Columns

Sixteen-year-old Concha Rosales was riding fence again. She got that hard job because when her father was attending to other chores, her cousin, Lalo, took his place.

“The Leadership Revival,” is a provocative January 13 column by David Brooks, who is one of the New York Times’ columnists reviewing the adventures of American conservatives inside and outside the preserves officially occupied by the Grand Old Party.

As the dizzying days of Christmas and the new year give way to other concerns, the coming mid-term elections in the United States are being pressed upon us by heavy media breathing north of the border.

An unseasonable biting wind brought sleety rains, mornings that put rubbery rims of ice on horse troughs, and harried rural residents of Jalisco’s mountainsides.

A cloudy, chill rain greeted the middle of Mexico’s long-stretch Christmas which began December 8 ­– the celebration of immaculate conception of “the Virgin Mary, Mother of God” – and continues until Three King’s Day, January 6.  Slithering wet clouds gave mountain areas of Jalisco a hue so solemn – and cold – that some folks seemed downcast.

This nation leaves a lackluster economic 2013, stuffed with uncertainty for a new year that the Mexican street views as more of the same.