A Nation of Lies
Among Mexico City's socioeconomic elite, there's something you learn quickly: saying what you mean and meaning what you say are not that important.
This may ring true for most politicians everywhere, but in Mexico it's not just the political class: it's a commonly understood way among most people to avoid taking a stance. Sure, most Mexicans would claim (as they do everywhere) that "telling the truth" is important, but in reality - especially Mexico City and the southeast part of the country - they place higher priority on other values.
Although dodging the truth when it doesn't suit you is a universal phenomena, Mexicans have raised truth-avoidance to an art form. In business chambers, courtrooms, conference halls and back rooms throughout the nation, people lie to an extent little known elsewhere. In fact, public discourse is measured by how much one can say without saying anything. According to one prominent Mexican investigator, "lying has always been and still is - today more than ever - the principal technique used by Mexican officials to govern."
Why are Mexican politicians and the ruling elite permitted to lie so much? There are many answers to this question, many gray shades that vary according to one's point of view, factors like lack of accountability, poor education, poverty, impunity, repression...
Everyone has a different answer. But the consequence of so many lies - and the reliance on deception by nearly every politician to effectively govern - has produced a feeling among most Mexicans that nobody can be trusted, and that the rule of law and institutions themselves are ineffective.
"Why?" asks Sara Sefchovich "have Mexicans permitted their leaders to lie to such an extent?" The answer -- based on her extensive investigation -- is that Mexicans themselves depend on lies to an extraordinary degree in their daily interactions. Put differently, Mexicans are conditioned to "give people the airplane", a strategy (perhaps "state of mind" is more accurate) to avoid saying things as they are.
"Lying is embedded in Mexican public discourse in such a deliberate, profound, conscious and systematic way that aside from its inevitability it often seems absolutely necessary".
Which is what it has become in the lives of most chilangos: an artifice necessary (or so it seems) to survive.
