THAT QUESTION OF POLITICAL IDEOLOGY
Eduardo de Jesus Castellanos Hernandez
To the question about what your political ideology is, regardless of whether or not you belong to a party political formation, there are several possible answers. The first is to deny the need or importance of defining or admitting it – as easy as saying “what matters to you”; The second is the difficulty of defining it – the easiest is right, left or center, depending on whether you feel more comfortable, even if you do not know why – and another one, once defined, is the appreciation of the congruence of your actions with the supposed postulates of the political ideology to which you adhere. But to arrive at relevant and satisfactory answers, it is better to try to identify before the assumptions and contexts of said political ideology, as well as the need and feasibility of the required congruence.
Political ideology can be analyzed from a social perspective but also from a strictly individual aspect. It is assumed that an average citizen – especially the one who goes to vote – has or responds or accepts or sympathizes or adheres to a political ideology and that this, in turn, is established somewhere and that, in addition, there are those who monitor its full observance to somehow punish its offenders or, Worse still, to denounce those who are apostates or deserters of that ideology and its militancy or congruence. But, first of all, it is necessary to answer an obligatory question: what is ideology?
Political ideology can only be a set of values, principles, rules and procedures understood as indispensable instruments to achieve scenarios or prospective horizons that materialize the objectives or purpose of collective or social life -a kind of heaven on earth as a promise fulfilled or to be fulfilled, something like the 4T (Fourth Transformation of the Mexican Republic)-; Therefore, this set of instruments is supposed to be indispensable to make possible the realization of both these scenarios and such objectives, that is, they feed back on themselves. For natural reason, this set of instruments is recorded in the fundamental documents for the organization of the National State, which are the respective political constitutions, either in the basic documents of the political parties or in the political offer that they and their candidates present in each election or in the speeches that a messianic leader delivers every day; We must now also add the proposals of organized civil society organizations that are increasingly better organized.
By natural reason, too, this set of values, principles, rules and procedures are in such a way general and ambiguous, on the one hand, that everything and its opposite can fit into them; But, also, it is necessary that there be someone who proposes, defines and interprets them to sanction deserters. Since it is nothing more and nothing less than the solution of the great national problems – and also, incidentally, those of you at home – which are of course multiple, diverse and difficult if not impossible to solve – at least in the short or medium term. But, obviously, the proposed political ideology is supposed to have the immediate and definitive solution of all those problems that have occurred and for having, I insist, heaven on earth.
Paradoxically, the political evolution of a country and of people takes place more according to circumstances, rather than being subject to ideologies. Ideologies, moreover, are nothing more than forms of legitimization of political domination to ensure the manipulation of the masses to access or maintain political power or, to put it less aggressively, to attract the intention of voting of the voters – whether or not it is fulfilled or nothing else is changed after you voted that is another matter that you should not care about. according to the elites naturally-. The formation of the national political ideology allows us to enter the context of the different ideologies in conflict, proposed or defended by those who lead the struggle for political power which, of course, are the national and local political parties or the ruling elite or those who aspire to be part of it, or replace the one that is.
The ideological-political evolution of the elites in our country is explained, once their national independence is achieved, by the need to find the ideal form of government to consolidate their new situation as a National State. So it is natural that the ideological controversy was initially given, on the one hand, between those who proposed monarchy or republic and, once the republic was adopted – after shooting the two emperors and surely many of their followers, not only the two of them – on the form of its organization be federal or decentralized, Or, unitary or centralized – if many people had to die in those struggles, I’m sure it mattered little to the triumphant elites of the moment. This strand of the ideological-political struggle occupied most of the nineteenth century; struggle between national protagonists that was accompanied by foreign interventions of a military nature but also of a religious nature.
Once the republic was consolidated and a series of basic constitutional principles were assumed, such as federalism, division of powers with preeminence of the executive power or bicameralism, but also others but not written as free trade and foreign investment -converted into an instrument to achieve an incipient industrialization- and various military formulas of political domination -such as “kill them hot” (now reissued)-; Then arose a new struggle and change of elites that very soon gave rise to a coup d’état -that of Victoriano Huerta-, which was followed by a civil war between the military triumphant over the coup general to finally reach the institutionalization of a single party and, currently, to a partisan plurality until recently with some possibility of alternation.
This ideological-political evolution of our country, after the Second World War, is largely defined by its geographical situation or circumstance: we were and are neighbors of the victors in that war that, in addition, allowed them to affirm their political, economic and military world hegemony. Meanwhile, the national reconstruction after the civil war usually known in a general way as the Mexican Revolution of 1910, had brought in turn a diversity of public policies formally covered by the same constitutional mantle, that of 1917, which in economic matters went from the pretended socialist education to the model of import substitution to return to free trade. Which does not prevent that in the official version of these historical and ideological stages each one is presented as a feat, an epic, an ideal turned into reality to solve the great national problems -and those of you or your predecessors, although this has never happened -although it must be evaluated in its terms to see how much is or was true-.
Thus, the so-called public policies in economic matters today – a pragmatic version of ideology – oscillate to date between a greater or lesser state interventionism in the economy under the name of mixed economy system; a model where, of course, as we can see again now, everything and its opposite fit. Politics, for its part, has gone through various shades of a presidentialism – after having been occupied only by the military – sustained by a ruling party sometimes hegemonic and sometimes only dominant, but in any way authoritarian by its constitutional and metaconstitutional powers – these, above all, when the president and his party have a majority in both federal chambers. in most local legislatures and can be dispatched to your liking.
At the present time, presidentialism based on a dominant party tends to become a presidentialism supported by a hegemonic party again – I am not referring now to the strategies to achieve this political success financed for the most part with dirty money, as everything indicates – but this will depend on the electoral results of the year 2024. For the results of the local elections of 2023 were not yet enough to affirm with a resounding triumph the hegemony of the new ruling party – although it exercises it daily via rampant propaganda – so it has done everything necessary to achieve its continuity through attempts so far failed constitutional and legal reforms in electoral matters – the famous Plan B of electoral legal reforms has just been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court Court-; although the gradual renewal of the National Electoral Institute in any case facilitates its capture to return to testimonial elections, as is the case of the ongoing polls totally outside the Constitution and the law – surveys to which, to legitimize them at least in the discourse, those of the opposition parties will be added as part of their innovative method of selecting and electing their presidential candidate, a method that has just been approved by the party leadership; subject to which I will dedicate my next contribution-. The dominant political ideology today – of both sides – invites us to accept all this not only as natural but even as necessary and convenient.
However, personal political ideology evolves according to circumstances and preferences with respect to the broad context in which people necessarily find themselves. In personal evolution, preferences or priorities to understand and interpret the reality that surrounds people are defined and influenced, among other factors, by their school training and their multiple life experiences, sometimes happening in unexpected or random circumstances.
But also for their labor insertion, as well as for the family context, their social inclusion and professional membership, and even for their friendships and relationships or affinities or personal perceptions. The influence of political propaganda and the media finds receptivity depending on the context described. For a personal conceptual nucleus has been built to explain and interpret its immediate reality, which therefore adapts to the ever-changing circumstances; Even more so if you depend on social aid to survive or round the bolillo.
Hence the importance of propaganda to convey and affirm an ideological proposal in the common people normally lacking a democratic political culture, as well as the training and information to locate the messages of political propaganda governmental or partisan- in a broad context subject to critical, objective and systematic analysis. In such a way that, if the usual thing is to take as references the right, the left or the center within a model of liberal democracy -the opposite is the dictatorship type Cuba, Nicaragua or Venezuela, where there is no way to choose even if there are elections-, these deficiencies noted above prevent the average voter from distinguishing between electoral offers plagued by multiple and contradictory proposals; All of which allows in a remote-controlled society – not only by television but also by other modern means of information and communication, paid for by those who have a way of doing so – that post-truth appears, that is, the lie presented and accepted as truth, as the normal and institutional form of communication and ideological-political manipulation.
Oaxaca City, June 25, 2023.
Eduardo de Jesús Castellanos Hernández.
Professor and Researcher. Doctor in Political Studies (France) and Doctor of Law (Mexico). Postdoctoral in Parliamentary Control and Public Policies (Spain) and in Comparative Political Regimes (USA). Author of books on Public, Private and Social Law; Public Administration and Political Science; Electoral Law and Electoral Procedural Law; his books can be found in libraries, bookstores, Amazon and Mercado Libre. Collections of their annual weekly items are published and for sale on Amazon; the most recent compilation appears under the title “PURO CHORO MAREADOR. Mexico in times of Q4” (only available on Amazon).
