Influencers

I listened to an influencer this morning somewhat ironically pronouncing that Miguelito is a "cero a la izquierda", a sugar baby, one of a multitude of Miguelitos and Miguelitas around the country, all of whom are nobodies and thus a distraction from the 'real problem' and its rather less amarillismo-adapted protagonists.

This argument makes very little sense, historically.

Individuals entrenched on the sidelines of great authoritarian power, be they Marie Antoinette or Rasputin, have always tended to be significant influencers.

And sugar babies are not all alike, some are facilitators as well as mere receivers. Pablo Escobar made use of a plethora of younger lovers, many of them basically children who ultimately had no national impact, but his girlfriend in the Colombian media was a different matter.

It is not delusional at all for the masses to focus their ire on these figures. The dynamic of both the French and Russian revolutions was profoundly affected by how people felt about the Queen and the Mad Monk.

And it is very hard to focus one's energies in resistance on faceless actors.

The key caras in this current popular uprising have been those of Porras and Curruchiche, and I have mentioned before how this creates a rather helpful narrow focus, preventing the movement from being hijacked by radical social and political propositions. The flipside of this is that if Porras were gone tomorrow, nothing essential would have changed.

Anyway, the underlying dynamic of the protests in Guatemala may not be the same after yesterday's ruckus, and in that alone we can say Miguelito's arrogance in showing up in the middle of Antigua on a Saturday, will have its due significance over the course of this 'interregnum'.