I’m going to keep this post short, as I am also preparing for a live presentation/conference about life here in rural Mexico and how I came to live here. I will also shortly be preparing a program in Spanish and one in English regarding end-of-life care vis-à-vis healthcare proxies. I will keep you all informed of those broadcasts, which will not be here on my blog, but will provide links so that those interested can join.
Anyway, election season is here, at least here in the state of Colima. It is not long and drawn-out as in some other countries where candidates might begin electioneering for the next round of votes shortly after entering office. Our elections will be in June. So we are starting to see the electioneering only two months ahead of the voting.
Some of the offices for which people will be voting are the governor of Colima and the president of Comala (a municipality of Colima). Signs are hung from walls of buildings and balconies. People may be ignoring them or reading them with interest, but as far as I can tell, there is no rancor such as tearing them down or fights among neighbors. Or maybe I am just unaware since my Spanish still isn’t 100% perfect – which also helped out where gossip was concerned. When I first moved here, I did not understand a lot of the conversations I was hearing, so I had a good excuse not to have to take sides in gossip. As my Spanish improved, I could feign ignorance and poor understanding of the language even when I could understand the topic of conversation…………….But it does seem that everyone is ignoring them.
On radio and television, they will air commercials for the political parties, one after the other (there are 4 major parties here – Morena, PAN, PRI and PRD). As far as I can tell, there is no station that airs only one party to the exclusion of the others.
And now we come to the dance music. I don’t know about the large cities throughout Mexico, but we are a rural/agricultural state here and maybe different, but cars with loudspeakers strapped to their roofs blare music and songs extolling the virtues of their preferred candidate and party. The music just makes you want to dance, and I imagine that even if it is not for your preferred candidate, just listening to it will make you dance – or want to dance and brighten your day.
So for your enjoyment, I bring you a little bit of political music, Colimense style:
mex-pat.org 