The Guadalajara Reporter

A week of many contradictions, false hopes cunningly planted, Churchly misperception, and a candidate’s face touting adultery

A week of dizzying contradiction, misdirection, party betrayal by an ex-president, diligently planted false hopes, political handouts, and of course, an immeasurable amount of condescension and poorly veiled contempt for voters.   Tawdry stuff from the Catholic Church.  Cheery politically designed news from a slew of national, state and municipal candidates all plying voters with money and gifts, while ignoring their more basic needs as inflation surges.  But also there was Mexico’s Tourism Department seeking to balance this breathless hype with reality by giving some reassuring statistics:  There was a 5.3 percent increase in the number of international visitors to Mexico between January and April.  More than half of them were U.S. citizens ignoring their government’s warnings on the increase in crime, and the endless reports of violence.

But then came a report from Canada’s leading newspaper, the Globe and Mail, describing Mexico as a “country with poverty that’s no longer poor.”  A winsome thesis that fit my Mexican neighbors’ long-held conviction that gringos (blancos all look the same) are crazy. If not right now, eventually.

But there was no reason for reading Canadian; home-grown lunacy much closer was lush.   The former president (2000-2006) Vicente Fox, who forged a place in in Mexican history as an electoral hero toppling the authoritarian, vastly corrupt and brutal 71-year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) spoke up.  Today, it appears the pompadoured Enrique Peña Nieto will lead the PRI back into national rule.  And Vicente Fox, of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), called for everyone to gather round the PRI candidate if he wins July 1.  This of course undercuts his party’s present candidate, the first female member of a major Mexican party to run for president, Josefina Vazquez Mota.  It mars his own accomplishment, one that many Mexicans had believed in 2000 was possible.  Though Vazquez Mota may be running third in the presidential campaign, she clearly voiced the opinion of a great many Mexicans of all parties when she called Fox’s comments “completely senseless.”

More evidence indicating for many citizens that this electoral season is particularly loco is the big, full-colored billboard in Mexico City using Peña Nieto to promote adultery.   I’ve lived in Mexico for four decades and change, and I’ve seen some strange and staggering things, but nothing quite like that.  There is Peña Nieto, slicked hair shining ... and a smear of red lipstick on his white dress shirt ... an index finger shushing his lips in warning.  Above his right shoulder are the large words, “Unfaithful to his family and committed to his country.” It’s an advertisement for an outfit that helps folks have discreet extra-marital affairs.  The Mexico representative of the company told reporters that this country has quickly proved to be a thriving market: 300,000 users since November.  Peña Nieto has admitted to cheating on his first wife and fathering two children with two other women.

No one has seen much from Mexico’s Catholic Church in the media.  And Mexicans are following the Church’s attempt to keep its head down at this time  Which is hard to do, in a time when people are talking about how middle-class Mexico has become – meaning that some Mexicans who once were poor now are members of the middle class.  With inflation stripping their weekly earnings and drug thugs trying to kill them as they walk home from work, many that seem to others to be climbing the economic ladder are not overjoyed by such middle-class boasting.

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