The protests allegedly called by young people of the so-called generation Z and against insecurity after the murder of the mayor of Uruapan, Carlos Manzo, have been interpreted as the first major political crisis of the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. And it certainly is. Although the demonstration of the so-called generation Z was called weeks in advance, the murder of Carlos Manzo gave another twist to the call to demonstrate against the current government of the Fourth Transformation on November 15 in Mexico City, Guadalajara and other cities in the country.
Even though the government and official voices of Morena and the Fourth Transformation have tried to discredit the demonstration, it is a mistake to ignore that there are real problems that justify and legitimize these protests, firstly the violence and structural insecurity that has been lacerating Mexican society for 20 years and, on the other hand, the systemic causes that prevent young Mexicans from aspiring to a decent life. Another thing is that the weakened Mexican opposition opportunistically takes advantage of these causes to criticize and question the second government of the Fourth Transformation. They are in their role and in their right, just as before coming to power, Morena questioned the governments in power.
The repressive response to these demonstrations by the police, by Morena in the case of Mexico City and by Movimiento Ciudadano in Guadalajara, must and deserves to be strongly condemned for showing that the heavy hand has been and continues to be a tool of control and containment of social protests rather than dialogue and attention to the causes of these protests.
Returning to the causes, President Claudia Sheinbaum and the politicians and spokespersons for Morena and 4T are wrong, and too wrong, when they try to discredit these demonstrations only as right-wing maneuvers and disqualify them as violent. If you haven’t heard, you should know that a wide swath of society is fed up with the violence and structural insecurity that has been suffered for at least two decades. It is not just the extortion of the avocado and lemon trees of Michoacán, or the taxi drivers and merchants of Guerrero or Chiapas.
They are the murders in Sinaloa, Guanajuato, Chihuahua and the State of Mexico; and they are the massive disappearances that have terrified states like Jalisco, Tamaulipas and Veracruz. Society is tired of demonstrating to cry out against insecurity and disappearances as was done in 2011 with the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity after the death of the son of the poet Javier Sicilia and friends in April of that year or the massive protests against the disappearance of the 43 normalistas from Ayotzinapa at the end of 2014.
Now the murder of the mayor of Uruapan, Carlos Manzo, once again outrages and angers a good part of society because it reveals not only the fragility of life in this Mexico under the machinery of death of necropolitics, but also the corrupt links between the government department and the criminal organizations that do juicy business in illegal capitalism. So even if undesirable and nefarious opposition figures appear who opportunistically seek to capitalize on protests against insecurity, there are plenty of reasons to protest for this cause.
The misguided phrase of Andrés Manuel López Obrador when defining his security policy as “hugs and not bullets” has been installed in a part of society, as a policy of surrender or complicity with organized crime, although it was not that way. One of the successes of the current president Claudia Sheinbaum has been to put aside the security policy of her predecessor, to change and professionalize the security strategy and return it to civilian command by leaving it in the hands of the Secretary of Security Omar García Harfuch. Although modest, there have been results such as a decrease in intentional homicides. But it would be a major blunder to pretend that this has resolved the insecurity crisis and the virtual informal war that we are experiencing. As long as dozens of people continue to disappear every day, as long as the search mothers continue to dig clandestine graves, as long as thousands of bodies and human remains remain in the country’s morgues and as long as people in this country continue to be murdered or extorted, security policy will continue to be a failure. It would be better for the current government to start from this premise and accept that the part of society that demands results in terms of security is right rather than discredit it.
And the president, Claudia Sheinbaum, and the pro-government voices are wrong, especially when they mocked that there were no young people in the generation Z protest. Although they were not the majority and although some testimonies show them to be uninformed, and with little political awareness, the young people of this country have legitimate underlying causes for going out to protest.
With almost 38 million people, young people represent a third of the population and yet they do not have a secure hope for the future. On the contrary, the life project that Mexican capitalism offers them is a horizon where, despite studying for more than 20 years (from kindergarten to university), in the end they are not guaranteed a job with a decent salary (moreover, the majority without social security), much less the possibility of accessing their own home and ensuring sufficient income to guarantee a decent life.
As if that were not enough, it is young people who are at the center of this violence and informal war that turns them into cannon fodder in disputes between cartels and between them and the state security forces. Both hitmen, national guards and police are mostly young. The majority of the disappeared and the bodies found in clandestine graves are young people. So the protest of November 15, pushing aside the opportunists of the opposition, had every reason to go out to demonstrate against a regime (be it PRI, PAN, Emecista or Morenista) that does not guarantee them a life in peace and a dignified life.
On the other hand, it would be naive to ignore the blatant opportunism of the opposition parties, especially the PAN and the PRI, which took advantage of the call of generation Z and the murder of Carlos Manzo, to try to capitalize on it politically and profit electorally from these causes and the tragedy of violence. Special mention deserves the audacity of businessman Ricardo Salinas Pliego to profit from the media in this situation for two purposes: to continue evading taxes and to take advantage of the tragedy of the Mexicans to postulate himself as a supposed savior of the “communist dictatorship” that according to him Mexico has become under the Morena governments.
President Sheinbaum does well to unmask the opportunists who take advantage of these calls for social protest, but instead of disqualifying those who came out (and will continue to come out) to demonstrate, her government must admit the legitimate causes that justifiably prompted thousands to take to the streets.