claims or not true. The abuse of power, between “preaching and throwing stones”, and harassment and defamation, which aim to mow down and disavow dissenting voices: a way of restricting freedom of expression.

And finally, incompetence as central feature of his government, the famous “90% loyalty, 10% capacity” that has brought a handful of inept people to crucial positions in the administration, as well as the permanent incongruity between what López Obrador says and ends up doing.

The load of information contained in the book – a reminder of everything that has been destroyed in exchange for practically nothing—arouses in the reader a sensation growing that looks a lot like the indignation.

If that provokes the reader, What will it have caused behind the high walls of the National Palace? What it caused is visible: a passage that could comfortably appear in the book of Maria Amparo Casar to culminate the portrait of a toxic government, starring a toxic character like few others.

It is the book that allowed, in a single “morning”, López Obrador to show the worst of himself. The nightmare that will accompany the final days of his government.

@hdemauleon