Columns

Eleno Diaz was boldly, if shakily, perched at the peak of my teja-and-carrizo roof, and in a satirical voice reviewing the local chismes from his pueblo. (Non-Spanish speakers: chisme means gossip.

But today when Mexicans greet one another with an early “Buenos dias,” asking, “Hay chismes hoy?”, it’s assumed they’re inquiring if there is news about some outage straight from a police blotter of earlier times — deaths occasioned by breaking and entering, robberies, kidnappings, and the night’s unadorned mindless killings, etc.) However, “Leno” was speaking with rural cynicism of purely political behavior, often so outrageous as to appear clownish — and maybe dangerous — to campesinos.

With much of Mexico’s media daunted by presidential command and recent murders of journalists, “anonymous” social media reports and careful cantina talk become indispensable sources of unintimidated news.  But, despite the admonitions to the media from Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, to sing rosy songs rather than report continuing cartel butchery, local, careful chismorreo was putting the reported – and unreported – total of victims since Mexico’s new jefe took office December 1 at more than 5,000.  That exceeds the 4,200 the media was reporting during and after President Obama’s innocuous visit to Mexico last week.  

Amid a challenging week for Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, as a salto of critical reports crowded media headlines here and internationally, there was a conversation between two Mexican newsmen that was refreshing.  Veteran Mexican newsmen, they well knew what they were talking about. Meaning that they had face-to-face experience with the history of Peña Nieto’s political and personal life, and of the aromatic history of his political party, the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI).  And because they are experienced political investigators, they clearly recognized the often veiled nuances of political malfeasance, no matter how distractingly adorned.  Yet they had some rather differing opinions.

As both non-believers and fervent Catholics look on, the Mexican Catholic Church, which throughout its jagged history has tended to side with dictatorial elites, is having twitchy days since its new leader, Jesuit Pope Francis, was elected.  

Even non-Catholic Mexicans have been asking: Why wasn’t a Mexican given a look when the prelates in Rome decided the new pope had to be a non-European?  Does the new Jesuit pope, Francis, realize that from the moment he was selected a no-holds-barred war commenced between him and Rome’s Vatican/Curia?

During that just-past “crazy” March — from the Mexican saying, Febrero loco, Marzo mas poco —‘Nando Diaz Mendez had an unusual occurrence in the small covered corral of his chilly mountainside ranch.  Two of his mares dropped foals within five days of one another. The blocky dun, always fat, surprised him. She was early. But now, as government-monopoly gasoline becomes so “dear,” the foal was a welcome surprise. Horses, especially valued during the rainy season, now represented a year-round economic bounty despite “painful” prices of supplemental livestock feed.