Who Won this Election Period?
I don't know what to say. I'm mostly tired after yesterday. Every muscle aches, it is as if after the election period, the largest in Mexico, (ninety million people were exerted to vote) many of the one million 400 hundred thousand people like me who were volunteers working on the polls were aboslutely exhausted around the complex ways elections run through.
I was given four manuals, one was a hundred page booklet. Forget about me for a bit, but what about people who can't read somewhere in the state of Chiapas? And if the process wasn't clear to many of us, I must say I was already heartbroken about democracy in the making. I was from the getgo, dissilusioned about the candidate debates who had the rippling effect of creating more violence as messages from organized crime appeared with dead bodies making allusions to chopping off corrupt hands from legal or illegal forces.
One hundred and twenty nine deaths related to this electoral period, PRI candidates like Fernando Purón, killed by a bullet in the back of the head, after a debate in Coahuila state by a lone shooter. After his body collapses, his hand slowly hits the pavement, irrevocably so.
Rosely Magaña (PRI Candidate for Isla Mujeres) and another woman of her party raided by bullets at her house, then died at the hospital days later. What about Emigdio López Avendaño (MORENA Deputy Candidate for the 21st district) who was killed by gunshots on his car, with other four members of his party at San Vicente Caotlán in the state of Oaxaca?
If September 2017 marked the beginning of the electoral race, with the death of Ángel Vergara Chamú (Candidate for the Movimiento Ciudadado party), by January 2018, Jorge Montes González murder, Celaya's state PRI candidate, concluded that one politician was killed every 4 days [source].
The list is very long and sad, mostly because some of these images reveal the living conditions of the men and women behind the politics in Mexico. The crime scenes are harder to deal with when these cordoned off homes are modestly lived. Gray blocks without any paint, shattered glasses, bullet holes on cars, dead bodies found on the road of people that were days before their death, denouncing illegal practices from the actual party in power. (Like stocking up warehouses of food pantries to be handed off to poor people in order to trade them for votes).
Will things change? It depends on us mostly. Not on any indivudual. So far, what I do have to credit is that democracy is behaving like the Mexican Football team at the World Cup. We have become middle weight fighters, which is not a battle yet won, but half-covered, and that may be enough ground for hope.
I was given four manuals, one was a hundred page booklet. Forget about me for a bit, but what about people who can't read somewhere in the state of Chiapas? And if the process wasn't clear to many of us, I must say I was already heartbroken about democracy in the making. I was from the getgo, dissilusioned about the candidate debates who had the rippling effect of creating more violence as messages from organized crime appeared with dead bodies making allusions to chopping off corrupt hands from legal or illegal forces.
Rosely Magaña (PRI Candidate for Isla Mujeres) and another woman of her party raided by bullets at her house, then died at the hospital days later. What about Emigdio López Avendaño (MORENA Deputy Candidate for the 21st district) who was killed by gunshots on his car, with other four members of his party at San Vicente Caotlán in the state of Oaxaca?
If September 2017 marked the beginning of the electoral race, with the death of Ángel Vergara Chamú (Candidate for the Movimiento Ciudadado party), by January 2018, Jorge Montes González murder, Celaya's state PRI candidate, concluded that one politician was killed every 4 days [source].
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| Armed individuals kill Santana Cruz Bahena, Elect mayor at Hidalgotittlán. Image: Cuartoscuro |
So if I have to say something about who won these past elections I would say satiety of corruption and violence. That is AMLO's populist message and it resonated amongst many in this vast country.
I'm skeptic and cautious though, like every six-year term, I always feel like that beforehand because I never felt represented by any of the candidates in any election period. It has always been a bet on the least of the worst possibilities. I have secretly coveted countries that had politicians you admire, that you then, miss from the landscape once they leave a big black hole sucking the energy of everything around it.
I'm skeptic and cautious though, like every six-year term, I always feel like that beforehand because I never felt represented by any of the candidates in any election period. It has always been a bet on the least of the worst possibilities. I have secretly coveted countries that had politicians you admire, that you then, miss from the landscape once they leave a big black hole sucking the energy of everything around it.
Will things change? It depends on us mostly. Not on any indivudual. So far, what I do have to credit is that democracy is behaving like the Mexican Football team at the World Cup. We have become middle weight fighters, which is not a battle yet won, but half-covered, and that may be enough ground for hope.
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