From Xico

Cow, Waterfall, and Counterfeit Tequila, not necessarily related

Yesterday we drove with our friends L and V to La Gloria via, among other places,

Patlanalan.  I've posted pictures from previous trips following this route, but here are two new ones from yesterday's trip.

A cow reclining in the shallow lake eating water lilies:

The waterfall that crosses the road on the way to Ixhuacán de los Reyes:

Today in La Jornada it is reported that 

customs authorities at the port of Veracruz threw out 23 thousand liters of fake tequila inside a port facility which was intended for export to the US.
According to information  from the National Tequila Industry Council, the drink was made with sugar alcohol and not agave, the principal ingrediant of tequila.
Already bottled, around 33 thousand liters of fake tequila would have been sold in the North American market, said Ramón González Figueroa, director of the Council.
The secret exportation of this type of false beverage obviously detracts from the reputation of our product which is recognized internationally as a drink of quality made from agave.

US "War on Drugs," Plan Mérida and the Mexican Army

There is an excellent and important post over at Mex Files which you all should read. Why the US continues so dense about drugs, about Mexico and about Latin America is a complete puzzle to me.  All I would add to the article is to mention that the PRI  (which was NOT a ruthless dictatorship -- or not only one -- for seventy years before the 2000 elections) in its previous manifestation was responsible for separating the army from the police and army actions from police actions. The army was  not permitted to be involved against civilians which is one of the reasons Mexico has not been subject to military coups for a very long time.  So Calderón's use of the military vs. narcos is definitely controversial and the US's provision of funding for military hardware via Plan Mérida (hardware which of course is US hardware, I'm pretty sure) rather than for assistance in training, pay increases and equipment for civilian police is a huge mistake.

I agree with RG, author of Mex Files: Obama isn't doing a good job south of the US border. Granted, he has a lot on his plate, but certainly he doesn't have to make things worse.

Mexico Votes

On Sunday, the day of the elections for the federal Chamber of Deputies here in Mexico and for some other offices as well in some states (though not in Veracruz), Jim and I took one of our drives from up into the folds of Cofre de Perote via the small road to Tonalaco.  This is the road that goes past Guillermo's family's rancho. In the little towns we passed through, there were lines of people voting and waiting to vote.  Voting places had been defined by red tape, and they could be anything from the front of a store to a school room to I think maybe even someone's house. We don't know a single Mexican here in our area who isn't skeptical at best, cynical more normally, about politicians, but they have sufficient faith to keep on voting.  This time around, the turnout was considered low at 44.68%.  In the state of Veracruz the turnout was 47.54%.  For very a very good presentation of the data, see this link.

Eight parties were in the elections, and in some states, four of the parties combined into two coalitions of two of the parties each. The dominant parties are the PAN (National Action Party in English), President Felipe Calderón's party, most often compared to Republicans in the US, though it is nothing like the current US Republican Party; the PRI (Institutional Revolution Party más o menos in English), the old dominant party, probably best characterized as center-left and not really like US Democrats, and the PRD (Democratic Revolution Party, más o menos), more left and populist and having lots of organizational problems at the moment.  PAN lost big-time: PRI took over control of the Chamber of Deputies, giving the party control of the entire Mexican Congress which is, as it is in the US, a two-level institution.  The upper house is comprised of senators and is currently and still dominated by the PRI.

Overall, the PRI received 36.68% of the vote, the PAN, 27.98% of the vote and the PRD, 12.20% of the vote.  The Verdes, the Greens, got the next number of votes with 6.50 %.  The Green Party is a very strange party (to me) and I will try to address it in the future.  It was started by one family, considers (-ed?) itself a conservative environmental party, was more aligned with PAN in the past, but this time made up a coalition party with PRI in a number of states. Like all the parties, it has faced corruption charges.

The states vary dramatically in size, so talking about state votes isn't necessarily significant on a national level, but there are some interesting quirks. In nine of the thirty two states (if I counted correctly) the PAN outvoted the PRI, but in 3 of those states, the PRD outvoted the PAN (and thus, the PRI as well).  These states are Chiapas, Mexico DF (Mexico City, counted as a state here), and Michoacán, and therefore won.  I didn't look very closely, but if I'm not mistaken, where the PRI outpolled the PAN, it always took the state.

In our state of Veracruz, the PAN took 33.83% of the vote; the PRI, 45.20%, the PRD 5.37%.  In our district, sexy Silvia Monge, the PAN candidate, lost to the PRI candidate, the pleasant-looking Jose Yuni Zorilla by roughly 27,000 votes to roughly 70,000 votes.  PAN won in only three districts, and only in one of them by a significant margin: 48,600-44,000 votes. (roughly).

It is interesting that the PRI so dominated here. The governor, Fidel Herrera Beltrán, is PRI, but he is not generally liked.  Practically anyone you talk to says he is involved with narcos (perhaps, but only perhaps, one of the reasons the state has a low crime rate: the Port of Veracruz is, after all, a huge port and ports traditionally have a role in the drug trade.) It is said that he claimed to win the lottery a couple of times, which seems a good way to funnel drug money.  These are rumors.  But he is not popular, for sure: he has sponsored not bridges to nowhere as has a famous US governor (as far as I know) but he has sponsored roads to nowhere.  Local public works projects have flashy signs hanging over them crediting the PRI -- and also often advertising the incredibly high prices for the projects.  I'm never sure whether people are supposed to be amazed that the government spent so much on their behalf or what.

Anyway, in general, in recent years, the IFE, the Federal Electoral Institution, has been a model of efficiency and pretty much of honesty in running elections. Mexicans in fact went to Iraq with Mexican voting machines to assist in setting up voting procedures.  Again, as naturally skeptical Mexicans may tell you, IFE is great in theory but sometimes rough around the edges in practice.  

Here is a copy of a ballot from the State of Coahuila:

Next to each party's icon, the party's name is printed on top, the candidate's name underneath.  Since only one office was being voted on, there is only one name for each party.  As I understand it, when more offices are being voted on, for instance, governor, senator and local dog catcher, then there are additional sections for each office.  But the party icon is always to the left of each candidates' names, because it is the party icon of each candidate that you put a big "X" in to indicate your vote. This enables people who can't read well or at all to at least identify the party they want to vote for.  When Jim and I first saw election ads, we saw something like this:

In the lower right corner of Dr. Jorge Quiroz Díaz's banner you see a big X through the Convergencia icon.  We thought this meant DON'T vote for this party.  We were wrong. It meant DO vote for him: that's what the X means.  Dr. Quiroz Díaz was a candidate in our area for a smallish party called Convergencia.  The man on the left, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, was the PRD candidate for President in 2004.  He lost narrowly and perhaps unfairly to Calderón.  Since then, the Left has been struggling and AMLO and others have loose alliances with some smaller groups and they endorse each others' candidates.

Below is a ballot from previous election.  The voter wanted to indicate very strongly that he wrote in a candidate.

Here is a Mexican voter ID card.  The voter ID cards are in fact national identity cards required kind of the way drivers' licenses are in the US. Everyone is supposed to have one.  It's a good way to build up the number of eligible voters. (I took this image from the IFE site where it the circle was drawn to show where to find your voting section.)

And finally, a last glimpse of Silvia Monge.  I inserted this by mistake, but a new glitch in Typepad is preventing me from deleting it!

Alas, Poor Sexy Candidate

Trivial really petty election coverage:

Silvia Monge as candidate in the running (courtesy her poster):

Sylvia Monge as defeated candidate (stolen from La Voz de la Región)

Still sexy, but not so happy.

Elections and Floods

Mex Files has a good exposition of the upcoming elections in Mexico here.  For those of you who speak Spanish, and even those who don't but can make sense of maps and cognates, this link to El Diario provides you with a lot of very good information about them, including who is voting for what, elections not held the 5th of July, etc. We are very aware of elections since cars with loudspeakers have been tooling around neighborhoods with great frequency.  However, as you can read in Mexico, electioneering right up to the voting centers as happens in the US is prohibited and in fact by law pretty much stops 72 hours before the event.  If I remember correctly, liquor is not sold in the US on Election Day.  Here in Xalapa, it was illegal to sell liquor forty eight hours previous to the election, but that has been reduced to 24 hours.

On the flooding in our area.

From today's El Diario , a snapshot of the Xalapa-Banderilla highway where much of the flooding has occured.

It seems that as in the United States, the paving over of large swatches of land with parking lots and large box buildings and highway contributes to the problem.   The La Martinica- Banderilla area is very hilly and prone to landslides and rushes of water to begin with, and the development along it has just increased problems. A basket of efforts has been proposed by elected and civil service officials, both short and long term.

Water, Water Everywhere

Last night a good friend, just returned to the area, came over so we could all go to Xico for supper, which we did, at El Campanario.  ¡Qué aventuras tuvieramos! Dark clouds had been tumbling through the skies all afternoon, but though it had rained a bit, it had not been sufficient to dampen our enthusiasm.  (We brushed aside our knowledge of recent rains in the Xalapa area.) But as we drove on the main road towards Xico, we got the distinct impression it had rained more in that direction than in our own area: rushing water overfilled the drainage ditches exploding against the small pedestrian bridges which crossed them. Water tumbled down the road.  Thunder cracked.  But still, the rain seemed to have slowed.  We pulled up across the street from the restaurant to see someone shut the light off inside it.  And the rain start up again.  S. ran, umbrella-less across the street to stand on its veranda. Jim, disconcerted by the fact that our umbrella didn't seem to want to open and anxious to get me and it and himself out of the rain, managed to lock the keys in the car.  And of course the lights going off signaled that the restaurant had closed.  What fools would be going out to eat this night?

Maybe we could eat across the street?  The manager, a small, plump, friendly woman smiled at our obvious disappointment.  Okay, you can eat here.  

And we did: just the three of us in a corner, most of the restaurant still dark.  And wonderful food, which is why we wanted to eat there and not across the street. S. and I had my favorite, a dish called No Que No.*  After dinner we talked and drank beer.   The lights flickered on and off several times.  The thunder boomed, lightening cracked directly overhead.  At some point it became clear we had to face leaving.  

The manager called a taxi.  The driver had come away from home to take us, and his wife and a child sat in the front seat.**  One of us is a bit plump, one a bit less plump, one a rather tall man, and we joked about squeezing in the back seat.  He laughed: once he had, he said, 23 children in his car!  On the roof? In the trunk? On the hood?  No! Inside the car!  I think he was kidding a bit.  Anyway, it was a merry ride home through the storm.

The rain let up as we drove down our street to the house, but still water flowed. It appeared that much of the dirt from the park a half a block uphill had poured down to our street. 

We rummaged for Jim's keys as the lights flickered on and off in the house. S. said maybe we should turn the fridge off since uneven current was bad for it. Hmm, I said, and the lights went out and stayed out. Does this happen to us often, asked S. It did for a while a month or so ago, but not recently.  But we felt our normal irritation about interrupted service in our poor, neglected colonia.  And then Scott drove us back to Xico to retrieve our car. Colonia Ursulo Galvan was not alone in the dark. The lights were out everywhere, including in Xico  I have no idea how much of the area lost luz.  

We made it home and lit candles and flashlights, said goodby to S. and settled in. The waterfall was roaring; I could just make it out: it looked like a faint, giant white cloud settled against the darkness.

The lights came on at some ungodly hour.  We woke up to them shining in our faces (it's hard to remember which switches were on, which off in the dark).  This morning, the sky was a lovely blue with innocent-looking puffs and streaks of white cloud drifting around.  The waterfall is still huge and turbulent, but there appear to be no ill effects in our community. 

However, flooding continued in Banderilla, and there was flooding in Xalapa's Centro. And the forecast predicts more rain starting today as onda tropical 8, tropical system 8 heads towards the state.

In Banderilla, citizens continue to say that the floods are due to poor maintenance as much as poor engineering to start with.  Below you see a picture I stole from yesterday's Diario de Xalapa showing the demonstration blocking Highway 140 and a picture of a man up to his neck in water.  He is reclining, by the way, not standing.  Reminds me just a teeny bit of that old picture of Mao's head floating on water which was supposed to convince us he was in good health.

According to El Diario, in some places, the standing water reached 70 centimeters in depth.

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*I have been told what "no que no" means (vaguely) and I can't remember (exactly).  There are songs and restaurants called No Que No and it appears in lyrics and tons of other places. I think it has the sense of "don't say no," or maybe "say it isn't so," but I could be wrong. It is one of the phrases that reminds me I am a foreigner.

**The taxi driver who took us to Caxa, the Xalapa bus terminal, for our van to the airport in Veracruz, brought along his mother.  It was after all three in the morning.