The Guadalajara Reporter
Guadalajara's Largest English Newspaper
Unsurprisingly, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) came out on top in Mexico’s midterm election June 7.
Don Elizar Dueñas got mad when a Hiuchol indian from the Rancheria Nayarit suddenly appeared. He stood several feet from the front door, silently waiting in the sun-rinsed morning mist for Alma Rosa Molinas.
The stuttery rains that have blown over the Cerrro de Santa Cruz some distance south of Guadalajara have been disappointing thus far (May 28). But campesinos there were so eager for the temporada de lluvias to begin, in any kind of way, that they celebrated extravagantly with a barrage of booking cohetes (skyrockets), a few pistol shots and not a little aguardiente — literally, firewater.
For much of his life, President Enrique Peña Nieto dismissed Mexico’s destructive blight, corruption, as “a cultural phenomenon.” An unfortunate one, but so commonplace that Mexican business people – those citizens that evidently count – are blasé about it. The less well-off tend to be angry about having to silently endure being robbed.
A young Huichol girl, gripping a costal with a machete sticking out, sat at the far end of the cattle truck. Forward, against the cab sat four mestizo workers. All the Mestizos – driver and workers – called her “La India” and tried to talk to her. Alma Rosa Molinas said nothing. She pulled her poncho tight against the cold. Only her eyes showed.
“What’s happening in Jalisco is ... a readjustment by a criminal organization that has enjoyed great complacency from the state government, which has let it grow, ” said an opposition congressional candidate for the June elections. When repeated later, there seemed to be a slight hesitation, mid-sentence, cultivating the impression that the author of this increasingly widely held observation wished to add a greater embrace of tricky, corrosive behavior. A new scuff marring the presidency. “The real estate scandal” of course is survivable: What are they going to do, impeach him?
Quieta Zepeda, the Huichol girl, told me this when Jilotitlan was barely a pueblo, ornamented with milpas scattered near the center.