The Guadalajara Reporter
Guadalajara's Largest English Newspaper
For history buffs, for the saint-struck, the fans of religious personages lost in historical mists, for aficionados of religious fecklessness, the ancient saint of rain Saint Primitivo can be enticing.
A week of dizzying contradiction, misdirection, party betrayal by an ex-president, diligently planted false hopes, political handouts, and of course, an immeasurable amount of condescension and poorly veiled contempt for voters. Tawdry stuff from the Catholic Church. Cheery politically designed news from a slew of national, state and municipal candidates all plying voters with money and gifts, while ignoring their more basic needs as inflation surges. But also there was Mexico’s Tourism Department seeking to balance this breathless hype with reality by giving some reassuring statistics: There was a 5.3 percent increase in the number of international visitors to Mexico between January and April. More than half of them were U.S. citizens ignoring their government’s warnings on the increase in crime, and the endless reports of violence.
While the gutsy, imaginative and energetic Mexican online-born “student revolt” movement, “#Yo Soy 132” (“I am number 132”), is exciting the attention of political junkies — and journalists — the world over, veteran Mexican hands, while cheered, are somber about the results.
This was a week in which credulity was repeatedly and severely tested. Let’s leave aside the ouija board meanderings of U.S. political thought, a fantasy made boring months ago by what seemed to be 300 vitriolic Republican candidates destructively denouncing one another.
“Literary Great, Carlos Fuentes, Dies.” A headline that did not exaggerate. Fuentes had become Mexico’s “greatest living author” April 19, 1998, the day that Mexico’s only Nobel Laureate in Literature — and Fuentes’ one-time mentor — Octavio Paz, died.
Jalisco’s 21-year-old Saul “Canelo” Alvarez retained his WBC Light MiddleWeight Championship title, Saturday, May 5, defeating six-time world champion Shane Mosley. Mosley, at 40, had just begun to show the wear-and-tear of a long, successful career in his last three fights. Yet many pundits, especially in Mexico, had suggested Canelo would have trouble with Mosley’s well-known hard punching and ring savvy.
‘As of marriages, so of revolutions,’ writes a historian of Mexico. ‘The best take years to turn out well. (Francisco) Madero accomplished the overthrow of (Porfirio) Diaz in ten months of planning and action. A victory won too soon.’
