Spain-Mexico: populism blocks the economy

Under the enlightening title 'The Mirrors of Manuelism', Mexican author Avelino Cortizo Martínez, who holds a Master's degree in Economics and Business Management from the University of Navarra in Barcelona, has made a detailed analysis of the socio-economic situation in which Mexico finds itself under the reign of current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has been in the country's supreme magistracy for just over two years.

Avelino Cortizo is an expert on the Mexican reality; he founded the Commission for Innovation and Technological Development of the Mexican employers' association and is currently president of a technology transfer office. He lives between Barcelona and Mexico City. 

The book is not an ideological debate, nor an analysis of the theoretical, political and (or) historical foundations of Manuelista populism. It is a pragmatic x-ray of the country: where Mexico was before the arrival of Manuel López Obrador, and where it is now. A book full of figures, facts, business results, achievements and failures, framed in the country's political and administrative structure. 

Francisco García Blanch, an engineer with a degree in Business Studies from ICADE, presents the book in an unequivocal way: "Through a breakdown of the facts that have led to this crisis situation, Cortizo provides us with an accurate vision of the global danger that today looms over post-industrial societies". That danger, for García Blanch expressly and for Cortizo Martínez implicitly, is populism. 

Cortizo pertinently suggests that the detonation of manuelismo is to be sought in the mistakes of previous governments, writes García Blanch, but reminds us that the weakness of the human condition is the main support on which these kinds of movements of social despotism are built.

And as there is nothing new under the sun, the book's presenter, with a very pleasant prose, reminds us that populism, so fashionable in our post-industrial societies - Peronism in Argentina, Chavism in Venezuela, Manuelism in Mexico and Podemism in Spain - has more than 25 centuries of history behind it. García Blanch lists the antecedents in the Greek theoricon that became a political weapon in the hands of demagogues; social aid was also practised by the Romans with their Bread and Circus; and later in the Middle Ages by the feudals and the Church with the sopa boba, bodrio or sopa de los peregrinos; or the mogollón food that was distributed free of charge in the canteens of the military orders. 

The fundamental criticism made by the author of the book is the blockage to economic development caused by the elimination of aid to small and medium-sized businesses, the lack of a tax system capable of becoming a driving force for the economy and job creation, and the demagogy of populist policies of unproductive subsidies. 

An interesting contribution by Cortizo is his analysis of the use of new technological communication systems by the leadership of populist parties, as García Blanch pertinently points out, which have become almost exclusive to this type of social communication. Until now, no one has known how to manipulate social networks like the populist parties, and no matter how much of a digital native one is, people need certainties, which can only be provided by the manipulator of the networks, as has been the case up to the present.  

The question posed by the author himself, and for us the presenter, is whether Spain is on the way to following in Mexico's footsteps. What was once the third or fourth largest economy in Europe is now bleeding to death, with four million unemployed and an economic collapse the likes of which has not been seen for decades. 

As a warning, García Blanch reminds us of the thoughts of the Italian journalist and writer and founder of Corriere della Sera, Indro Montanelli, almost a century ago: supporters of populist governments are divided into three groups: those who hope to be part of those in power, those who hope to receive something from those in power, and those who do not understand the substance of the message, but believe that it will benefit them to support them so that they will be in power.