Elections are coming! (written August 29)

Let the festivities begin! Or, really, wind down to their expected conclusion, that is for everyone except me who arrived in Xalapa yesterday just days before Sunday’s heated municipal and state-legislature elections are scheduled to take place. Some might say that being around for such little time before the end of the race limits the value of my observations. But let’s be honest, the months of campaigning and political maneuvering are simply in anticipation for what I like to call the ‘make em or break em hours.’ (OK, so I’ve never really called them that before but every expression needs to start somewhere) Lucky me, I guess I’ve arrived just in time.

Today, my first full day in Xalapa, I already got a sense of what’s in store for the next 72 hours before the big day. The city’s principal cathedral’s plaza was dotted with the tents of a handful of opposition parties. And of course, what is an opposition party without a huge banner demanding justice and democracy, in place of the incumbent party’s corrupt abuse of power? Later in the afternoon when I returned to the cathedral’s plaza to take a look at one of the two newspapers I had bought earlier that day I was treated to an American 4th of July-esque street parade, complete with children frantically scrambling after the gobs of candy tossed onto the street by passing floats. About 30 cars long, the political caravan seemed to be in support of just one of the several opposition candidates. This, I’ve been told was the last of its kind to be held.

Left in the parade’s wake were dozens of trampled flyers and campaign banners, one of which I left after being given two by two different less-than-ten-year-old boys. It complimented the hundreds of banners hanging from every street lamp, street sign and public building in the Xalapa’s downtown center.

For all the pomp and circumstance of these last few days, one would think that the opposition candidates’ had a real shot at winning. Unfortunately, few here are hopeful that these final hours will live up to the title I have assigned to them. For many, the election need not even take place in order to know the outcome. Just as they always have, the same two dominant parties, the National Action Party (PAN) and the Party of the Institutiionalized Revolution (PRI), will maintain their monopolistic grip on political power in Mexico. Same old, hopelessly depressing story.

Of course there are layers of complexity of the Mexican political machine that would be impossible in the next few days for some fresh-on-the scene gringo to even begin to comprehend. However, overtime, I hope that what I observe firsthand and read about in the local papers of the local political scene will help shed some light on the political happenings of the rest of the country. And obviously, the internal politics of the country from which the majority of our country’s immigrants are coming could be of some fundamentally practical value to us Americans.