Decadence

By Sofía Guadarrama Collado

We reached decadence and did not realize it. 

Throughout history, several civilizations have fallen into decline, due to a combination of internal and external factors, such as political, economic, social and cultural declines, which weaken their structure.

Historical declines are often the result of corruption, mismanagement, social inequalities, economic crises, political problems, loss of cultural values, military invasions and threats, environmental or climatic changes, and cultural, religious or ideological pressures.

Some examples of decadence throughout history are the disappearance of the Mayan civilization, the fall of Teotihuacan, the Toltec empire and the Mexica empire, which did not fall precisely because of the arrival of Hernán Cortés, but imploded. It was the subjugated peoples themselves who overthrew Tenochtitlan. Other examples are the fall of the Roman, Byzantine and Persian empires; the decline of the Qing dynasty in China and the fall of the Soviet Union.

Today, it is our turn to witness and suffer the decline of the United States and Mexico. The arrival of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States for the second time will inevitably be the cause of the decline of the most powerful country on the planet. The threats of tariffs -among other outrages- are the dynamite cartridges that Trump himself is placing on the pillars of the U.S. economy. And inevitably, this collapse will affect Mexico.

If only that were the only reason for Mexico's decadence, but it is not. In the last six years, our country has been contributing every day to this decadence. 

Mexico boomed during the governments of Manuel Ávila Camacho, Miguel Alemán, Adolfo Ruiz Cortínez, Adolfo López Mateos and Gustavo Díaz Ordaz. And despite the misfortune of having had Luis Echeverría and José López Portillo in Los Pinos, Mexico did not decline. They generated economic crises. Yes. Corruption grew. Yes. Nevertheless, Mexico moved forward after the 85 earthquakes and the economic crisis inherited by Miguel de la Madrid. The following five presidencies, for better or worse, helped to improve the little we were gaining.

In the 1990s, Mexico experienced the beginning of democracy with Ernesto Zedillo. In spite of the economic crisis at the beginning of that six-year term, the greatest opening to democracy that Mexico had ever experienced took place. The IFE and a long list of autonomous organizations were created. The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation was autonomous for the first time. In addition, in the year 2000, for the first time in history we had an alternation in the presidency. 

We reached the end of the century with many achievements that we did not know how to appreciate because we let ourselves be carried away by the collective complaint and hatred instilled in us by the Mexican left. A half-baked left. An opportunistic left. A lying left that pointed out to us everything that the PRI governments had done wrong while at the same time putting a blindfold on our eyes so that we would not see what they had built in 90 years: roads, drainage, electrical installations, drinking water, hospitals, schools, universities, programs, and a long list of things that the Mexico of Porfirio did not experience and neither did the Mexico of Benito Juárez, much less the post-independence Mexico. 

The PRI and PAN governments also sinned of corruption and were also part of this decline, but it was not until Andrés Manuel López Obrador arrived and opened the doors wide to decadence with his corruption, his lousy administration, his sinister post-truth, the malevolent polarization, the hate he spread every morning and his perverse embrace not bullets, that he made a shameless pact with organized crime and handed the country over to it. Today 30 percent of the territory is under the control of organized crime.

The normalization of horror arrived: 200 thousand intentional homicides, 7617 femicides, 51 thousand 618 missing persons, 72100 unidentified bodies, 7000 clandestine graves and countless extermination camps did not shake the country.

Admittedly, modernity, technology and social networks have also contributed to the decadence of our society. Today our citizens are more ignorant than before despite having more tools such as the internet, computers, cell phones and artificial intelligence. The new generations no longer want complex learning and go for immediacy, quick and basic response.

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