The idea that professional politics is often a scenario that encourages corruption and stupidity, instead of being a constructive activity that lays the groundwork for the country’s progress, has led to the circus being associated with political management. It is not bad to be a clown if the clown limits his activities in the circus; But the fact that a politician behaves like a clown speaks of the denigration of political activity, since it is no longer governed by reason, nor common sense, nor the purpose of the community, but is presented as a perverse idea to distract citizens and legitimize mismanagement and theft.

This idea that combines professional politicians and circus farce is an old one. It has already been a hundred years since the publication, in the magazine Caricatura de Quito, of a drawing by Enrique Terán, on September 9, 1923, under the title “Chamber of Representatives”, in which politicians can be seen, with top hats and tails. , juggling of all kinds, with kites, rackets, games with ropes or spikes, amusements with carts, or jumping without them, or with dice, playing with a metal hoop, or threading a kite that has the face of a public figure. Here politicians are clowns and they confuse them with other clowns.

Legislation or circus?

Enrique Terán, the author of this drawing, very active in the left-wing press, was an intellectual from Quito, from a liberal family, who had the opportunity to live and study music and the violin in London. Born in 1887, he was part of the generation that became radicalized with the liberal Alfarist project and the Julian Revolution, which led to the birth of the Ecuadorian Socialist Party, of which he was secretary general in 1928. Internal ideological disputes between the socialists and the communists gradually distanced him from militancy. on the left and Terán opted for letters to reexamine the reality of his time.

This was the legislative work of Luisa González and Daniel Noboa in the National Assembly

In 1940, he published the novel El cojo Navarrete, which recounts the disappointments of a liberal fighter who lost his leg in battle. At the bottom of the cartoon, one who looks like Chaplin, stands on a stack of papers written “Bills of Exchange” (presumably bills), holding a jump rope, but which serves as a tightrope for another politician. The Constitution lies on the ground, like an old newspaper, near a beach ball. Meanwhile, the characters play horse and broom, with little trains, and wander absentmindedly while smoking. Nobody takes their national team seriously.

In 1919, on the cover of the magazine Caricatura, dated November 16, 1919, Terán had already taken as a motif the similarity of circus and politics in “Debut del circus”, with the legend that says: “We don’t need to see: our “Politics is the most perfect circus! ” Why have we as a country failed to make politics a decent task for a whole century? Steady politicians certainly existed, I’m not talking about that, but about the fact that as a structure, the intentions of the vast majority of politicians were to exploit the state’s resources, which brought us a truly shameful National Assembly. (OR)