Bonds of Authoritarianism and the Embodiment of Political Evil: An Interview with President Echeverría
In: Territories of EvilSearch for other papers by Alejandro Cervantes-Carson in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Purchase instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
To meet with the person whom you had perceived for decades to be the embodiment of political evil can only create a subjective crisis, a crisis of the moral order, and a crisis of ethical standards. The experience of meeting with President Luis Echeverría, in a three-hour long interview, did that to me; all at once, before, during, and after the interview. While the interview was not focused on themes related to the reasons why he was being prosecuted for crimes against humanity in a democratizing Mexico, the spectres of these crimes hung heavily over the entire experience. It was the terrain of the unspoken; it was life and collective memory that were to be silenced. But the symbols were there: they were all there because I read them all to be there. I met his social and political embodiment with my social and political embodiment. In many ways it was not he and I who met, but historical, political, and symbolic forces behind each one of us that were at that meeting. It was a meeting of forces beyond our selves, of signifying circumstances beyond our control, the embodiment of energies (perhaps) that were struggling to define political democracy at that precise historical point in Mexico. This paper is the first exploration into this experience; it constitutes a first instalment of a longer-term research and book project that will try to make sense of these types of encounters.