¿Les suena?

En su ensayo, Enrique Krauze incluye una cita de “Viaje a los Estados Unidos del Norte de América”, un libro de Lorenzo de Zavala, un intelectual mexicano que llegó a ser vicepresidente de Texas, publicado en 1830, casi al mismo tiempo que “La démocratie en Amérique”, de Alexis de Tocqueville.

Zavala habla de México, pero creo que aplica a todo el subcontinente (la cita original es en castellano, pero no la pude encontrar):

[The United States has] a people that is hard working, active, reflective, circumspect, religious in the midst of a multiplicity of sects, tolerant, thrifty, free, proud and persevering. The Mexican is easy going, lazy, intolerant, generous almost to prodigality, vain, belligerent, superstitious, ignorant and an enemy of all restraint. The North American works, the Mexican has a good time; the first spends less than he has, the second even that which he does not have; the former carries out the most arduous enterprises to their conclusion, the latter abandons them in the early stages; the one lives in his house, decorates it, furnishes it, preserves it against the inclement weather; the other spends his time in the street, flees from his home, and in a land where there are no seasons he worries little about a place to rest. In the United States all men are property owners and tend to increase their fortune; in Mexico the few who have anything are careless with it and fritter it away.

¿Cuál es el camino para salir del círculo vicioso de la pobreza y del atraso?

[M]end your ways. Get rid of those eighty-seven holidays during the year that you dedicate to play, drunkenness and pleasure. Save up capital for the decent support of yourselves and your families in order to give guarantees of your concern for the preservation of the social order. Tolerate the opinions of other people; be indulgent with those who do not think as you do; allow the people of your country to exercise freely their trade, whatever it may be, and to worship the supreme Author of the Universe in accordance with their own consciences. Repair your roads; raise up houses in order to live like rational beings; dress your children and your wives with decency; don’t incite riots in order to take what belongs to somebody else. And finally, live on the fruit of your labors, and then you will be worthy of liberty and of the praises of sensible and impartial men.