AYUSO IN MEXICO: POLITICS AND HOSTILITY

 

The President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, during her visit to Aguascalientes, Mexico, was boycotted, insulted, and subjected to a climate of political hostility that eventually led her to shorten her stay. Much of this atmosphere appears to have been encouraged by sectors close to President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, whose brand of combative left-wing populism often shows little tolerance for dissenting voices.

This episode brings to mind Professor Edward O. Wilson, the distinguished Harvard naturalist, who, in February 1978, while delivering a lecture at a meeting of the AAAS, was heckled by activists and had a jug of water poured over his head as members of the audience shouted, ‘You are all wet, you are all wet.’ Wilson was accused of being a Nazi and a fascist, accusations that were as absurd as they were unjust.

History has a tendency to repeat itself. Those who speak in favor of liberty and democratic pluralism are frequently caricatured and demonized by ideological extremists who remain strangely indulgent toward authoritarian regimes in places such as North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba.

Isabel Díaz Ayuso does not need my defense; she is perfectly capable of enduring the slings and arrows of political adversaries on both the Socialist and Communist left.”