2023-05-18 02:05:00
As a child of six or seven years old, back in the first half of the eighties, I heard for the first time about the brave Burciaga brothers, Rosendo lived in Monclova and Lorenzo in Saltillo.
At such a young age I was a simple spectator of the actions of my parents, who participated in party politics coming from their activities in Church movements in Piedras Negras.
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It was the eighties the political system in Coahuila was in full crisis, the PRI was showing its first signs of weakness. ruled the state “The Devil” of the Sourcesa specimen of the worst species of the PRI Jurassic, a criminal in every sense of the word.
Perhaps many have already forgotten it, but the Secretary General of the Government was Enrique Martinez and Martinezwith a very strong hand with the opposition, although years later he wanted to sell himself as a modernizing version of the PRI, civilized, let’s say.
I personally met Lorenzo already Rosendo Burciaga in 2001, in the Aztec de Oro, a Mexican restaurant in Elgin, a small town in the state of Illinois. The PAN had just won the presidential elections. The party and its president were news. There was joy and great expectations. Mexicans in the United States had played a very important role in the process that culminated in the alternation.
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Fox received huge outpourings of support from the Mexican community in the United States. To meet that civic spirit, the president of Acción Nacional, Luis Felipe Bravo Mena, decided to open a small office to serve Mexicans abroad. He had only one position, that of director, he had to be in charge of organizing the countrymen who wanted to join the PAN and participate in politics. I was that first director.
It was, without a doubt, one of the jobs I have enjoyed the most. I spoke to nearly empty auditoriums, others fairly full, and some very full. I visited farm fields in Northern California, restaurants in Chicago and New York, and construction in Texas.. In all these places and their surroundings the effervescence was lived to the fullest. There were great expectations of Mexico and its government. When he returned to Mexico City he used to joke that, in Illinois, the PAN was so numerous and participatory that the PAN members were already fighting among themselves.
In the small City of Elgin there was a large group of PAN membersand journalists, legislators, functionaries and leaders of the party arrived there. Rosendo Burciaga lived therewho had requested political asylum in the United States after a beating that he was given by orders of the Coahuila PRI, he named those responsible by their names and surnames: Jose de las Fuentes Rodriguez y Enrique Martinez and Martinez. How was the beating they gave Rosendo, otherwise widely documented, that the US authorities decided to grant him political asylum and full citizenship?
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In those founding efforts in the United States, we were accompanied by his brother Lorenzo who used to visit him from time to time. How I enjoyed that talk at the Azteca de Oro. He told me about his political adventures from his beginnings in the Catholic Action of Mexican Youth, the ACJM, or as he called them, the acejotemeros. There he met many who later became national leaders of the PAN. He also told me about his first battles in the PAN in Saltillo and Coahuila, the difficulties typical of defeats, and even greater difficulties, typical of triumphs.
When I was a federal deputy I spent long hours listening to him. He had a tone of voice that made his long dissertations an entertaining, interesting, instructive narrative.. He invited me to his house, he showed me his entire collection of La Nación, the official magazine of the PAN, but he was sorry not to have a copy of the first issue.
Don Lorenzo was not a saint of the devotion of many PAN members, and even less of the PRI members, whom he faced with substance and conviction. When he criticized the PAN, sometimes he was right, other times not, but we always agreed on each and every one of the accusations we made to the PRI-Government. If something cannot be haggled with Don Lorenzo it is his consistency, he was until the end of his days.
Over time I moved away from partisan politics and the PAN. I stopped seeing Don Lorenzo, now I’ll look for Rosendo to say hello. But I would not have to see or listen to Don Lorenzo to know what he thought of the PAN, its collapse and its alliance with the PRI, with that PRI-Government that he faced with incomparable courage. rest in peace sir Lorenzo Burciagasee you soon.
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