Urban Onramps

Mark in Mexico is this blogger who has been keeping up with the Mexican elections. If you want another opinion about what’s going on, well, Mark has been live-blogging election results for two days. He’s an American who is doing something down in Oaxaca. His reporting includes snippets like this:

I am still amazed at the number of news reports from yesterday that insisted that this was a recount. I only found one newspaper, from Australia, that correctly reported that the process which has been taking place for the last 23 hours is the second step in a 3 step process of certifying a winner of the election.

Here was Mark’s morning assessment:

So, here we go. I feel really bad for the Mexican people today. An electoral process that seems to be the most transparent and efficient that I have ever witnessed conducted an election that, unfortunately, was so close that the results will never be accepted by the loser. Never.

The context for this quote is that the PAN candidate, Calderon, has a .4 percent lead over the PRD candidate, Obrador, yet Obrador is cranking up his fiery rhetoric, insisting on an actual recount because there were “irregularities,” and has called for a mass demonstration in Mexico City on Saturday.

In other Mexico reportage, we have some family friends in Mexico City who may visit us at the end of this month. We were on the phone, talking about the Mexico-Argentina soccer game, and Liz said the wisdom of the Mexican crowds is as follows: “Mexico – jugaron como nunca, perdieron como siempre.” Translation: “Mexico – they played like never before, but they lost like always.” Double heh. Mexican humor can be sublime.