okay oh foreign the experience thank you very much you cannot imagine how deeply i regret not to be with you in trento i had such a my wife and i had such an illusion to be in your wonderful city in the country italy that we've visited very often and that we cherish so much so deeply in our hearts i will start to talk about how it felt in latin america the last years the last decades of the 20th century we were all full of hopes with uh winds of freedom and democracy were blowing all over the world we know the the berlin wall had failed and all the countries in europe were one by one being adopting democracy as their political rule of their lives and in latin america there were some very important virtues circles uh brazil argentina uruguay that were plagued with ferocious military dictatorships were democracies salvador nicaragua that had undergone revolutionary and guerrilla wars were democracies also in all latin america there were two main exceptions cuba that of course remains an exception but only also mexico mario by graziosa my dear and admired friend came to mexico in 1990 and said that mexico was the perfect dictatorship it was a perfect dictatorship in the sense that we didn't feel as living a dictatorship because we had a all-powerful president and a one-party system but dictatorship it was and for several decades starting from the 1968 movement in which i participated personally along with my generation we fought for freedom and democracy in mexico and then suddenly in the last decade of the 20th century the pre the party that had ruled mexico for 70 years since 1929 began to feel the immense pressure of the world democracy and yes something unexpected unexpected happened mexico had a soft transition towards democracy 1997 to the year 2000 we had alternation of power we had real parties in the parliament we had independence of the judiciary we had full freedom of the press and opinion and most of all we have a president that did not belong to the pre so you can imagine the amount of hope of that we felt in the year 2000 it was for mexico in a way i think it was for the world one of the most hopeful uh endings not only of a century but also over millennia but of course we had history is a box of surprises and history had very serious surprises stored for us we all know that history started to change in the in 9 11 2001 over the attacks of the twin towers but in latin america it all we didn't really feel any change and to the extent that populism and now i first i'm using that word seem to be a thing of the past curiously enough you will remember that around those years the famous film evita on ebitda peron was famous all over the world and i did write a piece on ebitda peron and on peronism in argentina but feeling in those days that it was a closed chapter of latin american history we felt i felt that it was a thing of the past and a thing that was reserved only for argentina but then it came suddenly came the year 2000 2002 and 2003 and uber chavis began to appear in the world stage as something of a new kind of leadership uber chavez as you remember had staged a coup d'etat against a democratic government in 1992. he was briefly jailed but he was very famous and very popular because he pointed out some very serious and real problems of the venezuelan democracy first of all corruption then in social and economic inequality these two elements uh contributed to the uh bad name of the political parties in venezuela and gave ugochives his extraordinary popularity by the way he was drawing on the tradition of the caudillos in the most caudiesta country of latin america which is venezuela venezuela doesn't is not a very religious country as mexico is but venezuela has a very strange kind of religion the religion of simon bolivar and travis was very clever to picture himself as the follower of bolivar he started talking about the bolivarian revolution and he was and by the way still is after he's dead but in 2013 but he still is he still retains a kind of religious aura around his name around his legend around his finger he i began to see the populist government and regime in venezuela and then i wrote in 2004 2004 a decalogue of a decal of populism with the 10 points that in my opinion are aware but i think they still are the 10 main elements of populism in latin america first populism is unimaginable undistinguishable from a charismatic leader there is no populism if you don't have the figure of a providential man a provincial person who will resolve once and for all once and for ever the problems of the people second the public uses and abuses uh the use of the public word uh the microphone the image uh uh chavez appeared every sunday in the television of venezuela for seven hours third populism uh tends to fabricate truth at that at that time we didn't use the word fake news that trump donald trump that utmost american populist uses so often but the populist leader and uber travis at that time wanted to reshape not only truth but also history to rewrite history so for instance he pictured himself as i have told you as the direct follower of bolivar and he even talked about uh it spoke about venezuelan history as a immense void from the moment of awareness of a bolivar's death in 1830 to the uh to to uber chavez presidency in 1998. so we're talking about 160 something years of void and this is the rewriting of venezuelan history so the populist in latin america rewrites history and so to speak privatizes the truth four a populist in latin america uses in a completely discretional way public money and fifth he uses it to distribute it directly to the people i want to say that in my opinion because i am not a neoliberal i think that universal income is something that is necessary in these countries i happen to think that the idea of uber charis of giving directly a quarter of the personal of the national income directly to the people benefits the immense the large poor populations what i am not in favor of is to charge for that universal income with political obedience and that is exactly what hugo chavez did say six the populist in latin america uh feeds social hatred social welfare uh uh social warfare and also seven mobilizes permanently social groups and the masses around him eight populist needs to focus in a internal or external enemy chinese always sign out the united states of course the united states have been have had a terrible record in latin america absolutely terrible unforgivable but united states are until now or where until now the only country that buys directly in cash the venezuelan oil but chavez needed to uh to to to talk about that external enemy and and to talk about the internal enemies and he was very very fierce in insulting the medium classes and everyone that opposes him finally two athletes the populist in latin america is against the rule of law and finally ten he has come he usually comes to power by democratic means but being in power and amen and having all the power of the legislative the judiciary the press the electoral institute immediately tries to undermine liberties freedom and democracy this is something that i began to theorize and to write about in the year 2004 but in mexico in 2005 we saw the rise of the most formidable popular leader of the mexican recent history andres manuel lopez obrador our current president when i met him in the year 2003 or i was immensely impressed by the man and i told him that i admired him enormously for his popular instinct and for his will to clean this country of corruption and tackle the problems of poverty and inequality but at the same time as a democrat and as a liberal i told him that i was very worried for some authoritarian elements in his personality he had read my books he showed respect for my work he's not my age he's 66 years younger than me but we had a good respectful relationship uh but politicians tend be very sensitive towards criticism and lopez obrador is not the exception and in the year 2006 he launched a formidable campaign for the presidency a campaign which he lost by point zero two percent only 200 uh 200 000 votes out of 40 million marked his defeat against another candidate felipe calderon before the election being completely sure that he would win that election i wrote a critical piece a critical essay that had an impact in mexico and i called it the tropical messiah please don't laugh i was not making mocca i was the one the word messiah is a very serious word in the religious vocabulary of christianism judaism islam and i am a scholar a modest scholar being myself a mexican jew of what messianism is and he is truly seen by people but many people and he sees himself as a messiah as the man who will save mexico i believe that messiahs are the central central element of the world's monotheistic religions but it's very very very dangerous for a messiah to appear in the public political sphere as for the world tropical it is not my word it is manuel lopez obrador way of talking about his home state tabasco he has he wrote a theory and his theory of power is called the power of the tropics the tropical power meaning by that that in the tropics of mexico and in central america you know that central american caribbeans power is a very serious and a very tempestuous passion and he thinks that he has those two elements a tempestuous will of power plus a messianic calling well as a liberal as a democrat i felt the need and the urge of writing that peace i can assure you that from that moment on i earned well not only the criticism but sadly the hatred of many many people after 2006 i focused in venezuela i went to venezuela and i wrote a book on venezuela i interviewed chavistas and anti-chavista i went to see for instance the minister of finance and i told him that i agreed and was enthusiastic about the universal income he told me what china and russia and cuba have not achieved we in venezuela will achieve it and i say i said how will you will you achieve that that that utopia he said it's not a utopia i can tell you that his name was rodriguez a very serious and not corrupt man a very serious man and he said you know how we will do it because we'll do it because the barrel of oil will be worth very soon 250 dollars and i said how do you know he answered we know thanks due to that idea to that illusion venezuela had not only the greatest inflow of dollars for more than a decade i would i would call it a tsunami of dollars billions tens of billions of dollars came into the country and were mainly fueled to corruption they helped also many people for some years but travis began a frantical uh um action of nationalizing industries he nationalized jewelries department stores every imaginable industry and uh company and business in that country and most important he began to militarize and affect very seriously the very important and very efficient ones are oil company of venezuela so after when i wrote that book it was called el poderia el delirio power and delirium it was published in 2009 you can find there a kind of prophecy that this utopia was not going to happen and that there was going to be a very sour and very terrible outcome i've done a documentary now in 2016-17 on venezuela which i hope will be aired in italy and in europe and the story is the saddest story ever told of a country with the highest reserves of oil and energy in latin america in america and maybe in the world that has now a humanitarian situation that is only comparable with haiti it is something that we should be truly deeply worried and why did that happen in my opinion it happened mainly for many reasons but mainly because a country suddenly decided that democracy was not that important and it put all the power all the money all the resources in the hand of only one man in uh a few years ago because i was looking at the picture in latin america and the possibilities of populism really taking roots in mexico i did a study on the history and i would call it even more the anatomy of power in latin america let me tell you what my historical conclusions were maybe you will find it interesting first of all it has to do with the main deep tradition of political monarchy collapsology that latin america has from its three centuries of spanish dominion from 1521 to 1821 mexico and the whole of latin america had one king one rule one master and one political philosophy the political philosophy of uh of the spanish monarchy and what was that political philosophy maybe you would be surprised it is a political philosophy that was had its roots in saint thomas aquinas and more so the neo-scholastic tradition of spanish 16th and 17th century mainly of a philosopher and theologian francisco suarez and to sum up his philosophy he wrote that there is a kind of mystical pact between the people and the king with no intermediary the people give the king the power the power of the people comes from god but the people grant the monarch the power total power complete power he has the power to legislate to be a judge and to execute he has total power and if you consider that in three centuries not one spanish monarch set foot in the future latin america and by the way not one portuguese monarch set foot in the future brazil and in spite of that there were so few rebellions you can understand now that the roots of legitimacy of the absolute monarch and its bond and his bond with the people are very very deep in latin america then you will be familiar with a second route of power in latin america the first i repeat this absolute monarchy the bond between the monarch and the people what is the second the caudillos of latin america that are so similar to the condo thierry of italy the calvillos of latin america were mushroomed in the whole of our continent in the 19th century when the when the spanish uh monarchy in an empire sank like the titanic immediately we had everywhere in latin america the emergence of the caudillos we have them in argentina in venezuela in mexico facundo quiroga and rosas in argentina venezuela and also in peru in bolivia in uruguay we had them in colombia we had in in mexico uh very much so with with uh benito juarez mainly with porfirio diaz and even in the revolution zapata biya all the legendary figures of our history are calvillos so if you consider summing up the monarchical tradition that comes from three centuries of spanish dominion plus the emergence of the caudillos in the 19th and 20th century you can now understand that latin america has a very very strong too strong roots in a non-democratic non-liberal tradition in spite of that in many countries for instance in chile in argentina in uruguay in colombia in the 19th century and in the 20th century democrats and liberals have had a share of power we have had some episodes but very few the rule has been anarchical and caudillos our kinds of models which are the presidents and now think about mexico we had porfirio diaz that was a monarch like a habsburg monarch like a bourbon monarch for almost 40 years and then in mexico the tree had one monarch every six years so the liberal and democratic tradition has been very thin in latin america very weak very fragile and very brief and what i'm saying is in a book that i wrote was published in 2018 in the beginning of 18 and was called el pueblo i am the people well the last part of the story is that yes a man who believed that he is the people and a man whom the majority of the mexican people believe that he represents them that he incarnates not only a president but also a messiah has become the mexican president andres manuel lopez obrador has a complete legitimate mandate to rule over mexico for six years he is not only powerful he has as i say a religious calling to not only combat corruption and inequality and poverty which i think is excellent and also he believes and he has already started a vast program of universal income but he has been doing that by harming the economic institutions and even the institutions of welfare that have been effective in mexico i mean hospitals i mean institutions of health and assistance education universities and what's more worrying for me uh a big highly aggressive against freedom of the press against every person that does not uh that dares to criticize him well in that sense he is not unlike uh uh the other uh historical populists of latin america namely evaperon we are only six years six in the first part six months of the six years mandate and i hope deeply sincerely i hope that he will come into terms with the idea that he has to respect and freedom of the press freedom of criticism and the democratic institutions of mexico what awaits us future of light in america in argentina in venezuela in mexico what is the prospect of latin america with having that man who i think is not only a populist but the first real fascist of american history that is donald trump i have written extensively against donald trump and to my pride in my magazine letters libras we won a certain price for picturing the man with a mustache with a very little mustache uh that you can imagine uh was very similar to the uh mustache of the most ominous leader of the 20th century so in this way i think that the future of latin america doesn't seem green agreement in the sense that many countries let's talk about chile colombia uruguay costa rica for sure paraguay itself peru are democracies i am worried for a few countries i'm worried for brazil because brazil has president but a pros populist president whose opinions about uh economy about economy social issues moral issues the sexes equality of the sexes about women issues are extremely reactionary and right-wing and he is too much in love with the military in brazil and brazil believe me has a military tradition i'm also worried for argentina who will have soon a september crucial elections in which they will have to choose between the comeback of peronism with christina kitchener or keeping up with mauricio macri that has yes disappointed people that felt that argentina would go well very fast and it hasn't happened i'm worried for mexico for many reasons first of all not for lobster i'm working for mexico because of donald trump i can talk more about these subjects if you will in the part of our discussion and i would be very glad uh to take your uh your uh your opinions your remarks your questions and again i am i repeat that i'm deeply grateful for the festival economy and i hope to be there in toronto believe me if you if you think you can invite me some other time i i i dream of being there thank you very much italian it is the most important and most important question the answer is i don't know i still don't know and i don't think we know by now social media facebook twitter and i'm a very very active user of twitter our weapons uh that we felt where the road for a global conversation the road for democracy uh a tool for democracy of dialogue or debate of respect of intelligent debate at this point i think they are degrading themselves into a kind of noise to put it very mildly and on the other hand of hate speech and when you have this amount of hate speech in the uh social media that hate speech is perfectly made to empower the dictator dictators i think at this moment that donald trump has used very cleverly social media to to govern the united states and if he wins in 2020 which will be a tragedy he would have win because he uses twitter to govern at this moment at this moment i'm afraid twitter is being used by the powers of dictators and even populists with much more efficiency that it is being used by people that believe in democracy and in freedom foreign american um is i am not a neoliberal i believe that the state has a role that the state has an important role concerning education i am concerning social and medical issues concerning for instance the very crucial point of security and shielding the people on on the terrible problem of violence i am not a libertarian in that sense my writings are the writings of a historian i try to understand i am not a politician and i am not a propagandist i am a historian and i think for the reasons i gave you the spanish roots the spanish tradition we have the tradition of a state and to think that in latin america we can be liberals as a textbook in england or as readers of john locke well not to mention more libertarian authors is wrong simply wrong i would say that karl popper and isaiah berlin those are the liberal thinkers in the case of cyberlink directly a teacher and a man who i knew and whom i edited and revered so uh even though i think uh the people that you mentioned have been doing an important uh work in in focusing on the big enormous dangers of populism in latin america let's put it this way my outlook and my approach is a different one i'm more a social democrat that believes in freedom and in democracy and as a social democrat i am very worried for the fate of mexico and i am mourning that's a word the tragedy of venezuela hello can i do the question in english yes okay thank you uh thanks for your for your brilliant talk um i have a question regarding your your view because when you start describing the different characteristics of the of the caudillo i figure out that many of the things that you were talking about are very much the characteristics of many leaders today in europe so you do you think there is a real risk that in europe some kind of populist some kind of caudillo as the ones that you were describing before could rise so is there any real real let's say risk of having a kind of i could call it uh kind of spaghetti caudillo spaghetti messiah let me give you some very interesting question gee how i wish i was there truly every minute i wish it more but alas i'm here in mexico okay you know who planted the idea of populism in the head of juan domingo peron maybe you don't know what it was mussolini of the argentinian embassy in 1922 in mussolini's italy and what he saw in italy he said we should have a statue of mussolini in every city in argentina this is the future he understood the power of the world the power of public speaking the power of radio the power of the microphone the power of assessing directly the masses in the public's square he needed but he wasn't such an extraordinary orator then he found the perfect match well maybe he was in love with her maybe but maybe love was didn't have so much to do but the idea of grabbing total power and then there was evita peron evita was an actress evita was a very famous actress in radio poor actress in cinema but very good actors and you know what her problems in radio were she had programs on the great woman in power in history catherine um elizabeth all the queens of course they don't listen to those programs and he adopted uh erita and he started let's say the first mussolinian experiment in latin america well it seems now the roles have been reversing yes we are watching the very worrisome panorama horizon of the strong man in europe i still don't see it very clearly in england but you have neil farage whom i think and many people think is the greatest demagogue that has ever lived and born enacted in the english history the greatest because i think cromwell was not a democracy a popular charismatic leader but a demagogue a democrat like farage england hasn't seen one and we have some candidates in uh in in in spain and we have le pen france and we have uh some candidates or some politicians important politicians i don't want to be unpolite in italy and we have urban of course perfectly shaped a latin american populist a peronist in hungary and we have one also in uh in poland so yes it seems that the populist virus of latin america that was first uh born in in in italy came back to to europe and i'm worried for uh european democracy but i i i believe that the tradition of freedom and liberty uh uh of europe uh and of the great history of italy and and and its wonderful historical feats and the same can be said of france and england and spain will prevail um well first of all let me tell you that uh that there is something like there is someone a young student in italy who is starting the 20th century the atrocious legacy of fascism and totalitarian totalitarianism uh totalitarianism in in the 20th century gives me hope i want to stress that because my great fear is that young people forget history dismiss history it is happening in the united states people young people don't care about history don't know history you are not guilty of not knowing firsthand the history that you didn't live how could i ask you to know by experience what happened in the 80s and 70s and 60s my experience is not your experience but i'm very glad to hear that you are now starting the 20th century if one does not study the 20 i would say something this clear if the 21st century forgets the legacy the horrible legacy of fascism and total totalitarianism of the 20th century both in its right wing fascist and nutty wing and in its communist stalinist maoist side if the 21st century forgets that experience let me i hope not sound historic then the 21st century is doomed if the 20s forgets that past the 21st century is doomed so yes i see i saw in travis many features of fidel castro's school cuba and by the way i'm not saying anything new it is chalice himself who said in 2000 in the year 2000 he said this in havana he said cuba is sailing in the seas of happiness very soon venezuela will be sailing in the same seas of happiness well there you have it venezuela is sailing yes like the prophet the caudill populist prophet yuwa chavis envisaged their wanted in the same seas as cuba but those aren't seas of happiness believe me as for mexico i can tell you something i believe that lopez obrador is sort of a breed that doesn't have much to do neither with the example of uh european fascism or of a stalinist experience but he is a great admirer of uh of fidel castro he shed tears sincerest tears genuine public tears when castro died and he said i think castro is a leader of the dimension of nelson mandela well i happen to think that he's wrong nelson mandela was a pacifist and he believed in freedom equality and democracy fidel castro never believed in freedom and democracy and he was a dictator and after uh he's dead for several years now he is still ruling and he will be probably ruling for many years in cuba so there are aspects to answer now some specific point of your questions if you see the use that lopez obrador does and his people and his propaganda apparatus and how he uses social media to intimidate critics i can tell you something that is fascism that is a seed of totalitarian regime yes i do not hesitate to say that in its last extent the wish of populism at least in latin america is to install a regime of a one-man rule with some latin american or mexican features but with a total complete dominion of one man and one party well how should we call that who cares which point is that the prospect of that evolving is truly green no in mexico a is foreign absolutely referendum a a so yes i'll do it i'll do it gladly to do it even better so let's start the mexican president now lopez obrador hasn't even hasn't only uh introduced a law of immunity but he has also amazed all the power the judiciary the uh the legislative many legislators of the states in mexico are in his hand the media is in his hand most of the media tells them part of the radio and he gives a daily address from seven o'clock to nine o'clock in the morning uber travis used to give one speech every one program every sunday he called it a law president in that program uber chavez danced and recited poems and gave kisses and and and and and and and ordered and he actually was ruling the country from that sunday program every every every venezuelan his enemies and his friends watch that program a law president uh now now what happened uh now what happened in mexico is that we have a daily program from seven o'clock to um uh to 9 o'clock in which the president sets the agenda every mexican speaks and talks and thinks about lopez obrador morning afternoon and night in that sense he does resemble ugochi his aim is to concentrate power first in the year 2020 in the mid-term elections and then in 2024 in the presidential elections does mexico resemble venezuela yes and no no because mexico has a very a much more dynamic modern economy mexico does not depend on its oil as venezuela did and mexican industry services economy is much more varied and dynamic and strong than venezuela on the other hand lopez obrador is not a military as you remember chavez was a military man and mexico does not have a military tradition like venezuela so in that those two very crucial points mexico is not venezuela doesn't resemble venezuela and lopez obrador is not chinese but on the other hand i said yes lopez obrador does have the libretto he is completely false in having the attention and the love both attention and love of the mexican people first with his program and then he travels all over the country as if he was in a presidential ongoing campaign every minute every hour he's very popular although popularity has decreased from 80 in february to around 65 or 70 percent now it is decreasing because he has truly armed institutions of health of education and he has not been able to curb violence but he's still very popular because people do believe that he has good heart and good intentions i don't distrust his intentions but i believe that in politics in history good intentions are not enough you need to have responsibility and results and you did have to respect institutions and you have to respect freedom and i'm worried and you as a mexican will extend and you in the audience will understand very well why i'm worried this amount of concentration of power is something that we mexicans have not seen in the whole of our history i would say our modern history you would say well weren't the mexican presidents very powerful yes they were but the tree was a corporation made of peasants and bureaucrats and workers like a fascist corporatist party which i do not admire of course in which i dreaded and attacked and criticized but the pre was a party that was not owned by the president so for instance president salinas maybe you remember that that name salinas not a friend of mine not any other president of the pre was a friend of mine and i didn't need those friendships well salinas was all powerful who massacred students in 68. they were all powerful but they had the pre and they didn't owe the pre and if they did some mistakes the pre was there to say there were some limits for instance echelaria each did many things to harm to to to the workers in the pre and the pre uh set some limits to a chevrolet the asurdas massacred students in 68 and sadly the pre didn't put any limit but what i want to say is that the pre was one key of power in 20th century mexico and the other part was the president now fast forward mexico 2019 and es manuel lopez obrador is all power judiciary legislative the states media the jude every and he is and he's going to to to to have much more power and andres manuel lopez obrador owns his party and the party morena is he once said i am the movement mourinho is called he once said i am the movement well i think he says also i am the people i think he says also i am mexico i think he is the owner of mexico now you understand why i am deeply worried and yes this ownership can last not one one six years not one term it can last well probably in what i think will be my lifetime at least the next six years hope i'm wrong thank you very much i i will make two questions regarding the mexican economy since in the past two days mr trump imposed a new a new tariff into mexican goods coming to united states as of june 10th and this is something new when we were just about to have the new treaty between mexico and and the us so what is your point of view about this does the mexican administration have time to negotiate the next eight eight days and the second question is who will lose the most if this tariff goes on the mexican companies or the american taxpayers it will be like shooting at your own boat what do you think about it thank you very much well um it came for me it was not a surprise when president pena nieto invited trump i remember the date august 31st 2017. i went immediately to the mexican television to say it was this was the greatest historical mistake done by a mexican president shameful shameful mistake of inviting trump pena nieto not only was undignified in front of trump but also granted him a statue a statue of ceiling presidential that i'm sure helped him in his presidential race now trump lopez obrador thinks that he cannot appease trump by speaking soft by being humble by accepting every wish by helping him in every sense trump can insult mexicans in twitter every day he can say that we are rapists and murderers he can say whatever he says and lopez obrador says i don't want to get in a fight with mr trump we get along very well i understand very well his his wishes and i respect him well i happen to think that you do not appease tyrants you face tyrants and that is a great lesson of the 20th century remember munich remember what happened with hitler and with uh uh and with england when uh they tried to appease uh hitler it was it was a failure uh it was a failure with tyrants you don't act that way you face them you face them with respect when you face them with firmness but most of all you face them with dignity now if trump is menacing to set tariffs from five percent very soon june 10th if i understand well and rising to 30 it will harm mexico immensely it will also harm the american companies it will put in endanger the treaty mexico it's a very serious scenario companies will go broke the econ the economy will suffer immensely that would be the turning point and the great test for andres manuel lopez obrador how will he react will he react uniting the country will he unite respecting his critics will he unite the country saying that we face a great real and present danger that mexican has from mexico and mexicans that live the 20 million that live outside mexico in the united states have to unite and face this with dignity and show trump that we are courageous and that he cannot uh he can act that way but we can respond we are weak immensely weak but we have dignity or will he react blaming the mexican critics and the mexican businessmen and yes blaming trump for the illnesses at home and gear this country decisively to a venezuelan tragedy and path well my friends that is the big question that is facing my country gotcha is as you know jews used to say say next year in jerusalem well i will start saying as a mexican next year you