Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been celebrating the increase in money sent to Mexico during the month of March by Mexicans living in the United States. El Presidente is all smiles. “It’s a miracle,” he says, thanking Mexico’s “héroes y heroínas, nuestros migrantes,” for helping their country in a time of need. It’s as if the paisanos in El Norte were the troops coming to the rescue of a beleaguered fort that has been resisting attacks from all sides.
The increase in remittances gives López Obrador something to crow about in the middle of the beating he is taking from the press, nationally and internationally, for his incompetent handling of the pandemic.
Initially, he responded to this serious health crisis with new-age curandero politics. He promoted amulets and religious stamps to stop the virus from getting Mexicans sick, a tactic reminiscent of the Cristero War when Catholic insurgents wore scapulars to stop bullets. When the risible amulet ploy didn’t go anywhere, López Obrador switched to using Trump tactics. He went on the attack against the “conservative press,” the Mexican fake news; that is, every reporter who opposes any of his demented policies, particularly el Tren Maya, the gasoline refinery at Dos Bocas, and the construction of the international airport de Santa Lucia. And now, of course, the “conservative press” includes anyone who questions his handling of the pandemic in Mexico.
The man is a walking berrinche. It is telling that at a time when other countries hail their medical personnel as heroes in a war against an invisible virus that’s creating global havoc, López Obrador pours his bile on Mexican health workers accusing them of being more interested in making money than in curing the sick. Moreover, people in the scientific community are also demeaned for daring to question the veracity of the shady statistics of the pandemic that his lackey, Hugo López-Gatell, pushes as the truth every day.
To deflect criticism of his handling of the health crisis, the President has used a strategy that has proven efficient during the first year and a half of his administration: he throws money at everything. Every other day a Secretary of something or another announces the allocation of millions or billions of pesos to alleviate the latest problem that has arisen in the country, a problem usually created in the first place by the ineptness of the President’s policies.
This is where the importance of the monthly remittances comes in: López Obrador is finding it more difficult to put out the socio-political fires with pesos. The money is drying up since he can only cut the government budget so much before he bleeds it dry. He’s now on a tax hunt; everyone is a target either directly or indirectly, especially if you’re a client of platforms such as Netflix and Uber. You’ll be hit with a tax. Still, he won’t be able to find enough money to keep up the free handouts. It is evident that in his fantasy world, the President sees the remittances as support for his misguided policies, as money that helps to put out or prevent more fires. Like his good friend, Donald Trump, he loves to distort the truth.
I seriously doubt that los mexicanos de afuera, living in the USA, are sending money to support López Obrador’s politics; they’re instead sending dollars to make sure their loved ones in Mexico don’t suffer from the bad decisions El Presidente has made and continues to make rashly. The nationals residing in El Norte are realists. They know hard times are ahead because of the economic shutdown and they may not be able to support their relatives in the coming months or years. This is probably why they are now sending more money home, to make sure their families don’t go hungry in Mexico cuando nos lleguen las vacas flacas.
López Obrador, on the other hand, is a fantasist with a retrograde ideology. He refuses to recognize the economic dire straits in which the country finds itself and truly believes that his moral presence is enough to sustain a fundamental change in Mexico. If he can convince everyone to be good Christians, they’ll also be good civic citizens. Then, money like maná (not the rock group) will gently fall from the skies and make everybody happy. If the President continues to pursue this fantasy with his inept policies that have real, disastrous consequences for the nation, the only thing Mexico can expect is a hard rain that will fall and leave it devastated for the foreseeable future.
Postcards From a PostMexican 
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