The dark side of the left.
Interview with José Woldenberg *
Ariel Ruiz Mondragón
In the four most recent decades the Mexican left has experienced significant growth that has made outstanding player Mexican politics, which has held important positions of power. Is a key period in which he has spent virtually the catacombs of the guerrilla struggle almost to the Presidency of the Republic through his intense activity in the independent unions, social organizations and party complex construction.
The development of the Mexican left has had many downs. In the mentioned period also took actions, policies and behaviors more than questionable, which, paradoxically and ironically, there have rarely gone against his own achievements: for example, the defense of privilege, political intransigence, the revolutionary and the atavism attack on the electoral institutions.
on the follies of political sinister José Woldenberg published late last year Disenchantment (Mexico, Cal y Arena), a fiction in which, through a character named Manuel passes critical review of four dark moments of the Mexican left in the period mentioned, in addition to a review of works in which seven writers expressed disappointment communism.
About this book we had a chat with the author, which addressed matters such as literature and memory, the claim of reformism, the bright moments on the left, ethics and politics, and the need for democratic left , among others. Woldenberg
holds a Masters in Latin American Studies at UNAM, which institution is a professor in the Faculty of Political Science and Social. Former Board Chairman of the Federal Electoral Institute, director of Nexos and the Institute for the Study of Democratic Transition. He has worked in publications such as Unomásuno , La Jornada, Point, and currently Etcetera Reform. He has written at least a dozen books and co-author and coordinator of many others.
Ariel Ruiz (AR): Why publish a book like disenchantment, especially taking into account historical memories and historical books such as left memory or history documentary SPAUNAM ? José
Woldenberg (JW): For several reasons. First, there is an attempt to recover his memory, and in this sense is related to left Memory and the Documentary History of SPAUNAM . But unlike those texts, this is a more critical view. Those, in one way or another, were very festive texts largely apologetic, of which I have no regrets because they offer a face of those events that are worth retaining.
But now what interested me was to show the other side and take a critical approach to some of the episodes of the Mexican left in the past 35 years, I think, from my subjectivity, marked for evil.
In that sense, creating a fictional character who goes through a series of events that really happened was a formula that seemed to me appropriate to make that criticism.
AR: How has your transition from the political science literature in this book?
JW: I call loaded test story. I believe that the creation of this character to me allowed me to see the events from the outside, and gave me freedoms that perhaps from the trial or from the autobiography could not deploy. For example, the character is, perhaps, more empathetic and more blunt than I am, but I wanted to highlight the issues inks I'm concerned and I discouraged, as are told in this story.
was then that why I chose this fiction actually charged, but conscious, and so begins the book, which says a caption I use Doris Lessing, who assumes the inability to write the only kind of novel interests you: a book equipped with a moral or intellectual passion so strong that it can create an order, a new way of seeing life. Assuming that disability
, anyway I started writing this book.
AR: There is also the possibility that you stated in the appointment of Alain Finkielkraut ago: "The past must be taken as one's sleeve who is drowning. "
JW: Yes. Even that was a possible name for the book: "As someone who is drowning." This, taken from the phrase I take from Jankélévitch Finkielkraut, which says that the past is to grab the sleeve as someone who is drowning. Because I think a very relevant consideration: the past is doomed to disappear, the inertia of the past makes things evaporate, dilute. Then it takes an effort to try to keep it alive, which is to recover memory.
already know: the memory is always subjective and individual, and I do not doubt for a moment that those who lived, for example, the same episodes of trade unionism, the unification process on the left, the Zapatista uprising and the 2006 post-election conflict, have other views and other versions, surely legitimate. But I'm here I want to recreate this.
AR: One of the book is the mnemonic exercise, and the other is composed of seven essays on writers who were very critical of communism. Why did those seven? There would be many more we could add.
JW: Of course that could increase the list, but what have these seven writers? One, they are very good writers, from my very particular point of view. Two, six of them were fascinated, in a moment, by the Soviet experiment, they placed their hopes in him and that, ultimately, were deeply disappointed.
Third, because they are of seven different nationalities; room because the reasons for disappointment are different in each of them, and fifth, which is perhaps the most basic, it all stopped, whether in novels or testimony, a reflection about what had happened. For example, in the case of Arthur Koestler, he became a novel, a fiction, but in the case of Howard Fast and André Gide they left their testimonies.
What I think gives the final set of reflections of the seven are the different veins of disenchantment. For example, Fast became disenchanted after XX Congreso del Partido Comunista de la Unión Soviética, cuando se conoció el llamado “Informe secreto” de Jrúschov, y cuando se pusieron sobre la mesa todas las aberraciones de Stalin.
En el caso de Gide, él desde antes había viajado a la Unión Soviética. Vio que aquello en materia cultural era un páramo en el que se estaba tratando de homogeneizar lo que debe ser diverso, y dijo: “Esto está mal.” Koestler se desencantó por los juicios de Moscú, y Victor Serge lo hizo por la burocratización y la insensibilidad; George Orwell, quien a final de cuentas fue el único que no fue comunista, se decepcionó por la matriz misma del sistema que se estaba construyendo, a powerful state unable to respect the freedoms of individuals, and then created the dystopia that is 1984.
Meanwhile, Ignazio Silone, who very early, as delegate to the International Italian Communist Party, saw ways to "discuss", and said: "This is not," not to be uncritically aligned to a position and not being asked to condemn someone without knowing who the document is being brought to trial. Not that.
Each is very expressive, everyone has strong reasons, but the seven together make the mural more complex, more colorful and more eloquent.
AR: But the other writer you try, José Revueltas, was very radical, because not only lashed out at the Communists, but came close to condemning the human condition.
JW: That's what I read in terrestrial Days . I think in the case of Revueltas his book is terrible in the best sense of the word, ie, makes his characters very introspective, and I have the impression that almost reaches the conclusion that mankind is unreformable. It says in the text, do not say in its political life, because the appeal of Riots in political life is that while writing this book, as militants continued. In 1949, when he wrote, have not even broke with the party, I say that the book itself, but its membership no. And when he wrote errors then yes, he was a convinced anti-Stalinist.
is a phenomenon that I find very interesting. I think the literature of Revueltas was ahead of his own political texts, and I think, at least until now, has no expiration date, and perhaps some of his political texts themselves.
AR: I think your book is a vindication of the reform that goes from the creation of a university union to defend electoral institutions. Why too much of the left has been so bad given the reformist path? In the book are few episodes ranging from radical left-wing guerrillas that it murdered even reformist leaders of the left, to knock for democracy.
JW: I think you overshoot, that is perhaps one of the strong threads of the book. But I would go even further, because there is a huge paradox: most of the Mexican left, which is in the parties, trade unions, agricultural organizations, which has publications, etc., is de facto reform. However, there is a kind of bad conscience: he wants to be thought of as revolutionary. In the case of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), I think in his own name is that breath.
However, I would also say this: the mechanics of political change and what the Left has succeeded in recent years, has done, from my point of view, the revolutionary currents that go down, and that want to or not, reformism has its way, often without recognizing their own name.
What I mean by reformism? A policy of gradual changes that are in the sense that you think right, and that can be deployed by a participatory and peaceful way, and today in Mexico even institutional.
So, I think the great challenge of the Mexican left to grow further is to assume that democracy is a way, but is also an end in itself. He says the character in the book, and I think that's one of the things that are not yet solved, since there are still a bad conscience that each time it appears the ability to skip stages of the revolutionary path, again activate a set of expectations, the truth, I do not think that can lead to nothing.
That was the case of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. The criticism made, rather than to the EZLN, is the inability of a constellation of diverse leftist groups to clearly condemn the use of arms, especially at a time -1994 - where there was a transition process up, when things were changing in a democratizing effect.
Then, there is a difficulty to commit themselves to a peaceful folds institutional and social change.
AR: The book is very critical, and it identifies four moments of the Mexican left negative: the conservatism of the Student Council (EWC) in 1986-87, the intransigence of the PRD in the early 90's, the EZLN violence and lies about the 2006 elections. But what has illuminated aspects?
JW: A lot. Glad you mentioned. The book is called his name, largely because I want to address the dark side of the left, from my perspective, of course, "and he made no light, but there are many that really happened. For example, I think the process of unification of the left, the process, not the moment to be seen as a happy and very important process.
Two, the left's commitment to the electoral process is a great thing and is a great political capital. The 1988 elections were a time of exceptional growth of the Mexican left, as well as the 2006. Also the political and electoral reforms of 1994 and 1996, which attended the PRD, were policy and institutional redesign that enabled what we see today: electoral competition as never before.
The Triumphs Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, and then for Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Marcelo Ebrard at the nation's capital, as well as victory in Zacatecas Amalia García are bright moments. The decriminalization of abortion see it very favorably.
there are plenty of bright moments, but this is a story that is neither balanced nor wants to be, because when you go that route, then what you want to highlight and focus on the losing end.
I wanted to do consciously is a story of a person to be disenchanted by a series of attitudes, and on-hopefully-I would like to have a debate, a discussion and a correction.
why the text is about the dark side of things, which does not deny that in reality there are many adventurous moments. Moreover, I have forgotten many.
AR: In the early seventies, as shown in the book, one of the major topics on the left, and I think the transition has been lost somehow, it was social inequality. It seems it was more successful the political transition, but what happened to social inequality?
JW: You look good: there was a democratic transition that made us move from a hegemonic party system to a balanced, non-competitive election processes competitor, a monochrome world of representation to a plural of a presidency to a limited overwhelmed; of Congress subject to a lively and plural. It was a major political change.
But that apparently does not change, and that from Humboldt, is that this country is absolutely deformed, crossed by an inequality, sometimes as ECLA itself says, prevents thinking about building a "we" inclusive, Both Mexico because Mexico is marked by inequality, the sense of belonging to a national community becomes involved.
I think that's the fundamental problem of Mexico, and maybe you're sharpening. I also believe that this problem is where the left can have their roots and better growth.
But I insist it is not just opt \u200b\u200bfor equity, which is what must be the unique flag on the left, but combined with the other great achievement of civilization that are individual freedoms.
In this conjunction that, I think, has tried and succeeded in making social democracy in the world can be a way for the development of a strong left and able to reverse the structural failure of Mexican society is its profound inequality.
This topic is in the genetic code on the left. But I say should be of concern even to the right, because one can not be betting only the deployment of freedom in a world of great inequalities as the Mexican. I Said No: The United Nations Programme for Development has warned that much of the disenchantment with democracy in Latin America has to do with poverty and inequality, because people perceive that their material conditions of life in democracy and improve perception then is: "Beautiful Democracy!".
Then, of course, is one of the main concerns of the left, but it should be all political. There is a minor issue.
AR: Another big issue that crosses the book is the discussion of political ethics. Are there any ethical specific policy to the left?
JW: I do not know if I can have an ethic of left and another right. What I do believe, unlike the cynical and pragmatic, is that politics and ethics should be connecting bridges.
There is a pragmatic policy that is perhaps hegemonic, which can be dispensed without difficulty ethics. It is the policy that would, in short, that the end justifies the means.
AR: And as you said in the book, the media are shaping the ends.
JW: The media are often more important than ends, because they are modeling the actor: the way I act, speak, say and unfold, I will be doing to me. Then, the media are not incidental, but rather the opposite: they tend to be more important than ends.
is no coincidence that the armed revolutions usually end up in moments of terror. Because who has pursued the formula feels legitimate political activity, and may extend for a further period.
I return to the idea of \u200b\u200bethics and politics. The character, of course, it repels the amoral pragmatism, but also the other extreme, in which ethics is not in charge of policy requirements, which would as a matter enclosed in itself, so the quotes - at least two teacher-Adolfo Sánchez Vazquez, who is the one who has thought of, from left, the links between politics and ethics in a way, I think, more sophisticated.
AR: Do not you think that, on many occasions, the left has seemed to threaten its gains?
JW: Yes, the left has been beneficially incentive and political change. That is, democratizing change in Mexico would not be understood without the contribution of the Mexican left, but it has also been beneficially. That is, given that there are democratic ways of choosing the rulers, today the PRD has five governors and the mayor of Mexico City. So, while it has been a driver of change, has been receiving him.
However, at certain moments it seems that the Left threatens the very achievements that have served to unfold and grow. This is the case of conduct after the 2006 elections.
Before the 2009 elections could speculate how much it would affect the post-electoral behavior, 2006, but what happened in them, which, by adding the votes of the PRD on one side and the alliance Convergence-PT on the other are something like half of those who had received the Coalition for the Good of All, should be a warning to rectify, I think.
But the hardest thing in politics is correct, because the dynamics of the PRD is very easy to accuse moderate currents the most radical of the results, and also very easy to turn, radicals accuse the moderates of them. Stronger than the reality is the lens through which it is viewed.
Then, reality can change, but if you continue with the same lens, will continue to draw the same conclusions. That is the most powerful issue for any political organization.
AR: At the beginning of the book the main character says: "We are the generation of disenchantment. We made lots of noise and our nuts are rotten. "
JW: Well, the character can be much more emphatic what I am. I think Manuel's vision is high contrast, and that is what I think may be the intention. Maybe in my view there are many more gray, but the idea was to put the character through a series of issues that I believe deserve to be discussed.
AR: For writers who are discussed in the book, after the disillusionment with communism was different positions, from those who continued to insist on social change to that observed in a pessimistic way to the human condition. "You are still left?
JW: I think this is a plea from the democratic left positions to the left. That is, I still believe that a democratic left in Mexico is not only possible but necessary, because it is very difficult from other political ideologies can be put in the center issues of inequality. So I say a democratic left, which is able to combine the drive for equality with the drive for freedom.
* A slightly shorter version of this interview appeared in Millennium weekly, no. 664, July 19, 2010. Reproduced with permission of the director.
0 comments:
Post a Comment