Random Readings Redux: Dismissed

A year and a half after its publication in Spanish, an English version of "Mexican Messiah" is scheduled for release this month. It's by George Grayson, the American "Mexicologist" who studies this country from afar. The original came out in the spring of 2006, by which time the issue in the presidential election was not which of the three major candidates the voters would ultimately prefer, but whether enough supporters of Andrés Manuel López Obrador would be scared away from voting for him. As it turned out, enough (barely) were.

Grayson's role in fomenting the fear was a minor one, if any contribution can be considered minor in an election decided by half a percentage point. The major threats invented by the fearmongers were Hugo Chávez-envy, latent authoriarianism, potential violence and a general, miscellaneous "danger" lurking within the candidate. Grayson, along with Mexican historian Enrique Krauze, created the complementary "Messiah" scare, essentially branding López Obrador with a Christ complex.

Grayson and Krauze's Messiah ploy was no more or less insidious than the other anti-AMLO scare tactics, but it alone had a decidedly ivory tower tone to it. It asked us to accept that supporters of the other candidates were acting with free will, while AMLO's core following was being duped by a charlatan. If the major business organizations supported Calderón, they were acting intelligently in their own best interest. If the poor supported AMLO, they were falling for a Messiah. Oh, those colorful, innocent poor people!

I reviewed the Spanish-language version of "Mexican Messiah" on May 14, 2006:

Mesías Mexicano
By George Grayson
Grijalbo (2006)

REVIEWED BY KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT
The Herald Mexico


It’s been said that Andrés Manuel López Obrador has allowed himself to be defined by his enemies. That’s surely true, and to his detriment. How else could his presidential hopes have come down to whether he’s “another Lula or another Chávez,” as though the question were remotely legitimate?

But it’s not just his rivals who create an AMLO that suits their purpose. Somewhere along the way the PRD candidate has become fair game for whatever defining character note that anybody, enemy or not, chooses to aim in his direction. Thus we can be told on the same day, sometimes by the same person, that he’s a manipulative demagogue and a naïve idealist. That he’s a throwback to the past and a harbinger of Mexico’s future. A bewildered rube and a shrewd pragmatist. A radical reformer and an enemy of reform. An advocate for the poor and a tool of capitalism. A fascist and a communist. A populist and a Keynesian. The nation’s hope and the nation’s peril.

One reason for the free-for-all is that AMLO is so atypical of today’s Mexican politicians. He doesn’t talk like the others, think like the others, campaign like the others, or even live like the others. Since he doesn’t fit any familiar mold, people assign him a mold from the past, or create a new one for him.

George Grayson’s contribution to the “What is López Obrador, Really?” sweepstakes is explicit in the title of his new book. While agreeing with other definers that AMLO’s approach includes populism, nationalism, leftism and corporativism, Grayson contends that the PRD candidate “is in fact a political Messiah.”

What does that mean? It means, according to Grayson, that López Obrador operates with the “conviction that he incarnates a project of redemption.” What project is that? It’s the project of “a savior ready to rescue the humble masses from the lying politicians and the neoliberal schemes that favor the rich.”

If you detect a not-so-subtle irony in those descriptions, you’re onto something. Grayson’s presentation of AMLO’s ideas is an extended exercise in the skillful weaving of accurate paraphrase with a mocking tone. If his intent is to steer the reader — without ever really saying so directly — toward the notion that this candidate may not deserve to be taken entirely seriously, then it’s a successful technique.

Grayson’s critical biography had been eagerly awaited (at least by me) as a potential corrective to the ever-expanding line-up of love-him-or-hate-him AMLO books piling up at Sanborn’s. Grayson, a professor of government at William & Mary College in Virginia, is considered one of the foremost U.S. authorities on Mexican politics and society, and has been for many decades. That puts him in a position to deliver what we’ve needed — a well-researched, fact-filled, fully footnoted, thoroughly indexed biography in English of the most consequential and least understood human being in Mexico today.

Now we have it, except for the “in English” part. “Mesías Mexicano” has only been published in the Spanish translation. That’s too bad, since monolingual Anglophones bored with “fiery leftist” and “populist” as handy AMLO definitions are denied an alternative mask for him — “Messiah.”

The author insists that he’s using the label “in a descriptive mode, not a pejorative one.” I don’t believe that for a second, and I doubt I’m really meant to. Calling a candidate for president a “Messiah” is not a neutral observation. Since nobody can really be a Messiah, promoting yourself as one — or in this case having somebody else do it for you — has to mean that you’re either a manipulator, a fraud, terminally naive or simply deluded.

Grayson’s task, then, is to justify the pejorative label, and he goes about it with vigor. For example, AMLO’s mission to rescue the people from the current economic strategy is, we’re told, comparable to Jesus’ role as spiritual liberator. Also, López Obrador lives frugally, “as Christ did.” AMLO “has imitated Jesus’ practices of speaking in parables.” In fact, his campaign motto — “The poor come first, for everybody’s benefit” — is a “modern interpretation” of Luke 6:20, “Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.”

We also learn that the influence on AMLO by the speeches of salient figures in Mexican history — Morelos, Juárez, Madero — is “very similar to how the prophets guided Jesus.”

Right about here, the reader recalls his or her freshman composition teacher warning of metaphors stretched past the breaking point. But Professor Grayson is just warming up. We get seven more applications of the AMLO-Messiah analogy, scattered broadly across the credibility spectrum. And all this is just in the introduction. Then they continue throughout the book, with even the chapter titles staying on theme (“A Child is Born in Tabasco,” “Savior or Crucifier”).

You got to hand it to the good professor. I don’t think the plenary session at a Baptist preachers' convention could come up with as many biblical references as Grayson does in the context of a thoroughly secular politician’s life story. But rather than bolstering the thesis that AMLO is running a messianic campaign, the cumulative effect of so much gratuitous scripture strains the author’s credibility, not to mention the reader’s patience.

The problem is more than just overkill. Much of the book suffers from a terminal case of dismissiveness. A candidate running on an anti-poverty platform will always be accused of irresponsible populism (and now of messianic tendencies) by “realistic” critics who, remembering the Perons of the past, reflexively associate promotion of the poor's interests with pandering to the poor's vulnerabilities. But is it entirely out of the question that López Obrador’s expressed priority of government intervention to lift the poor is not a ploy to tap into the electorate’s spiritual unconscious but a well-thought-out political proposal he considers appropriate for a nation whose every problem can be traced to poverty and economic inequality? Can’t his platform be discussed on its own terms?

Grayson does dedicate the last three chapters to policy discussion, which mostly consists of setting up AMLO’s proposals (mercifully reduced from 50 to 11, and of course called “commandments” and presented in “Thou Shalt Not” language) like bowling pins to be knocked down. Fair enough. He’s certainly not the only observer who has doubts about this candidate’s character, and who considers his proposals to be mostly unworkable. Besides, by now the reader knows where the author is coming from.

For the record, “Mesías Mexicano” isn’t just another AMLO-phobic tract. It is, after all, a critical biography, and the patient, forgiving reader will come out of it with a much better idea of who Andrés Manuel López Obrador is, as well as what George Grayson thinks of him. I especially liked the early chapter on AMLO’s boyhood and family history.

Readers will appreciate the several charts and timelines that clarify some of the more Byzantine topics of Mexican politics, such as the background of the desafuero and the PRD’s internal factions. Relatively speaking, this book is no less detached than any of the other AMLO bios out there, all of which seem to be either hagiographies or diatribes. The research, detail and sourcing in this one give it an advantage. You just have to sort the information from the attitude.

If you’re still in the mood for metaphors, you can think of Dr. Grayson’s work as a pretty decent cut of steak with a half-quart of ketchup poured over it. The ketchup, unfortunately, is what the author seems to care about most, and it's what he means to smear the candidate with.