PRI's Velasco finishes off campaign strong (written September 1)

It’s pretty much already known that PRI candidate David Velasco is going to emerge Sunday evening as the victor. But, if he doesn’t win, if nothing else, he can be content with knowing that he ended his campaigning with a bigger bang than either of his two opponents. Wednesday afternoon at 4, he attracted a crowd of more than 4500 supporters onto the property of the Museum of Transport.

All wearing campaign tee-shirts of none other than the Governor’s favorite color of red, Velasco and five other PRI candidates running for local offices gave short addresses to the screaming fans.

If you look close enough at the picture of the rally on the front page of Wednesday’s Diario you can actually see my host-mom, hidden in the back, all the way behind the crowd. At least, this is what she told me. Of course, the story was plausible, I know she works there, and that night when she returned she complained of the massive amounts of people that had been in the museum that afternoon. But, to eliminate any doubts I might have still had, she gave me one of the ten Velasco tee-shirts that she found in the wake of the rally. I’m not afraid to admit it, I wore it yesterday…as an undershirt.

Velasco is Xalapa’s most prominent candidate running as part of the Governor’s Alianza Fidelidad por Veracruz. Amongst others, the Ecological Green Party and the Alternative National Political Party join PRI in the alliance. At first glance two left, environmentally focused parties teaming with the conservative PRI, represented in the race for municipal president by an extremely wealthy political neophyte, seems a little odd. But, joining unlikely members under one political banner has been the basis of the PRI for the last seven decades.

In 1928, just years after the conclusion of a violent revolution that lasted nearly a decade, President Calles, aka the “Maximum Boss,” started to think “How can I get people to just stop fighting and get along?” His solution: consolidate all political factions into a single political entity. For, there’s no better way to convince people to stop fighting with one another than by cutting off all means of political expression that result in democr, I mean, disagreement. Changing its name three times until finally sticking with PRI, this party stayed in power for over 70 years until being replaced by PAN in the 2000 elections. Beating out even the Bolshevik Regime, the PRI has the dubious recognition of having been in power longer than any other single party in the world.

While eating lunch this afternoon my mom explained that there’s one thing that separates PRI from the competition, making it nearly unbeatable: its organization. With a 70 year head start, it makes sense that it would be quite a bit ahead of all the competition.