Pascoe Pierce on the Left

In light of AMLO's relaunch and Zavaleta's goodbye to the PRD, a recent column from Ricardo Pascoe Pierce (a longtime leftist who was once a member of the PRD) seems particularly relevant:

What is true is that his present discourse marks an important change in political direction. Over the past year the discourse of the "great rupture" has been incubated and stimulated, which promises the fall of Calderón, takes up a supposed national feeling that, now as in 1810 and 1910, in the next year Mexico is magically condemned to live a revolutionary rupture of government. It assumed that the country would enter into a situation of presidential replacement, for which his favorite deputies already presented an initiative with eyes toward defining a quick replacement of the federal executive. Nevertheless, everything indicates that it is already clear that there don't exist the conditions for such a process in the country. The greatest reflection of this national mood is the scarce response that the SME movement is having...

[Break]

The formal leaders of this supposed left would do well to think not only about themselves, but rethink their position on the country. Can they explain the advance of conservative and restorational thought in Mexico? Do they have any coherent idea to explain this phenomenon? Do they perhaps know that one important part of that explanation that they resist giving? The tomb of the left is in sight, tragically: it is prepared with the goal of the 2012 contest, turning over the country, from this point on, to projects that, still with their tricks and their lies, offer more hope than bitterness, more optimism than depression, more known options than magic offerings. What happened to creative, intelligent, and above all modern thought in the Left?

As someone who leans left but finds very little to like about its iteration in Mexico, I couldn't agree more. The lack of answers being presented to the above questions is a product of living in an alternate universe, a Manichean facsimile of Mexico. Unfortunately, despite the fact that making a clean break with this mentality is a prerequisite for the PRD's (or its replacement's) electoral relevance on a national level, such a development doesn't seem to be in the offing.

However, I don't agree that the tomb of the left is in sight; whatever happens to the PRD/PT/AMLO/Convergencia, their will continue to be a strong leftist sentiment in Mexico, waiting to be organized into a responsible political movement. We're just not there yet.