APPS & BOTS
On the first day in office of the 45th U.S. president, dystopian feelings loom over the hearts and minds of many in both Mexico and the United States. President Trump’s mandate begins amid controversy over the legitimacy of the election, Russian meddling and diplomacy over Twitter. It is the United States’ first hacked election, an “unpresidented” situation; however, not new to Mexico where the system has been tampered with before.
The infamous “system crash” in 1988, when opposition candidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas lost to Havard’s own Carlos Salinas de Gortari, came to mind — despite the fact that it was an inside job motivated by the refusal of the monolithic Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to leave the presidential seat rather, than an international plot whose details are yet to be known.
Perhaps the connection lies in the lack of accountability of a computerized system — a perfect scapegoat — making a choice over the most nefarious candidate. Salinas de Gortari’s term was marked by the liberalization of the economy with the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and one of the worst economical crises the country has experienced. The opposite is true for Trump’s plans in the White House: economic protectionism and the renegotiation of international trade agreements, whose effects have been immediately felt in Mexico, namely the peso’s rapid downward spiral along with the devastating effects of his tweeting capacities on the manufacturing sector.
As bleak as the outlook may seem, melancholy and catastrophism aren’t the most useful of allies; hence, alternatives have to be thought up. Is there any silver lining in the political storm we are headed to? Will citizen movements gain momentum and influence on forthcoming rulings? Can clicktivism save us?