Latest / Tales From Aztlantis / Episode 59: Mexican Elections & Right Wing Politics W/ Dr. Luis Herran Avila Part 2!

Transcript

Episode 59: Mexican Elections & Right Wing Politics W/ Dr. Luis Herran Avila Part 2! · Tales From Aztlantis

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: You must excuse me.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: But you remember the lesson.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Lesson of honesty.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Honesty to some honesty defensive.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Lesson understanding good extent on your mind.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think we've all learned a good lesson.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: I've always heard that honesty is the best policy.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm catching on why that's on a why that's on the why that's.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome yet again to Tales from Atlantes.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: This is part two of our interview with Dr.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: Luis Herran Ávila about the presidential election in Mexico and right-wing movements in Mexican politics.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: If you have not listened to part one yet, I highly recommend that you go back and do so.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: Now, on with the show.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: I seem to recall back during his run for presidency, Fox wasn't he criticized for having connections to Sinarquismo.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Wasn't that one of the criticisms that was kind of levied against him at the time?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why a lot of people were kind of uh uh had hesitation towards voting for him or for him being uh the head of uh what the pun, right?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because he was uh candidate for the pun.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, this has to do with the fans' longer history of you know being again this center-right party that has always had within the party a wing of the party that's a little bit more to the right, right?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes quite a bit more to the right.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: So folks that were, for instance, in in El Junque, a lot of them actually started their political careers in the PAN, right?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: For instance, I have studied um some youth and student groups that became kind of neo-fascist groups in the 1960s and 70s that had their beginning of their political trajectory within the fan.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: So the fan is this very, I mean, within the pan, there's a range of right-wing politics, including the extreme, the most extreme versions, no?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: So a lot of the yunke actually comes from from the fan.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: Someone, again, to go back to Veraste, someone like Veraste would say, no, the Fan is uh definitely not the type of right that we want, and is the fake right, or the as he calls them, the La Derechita Cobarde, which is a fascinating term.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's like the coward petty right.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: And that's not the true right.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's hard to say what is the status of a Juncker right now because the I mean, again, it's a secret organization.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: But I mean, what what you were saying curly about that those connections with Spain, that's been one of the interesting developments in the past 20 years for the organization, is that they went outside of Mexico, right?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's kind of what I was alluding to earlier when I was talking about CPAG being sort of like this international conglomerate of uh conservative organizations, and it kind of reminded me of that conversation we had about a junke, and I wanted to see if you could make that connection there.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, do you think that there is any connection between the two, or they're still kind of maintain a separation at this point?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_03: I think they're allies.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_03: Some people that are members of a junque might be participating in these CPAC events or kind of just gravitating around the same people, right?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_03: The same uh meetings and so on and so forth.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_03: But I think they remain separate, partly because el Junque has its own history and its own kind of uh ideology, let's say, that they're willing to work together with these international allies like CPAC or maybe right-wing movements in I don't know, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, right?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Spain, so on and so forth, right?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_03: And and the Catholic connection is what matters a lot for them.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: So you know how like I'm sorry, Curly, but like the way that they calls have been known to have been involved in some nefarious actions, uh including murder and political assassinations.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Is the Junke also tied to any of that?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a history of them doing similar activities?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, absolutely.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_03: I was just precisely in writing the book that I'm working on currently.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_03: I found uh these documents that tell, for instance, stories of uh Junke members that were arrested by the police for whatever reason, and then they just kill the beans, right?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: That they belong to the secret organization, that they've been conducting paramilitary training, uh things like martial arts, the handling of weapons, things like uh guerrilla warfare training.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_03: And this is something that we see also in documents that talk about the loss, right?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: And how long ago?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, this was at least the document that I was looking at, it's kind of uh early 70s.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: And that's something that uh journalists that have been tracking el Junke more recently talk about, you know, interviewing members of a junke or former members of a junke, who also give uh testimonies about this type of indoctrination and training.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_03: So they are very similar in that sense.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: The thing with El Junke and Los Tecos is that they eventually, at some point, they had a fight over basically the control of the what we can call the kind of Catholic right-wing umbrella.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_03: Who's gonna lead this?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: Is it gonna be us loste or you the junky, right?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_03: And it also had to do with the fact that Los Tecos, I think I spoke about this in that last time that I was in the show, that Los Tecos were advocates of this idea that that the Catholic Church after the 1960s was no longer the real Catholic Church.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Vatican II, right?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: Vatican II, Second Vatican Council, and that they said, well, the current Pope is actually a communist and a crypto Jew, so we shouldn't trust him.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_03: El Junke actually pushed back against that idea.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where there was a split, right?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, because I was gonna ask um, do either of those groups, El Junque or uh the Tecos, I was going to ask, were they either of them affiliated with like um what is it, Catholic monarchism?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: This idea that it would be a theocratic state with the Pope as the head of the government, you know?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: And um, they're very orthodox.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: And there used to be a guy in uh he would send me hate mail all the time from uh Arizona of all places.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: He hates this podcast.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: Shout out if you're listening, by the way.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: Mr.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: Texts and emails, but he would send me like these bizarre memes of Catholic monarchist ideology.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: It just made me think like I wonder if either of these organizations, but it sounds like one of them, like at least the Techos would be more inclined to have like install their own Pope, right?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: If they see Vatican II as is fraudulent, and then the Yunke would be satisfied with just having the current, whoever is the current Pope, the head of the church.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: I mean interesting.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_03: They have these kind of very what to us might seem like very slight ideological differences.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, a lot of similarities for sure.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_03: I think both would have some version of this kind of uh theocracy as an ideal.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: But then again, there are different at least that that split or that that clash that they had with regards to um Vatican II, the reforms in the Catholic Church, and then Pope Paul VI, for one side he was a communist and a crypto Jew, and for the other side, it's like, well, you know, he's a Pope, he's infallible, and we'll just follow his lead, right?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_03: So, but both, for instance, both groups or both factions would still adhere to this idea of, for instance, a Hispanic Catholic culture and the legacy of Spanish culture in Mexico and in all of Latin America, and an admiration at least for uh Spanish monarchy, right?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_03: What they did for us as a culture, so on and so forth.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: This idea of Hispanismo, or rather Hispanidad as a unifying defining trait of Mexican culture.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_03: Both groups adhere to that for sure.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: Now, there's other currents of monarchism, for instance, in Brazil, it's very strong actually among the Brazilian right who want to see a restoration of the monarchy.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like, okay, but then that's the Portuguese monarchy that at some point was based in Brazil, right?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_03: They see Brazil as the actual heart of the old Portuguese empire.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but that's a good that's a whole other so not an extension of, but as the heart of the actual exactly, yeah.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: Portugal is a tiny little nation that was extracting resources from the from the real empire.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: I had a friend uh back in the day who would say this little phrase, like a radicalism radicalism loss, something to that effect.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like so even within radicalism, there's extremes of radicalism that disagree with each other, and this is a perfect example of that.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I guess we were wondering too, I don't know, Curly, uh if you had any other questions, but we wanted to ask you if you could tell us a little bit about your current project, what you're working on, um, and uh how soon you think uh the public might be able to have access to some of those materials uh once you're done with them.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I do have one more question.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you do?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: Well, go ahead.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: So one thing getting back to um Eduardo Verasteghi, one thing that he is doing, so he he produced this this movie, Sound of Freedom, right, which got super popular for some reason, and it's not a good movie, and it's based on this organization called the Operation Underground Railroad, and the leader of this organization has been called out as being a fraud and just like his organization's bullshit, and they're he's being sued right now by multiple people.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: But before all of this, and even working with the same director, I found that one of his first movies was a movie called Bella.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: Have you heard of this?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: He uh is directed by Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, who also directed uh Sound of Freedom, and it was written by Monteverde and produced by Eduardo Verasteghi.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: And what's funny about this movie, I mean, it's terrible.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's a terrible movie.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, Eduardo's in it.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: He plays the, you know, one of the main characters, but it's like this slick anti-abortion movie, but it's not overtly, like it's not marketed as being, you know, a Catholic anti-abortion movie.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: And it's very tricky the way they do it.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: The plot is very simple.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's set in New York City.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, something that doesn't make sense later on in the uh the narrative of the movie.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: But there's a Mexican restaurant in New York City, and there's this woman, young woman, who works there as a waitress, and she comes in late and she's like, I was sick, I couldn't come in.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, she gets yelled at and fired.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, it's bad.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just gonna tell you what it is so you don't have to watch it.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: So she leaves, and then Eduardo's character, who's the cook at the restaurant, follows her, and he's like, hey, what's wrong?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: And turns out she's sick because she's pregnant, right?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so they go around the city and he talks to her and like, well, what are you gonna do?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: And she's like, Well, I'm gonna it rhymes with too much mortified, is what I'm gonna do.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: And uh for all your little baby years out there.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: But the guy's like, Oh, you wouldn't consider giving your child up for adoption?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, so he takes her to meet his family.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: He spends the whole day basically, you know, clandestinely trying to convince her not to have an abortion.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: And she meets his family and she finds out that his brother was adopted, and you know, you should really give up, you know, your daughter or or whatever, you know, your child for adoption.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: And then we find out that Eduardo's character had like killed a little kid while drunk driving or something.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: So he's like feels bad about, you know, so there's like all these hammering over your head type stuff about, you know, killing children, juxtaposing, you know, this dead baby, you know, it's it's all fucked up.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's the silliest plot.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: But then it ends at the very end, you find out that, you know, this is where they get the title of the movie from Bella, she decides to have the baby, and Eduardo's character has adopted the baby.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: So now they're playing on the beach and it's all, you know, so it pulls all the right heartstrings.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you're somebody who thinks that lifetime movies are quality, you would probably watch this and it would go, the message would go over your head that it's just been jabbing you in the face with, right?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like you wouldn't even recognize that it's it's an overt anti-abortion film.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't marketed that way.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: It would, it's very innocuous looking.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: But what I don't get is, oh, and the little girl's name is Bella.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: So that's where they get the title of the movie.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: He she has the baby, names it Bella, then Eduardo Verasteghi's character adopts the baby.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: But my question was he's a cook in New York, like in Manhattan.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_03: How the hell can he afford like you're looking you're looking for coherence where there is none?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel magic, Carly.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: Come on, you know that it's you know, because the message obviously, and and it plays to this larger message of people who are against the women's reproductive rights, is they don't understand reality.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: All they're fixated on is no, abortion is bad.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: You should adopt.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, well, that's sometimes not possible.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: One, and two, who the fuck are you to tell me when I should and should not have a family?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think Curly, uh I think what you're saying here is the criticism is not so much that the guy adopted the kid, but that he was eight that he was allowed to adopt it to begin with.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on with the adoption agency?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: That they're not looking at this guy's finances and figuring out that the guy is only a what is it, a cook?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And what can he afford to adopt a kid on cook in Manhattan?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you were in prison for killing a child.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: Here's another one.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, and and of course, zero zero criticism of the of the adoption system, which has its own.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, these people think that you just give up the kid for adoption and they're gonna find a family for him, and everything's gonna be just a-okay, like they have no clue as to what it really takes for someone to be adopted, how many years a lot of these kids end up in the foster system going from one family to the next, and I mean it becomes very traumatizing.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not that simple.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, everything's so facile for people who think in these black and white terms, and I feel sorry for them sometimes because I wonder, like, what is really going on in your mind?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what how is this the kind of thinking that you have on a daily basis as you're making important decisions in your life?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do you not really think things through and really rationalize the implications of the decisions that you're making, and especially those that you're trying to make on someone other's behalf?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: And and those are the people that a movie like this is made for.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like, that's the audience for this movie.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: The people who think like that, who'll just watch a movie and be like, yeah, why don't they just give up their babies for adoption?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's so simple.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, why not?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's so simple.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: Why shouldn't I be allowed to tell other people what to do with their bodies?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, at least 10 with a bunch of books.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: Where's your book?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and just wanted to add to something that Curly said at the end, right?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's how effective film can be as a vehicle to kind of just normalize certain ideas and turn them into kind of common sense, no?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, this is one of the people that write scripts.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes they do have these types of agendas, right?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_03: And inserting certain ideas, and how natural it might sound for the anti-abortion people to say, of course it's wrong, of course it's uh abortion is murder, and that's just how life is.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: That is a fact, right?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: There's no discussion.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_03: And the the anti-abortion movement, at least for instance in Mexico, has been relatively strong, or I guess present, not necessarily strong, but present for a few decades now, precisely just based on this hard established fact that abortion is murder.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: And it's become one way through which the uh certain sectors of the Mexican right have been able to keep themselves sort of relevant or at least uh visible in the media, kind of in the public sphere, etc.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_03: That is their main, tends to be their main focus.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why Verastegui, when he launched his candidacy or when he was campaigning, he made a lot of emphasis precisely on this issue, right?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_03: He was trying to appeal to this supposed common sense amongst Mexican Catholics, but not all Mexican Catholics actually agree that this is the actual ultimate cause for which we must uh fight.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: And this was my way, of course, of avoiding talking about my book, but I'll tell you something about my book.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: It is a difficult question at this point.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: But so the book is uh about, and it could give you kind of uh the title that it has for now at least, it's uh Crusaders, um, nationalism, anti-communism, and right-wing politics in Cold War Mexico.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I went for that title, Crusaders, because it gives a sense of uh what some of the, let's say, main characters or main organizations that I study in the book, their approach to politics, right?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: This is not, you know, the politics of deliberation and negotiation and so on and so forth.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_03: This is about we are on a crusade against this thing that we call communism, that of course encompasses a whole bunch of things.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: And and what I do is I study different different groups on the spectrum of the right that share again the fear against communism or the struggle against communism in how they, you know, these groups were important for Cold War Mexico.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we tend to study uh mostly, let's say, government actors and then the left, but then uh these um other organizations on the right, you know, civic organizations, student groups, so on and so forth, were also very important.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, they appear in the newspapers, they're you know doing propaganda, and you we just haven't studied them enough, I think.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_03: And it's has also been helping me understand a little bit of people like Veraste, right?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: Or or these organizations that are today still alive and operating in Mexico, where do they come from?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: What makes them still be visible and present, but not strong enough to um, let's say, gain spaces in power or let's say win the presidency.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: This is kind of trying to study their weakness rather than their strength.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's kind of this.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, or saying, look, it's it's just not it's a strange case because if we think about I don't know, the right in Brazil or in Argentina, a lot of the explanation for their strength is well, these countries had military dictatorships that were straightforward, like very right wing, right?
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: They created a base of support and legitimacy.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: The right wing in Mexico is not quite like that, right?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: The PRI, because it was so wishy-washy and so again, such a chameleon, tended to be repressive against the right.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_03: They didn't want these Catholic right-wingers to come to power, no.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: So, this is some of the stuff that I some of the things that I study in the book are precisely this, you know, the the importance of right-wing politics that we haven't studied enough for the Mexican context, and then trying to explain this important public presence, since Catholicism is against such an important cultural force in Mexican society, but then also how weak they have actually been as political groups, let's say.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder what both parties, or not both parties, but some of these more conservative types, uh, especially the ones that don't think that the current coalition on the right is conservative enough or Catholic enough, think of the fact that we have in Mexico two women leading major coalitions in the run for the presidency.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, doesn't that have also something to play into their their personal politics in terms of what it means to be a conservative and a conservative country, a conservative culture that still tied ties into patriarchy and to some extent still to Mexican machismo in a sense?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm sure some of that plays into uh the antagonism that people like Verastegui might have against, for instance, Sochil, right?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, yeah, I mean the gender politics I mean can be very much in your face in Mexican society.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_03: And the fact that you have two women, two female presidential candidates is very new.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: This wasn't an explicit point in Verasteghi's platform, but part of the attraction of his candidacy for kind of the hardcore conservatives was we need a man.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_03: Women don't belong in these types of leadership positions, right?
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_03: Uh maybe some of them are a little bit more reformed and moderate about that specific issue.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but I think for the most part, you know, he in the end, Verasty represents this, you know, very macho, good-looking figure.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, anti-feminist, of course, so on and so forth.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_03: So I think there is an element there, and we'll see how it plays out during the now that we're kind of entering the decisive months of the campaigns, how um, let's say, discourses of misogyny attacking the two candidates are gonna play out, no?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: And this is, of course, uh, aside from what the extreme right might say, there is still you know a very macho and misogynistic uh public culture in Mexico.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: So uh we're starting to see that, right?
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_03: Attacks against Sochil Gálvez for being La Vieja, La Vieja Sonsa, or I don't know, right?
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_03: This use of vieja, right?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: That that very derogatory term to refer to women uh being used to attack both Claudia Sheinbaum and Sochil Gales.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so will will this be the first time in Mexican history that there's a a woman president?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, first time.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: So that's pretty significant.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Very significant.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_03: Very, very significant.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: And we'll see, I mean, it looks gonna be interesting to see how this conservative movements.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: conservative wing of Mexican politics, how do they deal with that?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_03: I mean that's and I think this is what you were saying, Ruben, is that it seems like uh there's gonna be kind of a a shock moment.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna they're gonna realize that and what is your prediction the outcome of the election?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like is there one candidate that is uh hotter than the other one at this point?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of people say anything can happen, right?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_03: But the most likely outcome is that Claudia Sheinbaum's gonna win the election.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: That's just I'm kind of looking at the numbers and and how weak the uh Sochil Galvez's candidacy has been so far.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: So interesting.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_03: And again it's it's gonna be uh you know again an interesting moment right if if it does come to happen first woman president maybe uh possibility that Morena will kind of morph it into something else we'll see what uh Lopez Obrador does in order to stay relevant or is he actually going to retire from politics which I don't think so but we'll see.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well he can't be president again right I mean he only served one term that's it and but he can he can be the power behind the court right so the siwa coat to the Tijuani.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh tying it in so maybe I don't know um maybe you can remind us a little bit about which uh one of the candidates you said uh uh claims indigenous uh identity or ancestry but also I'm thinking here like um there's a parallel with the Bree right with the BRI and how it survived its its early years and and its early iteration and its cult of personality to become what it became for 70 years.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if Morena will also you know if if it if it's true that that Shinebahn's gonna win and and uh Morena's gonna carry on as the leading political party in Mexico then it might survive AMLO and so I mean it'll probably last another 30 40 years.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: It is possible and I think that's what they are aiming for is to um I mean this is this is I think the current struggle in the party is how do we keep building strength based on Lopez Obrador's leadership but then how do we look to the future with the possibility of not only consolidating as a party but staying in power.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_03: I mean in and the issue with Sochil Galvez and her indigenous uh identity I mean she's very open about it and I don't think she's necessarily lying uh but she's been under attack because her opponents say well you're not really indigenous because you don't speak an indigenous language or there were some really messed up uh criticisms which were like but you are you're a businesswoman you cannot be indigenous if you're a businesswoman like okay that's so racism is rearing its head anti-indigenous racism as Mexican as apple pie.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Just for that TFA will back the indigenous candidate in this region.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: We so it's it I mean in that that sense it's been an interesting just seeing how it the conversation played out because we don't speak enough about Mexican indigenous peoples in Mexican politics like their actual representation participation in decision making.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah outside of Benito Juarez you don't really hear like yeah or the politicians I mean or the actual the actual for instance there are legislators who are from indigenous communities yeah and but we don't hear about them and it's only in this very opportunistic way that we get to talk about it.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: And but then the conversation quickly died down and moved on to other things.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: And a similar issue uh has been raised with Claude Yasheinbaum's Jewish identity because there is of course a strong or you know important uh undercurrent of anti-Semitism in Mexico yes and people that say you know she she's not even Mexican wow she has that right the the the usual anti-Semitic trope of the double allegiance that she is really loyal to Israel and not to to Mexico right um I don't think it's gonna be an effective weapon to take votes away from her but it's just it's a uh rhetoric that's kind of out there in social media no so it's also very interesting to observe that so I can just imagine like right now the ire and the fire and the blood of some of these people in Mexico who see not only two women running for president and leading the coalitions one of them is claiming indigenous identity and the other one is of Jewish ancestry so I can just like imagine all these conservative head explosions going on throughout Mexico exactly it's the worst thing that could have ever happened right both women and two with two identities that are seen as just not fully acceptable acceptable right one is you know the the remnants of the of a barbaric past yeah the old Mexico not not the modern Mexico right and the other one being kind of this you know um not not a real Mexican not a real Mexican but essentially a foreigner right a foreigner right also the people that killed Christ right that's right that's right because man I mean this is this is this is a tri this is something that you know it doesn't take much work to find on maybe not on Facebook uh who uses Facebook anymore but uh on the platform uh uh formerly known as Twitter right find all sorts of examples of people just saying that out in the open which is you know it's a phenomenon so anti-indigeneity anti-semitism is alive and well in modern day Mexican politics oh yeah yeah good times people good times well thank you for joining us Dr.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_03: Luis Erran Avila well thanks thanks to you guys for the for the conversation and getting the chance to you know to shoot some ideas about this uh not just Mexican right wingers but you know Mexico in general it's always good to to chat about that some of this is gonna go in the book right some of this conversation we had it's gonna make it into the book yeah I mean again because it's hard to uh oh you mean like it's actually you're gonna cite uh cite the podcast episode I will I will for sure thank you guys in the acknowledgments for the chance to you know just think through these things.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well I look forward to the book.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: I know every time we hang out that's like the first thing I ask you where's your book bro Curly Curly Ruins the night every time because that's the first thing that he that's that that sounds like a movie Curly Ruins the Night the name of my autobiography.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: I think I've got it nailed down well thank you very much and it's uh as always a pleasure to have you thank you guys and remember the truth is like medicine it doesn't always taste good but it is always good for you