A Bifocal Image of Political Power

On several occasions, I've had the opportunity to spend hours talking with my friend R, the editor of a multifaceted local newspaper in Mexico, about political power and its relationship with intellectual figures. As he knows well, my stance has consistently been one of little interest in anything that smacks of politics — that is, anything related to the power of public office, regardless of a government's ideology. This attitude, which I believe is prudent, has led me to remain on the sidelines of the political fray. However, I must confess that whenever I come across a piece of political journalism, I always end up reading it with growing interest. R says — seemingly with great conviction — that political work is one of the highest professions to which a person can aspire, and I've ended up agreeing with him, more or less, since politics is clearly the most rational, organized, and equitable way to exercise human leadership, and it is from this that our social order and its improvement originate.

Of course, when you talk with R, you can't separate the great human themes from one another, and at any moment our conversations about the mundane aspects of politics can veer into a heated and rather colorful political-religious syncretism. I've always chosen to remain neutral in those moments. But I think my reluctance to define myself politically has a great deal to do with the image that power projects. On the one hand, there's my iconoclastic attitude, which has led me — somewhat thoughtlessly — to follow an old biblical piece of advice I once read at random, one that exhorts readers to stay away from powerful men. Of course, in a contemporary context, these words amount to sound general advice, applicable to all dishonest and shady people who find themselves in positions of power — and it's worth clarifying that this doesn't mean power is inherently bad. Even so, I've always kept my distance from power and the powerful, regardless of their political stripe, because, according to my rather subversive view of politicians, many of them are truly a carriage full of demons, and to affiliate oneself with their interests is tantamount to committing spiritual suicide.

Such a statement is, of course, exaggerated — almost comical — in many contexts. I say it more to satirize that distorted, rather silly image of politics, which portrays politicians as wolves and intellectuals as a defenseless Little Red Riding Hood. What it does reflect are certain impressions of popular opinion I've gathered over time, impressions that merely underscore the low levels of public approval this profession — which should be noble — has suffered under questionable governments. Nevertheless, I would be betraying my values and principles, and my vision of my vocation as an artist and writer, if I insisted on maintaining a stance of disinterest, since expressing opinions on these issues is of vital importance to anyone who practices the craft of writing and takes pride in being a responsible actor in society.

Speaking more objectively, in my scale of values and personal interests, I do not envision openly participating in the pyramid of power. I do, however, admit that I enjoy observing, understanding, and critiquing political expressions, and that I remain as attentive as I can to the evolution I perceive in the nobler, more humanist side of power — as opposed to the pragmatic mechanics of its exercise. Direct participation in elected office or prominent bureaucratic positions holds no appeal for me. My vocation is to express opinions, not to lead in a political environment.

My friend R has implied, with some conviction, that my projects as currently conceived will likely need crutches, since all human activities are necessarily connected to politics, and those connections must be tangible in some way to truly shine. It's also true that journalism is a direct route to politics, and at the moment I'm writing an article highly focused on that very subject, which inherently involves me in certain levels of political maneuvering. This, in fact, brings me to an anecdote from my old days in Mexico: I once had colleagues who were dedicated to meticulously compiling all political information published in the local print media. They would cut out newspaper articles, glue them onto letter-sized sheets, make photocopies, and distribute them to higher-ranking bureaucrats so they would know what the press was saying about them.

The Ostentatious Government Badge

Those ubiquitous glue sticks are nothing new to me. I have to admit that two decades ago, I barely survived on a Mexican government job. The first few weeks were extremely unpleasant; certain people made my life very difficult. But as time went on, we learned to tolerate and respect each other, and I ended up making some very good friends whom I still remember fondly. In that office, I spent hours transcribing government officials' audio interviews into a word processor—an extremely tedious, monotonous task. There were hundreds of interviews and speeches by a Mexican governor, and from listening to him so often, I ended up memorizing many of his phrases.

Those of us who worked in that department back then wore ostentatious, computer-printed, laminated badges that prominently proclaimed: PRESS. My badge — which I still keep as a memento — bore my photo, my position (transcriber), my name, and the gleaming name of the State Government's Social Communication Department. The reporters who covered that beat jokingly called us "supermarket price-finders" because of the badge's bold visibility and colorfulness.

After a year in that office, I got a restless urge to see more of the world, so I quit to go live with my mother in the legendary Lone Star State — Texas, the American state where my entire immediate family now lives. I should clarify that I have deep Texas roots: my grandmother, Ofelia Cook, on my father's side, was born to Irish immigrants who settled North of Dallas. Then, after almost four years, swept away by another wave of longing for my beautiful, beloved Mexico, I returned — a full-fledged novelist. But my return went largely unnoticed. No one seemed enthusiastic about the first novel I wrote about undocumented immigrants, and more than one person outright ignored my requests for publication. I know that no one is a prophet in their own land, and I understand that to publish a sharp, socially conscious novel through public institutions, one first needs to be close to someone within the system who holds the power to approve it without excessive obstacles — a requirement I simply don't meet.

Publishing houses are also extremely scarce in that intellectually barren region, and in these lean economic times, they were reluctant to take risks on new writers. As a last resort, I can always flee once again to other countries in search of better opportunities. That is why R says my projects are on crutches: I lack current connections with those in power, and therefore, there is no place for me in the Mexican government's cultural projects. My relatively long absence has once again made me an unknown — no longer relevant in those circles.

Reconciling Positions by Finding the Middle Ground

It's true that I once had many friends in my local Mexican cultural world, but I lost touch with some of them, and others — though I still love and admire them — I simply stopped seeing, and I don't know what became of them. The only person from those circles I found with any regularity was R, who has known me since I was a child. When I was about six years old, he was already organizing political gatherings with his friends and some of my unsuspecting uncles — and where? In the very living room of the house where I spent the first years of my childhood. When I reconnected with him after so many years, following my intellectual exile in the silence of my own mind, he gave me temporary asylum in the pages of his newspaper. And what did we end up talking about, after all this time? The same old story: politics and religion. To this day, I have continued to assert, with something like prophetic zeal, that if I were to entangle myself in the sticky web of politics and renounce my cherished freedom and independence, I would risk falling into an abyss from which I could not escape with my sanity intact.

But that conviction hasn't diminished my desire to keep writing, to develop my talent, and to continue putting my work into the world. Nor has it dampened my enthusiasm for creating and building, or my belief that, given a legitimate opportunity, I too can contribute greatly to my community. Because, despite what I took from R's comments — that perhaps I lack the capacity to realize certain cultural projects without the cooperation of political power — I am also discouraged by the fact that pursuing such projects means confronting the ever-present animosity of people who fear being displaced when they see someone with talent and ideas approaching. I've experienced this more times than I care to count.

My approach to engaging with institutions, government officials, and politics is therefore now more reasoned and less emotional. I know there must be a path to a middle ground: one where I don't compromise my talent or sacrifice my hard-earned dignity by having to beg, and where those in power don't need to adopt a condescending stance from the heights they occupy. For those of us on the margins, I believe this is the right answer: to accept and tolerate one another, to find a space of genuine conciliation, and for each of us — from our own ideological position and place in the world — to work together toward a better political and cultural environment. It doesn't matter if, in the end, I return to the other side of the border to find a niche where my talent and enthusiasm can take root. Because all journalists, writers, politicians, intellectuals, and artists are actors in the same play — and in this strange era, ushered in by the prophetic Aldous Huxley, each person's Brave New World can be built from any geographical location, through the shared effort and consensus of everyone.