"When life goes wrong, a wet sponge erases the whole picture."- Cassandra, from Agamemnon by Aiskhylos
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Carlos Alberto Montaner (Left) warns of the threat AMLO presents to Mexico |
Tonight my concerns for the future of Mexico deepened when a thinker that I greatly admire, Carlos Alberto Montaner, retweeted my tweet and added a cautionary prediction on the July 1, 2018 Presidential election in Mexico. He warned that, "
AMLO [Andrés Manuel López Obrador] leads the polls in Mexico. The people commit suicide. Venezuelans and Cubans can attest to that. The Czechoslovaks also committed suicide after the Second World War. They paid with 40 years of communist totalitarianism. Until 1989 they did not breathe freedom again."
Montaner is well informed, wise and his opinion has considerable weight. Amazon
provides the following biography on this scholar and defender of freedom which is excerpted below.
Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1943. Has lived in Madrid since 1970. Has
been a university professor in various institutions in Latin America,
the United States and Spain. He is a writer and journalist. Dozens of
newspapers in Latin America, Spain and the United States have published
his weekly column for the past 40 years at least. He has been described
by the magazine ‘Poder’ (‘Power’) as one of the most widely read and
most influential columnists in the Spanish-language world. The number of
readers who have access to his articles every week is estimated at 6
million.
He has participated as an observer at several elections
in Latin America and in numerous seminars devoted to the strengthening
of democracy and the diffusion of the concepts of liberty.
Montaner
received the Tolerance Prize awarded by the Comunidad de Madrid in
2007. In 2010 he was awarded the “Juan de Mariana for a life dedicated
to the defense of freedom”. In 2009 the Universidad Francisco Marroquín
in Guatemala was awarded the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa. Previously,
the University of Applied Sciences in Peru (UPC) had appointed him a
Visiting Professor. In 2007, during the democratic government of Enrique
Bolaños, Nicaragua's government gave him the “Orden Rubén Darío”.
Montaner
has published more than 25 books. Several of them have been translated
into English, Portuguese, Russian and Italian. Among the better known
and re-edited titles are Journey to the Heart of Cuba; How and Why
Communism Disappeared; Liberty, the Key to Prosperity, and the novels
Perromundo, A Dog's World, and 1898: The Plot. Some of his most
controversial and most widely distributed essays are the best-sellers
Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot and Manufacturers of Misery,
both co-written with Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza and Álvaro Vargas Llosa. The
Return of the Idiot, also by the three authors, has been published.
Some claim that AMLO is no Hugo Chavez, but like the late Venezuelan despot, Lopez Obrador has distanced himself while following the same playbook and calling for a rewrite of the Mexican constitution. This is what Chavez did in 1998. Chavez
even called Fidel Castro a dictator during the campaign, and pledged that he would turn over power prior to his five year term. Five years earlier the Venezuelan president turned dictator
had been received in Cuba by Fidel Castro and celebrated as a hero. Let us hope and pray that history does not repeat itself in Mexico.
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