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In this ever-changing world in which we live, the Socialist People’s Fiefdom of Anahuac had begun to pride itself on a certain (slightly boring) stability. In a region where Pantocratoria continued its slow spiral into nationalism at best and fascism at worse; where Caldan worried about its direction and the long continuity of her institutions and whether her best days now lay behind; where Snefaldia and Excalbia spoke warm words whilst sharpening their bayonets, where Knootoos was governed by snake oil salesmen and Ernestria circled the precipice of civil war; compared to all these Anahuac was a beacon of stability and order.
It helped, of course, that the Party had done a damn good job of selling a version of itself on the international stage. Was it not reasonable, asked the elites of the region gathered in a ski resort in Kartlis or at a conference centre in Providencia, to imagine that a country that displayed the best virtues of dispassionate statecraft upon regional stage might also reflect a certain commendable pragmatism at home? Was it not inevitable, mused the doyens of the Excalbian military-industrial complex whilst stroking their fashionable beards, to conclude that the Party might not one day be coaxed down the road of abandoning its quaint communist tendencies and fully joining the congress of civilized nations?
It was an understandable view to be sure. Commendable, in a certain way, but it missed the point. This vaunted pragmatism, this high-minded attachment to a little utilitarianism, did not originate from the purest intentions of the heart but from a sober evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses upon the regional stage. In reality Anahuac had two choices before her: participant or pariah. Daytanistan occupied the later, and the grey men of the politburo were too proud to fund their nation by selling heroin in the nightclubs of Williamsburg
But that was foreign affairs, an arena of competing interests and mutual benefit. Were Anahuac the size of Snefaldia then this calculation would be very different. But it was not, and so compromise had won the day.
At home, well...that was a different story. Here the Party was a monolith, standing as a colossus over the lands in which it held sway. What need had it for negotiation or compromise? These were words spoken abroad. There was no need for them in the Workers’ State where the Party’s will was as hard iron.
Stability, though, comes with a price and it was not the leaders who paid it but their citizens. Some of it was material; the party elders were sure, nay convinced, that those living in the villages skirting the Centzontepec mountains were happy to forego electrification in order that the funds were available for a new generation of jet fighters. That much was obvious.
But it was the political arena that suffered the most. The gulags of the Spode era were gone, that foundations dug up so as to deny even archaeological evidence as to their once existence. The Party, however, did not need a boot stamping on a face forever to maintain its control, and it didn’t need to physically break men to make them subservient. A comfortable life awaited those who did not question; the loss of jobs, status, friends and ultimately liberty awaited those that demanded more.
The Anahuacan police state rested on many pillars. There were the usual suspects; the police, both secret and otherwise, together with the army. All media followed, like a waterfall, from the government and those that did not, like Social Media, were intensely monitored lest subversive ideas infect the body politic like a cancer.
There were also less obvious fetters. It was not unusual for the partially-informed foreigner to ask at what point in her history was Anahuac colonised by Europeans. The standard response, certainly from Valdricians, was to point to the ruins of their past and explain in as friendly (if exasperated) voice as possible that the prevalent Nahuatl speakers had not arrived on the plateau much before those hardy Ostrogoths had settled the coast. And, they would go on to say, Valdrass is at least half a millenium older than Itztlan.
A mistaken question, however, is not without merit. For thirteen centuries the two peoples had existed as neighbours; the fruits of that relationship being more often conflict than mutual respect, indifference rather than engagement. Many a Tochtepec emperor, keen to show his martial prowess, would lead his armies down from the plateau in an attempt to drive those Europeans into the sea. Likewise would young adventurers, keen to seek the vast treasure that lay in the alien interior, set forth to seek their fortune never to be heard from again. The great bastion walls of Valdrass were a testament to that precarious existence.
The point of this history lesson? A question; was Anahuac racist? Well no, replied the Party, because racism was a symptom of Class War of which they had none. Press them on the overwhelmingly white faces in the upper echelons of the Party and you may get a reply that focused on the ongoing legacy of Capitalism and a handwave about the necessity of historical materialism, how most of the industrialisation that had occurred had taken place in the old Serene Republic and therefore, with a Valdrician proletariat, it must needs be remarked that the vanguard that emerged from it from also be Valdrician.
But that was the past and the Fiefdom has existed since 1948. Surely that legacy ought to have dissipated by now. You might then wonder why, for all their talk of being protectors of the Nāhuatlācatl in a harsh and unfeeling world, the Party still saw no reason to promote anything like true bilingualism. In a thousand ways, from the language of higher education to the forms issued by their government, the Nahuas felt like second-class citizens in the lands in which they had always lived. Such feelings could not go unchecked forever; change was coming; some said you could almost feel it in the air.
They had put on a good show, but outward stability could not mask the cracks within forever. To understand Anahuac, you had to not look only at what the image the Party projected but at what lies beneath it.