The Naked Truth: The Mexican politician who stripped in parliament to fight for the people
I don’t think I’m blowing anyone’s mind by saying that politics is essentially just show business.
It’s often said that politicians are where failed rock stars go to get the fix of power and adulation that real rock stars feel every night. This is true to an extent. Only the fundamentally broken love politicians the way people love rock stars, for one. A successful politician will also have a lot more people wanting to rip out their lower intestine and wear it as a condom than a successful rock star, unless you get to a truly unattainable level of mega-fame. However, the proof is there if you look.
Tony Blair’s “down with the kids” exterior was strengthened by his palling around with Noel Gallagher and the reports of him fronting a rock band called Ugly Rumours when he was still at school. Barack Obama has said several times that he became president because he couldn’t be Bruce Springsteen. Javier Milei, president of Argentina, decided that just talking about his rock star dreams wasn’t enough. He humiliated himself in front of an arena full of sycophants, slobbering his way through a pub karaoke standard array of Argentine rock hits from the 1980s.
The thing is, this shit works. We’re talking about three hugely successful politicians, no matter your opinion of them. People buy into cults of personality, grand narratives will always convince people over sensible policy, and if you want people outside of politics to really listen to you, as Milei shows, you’ve got to make a spectacle of yourself. It took a politician in Mexico to show how you can do that while still retaining a modicum of political messaging, though.
How did stripping affect Mexican politics?
In August 2013, a bill was introduced in Mexico’s congress that would amend its constitution, allowing foreign and private investment in the Mexican energy value chain for the first time in 75 years. It seems that exactly as many people in Mexican politics were apoplectic about this bill as they were overjoyed about it, and the next four months were spent vigorously debating the amendment in Congress until a date was set for a final vote on it in December of the same year.
If you think PMQs can look like a mad-house, take one look at any moment of the final vote on this amendment. Speeches both for and against the bill were hollered at each other, spontaneously chants of “ME-XI-CO” burst into life, but one politician, the Party of the Democratic Revolution’s Antonio Garcia Conejo, stole the show and went viral doing it. During a particularly passionate speech, tearing into the bill and its supporters, Garcia stripped down to his underwear to thunderous applause from his comrades and equally thunderous laughter from his rivals in politics.
The clip went viral, and several false translations of what Garcia was saying went viral along with it. According to a Reuters translation, when he was disrobing, Garcia was actually saying, “Just as you have stripped the nation by privatising Teléfonos de México [the country’s telecommunications provider], this is how you are stripping the nation. I am not ashamed [of stripping] because what you are doing, you took away and privatised Teléfonos de México, and where is the benefit?”
Despite Garcia’s passionate appeals, the bill went through. He took a stand, though, and that’s a lot more than can be said for most people in politics these days.