Enjoyable have been the nightly episodes of La Usurpadora (The Usurper), the Mexican telenovela of 2019. Who is the real Mexican First Lady? Is it Paulina or Paola? Even within the Mexican government, there is uncertainty.
No less so are we ourselves uncertain. Who is the real U.S. president? Is it Donald Trump or Joe Biden? Millions of Americans are uncertain. An added twist in this American telenovela is a double within the double: The double, Biden, has his own double, Kamala Harris. At the junction, Uncle Joe is out front, snoozing. But it is really Kamala who runs the Shady Rest.
There’s a little hotel called the Shady Rest at the junction.
It is run by “Kate”, come and be her guest at the junction.
And that’s Uncle Joe, he’s a-movin’ kinda slow, at the junction.
Petticoat Junction.
The theme of the double was explored by Octavio Paz in the Hackett Memorial Lecture delivered by him at the University of Texas at Austin on October 30, 1969. A development and amplification of that lecture is titled by Paz, The Other Mexico. Mexico has a double within herself. For Paz, the term “the other Mexico” invokes “a reality that is made up of different strata and that alternately folds in on itself and unfolds, hides itself and reveals itself.” [1]
A key moment of Mexican revelation for Paz was the Tlatelolco Massacre of October 2, 1968, when the Mexican Armed Forces opened fire on unarmed civilians, killing an undetermined number, in the hundreds. [2] The year was 1968 and Mexico was eager to show off her progress by hosting the Olympic Games. Instead, the theme of the double appeared: ataraxia and explosion, stupor of the technological society and the Tlatelolco Massacre. “If the explosions are part of the system, so are the repressions and the lethargy, enforced or voluntary, that follow them.” An implacable phantasm of the future collided with the spontaneous reality of the now. [3]
A phantasm of the future – bribe money disguised as stimulus – collided with a spontaneous reality on January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol building. The Biden double wants you to accept him in return for massive payoffs. (Already bribes had been dished out by the Trump double in return for coroner-virus compliance.) The phantasm bribes of the future were a carrot dangling from a stick before the American horse’s nose. Then the nasty now came along and upset the applecart of the future, on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6th. (The Magi came from the East, bearing gifts for the mysterious infant. In Rev. Magi there are twelve of these Magi, four times the usual number three. They had traveled a long way, from the land of Shir. [4])
The Magi came from the land of Shir to the U.S. capital on January 6, 2021. They worked their magic and accentuated the double in our midst. “Each people”, writes Paz, “carries on a dialogue with an invisible colloquist who is, at one and the same time, itself and the other, its double. Its double? Which is the original and which the phantasm?” [1] Which is the Mexican First Lady, Paulina or Paola? Which is the U.S. president, Trump or Biden? Says Sancho Panza, wherever he sits, in Mar-a-lago or elsewhere, will be the head of the table. [5]
——- Sources ——-
[1] The Labyrinth of Solitude (and Other Writings), by Octavio Paz. New York: Grove Press, 1985.
[2] “Tlatelolco massacre”, Wikipedia. Accessed January 18, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlatelolco_massacre
[3] “Tangled Web We Weave”, Ersjdamoo’s Blog, January 17, 2021. https://ersjdamoo.wordpress.com/2021/01/17/tangled-web-we-weave/
[4] “The Revelation of the Magi”, Ersjdamoo’s Blog, January 2, 2020. https://ersjdamoo.wordpress.com/2020/01/02/the-revelation-of-the-magi/
[5] “Zapata Horrified by Presidential Chair”, Ersjdamoo’s Blog, January 19, 2021. https://ersjdamoo.wordpress.com/2021/01/19/zapata-horrified-by-presidential-chair/