Breathe
By Liliana Alvarado, General Director of Ethos Public Policy Innovation.
During the 1980s I grew up in a home where both my mother and father worked. My mother is originally from Oxtotitlán, a town in the municipality of Teloloapan, Guerrero, which has about 3,000 inhabitants. My father was born in Mexico City, into a family that got ahead thanks to my grandfather's business, a typewriter maintenance shop, which eventually became my father's inheritance and my family's main source of income. Despite its modest origins, both my sister and I grew up in an environment of opportunities, generated by the tireless work of both of us.
My parents' dedication to their tasks left them little time to get involved in parallel activities, occasionally attending neighborhood meetings, school committees and they were not very enthusiastic about political life. I remember that their main concern was the country's economy, because for them it had a direct relationship with the performance of the business.
I currently direct a think tank or think tank in a country where, although the concerns that my parents had are still valid, there are others such as the territorial advance of organized crime and the consequent increase in violence; the limited availability of quality employment and the precariousness of salaries; the increase in the tasks and presence of the armed forces in national life; femicides and aggressions of various kinds against women; the latent risk of an upcoming pandemic; among others.
However, despite the seriousness of all these problems, one of the most worrisome is the stability of the democratic regime, since in recent years the red lights have been lit. And there are numerous, varied and repeated examples of this. These include attacks, through different modalities, on all the autonomous agencies that seek to operate according to their statutes and independently from the whims of the Federal Executive(the Energy Regulatory Commission, the National Electoral Institute, the National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data, and more recently the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation). It is worth mentioning that sometimes the attacks have been directed at the institutions and, in others, at members who are or were part of them (Norma Lucía Piña Hernández, Lorenzo Córdova Vianello, among others).
Unfortunately, this strategy of harassment and intimidation has also added other victims, groups that in democratic regimes traditionally act as counterweights. I am referring to civil society organizations, journalists, the media, intellectuals and businessmen. The vast majority of them have been the subject of a punctual pointing out from the presidential pulpit known as "la mañanera". This has led sectors of society to debate in different spaces whether we are moving towards an autocracy, whether these actions are typical of authoritarianism or whether our rights and freedoms are being undermined.
I am aware that my interest in the state or direction that democracy is taking in Mexico is intimately related to my profession, however, it is also true that there are clear signs that as Mexicans it would be irresponsible to ignore. The 2024 presidential elections are approaching and it is there where we will know how far the party in power will be willing to go to ensure an outcome that favors it. I am not naïve to look back with nostalgia on the concerns of the 1980s, but neither do I deny that 2024 will surely present challenges that could define our future as individuals and as a country.
Liliana Alvarado holds a Master's degree in Public Policy and Administration from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), thanks to the Chevening scholarship granted by the British government. She studied International Relations at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). He has worked at the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP), where he gained extensive experience in tax policy and specialized in issues related to the competitiveness of the Mexican tax system and the analysis of tax systems in the international arena. He also worked at FUNDAR, Centro de Análisis e Investigación, in the Public Budget Area, on issues related to budget transparency.
At Ethos she serves as General Director, where she has coordinated various projects in the areas of transparency and accountability, anti-corruption, public spending and fiscal policy. Finally, she is a commentator for Grupo Fórmula on Eduardo Ruiz Healy's newscast and guest columnist for El Economista newspaper.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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