CXVII. ¡Felíz Cumpleaños!

Happy Birthday!

They’ve been going at it for more than thirty minutes now—since 6:45AM when we were awakened—so I guess half an hour's not the length of time for which they’ve been hired. Some kind of celebration, that’s for sure. From our cozy bed we kept waiting for them to move on—the usual route down to the plaza and church, if it’s religious, or to the charro ring, if secular—but no, they stayed put, and damned close to our casa. And LOUD.

I finally rousted myself, put on shorts and tee and shuffled through sala and comedor, out the pasillo to the front gate and source of sound. The music had become deafening as I approached the group arrayed on the cobbles in the street in front of our house. And likewise in front of our neighbors. Francisco, the dad—he of boastful gestures—was swaggering among the musicians. Relatives were passing trays of sweetbreads and a sugary coffee drink—muchas gracias—and mamá was on the sidewalk smiling with all the hugs and kisses she was getting. It was her birthday.

And now, an hour after its first brassy and percussive notes, the band has begun dispersing. From the left we’ve had two trombones, two trumpets, two clarinets, a flugelhorn, two congas, a two-person trap set advertising La Misma Banda—The Same Band—and una tuba. I reckon there will be another party tonight.

CXVI. Una Entrega de Cerveza

Beer Delivery

The motorcycle I’m talking about was one of the small, wiry types—and funky from hard use—maybe about 95cc’s. You see them everywhere around our pueblo but I noticed this particular one because of the way it was being used. I heard the driver revving to blow out his plugs as he stopped on the cobbles, in the street right in front of our gate. I went to check out the noise since I’d been hearing a group of guys talking from—I thought—the sidewalk, but the driver was the only one I saw. Buenas noches exchanged, he swung his leg over the tank and reached behind him for a big plastic bucket. He handled it like it was heavy. It had been held in place by a circle of steel molded to fit both it and another bucket on a jerry-rigged bumper. Both buckets were filled with bottles of Corona beer. There must have been about a dozen in each, arranged neatly upside down on ice. The driver went to my neighbors’ door, passed the bucket inside and got paid, then climbed back on the bike and drove away for his next delivery. 

CXV. Las Elecciones Mexicanas

The Mexican Elections

Supporters of Moy Anaya, the Citizens Movement candidate for president of
our municipality, march past our door making noise. A minute earlier the
candidate himself stopped to chat and give us a pamphlet outlining his plans.

They gather and make a lot of noise up at the corner of our street with Guadalupe Victoria, maybe because the latter’s on the bus line, so greater visibility. Then they march down our block to go up Constitución—which is also on the bus line—chanting, banging drums, and hollering out their candidate’s name. Last time it was someone for the MORENA party. Late yesterday afternoon the desfile was for the Movimiento Ciudadano (MC) choice for Presidente of our municipality. I’m guessing the race will be tight between him and the incumbent PRI toady who has held that post the past three years.

As with most countries worldwide the election here is always held on a Sunday, and this year that’s four weeks away on the first of July. This is a strange time weather wise. Most of the election’s run-up takes place during May’s perennial heatwave, but the last half of June will have seen the beginning of the rainy season, now two weeks away. So election day comes around, perhaps, against a backdrop of budding optimism, fed by hope for greening and growth. 

The PAN party candidate for municipality president is Alejandro
Aguirre, pictured here saying, "For you, for your prosperity, for
Ajijic." The lower hashtag says, "Get happy, change has come".

Or not. Traditionally, the final months of the countrywide campaigns are also marked by vandalism, hot-headed fights and even a few cold-blooded assassinations funded by murky deep pockets. Cries of Corruption and Malfeasance abound! Piling on, the narco-cartels take advantage of this unsettled time to attack each other without their customary regard for incidental casualties. One longtime resident ex-pat suspends her country-wide travels during this period.

Since the Mexican equivalent of a civil war that occurred in the early 1900’s, and for next seventy years, members of only one political party had been popularly elected as Presidente; its name alone a contradiction in terms, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, is known to all as simply PRI—pronounced ‘pree'. Since about the last half of that period in the past century there has been a loyal opposition group, the National Action Party—PAN—that still retains a semblance of its historical alliance with the Catholic Church. In the year 2000 PRI’s lock on the national presidency was finally broken by PAN candidate Vicente Fox, whose victory was made possible by a split within PRI that gave the country the breakaway Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD. 

The old guard PRI party candidate for municipality president
is the incumbent, Javier Degollado.

A new, one-term only national president is democratically elected every six years. Since the turn of the millennium the number of viable parties has proliferated, and mutable coalitions arise every electoral cycle. After Sr. Fox, PAN elected another president in 2006, its candidate barely beating Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), a popular Mexico City mayor at the time and the candidate of a PRD-led coalition of leftist splinter parties. AMLO ran again, and again was barely defeated, in 2012. After this loss he founded a new, nationalistic and populist party he called Movement for National Regeneration, MORENA. Morena is also the Mexican-Spanish word describing a dark-skinned woman. 

Mexico has a federal bicameral legislature. Sergio here is the
local PRI candidate put up for election to the Chamber of
Deputies. He says that he is "Moving Forward With You".

Meanwhile, PRI, in the person of Ken-doll impersonating Enrique Peña Nieto, has controlled the presidency for the past six years. This will end next month, when by all accounts AMLO should finally win the national election, running for the coalition "Juntos Haremos Historia” (“Together We’ll Make History”) representing MORENA, the leftist Labor Party, and conservative, religious Social Encounter Party. Latest polls give AMLO a 22-point lead over PAN candidate and boy wonder, Ricardo Anaya. The latter’s “Forward for Mexico” coalition includes two groups that had supported AMLO in his previous tries for the presidency. 

"MORENA The Hope of Mexico" reads this wall painting just
around the corner from where we live.

A few of AMLO’s positions: place price controls on basic necessities, increase minimum wage and pensions, but no expropriations or nationalizations; charge Mexican consulates in the US to defend immigrants’ human rights there and bring a lawsuit in the UN against US violation of these rights; grant universal access to public colleges; end oil exports to encourage energy self-sufficiency; give amnesty to some drug war criminals and promote worthwhile alternatives to a life in the trade; allow international rights organizations to investigate corruption and human rights abuses in Mexico. 

Another Morena poster hangs from the balcony of the casa belonging to our
handyman, Saul. Many of the signs in the blocks around where we live are on
the bus routes.

In reference to the US President’s insistence that Mexico pay for a border wall and turn back Central American immigrants, AMLO has recently said that Mexico will not “be the piñata of any foreign government.” His critics worry that if elected he will become another Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s deceased leftist strongman. AMLO’s supporters, though, say that he has softened previous nationalistic stands and that claims to the contrary are to be expected from those fearful of losing their places of corrupt privilege. It is unsettling the extent to which the Morena Party is identified with the person of AMLO, but in his defense I’d also like to point out that he is a baseball fan and his favorite team is the St. Louis Cardinals, also beloved by my dear Granddad.