Columns

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.’

The United States-Mexican film, “For Greater Glory” (Spanish title: “Cristiada”), which opened in Mexico April 20, and is scheduled for U.S. release June 1, has special meaning for the people of Jalisco — however it may be judged as cinematic fare. That’s because it revives a valorous and bloody past. “Glory” recounts a special moment in history (1926-1929) when Jalisco become the center of a furious, ambitiously dispersed post-Revolution rebellion involving 13 states.