Latest / Tales From Aztlantis / Episode 58: Mexican Elections & Right Wing Politics W/ Dr. Luis Herran Avila Part 1!

Transcript

Episode 58: Mexican Elections & Right Wing Politics W/ Dr. Luis Herran Avila Part 1! · Tales From Aztlantis

• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Honesty to some honesty to others.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've all learned a good lesson.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've always heard that honesty is the best honesty.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm catching on why that's so why that's so why that's so good.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to yet another episode of Tales from Oclantis.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: We are your hosts, Curly Tlapoyawa.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: And Ruben Ariano Tla Katega.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: What is going on, Dr.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Ariano?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we have a guest today, Dr.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Luis Erran Avila from the UNM.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Doctor.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Excited to see you.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a long time.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: You're a return guest.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: You're our first return guest for season four.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: And for those who don't know Dr.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: Eran Avila, he is an assistant professor in the Department of History at UNM.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: He is a historian of the Cold War in Latin America with an emphasis on conservative, anti-communist, and extreme right movements.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: So welcome, Dr.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: Eran Avila.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: And it sounds like it's apropos to the times, which you're uh an expert on, because it's uh going down.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's election season in Mexico, right?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: So how are you doing?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: Good.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you guys for for uh having me uh on the on the show again.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's an honor and a pleasure.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, let's let's talk uh Mexican right wing politics.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's what I'm here for.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: So next month is go ahead.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: I was just gonna say it was an all-Mexican politics right wing.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we're gonna we're gonna talk about that.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: Uh next month is the presidential election, right?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: And we've got um who is it, Xochitl?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: What's what is her last name?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, but does she say does she pronounce it shochit or just Sochit or Suchil?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: She does the she does uh let's say the standard Mexican pronunciation Sochil.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: So that's right.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we have Sochil Galvez and then who's the opponent?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Claudia Sheinbaum.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: That is uh the Morena candidate.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then we have a third guy, a third guy who nobody knows, uh whose name I'm actually blanking on Jesus.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that's how unknown this guy is.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, do not look good.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: No, this is the the candidate from uh this uh third party called Movimiento Ciudadano, which is kind of this um, I guess middle of the road.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: What's the John Smith equivalent in Mexico?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Is it Juan Perez?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Juan Perez, there you go.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah, we can just call him Juan Perez.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: Just call him Perez.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: His name is Jorge Alvarez Maine.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Young guy.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: What's the last name?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: Mayman?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: Mainez.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's M Y.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: No, sorry, M-A-Y-N-E-Z.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: Mainez.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Very kind of strange last name.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: That is odd.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I've ever encountered that last name.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: So those are your your three candidates.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: So back to Sochil, what what party does she represent?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: So Claudia represents uh Morena, then Claudia is with Morena, and I mean there's a coalition of parties along with Morena, with the PT, the Labour Party, and the Green Party, which has nothing to do with really with anything.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: Green is just the name.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: Do they wear green?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: Is that what they call them?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: The green?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: They were green and it's they they they emerge the, I mean, originally they were kind of uh an environmentalist party, but they're just a bunch of crooks at this point.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh now the green is all is the money.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: Green is the money, except in Mexico.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_03: Except in Mexico, it's not green.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: But but then again, if you're I mean, Mexico does take a lot of dollars, so yeah.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: So that's uh Claudia Schemann's coalition with and with Morena, and then Sochil Galvez is representing another coalition, uh, which is the strangest one so far, I think, I mean, ever in Mexican history.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's the PRD, which used to be the leftist party, right, for a long time since its uh origins in the 1980s.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: So it's the PRD, the PRI, the party that refuses, the party that refuses to die.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um like Republicans, yeah, very much.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um uh and then uh the PAN, right?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: The PAN.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, which traditionally has been the kind of center right party.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: So you have this weird coalition uh of parties that are you know just basically their their shared identities, we oppose Morena.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: So what I'm hearing is that you have a coalition of the sore losers versus the coalition of the up and comers.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty much, yeah.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, it sounds like Mexican politics for the past uh couple hundred years.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, and and that's what's interesting is that I guess in past elections, I don't know, in the past, I don't know, let's say 30 years, you've had like clearer lines right between left and right.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: Well, especially again like between the PRD and the PRI, right?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like those guys were the traditional adversaries.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: Totally, yeah.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: Totally since since the 1980s, I mean, since the 888, 1988 election between Quautemo Cárdenas, right?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: This is before the PRD was formed.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: But you had Cuatemo Cárdenas, the son of Lazaro Cárdenas, uh competing against Carlos Salinas, right?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: Your neoliberal PRI sort of candidate.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: That was kind of the the founding moment of this long uh decades-long uh rivalry.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: And now they're they're together in this coalition, and it's really strange for a lot of people to just see how uh tables have turned.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: So for our the listeners who aren't familiar with Mexican politics, can you unpack some of these terms like PRI, PRD, pan, and um and Morena?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Morena, just give us an old like a brief summary of each.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, of course.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: So we have a let's start with the PRI, which is the perhaps the most important party of the whole 20th century in in Mexico, right?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: The party of the institutionalized revolution that had different incarnations throughout the 20th century.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh basically a party that uh emerged out of the Mexican revolution of the 1910s, and that all throughout the 20th century based its legitimacy in saying we are the party of the revolution, the revolution continues, right?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: And this was the rhetoric that they used up until, let's say, the uh 1990s, right?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: Very uh it they are what what we can call kind of a chameleon party in the sense that they've uh had kind of a leftist face, but also a very right-wing face, very repressive and authoritarian, and then also playing kind of we are the center, we are the balance, we can keep uh stable politics while also delivering, you know, delivering the goods for the Mexican population.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a PRI.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: They lost the Mexican presidency in the year 2000, um, and that brought uh their their what is it, 71-year dominance to an end.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um then we have the PAN, which is the oldest uh opposition party to the PRI, right?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: They were founded in uh 1939.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: It was founded by essentially by uh the Catholic opposition to the PRI.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: So traditionally a center right, if not very right, yeah.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: I was gonna say those guys.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, originally they were they were at least a few of them.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_03: The gold shirts, right?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: Didn't some of the the gold shirts eventually never really, let's say, they were never really into um the politics of the fund.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: Some of the founders of the fund were Franco sympathizers, right?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: Sympathizers of the uh Franco dictatorship in Spain, some were sympathizers of Nazi Germany, but that kind of faded away sort of fairly quickly after World War the end of World War II.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: And they were more like uh, you know, we're a Catholic sort of Christian democratic party, right?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: And they've they've been around for again a while, and they are actually the main party behind Sochil Galvez's candidacy.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: Also, although it's a coalition, they are actually the strongest of the three parties in the coalition, uh, which makes again the her her candidacy a little bit suspicious, at least for us who study the right, like what is the real agenda here, right?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: What are the real policies that were she to win the election, what is she going to implement?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: Well, what is she known for?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like what were her views prior to running for president?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh she's been part of the pan, at least as a, I believe as a legislator and a senator, although not officially a member of the party.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: And she's been known to be kind of a center, you know, wishy-washy uh politician.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: She is somewhat what we can call progressive in terms of um things like women's reproductive rights.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: She's kind of very open about that.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: She um, and we can talk more about this if you want.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: She she claims uh an indigenous identity as well, which is something that's not that common for mainstream politicians.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: But then again, uh a lot of her the platform that she's been promoting has been essentially is has been manufactured for her by mostly by the by the fund, right?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: By this uh center-right party.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of constrained her ability to appear more progressive, which is you know, she's the way you describe her, she kind of reminds me of of um W, George W.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Bush.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: She was kind of one of those figures that yeah, he belonged to the Republican Party, but he tended to be a little bit more kind of uh progressive on social issues, he was pro-immigration when he was governor of Texas, and uh, you know, because Texas at the time tended to be a little bit more diverse in its political direction than it currently is, and so it kind of reminds me a lot of like his politics.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Once he became the the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party, he basically just fell in line and followed the directive of the national party.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like that's what she's doing now, right?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: She has her own personal politics that she subscribed to over the years, but now that she's like the presumptive nominee for the coalition, now she kind of has to abide by at least by the terms that the the leading partner in that coalition has set out for her, right?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that's and that's something that you know is constraining her ability to appear a little bit more progressive.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: And and that's just I mean, that's a problem for her because you know, we can we can talk about Morena in a second, no, about the all the problems with with Morena, but progressive rhetoric or progressive discourse is actually what's in vogue in Mexico, right?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: So you have to appeal to things like social reform or social welfare, benefits for you know the poorest population, etc.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: etc.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, otherwise you you're not gonna get any votes, right?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: So that's been a problem for her, that she has this center-right party as the dominant uh party behind her coalition, and she can't really sometimes she can't really speak her mind about certain issues.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and and lastly, uh Morena, which is perhaps the most interesting of the current mainstream parties, it's a party of, of course, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a party that's the newest of all the parties that are in the race, uh, mostly made up of former PRD folks, right?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: So people who were on the left, kind of the historical left, including some kind of socialists and communists and all that, who were in the PRD, who were again social reformists, social democrats, so on and so forth, that uh left the PRD to create this new party, basically a party that was formed around the leadership of uh Lopez Obrador, right?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a very uh a party that's uh very much centered on his leadership.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh like the PRI in the past, Morena has been able to uh attract and even we can say capture politicians from all other parties, like the PAN, like the PRI, who suddenly have this, they see the light and they decide, oh, maybe it's better for uh the nation if I, you know, instead of being in the PRI or the FAN or the PRD, I just join Morena, which is the party that's winning everything and has been winning um governorships, um the con the party that uh currently dominates both the Senate and the House or the Congress, right?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Mexico.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: So it's become this dominant party, right?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: How old is Morena?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it was created after the 2000, uh the 2012 election, right?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Lopez Obrador was a candidate back then, and he just broke with so uh he parted ways with um with the PRD.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: There was kind of a split in the party, and he said, I'm gonna just create my own party, I can work with these people anymore.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: So he again created this party, Morena, as as as a almost almost as a personal project, right?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: So it's no longer I mean, the ideology, and this is something that people have have studied in Mexico or are studying currently, is that their ideology is obradorism.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that leads me to my next question.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now I wonder if it I mean, not in terms of their politics, but it it sounds very similar to like the MAGA movement here that is behind Trump.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's does it survive uh AMLO, the party, Morena?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh for instance, there's a lot of speculation here in the US in terms of whether or not the MAGA Republicans or even the Republican Party itself will survive Trump.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so is there a kind of like a similar conversation going on in Mexico in terms of uh AMLO and Morena?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think I think that is the big question that you know uh Lopez Obrador is not gonna live forever.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: His leadership is so strong in the party that once he's gone, what's gonna happen, right?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: Even if they stay in power for several years, who's gonna take that back?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's a very similar question.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: So that's I think the challenge Claudia Shanebaum, the Morena candidate, is going to uh is most likely going to win the election.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's gonna be the challenge, is how do we manage a transition within the party, right?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: So that it's not so personalized.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so that maybe, I mean, that's something that a lot of people are maybe kind of hopeful for, is that maybe there will be a change and have a let's say a progressive movement/slash party less attached to to this you know figure and more about the actual platform and the policies and so on and so forth.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: No, well, historically, how has how has populism done in Mexico?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's the thing, is that you know, aside from I I think the last political figure to have that status was precisely Lázaro Cárdenas, right, in the 1930s.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that became so iconic that um a lot of his political traction was based on that charisma and you know the idea of land reform, the legacy of the oil nationalization in 1938, etc.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: But then from after Cárdenas, it was really the party, the PRI.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: It was not about the personality or the charisma of the sitting president, it was more about the political apparatus and machinery that the PRI had built, right?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: So we have, I mean, terrible precedents in the sense of you know, zero charisma, like completely, right?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, think about the the guy who was president in 1968 when the student massacre happened, right?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, he had zero charisma uh in zero popular appeal.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: He was uh right an authoritarian, sort of uh very dry, um almost I I would say the most right-wing president that the PRI has had.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um but you know the PRI had a little bit of everything.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: So but it was never focused on really the the president the president's personality.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: So with Lopez Obrador, that is one of the big the I guess novelties is that this is a figure that's become so dominant uh and so popular that we're wondering about what's gonna be the the kind of the effect of that, let's say in the next 20 years.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm wondering, uh last time you were here, we talked about some right-wing movements in Mexico.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about the tecos and uh how they're connected to uh is it the Universidad de Guanajuato or Guadalajara.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: And and we talked about how there was maybe like a loose connection, uh, or maybe I'm I'm misremembering, but there was like a connection between Ordaz and sort of what was going on with them because they're kind of of the same approach to things, right?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: My way or the highway, kind of maybe not the the politics themselves, right?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: So can you can you uh point to any uh similarity between what was happening in 68 to something that might be happening currently in the current uh political theater in Mexico?
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I I think one thing that is similar, I would say, is that um the the Mexican left, however you define that, is kind of uh uh I guess uh shifting again.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: And that's something that happened during the 1960s and certainly after 68, right?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: When aid repression was sort of a signal that the more conventional forms of dissidence were no longer possible, and that led to the radicalization of a you know considerable sector of the left, particularly young people, right, that joined guerrilla groups or that simply became more radicalized.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: Not saying, of course, that that's happening now, but what I'm saying is that today what we're seeing is that the left has been reconfigured in such a in such a dramatic way that seems to be inside of Morena, right?
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: Which means they are sort of part of the government and part of the system, if you want.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a big question for those leftists who don't share Morena's uh program or the fact that Morena has become the dominant party.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: What do you do as a leftist who is not an obradorista, right?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right, because there's I mean, with everything, there it's it falls in the spectrum, right?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not sure where Morena would fall uh in the spectrum, but I'm I'm sure that people who are more on the radical left side of things probably have a lot of criticism uh against Morena and Obrador, which uh you know maybe you can say a few words about that and see how we can tie that into um the opposing view on the right as well.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, of course.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so um, for instance, one important voice uh from the left uh that has been opposing Morena has been the zapatistas, right?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: Who are still around.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: Kind of they have been, I would say, marginalized by the media and by the political system.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: Because when Lopez Obrador became president, uh they were immediately very critical, you know, of different things, but particularly saying, look, we historically belong to the same side, but we're gonna keep pointing out the failures of you know of the political system.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we're gonna keep being part of the opposition, right?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: So Morena didn't like that and essentially you know sidelined the zapatistas, and that's one sector of the you know, radical left that's sort of remains critical, but has also been pretty much silenced.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: And there are other groups.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: Think about the, for instance, uh feminist groups and organizations who have also clashed with Lopez Obrador, particularly over the question of femicide in Mexico, basically saying, look, you're not doing enough, it's still happening, and we still have all of these issues with sexism and uh macho violence, etc.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: So uh Lopez Obrador has accused them of being conservatives, of being allies of the right, and of course, you know, feminist groups haven't taken that, you know, with a lot of sympathy, right?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, those are two examples of sectors of the left that have been uh sort of that remain critical and that seem to have no space in Morena, at least as in in terms of party structure, you know, right?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: Morena still claims to be a feminist party, and we'll see how that might that might change with Claudia Sheimba.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Is she not very feminist uh according to the feminist Mexico?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: Or I guess in her personal trajectory, you could say she's you know a good example of you know, she's a scientist, she's an academic, she's been in politics for a while.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: So, in terms of her life trajectory, she's outspoken about women's reproductive rights, equality, so on and so forth.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: The problem that she has had is that uh because she was uh the mayor of Mexico City, and during her term as mayor, uh there were a lot of clashes between the police and these feminist uh protests.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: So feminist groups have said, look, you can claim all you want, the banner of uh feminism, but you've thrown your police to repress our protests, right?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: So that's not very feminist of you.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: The proof is in the pudding, right?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: So um, so it's a very it's a very interesting kind of dynamic, right?
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: Where Morena accuses the radical left of being allies with the right, which is a little uh weird, but then and then the radical left is also saying, look, Morena is actually a conservative party, right?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's always the case, right?
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it again we've we go back to to the the spectrum.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the further you are to the middle, the more conservative you look on the left, and on the right, the more radical you look, more on the left.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it's one of those conundrums.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: Well, speaking of the right, I I want to talk about this guy, Eduardo Verasteghi.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_03: Am I saying his his name right?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I guess he was this former telenovela star, uh, an actor, a model, uh good looking guy.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if he's very charismatic, but I mean he did come out in Paul Blart Molkop 2.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: I'm saying on his who was he?
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't see both.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: I've been watching both both of those movies.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: He played a character named Eduardo.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_03: Eduardo.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: Oh no, no, no.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: He didn't.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's the what he's credited as.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he played a guy named Eduardo.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: Uh he was also in that the Cristiada movie, the uh For Greater Glory, which makes makes sense.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: And apparently um, the morning after Mexico's uh Supreme Court decriminalized abortion, which was a huge, huge move on their part, this inspired him to like really get into right-wing politics even more.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_03: And that's when he registered as an independent candidate for the 2024 presidential campaign.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I don't know if anybody thinks he he was serious about becoming president or if he was just looking to get notoriety, like, oh, look, this former TV star and actor is now running for for president and he's uh promoting the far right.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he's super against uh women's reproductive rights, right?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it sounds to me like he's taking keys from the big orange blowhard.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's kind of there, there are some uh similarities there for sure.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: I know he said that he thinks uh abortion is uh is murder, like it's straight up murder, and that any doctor who performs an abortion should be uh imprisoned for a minimum of a hundred years.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_03: And then he said, uh, we are a Catholic country governed by an anti-Catholic government, which it makes sense he would be in the Cristiada movie for sure, with uh with an attitude like that.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: So, what what what do we know about this guy, Eduardo Verasteghi?
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, aside from as you said, being a telenovela actor, a terrible one, and also a terrible, I mean, movie actor.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: He was in Paul Blart Molcop 2, bro.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: That he can't.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: I need to go back and check to see which which character you're playing on that.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I mean, aside from that, he I mean he's had this interesting um I mean he's an interesting figure because he's a kind of a link between Mexican right-wing politics and and US American uh right-wing politics, right?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: He did play an interesting role in the Trump campaign.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, he was, I think, I can't remember his exact title, but he was something like uh the an advisor to Trump on Latino issues or Latino politics, something like that.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: He, you know, he was um kind of photographed alongside Trump several times.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: He attended uh different events, particularly with with Latino kind of Republican constituents and so on, so on and so forth.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: So um, and he he was also, I think I might be wrong about this, but I think he was part of the production group of this film that I'm uh blanking on the title, this film about uh human trafficking.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: Sound of freedom?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: Sound of freedom.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: Sound of freedom.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he was one of the uh biggest promoters of the film, but also I think he was part of the product he was a producer, I believe.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, his company uh produced the the film.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_03: Well, was one of the producers of the film, and his company has a weird, it's a name in Latin, and it's like a Catholic term for repentance.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I can't remember the Latin word, but that's what he named his company, his uh Latin form repentance.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: So so it gives you a sense, I mean it gives you kind of an idea of how this guy uh is operating on both stages, right?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: Both in the US and in Mexico.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: I I would say that he's been more successful in the United States in the sense that you know he's attached himself to the to the MAGA movement and to this, you know, we can call it this alliance between evangelicals and conservative Catholics that are have been promoting things like this this film, no.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um and all in all the conspiracy theories that you can think about, like you know, the about vaccines or about um gender ideology or the dangers of feminism.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um Joe Biden is a communist, stuff like that.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um he's the most milkedased communist on the planet, if he is.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_03: So I looked it up.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_03: He was a member of the President's Advisory Commission on Hispanic Prosperity.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_03: So I didn't know that foreign nationals could become members of advisory commissions.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: He has he has US he has U.S.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: citizenship.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: He does.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Was he born in the US and has dual citizenship?
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: He was born in Mexico, but he has um dual citizenship.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh, and that's been also part of the I mean, one minor part of the of what people have have been pointing out about him is that well, this guy has been has been making a political career in the United States and now suddenly wants to become president in Mexico.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how's that how would that work?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: You know that you know Mexican politics is very kind of wary of of this stuff about foreign intervention.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well, of gringos, especially.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, he uh he he founded CPAC Mexico, right?
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like he was he was behaving.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: He was the founder of CPAC Mexico, right?
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: So so the conference um of political conservative political action conference that maybe I'm getting the acronym wrong.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um what's it called in Mexico in Spanish?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh just CPAC Mexico.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_02: CPAC Mexico.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, they didn't even bother to translate it.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, okay.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: And the thing is that CPAC is an I mean it it's uh of course originally a US American uh group, right, that emerges out of the 1970s, but it's it's been kind of expanding its influence and operations to other parts of the world, like uh Hungary, right, where Trump and the conservative movement in the US had they have like a lot of really good allies, including the actual government of Hungary.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um they also have had conferences, meetings in in Brazil.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's been at least two or three meetings in Brazil.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: And then that one that that they um held in Mexico that was again sponsored by Verastegui and a whole bunch of people that are sympathizers with his uh right-wing politics.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, that was perhaps the one of the most visible public stages where Verastegui launched his presidential campaign, right?
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: He invited the son of Jair Bolsonaro, yeah.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: Eduardo.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: Eduardo Bolsonaro was uh quite a character.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: So was Eduardo and Eduardo?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: Right, exactly.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: And what's up with guys named Eduardo?
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: What the hell's going on here?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and that's where he basically said, I am going to run for president and just wait for 2024.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and people, I mean, and you you know, I followed the the broadcast of the event, and and the at least the audience seemed very thrilled about the idea, right?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: But it really the the candidacy really just fell apart, partly because the Mexican political system doesn't really allow uh much space for independent candidates, like citizen candidates.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: He didn't really have a uh political party backing him.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um and just he just fell short of uh the the um number of signatures that he needed.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean it was kind of an interesting moment because it just shows you that yes, there are he might him and his supporters might be noisy in terms of you know social media and all that stuff, but they just don't have the numbers.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: So his candidacy fell apart, so he's no longer in the running.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: He's no longer in the running.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so right now it's this basically between between Shine Blaze and uh what's Sochi's last name again?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Galuverez and and who's the third one?
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: Let's just call him Juan Petis?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I pulled up the uh the story here from Reuters about CPAC Mexico, and um it's just funny how similar all of this sounds.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's like uh beating the the same old drum again.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_03: It said Matt Schlap, that's his real name, by the way.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: Matt Schlapp, chairman of CPAC parent group American Conservative Union, said in the opening remarks at CPAC Mexico that his biggest worry was the march of godless communism from Latin America to the United States.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: It has a better kind of flow to it, Chairman Mao.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a communist, by the way, I'm just saying for the record, but it sounds to me like this is an international conspiracy, wouldn't you say?
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean going to Brazil, going to Hungary, having their clothes in Mexico, and yeah, they also they also held a meeting, a CFAP meeting in uh surprise, surprise, Israel.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: Oh wow.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, surprise, surprise.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, this this story uh goes on to say speakers who included conspiracy theorists, activists, and media personalities from around the world called for new leaders to fight the spread of socialism, globalism, and woke culture in Mexico and elsewhere in the region.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: And then uh here we go, Eduardo Verastegui.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_03: The right, the true right, has been orphaned, said Eduardo Verastegui, a Mexican soap actor turned anti-abortion advocate who helped organize the conference and who Eduardo Bolsonero praised as the future president of Mexico.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: Some that's some some bold claims there.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, this idea that the true right has been orphaned, like what's that based on?
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_03: What is he um, you know, what is the true right that he's referring to?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that that is the the the interesting uh question, no.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: At least in the Mexican context, uh, in and if you think about Verastegui as kind of the part of this um right-wing conservative Catholicism in Mexico, the true right is the hardcore religious right, not the fan, not certainly not the PRI.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: They don't like this kind of moderation thing, the lukewarm sort of, you know, we are conservative, but we're willing to negotiate certain things.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: So he's a crystal fascist, is what I'm hearing.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, could I mean there is there is, I think, a seed of that, right?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: And this has to do with with uh um, I mean, I mean, we spoke about this.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: I I think the last time I was and in in your show, that you know, the the legacy of the Crispero War, right?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: Verastegui is someone who sees himself as kind of a continuator, right, of that tradition or and of that struggle, right?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: And this is something that came up several times during that CFAC Mexico meeting, where it's you know, speakers, uh Mexican speakers uh talking about you know, we are cristeros, we we just don't fight, we just don't fight with rifles anymore.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_02: There are other forms of struggle, but we should continue sort of we should carry on that same spirit of combat, you know.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: So that is a political ideology, right?
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: That yeah, we can I mean I think it's safe to to say that there's an element of of tristo fascism.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh why strangely nationalism.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: What instead of running as an independent, why didn't he just go ahead and reinstall the Cristiana Party in Mexico?
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, is it because there isn't a lot of support for something that is so overtly religiously labeled, or or what's the hesitation?
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, because that yeah, Mexico it tends to be a progressive liberal country in in general, but it's still a very Catholic and very religious.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, I mean that's that's uh the the what um maybe from the outside looks like a weird um like something that's hard to reconcile, no?
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um I always say that in a country that's 90 plus percent Catholic, um a candidate like like him wouldn't really, you know, like his candidacy is never really took up.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: Partly has to do with again this the the lack of support from a mainstream party, right?
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um and but also this very interesting uh feature of Mexico of Mexican political culture where yes, you can be you know a majority Catholic country, but there is I think a very still a very strong sense that politics and religion you know don't belong in the same in the same uh realm.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like they separate.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: There's a there's a stricter sense of separation of church and state in Mexico than than there is in this country among the general populace.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: At least that's my sense, and I might be biased because that's how I see things, right?
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I mean, for instance, in Morena or even in the PRD, right, which was the that leftist party, I mean, you have, let's say, people with leftist politics, but also being very, you know, I don't know, very um attached to the traditions of Mexican Catholicism, like the you know, the Virgin of Guadalupe, right?
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like they there's no they see no contradiction between being a sort of uh Marxist or a socialist or what have you, and then being also a Catholic, right?
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: They they kind of understand that separation.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and at least from what I've seen, let's say, you know, if you look sometimes at uh things like opinion polls and stuff like that, people seem to have again that same idea, right?
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_02: That yes, Catholicism is an important part of my life, but I'm not about to vote for you know someone that's essentially uh advocating for the impositions of Christian politics over the entire country.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's just fine, right?
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_02: And this has to do with education or stuff about women's rights or um just the role of the church in in government and stuff like that.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, if you can call this a you know the victory of Benito Juarez and the 19th century liberalism, right?
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: They are probably very happy in their in their graves, not rolling on their graves, but but actually very happy celebrating that these principles of Mexican liberalism still hold somewhat strongly, you know.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_03: So the last time you were here, we spoke a little bit about El Yunque.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_03: And what's interesting is in the past year or so, I've been seeing their name pop up more on social media, and there's this um idea that El Yunque, even though politicians in Mexico, like some of them you uh they claim that El Yunque doesn't exist, right?
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, oh, that's uh that's a boogeyman, that doesn't exist.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not a member of El Yunque.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_03: And um, but on the other side, I'm seeing all these stories about how Depan in particular, and then there's a neo-fascist party in Spain called Vox, VOX, um, that both of those parties are being actively, if not infiltrated, at least influenced by the modern iteration of El Yunque.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_03: And there was a reporter, I can't remember his name, but he claims that he came across like a cache of internal documents from El Junque, and that he's able to show that there is uh an effort, a strategy on the part of El Junque to actively try to continue infiltrating and influencing Mexican politics.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_03: Do you see?
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, is there any truth to that?
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: And to what level would they even have uh influence on what's going on right now?
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, I mean the el Junque is I mean it's one of those organizations that's very difficult to you know to research and to really have a clear understanding just because they it's an organization that operates basically as a clandestine or uh group, right?
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_02: A secret group.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_02: Secrecy is you know their most important uh value, no?
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and and people that write about them sometimes tend to um to exaggerate their influence, but it is true that hard and I and I'm I I've seen documents, uh Junke documents at the National Archive in Mexico.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: It is true that their main strategy is yes, remain secret and then uh infiltrate, and they use this language, right?
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: The language of infiltration of government and civil society in general, business groups, church groups, uh education, so on and so forth, right?
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: Kind of placing members of El Junque in important posts, in key posts, so that they can kind of um bring about essentially the what they call the re-christianization of Mexico.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: The the the this restoration of the kingdom of uh God in Mexico, right?
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: Which essentially bringing bringing the church and religion to uh bear more heavily on public life, no?
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_02: So during the um Fox, Vicente Fox presidency, right, from 2000 to 2006, uh, there were documented cases of people in in specific parts of the government who were either suspected or actually demonstrated to be members of a Junke.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: Including uh, I mean, and this is this is where it gets a little fuzzy, right?
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: Because you can say, well, they were members of a junque, or were they just athletic right-wingers?
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: So, for instance, Fox had a Minister of Interior, which is essentially the second most important uh political post after the presidency, Minister of Interior, uh Carlos Abascal, who was the son of a very important right-wing leader, uh Salvador Abascal, who founded a right-wing Catholic movement in the 1930s called the Union Nacional Sinarquistas.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_02: So this Abascal, this Abascal family had this decades-long history of being Catholic right-wingers.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and this guy, Carlos, the guy who became uh Minister of Interior, it's unclear if he was a member of a Junque.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: We don't we it's not like he was a car-carrying member member of a Junke, and we have like lists of membership lists for a junque.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: But then in other parts of the Fox administration, we do have other examples of men and women who were uh, again, either suspected or you know confirmed that they were part of the organization.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for listening to part one of our extended interview with Dr.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_03: Luis Herran Avila about the upcoming Mexican presidential election and right-wing movements in Mexican politics.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_03: Part two of this interview will be available in two weeks, and as always, premium subscribers will get the episode a few days early and ad-free.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_03: To become a member, simply visit talesfromotlantis.com and click Go Premium.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_03: And as always, dear listener, remember the truth is like medicine.