Días DeliZIHosas

Mexico's elections are three weeks from this Sunday. We will elect a new president and a new mayor along with assorted other political posts. The presidential race looks like a slam dunk for Morena, same as most other races.

Rob, the media does seem to believe that the Moreno candidate for Presidenta is a shoe-in. And the distant second candidate is also a woman. Hard to believe that Macho México will have a woman president before the U.S. or Canada. Fact is always stranger than fiction. I hope she can do something about the violence, especially the violence directed against women.

Any guesses, estimates, predictions, hunches, etc., about the local mayor's race?

As always, thank you so much for your daily doses of life in Zihuatanejo. They keep me going until the next blessed escape from the frigid cold of San Diego/Tijuana.

Mexico also had a president of African descent as well as an Indigenous man, and that was way back in the 19th century.

Unfortunately the violence against women problem involves dealing with the cave man mentality too many men still foster. I think public physical castrations of men who commit violence against women would go a long way towards being a deterrence, don't you? Our justice system is still ill-equipped to deal with the violence that's grown from decades of Prohibition 2.0 and the growth of organized crime to supply the USA's self-inflicted black market. If it took the USA about 50 years to rein in the organized crime from 10 years of Prohibition back in the 20's, it suggests we're in for a long haul trying to rein in 50 years of the organized crime that grew in response to Prohibition 2.0.

The local mayor's race is simply a question of how many votes can the current mayor buy with the earnings he made drowning Zihuatanejo under his cement these past 6 years, because the tendency is that about 2/3 of the voters want to vote for Morena. The mayor spent several fortunes buying publicity for his wife, who accompanied him to almost every single public event to get her photo taken as if she had also been involved in whatever project that was being inaugurated. So her face and name are well known. But she's still the candidate for the coalition of the PRI-PAN-PRD, the 3 historically despised and corrupt parties who have nothing in common ideologically but who banded together so that they could get their campaign money from INE and continue existing as political parties. The Morena candidate is seen as the candidate of the people and against corruption. She has no veil of corruption hanging over her as the PRI-PAN-PRD candidate does simply by association. So it will come down to who can get the most people to the voting stations, and how many votes the PRI can buy, because that's their trademark modus operandi. There are a lot of interests who want to see Zihuatanejo's unbridled unrestricted development continue so they can make money until all the land is sold, all the forests and woodlands are chopped down and paved over, and all the beaches are privatized and lined with condos. They will do whatever they can to induce the vote for the PRI-PAN-PRD candidate. But there is a strong local resentment against allowing any dynasty to establish itself, as the Allec family is perceived to be. A lot of voters think that family has already made too much money for too long living off the taxpayers. This is where all those squatters come in that I tried in vain to warn certain well-intentioned but misguided foreigners to stay away from. People that were simply used by political parties for their bloc of votes. And thanks to one particular group of mostly foreigners who continue ignoring my warnings to stay away from politicians, many colonias of squatters believe it was the mayor and his wife who built their schools and helped their children get scholarships to attend school, not the actual foreigners or their organizations who raised the money. So the local race will be a squeaker. Let's hope no election violence erupts as it has in many other parts of the state. People who love our natural beauty including trees will not be voting for the mayor's wife. He showed his hand all too well with his endless no-bid self-awarded public contracts that left no trees in their wake except the silly palm trees he planted, as he continues doing, while totally ignoring too many other problems including public safety.