When Incongruence Disguises Itself as Resistance

By Nadine Cortés.

Some decisions are made with one eye on the polls. Others, with feet firmly planted in duty. Rehabilitating Revolución Park —Red Park— was not a popular measure. It was the right decision. During the pandemic, many merchants found an economic refuge there. They set up a Saturday street market and survived. It was an occupation tolerated for an understandable reason: the emergency. But no extraordinary measure can become permanent. And no informal use should privatize public space. Five years later, the city undertook its recovery. A profound intervention: 23 million pesos, five months of work, and a clear conviction: to return its original vocation to a park that belongs to everyone, not just a few. Alternatives were offered. Dialogue was opened. Many accepted. Others did not. And that’s when the usual thing appeared: the opportunism that turns every conflict into a slogan and every discontent into a campaign. <LinkPreview url=“https://www.liderempresarial.com/si-guadalajara-fuera-una-persona-seria-una-mujer-de-40-anos/ A part of the opposition, which acts as such in Guadalajara but governs in the country, decided to turn this process into theater. They disguised it as a social cause. They appropriated the language of resistance, as if defending order were repression, and recovering a park were dispossession. But there is no social cause when what is sought is not justice, but advantage.* *And there is no dignity in an opposition that plays at setting fire to what in other cities it demands to contain. The same ones who, from federal power, have reordered spaces, relocated merchants, and defended the control of public space with the National Guard included, now tear their clothes over a cyclone fence in a rehabilitated park. Where were they when Bellas Artes was evicted? Or when the Alameda was liberated by force of operation? Where is that outrage when they impose order? In Guadalajara, figures of up to 100,000 people who transit daily through the park area are managed. Recovering that space was not exclusion: it was restitution. It was not an aggression against informal commerce, it was a decision for the common good. https://www.liderempresarial.com/crecimiento-del-turismo-de-negocios-en-guadalajara-impulso-para-la-economia-local/ As Jane Jacobs said, a city is not just a place to live, it is a place to meet. If public spaces are taken by groups, without rules or temporality, the city ceases to be a shared space and becomes a captured territory. Not every claim is legitimate. Not every anger is political. Not every party acts responsibly. And when electoral calculus replaces public ethics, citizens end up trapped between two fires: the governability that does not hold and the protest that does not build. There is a huge difference between opposition and obstruction. One proposes, supervises, demands. The other polarizes, ignites, uses.

And if what we see today in <LinkPreview url=“https://www.liderempresarial.com/si-guadalajara-fuera-una-persona-seria-una-mujer-de-40-anos/ A part of the opposition, which acts as such in Guadalajara but governs in the country, decided to turn this process into theater. They disguised it as a social cause. They appropriated the language of resistance, as if defending order were repression, and recovering a park were dispossession. But there is no social cause when what is sought is not justice, but advantage.* *And there is no dignity in an opposition that plays at setting fire to what in other cities it demands to contain. The same ones who, from federal power, have reordered spaces, relocated merchants, and defended the control of public space with the National Guard included, now tear their clothes over a cyclone fence in a rehabilitated park. Where were they when Bellas Artes was evicted? Or when the Alameda was liberated by force of operation? Where is that outrage when they impose order? In Guadalajara, figures of up to 100,000 people who transit daily through the park area are managed. Recovering that space was not exclusion: it was restitution. It was not an aggression against informal commerce, it was a decision for the common good. https://www.liderempresarial.com/crecimiento-del-turismo-de-negocios-en-guadalajara-impulso-para-la-economia-local/ As Jane Jacobs said, a city is not just a place to live, it is a place to meet. If public spaces are taken by groups, without rules or temporality, the city ceases to be a shared space and becomes a captured territory. Not every claim is legitimate. Not every anger is political. Not every party acts responsibly. And when electoral calculus replaces public ethics, citizens end up trapped between two fires: the governability that does not hold and the protest that does not build. There is a huge difference between opposition and obstruction. One proposes, supervises, demands. The other polarizes, ignites, uses.

And if what we see today in (https://www.liderempresarial.com/asi-mejorara-jalisco-sus-tramites-e-inversion-en-2025/” title=“A part of the opposition, which acts as such in Guadalaja…” description=“Lee más sobre a part of the opposition, which acts as such in guadalajara but governs in the country, decided to turn…” />“>Guadalajara is a sample of how they want to govern the cities, then the debate is not about a park. It is about the future of the country. Because if even a park is politicized, any possibility of consensus is dynamited. And if order becomes the enemy, then governing is no longer possible.