Mexico Greets Copa with Giant Shrug - Larger Symptom?

The optimism of "si se puede" appears to be in need of a muertos altar this coming autumn. During the South Africa game I was up to my eyeballs in documents at the Cuernavaca state archive when Mexico scored a goal. One of the archivists looked up from his magazine and said "See, I knew we would end up behind" (my translation of his fairly, um, colorful statement). His colleagues had to correct him and tell him that the GOOOOOOOL he heard being screamed was for Mexico, not South Africa. The archivist said Mexico would screw it up by the end of the game - everybody nodded in agreement. The pesero driver, the grounds guys, my landlord ... everybody shrugged off the tie: we'll screw it up somehow, they all commented. Even generally upbeat MexFiles predicts disappointment, or at least says it is the same old disappointing garbage. At least they haven't behaved like Nigeria in front of Greece.

A politician here in Cuernavaca is running a television commercial these days saying that he wants to help change Mexico of Si Se Puede to Si Se Pudo. It seems the general pessimism of the early and mid 80s has crept back into Mexico as democratic reforms (come on, it is better than 1976, no?), urban renewal, and freemarket moves have failed to provide the benefits promised by elites and foreigners. A great manifestation of the national temperature, fùtbol seems to get a shrug as Mexicans have slipped into a general funk of pessimism. How will this play out on July 8, and how will it play out in 2012? Will it mean general reluctance to participate (like the 80s) or to increased particpation out of frustration?

Another Village Church, Another Love Triangle

In the 1930s a pentecostal preacher headed for the Mezquital plain in Hidalgo where he had little success in gaining converts. Traveling out to the villages, the populace rejected him (at times with violence) and he found himself in the town of Ixmiquilpan - what passes for a "big town" in the area. There he had some success gaining converts and, with the help of the army, he built a chapel and started a religious colony - Colonia Evangelica. The Summer Language Institute supplied Otomi bibles, and the congregation was set.

Jobs in the colony were parceled out to members only, and such an offer brought in converts from the pueblos that had previously rejected the preacher. Once migrants were converted and given jobs, missionaries easily penetrated their home pueblos and gained more converts in the area. Of course, the PRI was the political patron of the Pentecostals, and with institutional support, Pentecostalism throve in the area.

Flash forward to 2005. When a prominent Pentecostal preacher died, Catholics refused to allow him burial in the local municipal cemetery - mostly because they claimed he had never contributed to the upkeep of the place. Evangelical Christians in Hidalgo organized a protest in response, blockading the highway to Pachuca and shutting down trade and business along the route until the governor of Hidalgo offered to meet with them. However, in elections just a short time later, PRIistas were handed their heads - on plates - by an Evangelical voting bloc that sent a message to the parties - support our causes or find yourself on the loosing end of the vote.

With presidential elections two years away, and evangelical christian growth in Mexico growing steadily, we may be looking at a new player in Mexico's national elections - not just on the regional level.

For more on the topic, see Guillermo de la Pena's "El Campo Religioso, La Diversidad Regional." See also Joseph Contreras' In the Shadow of the Giant: The Americanization of Mexico, chapter 12 called "The Evangelical Challenge." Contreras, as a reporter, gets a little melodramatic at times, and could certainly use a history lesson or two, but it is an interesting book to chew on.

Guerra Sucia ...The US Spills Over to Mexico

Reports in Milenio on the upcoming election in Nuevo Leon describe what the news magazine is calling "guerra sucia." The offense? Push polling. Not that I'm calling for the "happy days" of a free sandwhich and a Tecate for your vote *cough - Salinas*, but I'm disappointed to see that the opening of the democratic process in Mexico is coming with the unsavory technological imports like push polling.

Over at La Opinion, Samuel Schmidt of the Universidad Autonóma de Ciudad Juarez is also using "guerra sucia" for his description of PANista politics in the last three years.

All things considered, do we really want to be invoking the term "guerra sucia" for nasty political tricks? Although, considering some of the allegations blowing around, perhaps we are talking about more than tricks and a little more "guerra."

That aside...considering the lovely imports that US "advisers" bring, I love this comic by David Horsey of the Seattle PI....