Interview with Enrique Krauze: "The best vaccine so that Boric does not fall into populist demagogy is to learn from the lessons of the twentieth century"

Para Enrique Krauze el triunfo de Gabriel Boric marca un quiebre generacional que despierta varias interrogantes para América Latina. “El gran desafío de Boric está en inventar al Boric del futuro”, sostiene vía zoom desde su casa en México. Autor, entre otros, de libros como Redentores y México, biografía del poder, el historiador y ensayista mexicano es un severo crítico del chavismo y de la izquierda populista de Manuel López Obrador, con quien ha tenido duros enfrentamientos en los últimos años. Por eso, citando a Ortega y Gasset, dice que espera que el futuro presidente de Chile sea de “la generación que funda y no de la que rompe”. Pero para eso, agrega “tiene que aprender de los horrores del siglo XX, porque no puede un joven que es la promesa de la democracia republicana de izquierda de América Latina y Chile olvidar las lecciones del siglo XX”.

What is your first analysis, your first reflection, in the face of the results of the choice in Chile and what is coming?

Chileans hopefully understand and value the peculiarity of their history in Latin America.Like all Latin American peoples we are experts in self -flagellar, it is not easy to value it.It is always said, it is very easy to formulate, it is more difficult to practice it.But I have looked out to Latin American history in my life and I can say that from the foundation, from portals and beautiful that republican formation, that slow formation of a republican tradition in Chile is something that is operating to this day.They have no idea the envy he gave me and gave many Latin Americans the reaction of Kast in front of the triumph of Boric.The results were fast, clear, forceful and the same the response of the one who lost saying "great victory", used those words.And from Puerto Ric, that he is going to govern for all Chileans.I have seen journalistic coverage, and I also feel great envy, because there is a specialization, a sophistication, a detail, an intelligence in the public debate that is not in other parts of Latin America.In sum, it is not there, I believe, the caudillista culture, the culture of a huge blind statism, I do not see it and celebrate that.Therefore, the first, please, to encourage what is coming, study Chilean history and make comparative history of Latin America and see in the mirror of countries that have unfortunately had a much more difficult trajectory due to the weight of the monarchical tradition,of caudillista tradition or ideologies in Latin America.We are going to put it that way, there is a metaphor of Latin American history in the fact that the Venezuelan Bello has lived in Chile and not in Venezuela, I see it that way I see it.

Do you see more risks or more opportunities in the next Gabriel Boric government?

First of all I take the word generation very seriously, here is a new generation and the word generation and the meaning of a new generation must be taken very seriously.Ortega y Gasset talks a lot about generations and says that generations have a cycle of four stations: the one that founds, the one that criticizes and the one that breaks.I would like, without going into details, that Boric was the generation that founds, not the one that breaks.

What does it melt?

That founds a new democratic left in Latin America, because it is about founding it.It does not exist in Latin America, nor has it existed since 1959, genuinely - more than certain flashes - a democratic left.It is the left that represented Teodoro Petkoff.I think it is the left that Allende represented, although Allende is a complicated issue, it also had an ideological drive that conditioned its management.I was very close, deeply antipinochetist, so I would never have voted for Kast.I want to think that it is a new generation.Specifically, I would define it in this way: how good it distanced itself from the dictatorial left of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.But that this statement is not only that, that it does not stop only in a statement, but in a critical and real self -criticism of how it was possible that Martí's dream, of a progress, of an independence, of a republic, ends up being aReplica of the Soviet Union.But I would also like that new left, which could represent Boric and its generation, take distance from the populist left in Latin America.It is not only Castro, the dynasty of the Castro, or Nicaragua, because there is no populism, there is pure and hard dictatorship, just like Maduro.Also see what is happening in Mexico with open eyes, because it is not with that populist, autocratic left, with tyrannical, antidemocratic trends, with which you have to identify.This is the first message, hopefully it begins a new stage, a founding generation of a democratic left, distanced from the dictatorial left, but also of the populist.

But there are sectors in the Boric coalition that are not so critical of Venezuela or Nicaragua.Do you see risks that you finally fall into that other left?

Yes there are risks, but I liked saying, let's leave the double standard (the double speech).I liked that, because I remember very well how in the 70s, for example, there was talk of Pinochet's crimes, but what happened in Cuba or the Soviet Union or the Soviet Union.That was very common.For my part I wrote against Pinochet, directly against Pinochet, openly, but I also criticized the crimes of Cuba and the Soviet Union.Good or bad ideology does not justify it.The end does not justify the media and there are no ideologies that have good dead or bad dead, they are all dead.Yes, there is that danger, but I would like Boric- and see that I am talking about a new generation- really study the twentieth century, it will appear to the twentieth century.You have to listen to the voice of the horrors of the twentieth century to inaugurate a new left in the 21st century.There were not one but two totalitarianism, the Nazi and the Soviet communist.Let's not forget the great promise of redemption that was the Russian revolution and what ended.A young man cannot, which is the promise of left -wing republican democracy in Latin America and Chile, forget the lessons of the twentieth century.The best vaccine to prevent Buric from falling into populist demagogy of several Latin American countries or in a dictatorial regime such as those that I have already failed, is to learn the lessons of the horrors of the twentieth century.

Why do you think sectors of the left of Latin America derived to models such as the Venezuelan or the Nicaraguan, or towards populist models?

For the lack of criticism with respect to Cuba.The capital sin of the left in Latin America since the 70s, 80s, 90s, with which the United States is very responsibility because it left the liberals and the Democrats of this continent alone, it was not to see the reality of Cuba in front.That is why Chávez and López Obrador and all the populists of Latin America continue to have Cuba as if it were the religious mecca of that messianic ideology.The self -critical process that lived the left in Europe, in Italy, in Spain, in France, in Germany, we did not have it in Latin America and that is the reason, one of the reasons why the left found that mutation, no longerOnly dictatorial as mature or as Ortega, but also populists with clear trends towards the dictatorship as in Mexico.

What do you think could be a reference for Gabriel Boric, from which to get lessons?

I would like Boric to think about the 1976 Spain, when a left that had come from Marxism, such as Felipe González, comes from the Pact of La Moncloa, like Felipe González, and leads Spain to a fairly enviable level, say what the Spaniards say, which are otherswho do not know how to understand their past.The great challenge for Puerto Ric is inventing the Puerto Ric.He has only to turn inside himself, to the lessons of the twentieth century, to Chilean history and realize that there is no exit to the left in populism or dictatorships, but in democracy.And I would like to mention something that has to do with his international speech.I do not like Bored to have talked about Israel as a genocidal state.I come from a family of Polish Jews and I have many dead in my family to not feel pain when a young man like him has to use such words that cannot be used.I am a vero critic of Israel's policy regarding the Palestinians, I am since 1976, that is clear.Always from the return magazine we insist on the need of the two states, we insist even on the return of the occupied territories, we insist that the occupation policy was going to lead to an unrestrably, inadmissible situation in terms of human rights, of Apartheid in a certain form.But we cannot close our eyes to the tragedy of the Jews in the twentieth century and precisely because I do not close it to Mr. Kast who has not spoken openly- if he spoke, I retract- as many children of officers of the German army, saying clearly sayingthat it was the most atrocious death machine that humanity has created.For this reason, I tell Mr. Boric, that one thing is to have a clear position in defense of the causes of freedom and justice in the Middle East and another thing is to attack Israel with words that Hugo Chávez would use.Do not forget the twentieth century Mr. Boric.They did not go to Israel for the weekend, they were refugees who had nowhere to go after the death of six million people, including 1 million children.I am not an orthodox, not even a believer, or nationalist, or ritualist, I am a Mexican and Latin American writer first of all.Therefore, I call him to reflect on that.

He believes that there are, as we say here in Chile, a certain "goodism" in a sector of the left that sometimes leads them to look excessively naivety some issues.

That word that I had not heard is very good.The word "goodism" is a very good word.Hegel spoke of beautiful souls, who are souls in love with their own moral beauty, as if they were seen in the mirror every morning and said "I can barely believe my own goodness".Well, no.You are made of an imperfect paste like all.Politics is rude, it is made of the imperfect matter that we are human beings.My suggestion is reading Max Weber, the politician's vocation, that is the great lesson of the twentieth century that the twentieth century forgot.No, the road is not in the falling of itself and in the easy slogans of the good and bad, it is in responsibility, in the measurement, in social engineering.Increase taxes, very well, but not to gain weight the State, but to make a more effective state that really serves the most needy, not the State itself.There are great lessons of the twentieth century that Mr. Boric can take advantage of.

What advice would I give him Boric?

If I could send him a message he would send him this: Congratulations President Boric, that his management refutes in the 21st century the horror of the twentieBoric Twitter has an Albert Camus appointment.Mr. Boric, if you really read Albert Camus we are facing a new left in Latin America.