Columns

Micaela (“Mica”) Garcia Martinez voted for a candidate whose party she loathed: Josefina Vazquez Mota. She was the first female to run as a presidential candidate for a major Mexican political party. Yet, Mica detests Vazquez Mota’s party, the presently ruling pro-church, pro-business National Action Party (PAN). That’s because she judged the last two local PAN presidentes de municipales to be worse than the normal run of thieves and liars, but, she said bitterly, because they were responsible for deaths of people she knew well. As for the party that “won” last Sunday, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), she lived too much of her life under its corrupt and brutal rule, she declared, and wanted nothing to do with that “vile armada”.

One solid, if awkwardly shaped, fact that stands out from the surging national certainty — and its backwash — that Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) will win the presidency Sunday. That fact is that few of those citizens voting for Peña Nieto seem to have any clear, certain idea of what the new president will do with the party shaped by a dictator, General Plutarco Elias Calles, in 1929, as an autocratic instrument of a military/business elite.

“In this part of Jalisco” — meaning the ample area around Guadalajara/Lake Chapala — “las aguas begin on the day of San Antonio.” That what everyone said when my wife and I arrived in Ajijic in 1963. Though often it didn’t occur quite as promptly as that declaration claimed. But sure enough, the first full-fledged rain arrived this year – with truenos y relampagos (thunder and lightning) — the night of June 12-13, the 13th being the feast day of San Antonio de Padua. And folks out late marking that saint’s day got soaked, as they expected.

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.