Santa Cruz de los Milagros

Night of September 12, Santa Cruz de los Milagros, Rooster heads up the serenade.

This has been a very busy week. Starting last Saturday, Bob and Maria took us to Mineral de Pozos, a mostly abandoned gold and silver mining town. Around the turn of the century it was one of the richest cities in Mexico with somewhere around 1,500 mines operating. By the 1940s its population had shrunk from over 70,000 to 400. In the 1990s, it began growing again, and is now 4,000, due in part to increasing tourism. The artsy crowd in San Miguel de Allende is touting it as the next artists’ colony. Mining started here before Cortes, was taken over by the Jesuits with enslaved indians, and after Spain kicked the Jesuits out of Mexico in the 1780s, private enterprise took over. Somewhere in there, the forests were destroyed, the ecology was raped, and a bunch of foreigners who owned and ran the mines got very, very rich. We visited two industrial haciendas, San Rafael which has an underground mine shaft, and Santa Brigida, which has a large surface mine and some interesting buildings. Both have incredible and extensive ruins, industrial and workers dwellings. It is a historical archaeologist’s dream. For some pictures, visit my Flickr site at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomwheaton/sets/72157594276915411/

The remainder of the week revolved around our barrio’s annual celebration of Santa Cruz de los Milagros (September 12-15) and Mexican Independence Day September 15 and 16. The Santa Cruz celebration is in remembrance of the taking of Sangremal Hill (where we live) by the Spanish in 1531 after Santiago appeared in the sky, and of the miracles wrought by the cross that gives the barrio its name. The wooden cross that was first used in the 1530s was later replaced by one of cantera (stone), and is now a venerated icon for the indigenous people who originally lived in the barrio and who still live in the other barrio on Sangremal called San Francisquito. This is the biggest celebration of the year for concheros (Aztec style dancers who use conch shells in their dances) and Apache/Soldado dancers from Querétaro and across the Republic.

The festivities start on the 12th and include a nearly all night serenade in the barrio. We started the festivities in the afternoon by following the sound of a band as it passed near our house, going in the direction of La Cruz church. At the tail end of the procession was a pick-up truck with offerings from the people at the La Cruz market. Later, this group was followed by people from the market carrying dozens of offerings of flowers, and by as many bird cages with all kinds and colors of birds, also from the market. The flowers were offered to the church for the weeks festivities, but I think the birds were just taken to church to be blessed. We ran into Sophie and her son Antoine as we came out of the church. They and Pierre are staying in Querétaro for a year while he is on sabbatical. They are friends of Byrone and Neils from Boston, and know and enjoy Mexico.

The serenade starts at 9 PM from La Cruz church and is led by a big paper maché rooster and smaller paper maché roosters all carried on long poles, followed by a 8-10 piece band, and 100-200 people to begin with. We went along Felipe Luna and stopped at a house about halfway up the block following the same route as most every other procession from the church. At the house, the band struck up Las Mañanitas (traditional Mexican birthday morning song and thus the roosters to greet the morning), and the priest and some Franciscans (who were all remarkably well-fed, jolly, and young) went inside to bless the altar set up by the owner while the rest of us stayed outdoors. This and the subsequent houses we went to were the houses of captains of the indigenous dance groups throughout the barrio. Every year the captains prepare altars or even turned their living rooms into small chapels with flowers, pictures, statues, an altar, etc. While the altar is being blessed inside, the band is playing, the cohete (rocket) guys are setting off big bottle rockets at the edge of the crowd (OSHA would definitely not approve), and the roosters are cavorting. At most of the houses, the crowd is offered something to drink or eat. The lively and animated crowd consists mostly of people from the barrio, with no foreigners (except us) or tourists from out of town, and very few people from other parts of Querétaro. Even our American and Canadian friends who live in the barrio did not come. There is a definite sense that the people know each other and feel a strong bond.

After the altar was blessed, the coheteros headed off to the next house shooting off rockets to lead the way. When they arrived at the next house they would send off half a dozen or more rockets at the same time. This invariably set off car alarms which added to the general noise and chaos. It was really rather amusing.

The only indication or information about the serenade was a short note posted at La Cruz church giving the time. There was also an explanation in the new book Christiane got from her teacher about the barrios of Querétaro which turned out to be a reliable guide on what was happening this week, why it was happening, and its history. Other than that there was no information available on the biggest celebration in the barrio. The folks in the barrio just knew what was going to happen next, since it has been going on, pretty much unchanged, for 300+ years.

Christiane went home as the crowd grew and headed off towards San Francisquito. I followed the crowd since we had heard the next house was giving out free tequila! By this time the rooster had lost a leg, the other one was hanging by a thread, one of the smaller roosters had popped off its carrying stick, and someone was passing around tequila surreptitiously, as people (well, guys) were getting a little tipsy. We crossed all six lanes of Avenida de Zaragoza stopping traffic in downtown Querétaro for 10 minutes. On the other side was San Francisquito, and a crowd waiting for us. There were now around 400 people.

The narrow, winding streets of San Francisquito made it hard to get around, and when I got to the street for the next altar it became apparent that I would never get in to get my tequila. So I said goodnight to the couple who had been telling us what was going to happen next and headed home at around midnight. We heard the multiple rockets exploding as the crowd arrived at a house until sometime between 3 and 5 AM.

The next day was the parade of dancers that started on Zaragosa and headed downtown passing through the main squares, then in front of the old San Francisco monastery (now the regional museum) where every group paid its respects and did a special dance. The parade then continued up Independencia to La Cruz Church. There were coheteros interspersed along the way setting off car alarms to the accompaniment of each dance group’s big drums that never stopped and which made a deafening noise. The featherwork was truly incredible (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomwheaton/sets/72157594286822733/), and the sense of movement almost made you seasick.

As evening drew near, my pictures began to get fuzzy, especially with the quick dance movements. The Aztec dancers have been around for over 100 years, but the Apache and Soldier dancers are 15 to 20 years old, I think. There are few if any Apaches in Mexico, and the soldiers are all French, even the ones with US Calvary uniforms. Since the French (under Maximilian) never fought the Apache, the whole meaning of this is beyond me. Do the Apache represent Mexicans, and the French represent the US or the Spanish? Why do the French always win?

The clowns in this parade are all either devils or skeletons, who are sometimes chased around by a little kid dressed as an Indian and holding a machete sword.

After three hours of this we were glad to see and hear the end of it.

On Thursday, there was dancing in all the streets around La Cruz from around 8 in the morning until at least 11 at night. After dancing for three hours in the parade the day before, everyone must have been exhausted and only kept going by the hypnotic effect of the drums. That evening we went to mass and happened to catch the bishop coming up the street (as foretold in C’s book) escorted from the cathedral across town by the best Aztec dancers and a coterie of well-fed, jolly, and young Franciscan monks. As mass was going on inside the church, the dancing went on outside. Without loudspeakers turned up full blast, no one would have been able to hear mass. At one point, I think I heard church bells amidst all the noise, and once I heard very faint, whoosh, whoosh, whooshes, followed several seconds latter by a dozen very loud explosions right over the church.

By this time we were worn out and went home to dinner. Later, we heard the sounds of real fireworks, not just the rockets, but were too tired to go watch. Maybe next year.

The barrio celebration ended Friday morning, and that evening was the Grito which memorializes the “cry” of Father Hidalgo in 1810. This is celebrated throughout the country, but the main celebration is the Zocalo in Mexico City. This year, there was a lot of speculation about what would happen with AMLO’s tent city dwellers who had been camped out there for 47 days. President Fox decided to avoid a confrontation (someone had to act like an adult) and visited Dolores Hidalgo and gave the Grito on the same steps Hidalgo did 196 years ago. By this time we were safely ensconced with our Irish coffees at David and Zoe’s B&B watching TV along with a bunch of other ex-pats like Bob and Maria, Joe, Lee, Barry, and some current Peace Corps Volunteers. We had a great view of the fireworks in Plaza de Armas from their roof, despite the rain which did not dampen the celebration too much.

Today, Saturday, there is a military parade in the Zocalo which AMLO kindly vacated for the occasion. Traffic is back to normal in Mexico City, and there is something going on in Querétaro, but I am too tired to find out what.

A footnote on AMLO and his movement. One gets the impression that a deal was struck between his group and the federal government to help him save face by being able to say he had “won” the Zocalo and defeated the “traitor” Fox. In return, he moved his folks out of the Zocalo. All the papers trumpeted how he had “won” and Fox had “lost”. But Fox also got what he wanted, by playing the martyr to the messianic, anti-democratic AMLO, by giving the Grito in Dolores Hidalgo (where it probably ought to be anyway), and by clearing out the Zocalo and Avenida Reforma of protestors without any need for police brutality. 84% in a national poll said they are glad AMLO and friends are leaving (every time AMLO does something his poll numbers go down and the PAN’s poll numbers go up, so the PAN was happy to let AMLO do his worst.) 77% said they don’t want him to come back; but significantly, 60% said they thought there should be a vocal opposition to the PAN and the federal bureaucracy. Also significantly, the PRD (AMLO’s party) are questioning whether they want to be a thorn in the side of the PAN or whether they want to get some laws passed for their constituents by working cooperatively in the legislature. And perhaps most significantly, the PRD and many of their sympathizers are now again referring to themselves as perredistas (PRD party members) and not as lopezobradoristas (followers of AMLO). Common sense seems to be prevailing.

Shadow Government?

The following is taken from a post to my brothers in response to a question about what is going on in Mexico and how the "shadow" government will work.

No one seems to know what a shadow government would entail. No one is even asking how they would raise taxes, rent offices, much less make laws. Only one columnist has recently raised the question of whether this whole business of setting up another government is treason. AMLO has been maintaining that because the constitution says that the power of the government is derived from the people, the people (him) can do whatever they want, up to and including setting up a different government and a constitutional convention. The most recent idea from the AMLO camp seems to be to hold meetings of the "leaders" every six months where they would make important decisions which they could not enforce, of course. AMLO would be the one to pick the "leaders" and set up the "rules" and his most ardent supporters (the ones who are still in the Zocalo) would gladly do whatever he asked. The ones who think are beginning to see him for what he is, a throw back to the early and mid 20th century, and are slinking quietly away. Just to put this in perspective, the great 19th century reformer, Mexico's Lincoln, Benito Juarez would not have succeeded if the US had not recognized his government early on, had not supplied money and advice, etc. I don't think they will do the same for AMLO, nor will anyone else. The guy is now seen by the majority here and abroad as a crackpot.

What I really see happening is that the other main figures of the left are deserting him in the past week or two, the mayor of the DF from his own party is asking him to take down the tent city in the Zocalo before the Independence Day celebration this Sat, and he is becoming increasingly marginalized. The people in the "camps" are dwindling and some of the other allied parties have deserted him. He will be a minor irritant this time next year, but it will take a while. Mexicans tend not to be confrontational, and they are unfailingly polite with folks like AMLO even if he is trying to undermine everything they have spent the last 10 years setting up. And people are worried because they know that democracy is young here, and they are not sure how strong it really is and whether it can stand up to this echo from the past.

Attached is an editorial in the NYT written by a Mexican intellectual (a separate and distinct class in Mexico). When I started reading it, I thought someone had been reading my blog since it is the first editorial by anyone I have seen, Mexican or US, that tries to put this into historical perspective, but then I realized the writer had really done his homework, well beyond anything in my blog. Turns out the author is Enrique Krause. We were present at an award ceremony a few months ago that was held in the Teatro de la Republica in Querétaro, a few blocks from our house. We were invited because of C's culture classes, and were the only gringos there, and I was one of only 6 who were not wearing dark suits! Krause, a noted historian and intellectual, was given a national literary award for a book on Mexican history. Even the left has a grudging respect for him. Anyway, he seems to have a real understanding of what is at stake for Mexico; what democracy, rule of law and transparency, etc. are; and a good handle on the facts and issues of the current situation in the Zocalo and Reforma Ave.

Few editorial writers of any stripe now support AMLO, but that does not mean they are letting up on President Fox and his myriad of mistakes (he is like the Mexican Bush) or supporting a leftist agenda of helping the poor. Even right wing writers (including Calderon) all admit that Calderon's main task will be helping the poor and developing jobs.

Since the link to Krause's article will expire, if it has not done so already, I have copied it here:

Mexico: Democracy Under Threat

By Enrique Krauze
Tuesday, September 5, 2006; Page A19, Washington Post

To get a sense of the danger hovering over Mexican democracy, consider these numbers: In the 681 years between the founding of the Aztec empire in 1325 and the present day, Mexico has lived for 196 years under an indigenous theocracy, 289 years under the absolute monarchy of Spain, 106 years under personal or party dictatorships, 68 years embroiled in civil wars or revolutions, and only 22 years in democracy.

This modest democratic 3 percent of Mexico's history is divided over three periods, far separated in time: 11 years in the second half of the 19th century, 11 months at the beginning of the 20th century, and the past 10 years. In the first two instances, the constitutional order was overturned by military coups

Scarcely 50 years ago, armed groups of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (known as the PRI, its initials in Spanish) attacked polling stations with pistols and submachine guns, gunning down suspect voters and stealing ballot boxes. Scarcely 20 years ago, the PRI -- which had refined its methods -- prided itself on being a nearly infallible machine. The government and the PRI (symbiotic entities) controlled every step of the elections, from the preparation of voting rolls and the discretionary issuing of voter registration cards to the counting of votes. Many bureaucrats and members of worker and peasant organizations were carted to polling stations where they were instructed to vote in mass for the official candidate chosen by the outgoing president. The voters were given sandwiches and gifts; their leaders were given government posts, sinecures and money. Many times the ballots were marked in advance and stuffed days before the election into "pregnant" ballot boxes; the establishment of secret polling places was common, and some people were registered many times over.

This shameful situation ended in 1996 when President Ernesto Zedillo set in motion a deep democratic reform. Elections at all levels were no longer controlled by the government, becoming the jurisdiction of an independent Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), subject to a Federal Electoral Tribunal. At great cost, detailed voter rolls were drawn up with a registration and voter ID system that made it possible to correlate physical presence, identity and registration at the polling places. The IFE very soon gained remarkable credibility. All over the country, citizens began to vote freely in fair and transparent elections. Few were surprised when in 1997 the PRI lost the majority in the Chamber of Deputies for the first time and the leftist candidate, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, attained the extremely important post of mayor of Mexico City. Three years later, the PRI lost the jewel in the crown, and the crown itself: Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN) won the presidency.

On July 2 this same independent electoral organization, made up of 909,575 citizens (not government employees), oversaw an orderly, peaceful election in which more than 41 million people voted. It's important to note that almost a million representatives from all parties participated, as well as nearly 25,000 national observers and 639 international observers. At the end of the day, the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) presidential candidate came away with more votes than any other leftist candidate in Mexican history; in fact, he fell just 240,000 votes short of winning the presidency.

What happened next has left Mexico on the verge of social upheaval. What would an American think if, after a campaign as heated as the Kerry-Bush race, the losing candidate had declared himself the winner the night of the election, claimed "massive fraud" a few days later and orchestrated a sit-in of his followers (many of them directly paid by the local PRD government) on the Mall in Washington, blocking access to the neighboring streets and affecting businesses and government offices? That is exactly what Andrés Manuel López Obrador has done.

In articles and interviews published in the international press (written in a misleading tone of civility, far from that of his incendiary speeches), López Obrador has seriously damaged Mexico's young democracy by trying to sustain the unsustainable: that Mexico today is the same as Mexico in the days of PRI rule. He fails to mention that:

· He spent more on television advertising than any other candidate.

· In the same election he calls "a filthy mess" his leftist coalition managed to become the second-most-powerful force in the legislature, considerably increasing its presence in both chambers, while the coalition's candidate for mayor of Mexico City won with 47 percent of the vote.

· The polling places where the Federal Electoral Tribunal ordered a recount (9 percent of the total) weren't a random sampling, which would have been more than sufficient to determine whether there was generalized fraud. They were instead a selection weighted in López Obrador's favor because he chose the polling places where he hoped to show that there had been fraud -- unsuccessfully, since the resulting difference has been minimal, according to the tribunal's ruling.

· He has said that even if there were a recount in 100 percent of the polling places, he wouldn't accept the results if they were not in his favor.

Today, many citizens who voted for López Obrador are not only disappointed but fearful. According to recent polls, the majority of the country disapproves of his actions and supports the Federal Electoral Tribunal's performance. If the presidential elections were held today, Felipe Calderón of the National Action Party would win with 54 percent to López Obrador's 30 percent.

López Obrador has complained about his opponents' fear-mongering, but he's the one stirring up real fear, by declaring that "Mexico needs a revolution" and comparing the situation to the circumstances that led to the Revolution of 1910. The historical comparison is completely wrong: López Obrador isn't the heir of liberal democrats Benito Juárez and Francisco I. Madero, but of Porfirio Díaz and Victoriano Huerta, the coup leaders who smothered Mexico's two initial attempts at democracy.

What comes next? If, as is likely, the final ruling of the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary confirms Calderón's victory, López Obrador will do as he has warned: On Sept. 16, Mexico's Independence Day, he'll gather tens of thousands of people in the central square of Mexico's capital to declare him "president" by acclaim. He may even try to control "his territory" in the southern states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco and Guerrero, and the capital itself. His aim for the near future will be to lay siege to the institutions he despises ("let them go to hell," he said recently) and force Calderón to resign.

It is crystal-clear that López Obrador is not a democrat. He's a revolutionary with a totalitarian mentality and messianic aspirations who is using the rhetoric of democracy to try to destroy this third historic attempt at democracy in Mexico. Eighty-six years ago, Mexico brought an end to a revolution that cost a million lives. Since then it has lived in peace. It's a country still plagued with injustice and poverty, but it has made significant progress in its economic transformation, social programs and political life. It would be a sad thing for it all to end in dictatorship or revolution: the 97 percent of our history. Mexico isn't just another democracy: it's the neighbor and partner of Canada and the United States and the counterweight on the scale tipping Latin America toward the example of Brazil and Chile and not Cuba and Venezuela. It's more important than ever that the democracy we've achieved has the support and understanding of international opinion.

Enrique Krauze is the author of "Mexico: Biography of Power" and editor of the magazine Letras Libres. This article was translated by Natasha Wimmer.

Mita's Here

Xochitecatl archaeological site with Ixtacihuatl in the background as viewed from the Cacaxtla archaeological site.

Mamita has been here for a little over a week. She arrived on the 19th and will leave on Saturday, September 2, just as the TRIFE announces its decision on who won the presidential election. I don’t think anyone seriously thinks the airport will be closed down, but there are rumors that Lopez Obrador’s (AMLO’s)supporters will attempt to disrupt things.

Mamita has visited San Miguel de Allende, la Peña de Bernal, Cadareyta, and of course Querétaro. Last weekend we drove to Cholula to visit Lupe and for Mamita to visit Lety and Jaime and the Capitan’s house, which she had not seen in 30 years. We were surprised by the presence of Omar, the Capitans’ son whom we had only met once, and whom we could not locate when we went to Guadalajara a couple of years ago. He was in Cholula to settle his mother’s papers. It was good to talk to him about his parents whom we all loved.

Mamita, Jaime and Lety at Jaime's kindergarten graduation, circa 1973.

Lety and Mamita with Jaime's kids at Cacaxtla, 2006.

Mita got to visit her old school, the Capitan’s house and garden, and Lety and Jaime. From the roof of the Capitan’s house we could see the volcanoes Popocatepetl, Ixtacihuatl, La Malinche, and the clouds over Orizaba, as well as the pyramid of Cholula, which looks more like a hill with a church on it than a pyramid. And because it was the rainy season, everything looked green and clean and fresh. On Sunday, we visited the archaeological site at Cacaxtla with Lety and Jaime’s kids before we headed back to Querétaro.

All of this was made easier and a lot more fun by the fact that Mamita’s Spanish was coming back and she understood most everything. She was even speaking at the end. I could tell that she would quickly speak better than me if she stayed here. Maybe I should take lessons.

The TRIFE made its announcement about Lopez Obrador’s demand that there be a total recount. By law the TRIFE can only recount in precincts where there was some evidence of errors or fraud, and so it had only recounted 9% of the vote. The result was that some 200,000 or so votes were thrown out because of problems at some polling stations. At the end, the totals did not change much for either party, and there was no evidence of a conspiracy or fraud. Thus, the TRIFE is expected to approve a final vote tally by September 2, and it is expected that Calderon will win.

Now AMLO says he will not accept the results and will form another government (the details are murky needless to say), because he says he will not accept a “coup d’etat” by the PAN and the presumably corrupt TRIFE. He also says that he and his followers will disrupt the government for the next 6 years if he is not given the presidency. He always disclaims any violence, but it has the ring of “he doth protest too much”, and he never denounces his followers when they threaten violence.

One of the federal judges put it correctly when he said that the election was fair and that now people who voted can be assured that their vote counted and will not usurped by a minority. Until this point AMLO has been implying that only his voters’ votes counted, so it is interesting to see someone point out the other side of the issue, i.e. the majority actually voted against him and their votes are as good as anyone else’s. Some speakers on TV are saying that AMLO just wants to go back to the old days of one-man rule, and that Mexico has come too far to give it all up for a government of 20 years ago.

Many AMLO voters have now turned against him and wish he would just go away or take his agenda to the legislature and deal with his issues in a democratic way. It seems that if the election were held today, he would lose by a much larger margin. There is some talk about AMLO and his party, the PRD, going their separate ways and for AMLO to have his own party.

At any rate, the peso has gathered strength on the TRIFE’s announcement, and our dollars are worth less everyday.

Some News, A Short One

We did not feel, and Christiane did not know about, the earthquake until folks called from the US to see how we were doing. We felt nothing at all, and it was not even in the local papers. Mexico City felt it in part because it is sitting on a bowl of jello (the clay bottom of Lake Texcoco that they have been draining away for the past 500 years). But there was no damage or injuries, even there.

When I went to get the Sunday paper this morning there were two pieces of news on the front page of El Universal that caught my eye. The PRD, who talked about keeping up the road blocks on Reforma in the DF until they got a 100% recount, are thinking about letting traffic through some of the intersections. They and the city government are feeling the pressure, and reason may be raising its ugly head. This may be the first crack in the protest. We shall see.

The other bit of news is that the Oaxaca teachers have asked President Fox to intervene in their dispute with the governor of the state. Why would the president get involved in such a local issue, you might ask? Because he is president of the republic and this has traditionally been part of his role. And if Fox goes along, this is the perfect example of the strongman over rule of law. This same thing happened when I was about ready to finish my masters in 1976. The teachers all went on strike, and after many months of closing down the university, the issue was finally decided by the president of the republic. Everyone else was afraid to make a decision and possibly take the blame for a bad one. For rule of law to flourish and real democracy to take root, this attitude had to change, and to some extent it has. But this is not simply a question of the ruling classes setting up a strong man type system that only helps them. In this case, the teachers (pretty low on the power totem pole) who are mostly “leftist” PRD supporters are asking for the president to intervene. In the short term, this may give them the results they want, but in the long term it merely perpetuates the system they claim to abhore.

Oh well, it does not look like things have changed all that much, and we probably won’t have a revolution, so we are still looking for a house to buy.

Once More into the Breach, The Mexican Election

Let me preface this by saying that it was intended to be included in an online forum responding to an editorial in the San Francisco (California) Chronicle about the presidential vote recount in Mexico. It is a little too sarcastic and long for them to publish so I am putting it here. Most of the Americans I know here think there should be a recount of all the votes to "calm things down." I think there is more here than whether the ideological left or right won the election, and something fundamentally more important. Christiane disagrees with me and thinks there should be a complete recount too, so this should not be taken as reflecting her views.

I guess it should not surprise me that your editorial only takes a superficial view of the situation in Mexico. Or that folks on the left and right in this forum are taking their ideological stands and speaking without thinking. It’s the American way after all.

Mexico has only had democracy for a few short years. One might say that it began in the early 1990s when the federal election institute (IFE) and a separate election court (TRIFE) were established. Mexico had been under one party, strongman rule for nearly 70 years by that time, which carried on a tradition that began before Cortes, was abused by the Spanish for 300 years and later by folks like Iturbide, Santa Ana and Porfiro Diaz in the nineteenth century, and by Carranza and the PRI in the twentieth. What is strongman rule? Most Americans don’t really know, despite their (and my) dislike of folks like W., and paying lip service to democracy (or at least semi-democracy) in the U.S.

From my personal experience living in Mexico for 5 years 30 years ago, from the past six months living in Mexico, and from several years living in other third world countries where rule of law was unknown, strongman rule, even benevolent strongman rule as we had in Mexico, means that the strongman is the final arbiter of even the smallest decisions. I know, as I personally felt the results of this in the 1970s. People and businesses are afraid to make decisions on their own, and one cannot trust the institutions that are supposedly set up to protect one’s rights, as the strongman and his henchmen (in this case the PRI) break the law whenever he or they feel like it or whenever the proper palms are greased. The law says one thing, but that only holds as long at the strongman goes along. This breeds distrust in governmental institutions, contempt for authority, and a general attitude that you can do whatever you can get away with as long as you have the right friends, enough money, or don’t get caught. This is not a healthy state of affairs in a democracy.

The extra legal maneuvers by the strongman might be for the good of the country, but they are paternalistic and beyond the law. This may have been the only way to govern in Mexico after the last revolution, but it was not democracy, and it certainly was not rule of law. The president picked his successor so he would not be held accountable for actions taken while he was president, the local warlords (caciques) were paid off one way or another, and everything worked pretty well until 1968 when cracks began showing in the system. From then until the late 1980s, people began asking for more accountability, transparency, distribution of power, checks and balances, public input, etc., the things we kind of take for granted in the US until the chads hit the fan in Florida, that is.

In the early 1990s, Mexico finally set up a system with checks and balances by mutual consent and with public input to govern their elections. This system took into consideration their long experience with fraud and how to commit it, and set up a system that until this year, Mexicans could be justly proud of. It was better by far than the US systems, even in the vaunted state of California. All political parties had input into this set of laws, including the PAN (Calderon) and PRD (Lopez Obrador). It set up an election institute (IFE) that assured fair elections, and even fair campaigns (unheard of in the US). All political parties have members on the IFE that runs elections and on the election court that hears appeals (sometimes called TRIFE). And the judges are “untouchable” in the sense that they are paid nearly $500,000 a year to insulate them from bribery.

During this past election, President Fox was reprimanded by the IFE for even suggesting that PAN and/or the government promote the election, a task left up solely to the IFE, not the parties or the government, unlike in the US where we are a bit looser about such things. The IFE also reprimanded the Catholic church for taking sides and even speaking out on the election. (Mexico has had a long and checkered relationship with the church, but that’s another story.) The IFE did not really get on Lopez Obrador’s case for using Mexico City funds to help his campaign, but they sure tried to keep the federal government from helping Calderon’s campaign and rightly so. Other than that the campaign was pretty tame by US standards, despite some name calling and easily offended sensibilities on one side or the other.

Over the past decade the IFE has run the cleanest election system in Mexico’s history. When a losing candidate has appealed to the TRIFE, an independent organization, they have reversed elections at the local and state level of all major parties. As a result, the PRD and PAN have lost some and won some, and in general everyone, including foreign observers, agree that the system has been fair and even-handed. In fact, the PRI is currently challenging a local election just won by the PRD, and the PRD is refusing a recount. Ironic when you think about it. But the TRIFE will settle it, and all parties will end up going along. In this case, the PRD trusts the TRIFE.

The 2006 federal election is the cleanest, most-transparent, well-run election in Mexico’s history, and perhaps in all of Latin America, with the possible exception of Costa Rica. The past decade had built up people’s confidence in the fact that they could set up a legal system that actually worked, and one that was the bedrock of everything else that happens politically in the country.

The election, despite being clean, undoubtedly had underhanded things happening and human error. But if you saw, as I did, the precinct tally sheets posted all around town with signatures from members of all the major parties, including the PRD; and if you watched the election night returns and listened to the president of IFE saying the election was too close to call, and that they could not call a winner using computer projections (like we do in the US), and thus everyone would have to wait a few days to get an actual count; and if you saw him pleading with the political parties to hold off on claims of victory until the count was in; you could not help but believe that the election was well run and was following the law. The whole business about the IFE hiding 3 million votes until the final vote count was in is hogwash, as the IFE said on election night that there were about 3 million disputed votes that would need to be counted. They were never missing, at least if you watched television on election night.

Now it is crunch time. If the election had not been close, none of this would have mattered much, but it was very, very close. And how well the system Mexico put into place for just such a situation will be tested as never before, and at the presidential level for the first time. The question is not simply whether one party won or another lost. This election and how Mexico handles it is a referendum on rule of law; on people’s faith in an institution that they, not a strongman, set up; on whether they are capable of building their own future or will have to revert back to a strongman system, no matter how benevolent. If they fail, it will set back true democracy in Mexico an additional 70 years, and continue a pattern that is already over 500 years old.

The system is following the course set out by law. By law the IFE cannot reopen ballot boxes to satisfy a disgruntled customer. That is for the TRIFE to decide. The IFE followed its rules, caught blatant cases of error (the 3 million “missing” ballots) and turned everything over to the TRIFE as they were supposed to do. Now they are being castigated by Mexicans who know better, and US editors who don’t. Opening ballot boxes is not for the candidates or their parties to decide either.

From the very beginning, and presumably in the name of democracy, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) and the PRD have been asking for something that is straight out of the strongman days. They claimed victory against the wishes of the IFE on election night in hopes of causing enough commotion to scare everyone else off and plant a seed of doubt. This last week AMLO has again declared himself president. That has not worked so far. Sixty percent of the voting public thinks the PAN won and that the elections were essentially clean.

AMLO and the PRD then presented what they considered evidence of massive fraud and conspiracy to the TRIFE as provided by law and demanded a complete recount. This was despite the fact that around a million common citizens were involved in the vote and vote count and acted as observers with foreign observers who also said the vote was clean. The level of bribery would have had to have been beyond anything seen anywhere, and keeping it quiet would be even more unbelievable. Appealing on the basis of possible vote fraud is their right and why the TRIFE was set up to begin with, but there has already been a vote by vote count that was signed off on by representatives of the PRD and the other major parties. AMLO now claims that his own people, selected by his party, were paid off by the other parties in a massive conspiracy. There has been no evidence of this, and it shows his lack of trust in even his own people.

Before the results were in from the TRIFE last week, AMLO and the PRD staged massive street protests supported by the Mexico City government (the PRD mayor of Mexico City has publicly offered to accept the political consequences of this activity) claiming fraud, and these have now extended to traffic blockages of the financial and political center of Mexico City. (It was the quietest I had ever seen the Avenida Reforma as my wife and I strolled up to Juarez.) And despite calls for non-violence by AMLO, there has been a general understanding that things will get rough unless there is a complete recount. AMLO has stated in his speeches that they will protest and increase the level of the protests until he is announced the winner. Of course, when he is interviewed by US papers, he modifies that to something along the lines that he just wants a full recount.

The TRIFE, following the Mexican law, not Californian law or US law or even Florida law, are only supposed to order a recount of votes in precincts if there is realistic evidence of a pattern of fraud or other irregularities. They can require a complete recount, but need to have some proof of a massive fraud to do so. Anything less would be succumbing to rule by strongman, not rule by law. They just cannot do it because a vocal minority and some misdirected US newspapers think they should. They can also toss out the entire vote and start over, but again they need some basis for doing so. Doing anything else, such as sitting down with Calderon and AMLO to come to a gentleman’s agreement on a recount, or taking the Catholic church up on its offer to “mediate” the “dispute”, or getting President Fox to promulgate a decree ordering a recount is not rule by law, and represents a reversion to everything the 1990s elections laws were set up to prevent. And it will mean going back to the bad old days of the PRI.

Much more is at stake here than whether the PRD or the PAN won the election. This fledging democracy, that basically had a revolution in the 1990s, needs to develop confidence in itself and its institutions, breaking the law to keep US newspaper editors and a minority of voters happy is too much to pay to prevent street protests.

Is Mexico a society of the very rich and the very poor? Have the poorer Mexicans been given a bad deal for the past 500 years? Should the government do more? The answers are absolutely yes. And Calderon has invited AMLO and the PRD to form a national government to approache these issues to little avail. But rather than changing things through a strongman system, no matter how good the motives, caving in to demands for a full recount outside the TRIFE will perpetuate the very same paternalistic (on a good day) or dictatorial (on a bad day) system that needs to be changed. AMLO is just another politician who wants to do things his way, just like Iturbide, Porfiro Diaz, and all the PRI presidents of the twentieth century. I think Mexico deserves true democracy with leaders who believe in and live by rule of law, transparency, and personal responsibility.

Questioning the system and throwing around words like “fraud” and “traitor”, and threatening undefined activities in order to change how the electoral institutions work is an attempt, whether conscious or not, to undermine their effectiveness and the public’s incipient faith in its ability to manage and maintain true democracy. This is serious stuff and US newspapers editors should start paying attention, and get a little education.