Today, the seventh of February, I finally decide to post something new to the blog.

The silence here, in this blog that has given me so much satisfaction, has several reasons behind it. The first is a kind of listlessness, stemming from what I'm about to describe and what has moved me to write again today.

The second is that we have had to work very hard, and even though I'm the one who works least, I work too. We all know how difficult the situation is, in the world and especially in Mexico.

The third and final reason is that I have devoted more time than I usually do to people who pass through our lives and who, more often than not, leave not even a trace.

Why one sometimes falls into this way of living, giving time to people who are ultimately irrelevant, I think comes down to a need for noise, a way of not thinking too hard about real problems. Even avoiding the work of looking inward to find the real answers.

I like people very much, and I enjoy enormously meeting someone new, but that doesn't stop me from asking myself how much time I waste, or spend badly, on so many of them.

What is happening around me right now? A general discontent with life here in Mexico. But being human, we always need to find hope somewhere, some belief that things will change.

Can things really change in a country where the rot has gone so deep?

I'll try to look at a few things from my own point of view, which is not that of any political scientist, sociologist, or psychologist, but simply that of an observant person who likes to analyze, to seek out information, and to dig a little deeper into some of these problems.

As many of you know, this year we will have been back from living in Asia for three years, and I am beginning to feel as though it never happened, as though all of it were a dream.

From the moment we left, I felt that my life should continue in constant motion, but it hasn't been possible, because the economic factor has kept us here in our country for obvious reasons of business.

I ask myself how we Mexicans might manage even a small shift in the way our country, our people, and our many problems, including global ones, are perceived. Today the image of Mexico abroad is devastating, which leads me to what might sound like a simple conclusion: we have to make an effort not to repeat outside our country things we haven't actually seen but only heard somewhere in passing. The rumors that reach us in droves about crimes, muggings, kidnappings, and so on. Corruption, on the other hand, we must not stay quiet about, even if we exaggerate it, because it is the root of everything we live with, and it is the only pressure we citizens have over the corrupt politicians, clergy, and businesspeople, all of them partners with organized crime and with everything that can generate more money and more power.

What do I mean by not repeating what I mentioned before? I mean not asserting that so-and-so was shot for no reason, in the street, on a highway, in a restaurant, and was a person of integrity, when we simply aren't sure.

It is perfectly clear to all of us Mexicans that there is plenty of crime operating in collusion with politicians, drug traffickers, corrupt business owners, and religious figures. But let's not be naive, and let's try for once to look at a sad reality that even I, who pride myself on my integrity, have to acknowledge.

At some point in our lives, all of us have contributed, even just a little, to feeding everything I'm describing here. And of course, even though "we are all guilty of everything," there are those who ARE FAR MORE GUILTY.

So I ask myself whether, in our attitude, we don't in some way cover for these situations and these people. Whether that's because they're part of our world, even our friends, or, in the worst cases, part of our own families.

What I have observed is that when an incident occurs of the kind where someone is killed for no apparent reason, we are very often not told the full story, yet we all play along with the fiction, some more than others.

We all lie sometimes, but some people lie far more than others, and those are the ones who do the most damage to society.

If among your friends and family people routinely tell only half-truths to excuse themselves from going somewhere, or to keep everyone happy while assuming the rest of us are fools, why wouldn't they do the same with things that actually matter? Of course they do, because they need the support of those around them to justify, as every human being needs to justify, their own failures and missteps.

A phrase I love very much goes like this: "POOR TRUTH, HOW MANY LIES TOLD IN YOUR NAME." Another: "TWO HALF-TRUTHS DO NOT MAKE ONE TRUTH" (Multatuli).

"IT IS AS HARD TO TELL THE TRUTH AS TO HIDE IT" (Maxim Gorky). And the one I love most, and which fits what I'm saying best: "YOU SAID HALF THE TRUTH? THEY WILL SAY YOU LIED TWICE WHEN YOU TELL THE OTHER HALF" (Antonio Machado).

Looking at this from where I stand, there are many events that happen and that society covers up or simply refuses to accept, because it is more painful than simply blaming those who, obviously, already bear the blame, namely the centers of power allied with organized crime, as I described above.

As it turns out, over these years I've been back I keep confirming what I already sensed before we left, and what made me feel genuinely relieved to be far away. Which is this: most of the people around us, in my world at least, have been getting poorer year by year, at different speeds depending on how much money they managed to accumulate in the past. There are many factors behind this that I won't attempt to analyze, since I said at the outset I don't have that kind of expertise. But as a plain citizen, I can see that alongside this large majority there exists a minority that grows disproportionately wealthy, and in most cases these are not people distinguished by any extraordinary qualities. They manage it, in my social milieu (and in almost every other, though in different ways), essentially through connections, above all governmental ones. These individuals will always be admired, because: "The powerful Mr. Money, when he passes, no matter where he came from, everybody takes off their hat."

I have stories of every kind around me, and I'll mention just one or two to illustrate what I mean.

Because anyone who seems to have, or genuinely has, a great deal of money, because their life, their car, their house, their businesses all project success and wealth, is so admired, venerated, and fawned over, no one stops to ask how they got there.

Why do families like ours, with businesses that operate within what the law permits, working hard, giving employment to hundreds of people, manufacturing high-tech products, not accumulate the same disproportionate wealth that these others do?

By cultivating the right relationships with the right people, and by engaging in whatever kind of maneuvering the "non-law" of this country allows for well-connected individuals with few or no scruples.

But when people like my family and I ask, or ask someone who is close to these individuals, or ask the individuals themselves, the answers come back as half-truths, or as reasoning that is hard for any reasonably intelligent person to believe, anyone who doesn't want to close their eyes to what's right in front of them.

I'm not going to recount any particular event I've witnessed (these days they come in every variety, because I deal with more people than ever), but I'll leave you with a reflection I will keep turning over in my mind. Among the people around you, if someone is accumulating money at an extraordinary rate and hasn't invented anything, hasn't built an obviously successful established business, where is all that money coming from?

In nearly three years back here I have already had to witness several incidents involving fraud, theft, and even suspicions about people I know, people who may be entangled with businesses that could be connected to criminal networks. I already defined what I mean by criminal networks and who, today, those networks include.

Of course, a great deal of this is fueled by neoliberalism, which rewards speculation of every kind (this category also includes people who make a living selling or brokering things, supposedly helping those who need to unload some asset, and who charge outrageous commissions while also taking advantage of the country's economic situation, or the world's, or the individual's) and there is no law capable of stopping these abuses.

Let's look at it clearly and stop covering it up. It's the least we can do to improve our society.

Instead of wasting time and energy, as the conservatives do (in Mexico there are far too many of them, due to ignorance and deep religiosity), on whether gay couples should be allowed to marry, to adopt children, and so on, living out that double morality that human beings always apply, and more so in a conservative, deeply Catholic country.

Because when it comes to exposing the dirty laundry of pedophile priests, how is it that so many people still come to their defense? It horrifies me. Marguerite Duras said it well: "Where everyone thinks the same, no one thinks very much." Pier Paolo Pasolini said: "The most difficult thing to open is a closed mind."

The past conditions us to seek belonging, to religion, nationality, groups of people, and so on, and that very need prevents us from seeing clearly and accepting that things are not the way we've been told they are.

To close, I'll only add that the most damaging thing in our country today is the press, generally speaking, because they are mercenaries, and we should turn off our televisions, which are the worst of this press. We already know who controls the media, and how, and which corrupt, ruthless businesspeople are behind all of it.

As a final note, one need only look at what just happened to Carmen Aristegui, one of the few journalists still trying to practice free, uncensored journalism, even against a power that has also sold itself to big capital in the communications industry.

Sanuk