Puppets and the election

There are not a lot of new things to report. Barb and I have volunteered to gather information on each child in Love in Action and then make up a one page fact sheet (including a photo) for each. These will then be sent to the respective godparents and sponsors. It is a bit of an undertaking. However, fact sheets should be very useful for the godparents and sponsors. Otherwise, with all our friends from up north gone, we have a very quiet life. It is much cooler now that the rainy season has started. We have not had any big rains, but we have been getting frequent short rains of half an inch to an inch. The mountains are green again.

As the photo shows, we did take the 3 niños (plus Sara, a 13 year old girl from LIA who came to help) to the puppet show. It was a bit different from what I expected. I include a photo showing the scene. It involved a good deal of arguing back and forth between the 2 main characters. However, they kept doing songs and music between the spoken sections. Our girls did not seem very interested or absorbed by it. I don’t think they understood what was going on; as it was all in Spanish, I didn’t understand everything that was going on either. In fact in one section the fellow in the chicken costume used a little whip to hit the other character who then made a big show of crying loudly. Dariana got upset and started to cry; Barb had to take her outside. There were a number of other kids from LIA there and the older ones got into it, shouting back and even getting up on stage to dance around. In fact at one point one of the puppeteers led a line of kids all around the auditorium. After the puppet show, we got a pizza and went to our house. Then, the little girls again had a ball in the wading pool. Steve next door invited Sara to swim in his pool (it is too deep for our little ones). Sara enjoyed it. Thus, I think the afternoon was a success.

There are election campaigns on in Mexico with voting day on July 5th. This is the mid-term elections (no presidential election), but representatives in both state and federal congresses as well as mayors and state governors are up for election. All sorts of walls and billboards have been painted touting candidates. We observed another approach to campaigning on Sunday. As we were walking to Open Circle, we noticed a big crowd gathered where the horses congregate on Camino Real about 3 blocks from our house. There was a band, lots of people with bright red t-shirts and a lot horses. We didn’t find out until later what it was about. During Open Circle we heard the band parading down the street. When we finished brunch we noticed a big parade on the street next to the plaza. There were a few young men dressed in women’s clothes and dancing in front of the band. There was croud of people with the red t-shirts; then we could see that they had the name of one of the candidates for mayor. There were also large numbers of horses (over 50 at least). There were also people carrying flags with the PRI banner (Insitutionalized Revolutionary Party). This was the party that dominated Mexico from the late 1930s until the later 1990s. During that time Mexico was virtually a one party state under the PRI. There were other small parties, but the government and the unions ensured that the other parties never got more than minuscule numbers of votes. It has changed in last 10 years or so. Although the PRI still tends to be the largest party, there are 2 other major parties which make elections quite competitive.