Columns

The media in Mexico and the United States are noting that the electorates in both countries are “weary” of the narrowness of their national political discourse. In other words they are both cynical and bored with their politicians, the campaigns, their national political rhetoric and their meager political choices.

It had been raining most of a week. The traditionally dry month of February was living up to its ancient reputation, Febrero Loco. Unseasonably cold, with enough wind-driven rain to make it seem like the middle of the rainy season. Except that term is aimed at seasonal high winds announcing the coming of spring. It’s twined with the following month, forming the Mexican dicho, Febrero loco, Marzo mas poco.

Explaining legal terms sometimes seems like trying to translate the entire four original volumes of William Blackstone’s hugely famed “Commentaries on English Law” (1770) into a familiar language.

Winter weather in the Jalisco highlands traditionally arrives after harvesting is finished in mid-October, a bit later if the rainy season is bountiful.  And frequently there are some cabañuelas in January – brief soakings that are popularly believed to forecast the next temporada de las aguas.

When internationally recognized Jalisco ceramicist Jorge Wilmot Mason talked of the halcyon stretch he and others in Mexico shared — the 1950-1960 era of surging creativity — he termed those days “another world.” It was an era when Octavio Paz stunned Mexican society and attracted international acclaim with his analysis of Mexican character, “The Labyrinth of Solitude,” when Carlos Fuentes did the same with his novel “The Death of Artemio Cruz.” Mexican culture in all its forms seemed to catch the world’s eye.

Jose Maria (“Chema”) Flores, a dark, crease-faced campesino of 57, was having family problems. He and his wife, Lupe, have eight children. One of their older sons, Jose, had gone off some time ago to dabble in crack and marry a woman also drawn to drugs.