I stepped off the train in Oceanside and gasped in gratitude, "Thank God I live here! It's so beautiful!"
That's what was missing in Tijuana - beauty. For the two days I was there with Barbra Cummings, as international observers of Mexico's election, we had the opportunity to see many sides of Tijuana, from wealth to poverty and desperation. What I didn't see anywhere was beauty. I thought, as I walked home from the Oceanside Transit Center, noticing for the first time how clean the streets are, that I'd just seen what a world of pervasive corruption looks like. When the common good is no longer a requisite, everything that isn't profitable is lost. Humans can live without beauty, but what's the point?
Oscar, the man who took us around Tijuana's polling places, acting as interpreter and guide, told us he mourns the aesthetic shortfalls of his city. He's a pianist and artist and sees no appreciation for design in the homes of his well-to-do neighborhood. He points out the lack of greenery and says he'd like to see the old race track converted to a park. "If Lopez Obrador wins the election," he muses, "maybe there could be some attention given to building codes." It seems like a lot to expect from a presidential candidate.
On the drive to our host's home, Oscar's mother, Silvia, pulled over so we could see the view. She pointed out the race track, the Catholic church, a small patch of green that is a golf course, the sprawling slums, and in the distance beyond them, the United States. It's hard for me to comprehend that we are observing all of this from a affluent area. The sidewalk is pocked and uneven and strewn with broken glass and the empty lot before us is covered with ruble and debris. I looked at the homes stacked one against the other, encased in wrought iron. Protection from theft and kidnapping seemed to be the predominate architectural influence.
Silvia is a passionate supporter of the PRD candidate, Lopez Obrador, whose campaign promises, to take care of the poor, fill her with hope for her country. While driving between polling places on Sunday, Oscar told me that his mother had married into money. "She quit school at 15 to take a secretarial course, put on her high heels and got a job at the bank where she met my father. He was the son of the owner of a chain of liquor stores," he explained. The difference between Silvia, and her neighbors, who all support the conservative PAN candidate, Felix Calderone, is that Silva remembers what it was like to be poor. For her leftist political views, she is somewhat of an outcast in the social set of Tijuana, but that doesn't stop her.
On Sunday, while Silvia worked as a volunteer observer for the PRD at her local polling place, Oscar drove Barbara and I throughout Tijuana to see democracy in action in Mexico. The polling places were all located outdoors, some in parks or schoolyards in front of libraries, businesses or homes. Makeshift tarps were stretched to give the poll workers some protection from the sun, but not the heat.
The voting process was elegant in its simplicity. There were no punch cards, levers, bubbles and scanners or touch screens. Each voter had an ID card with their photo and thumb print. Poll workers checked the card against a list with each registered voter's information and photo. They checked the voter's name on the list and handed them three ballots, one each for president, senator and congress.
Voters took their ballots into a makeshift booth that had a plastic flap to ensure their choices were made in complete privacy. They put a black "X" over the part of the ballots with their candidate's name and party symbol, then folded each sheet into quarters and put them in the appropriate, color-coded ballot box.
The process appeared to go smoothly in each of the local polling places we observed in the morning. Oscar took us to different neighborhoods throughout Tijuana, from the well-to-do area where Silvia was volunteering to destitute areas where people live in ramshackle homes crowded precariously on crumbling hillsides.
We drove past abandoned maquiladoras - factories that sprang up along the border after NAFTA was enacted, attracting thousands of desperate workers whose agricultural lifestyles were destroyed by the same free trade policy. Garbage was everywhere, trash flowed down the hillsides like a coating on a bunt cake.
In one of the worst areas the polling place was in a school yard. This could have been a poster-child school for what happens when a society stops investing in public education. No one with money sends their children to public school in Mexico. Menacing shards of broken glass were scattered over the playground area. The restrooms were in a separate disgusting outdoor building. I looked inside the classroom window, that had no glass in it, and saw a bare room with old desks packed so tightly together that I can only imagine children climbing over them to get to their own desk. There were no bulletin boards or pretty pictures or maps on the walls. A few old tattered books were on a shelf in the back of the room. There were three polling stations in this schoolyard and a steady flow of people coming to vote.
After this stop I was relieved when Oscar suggested that we go to the beach for lunch. I was ready for the refreshing ocean air and clean vista of the waves on the sand that I enjoy here in Oceanside. But once again we witnessed the results of a government that cares nothing about people or beauty. The oceanfront was lined with shacks selling coconut drinks, tacos and junk. We walked around indigenous women sitting on the sidewalks with their trinkets for sale spread out around them. The beach was crowded with people who were surrounded with trash. It was a struggle to look beyond all of the mess to see the stretch of ocean beyond them. Fortunately Oscar knew of a reasonably clean place to have lunch.
The first polling place we went to after lunch was in the downtown area. We learned that there were problems around the block at Miguel F. Martinez at a special election station for voters who were not voting in their home precinct. Sure enough we came upon a line that stretched out for several blocks. A man near the front of the line told us that he'd been waiting for 5 hours. There was no shade from the oppressive midday sun.
We learned from an IFE observer that there were only 250 ballots left. He counted down to the middle of the block and informed those remaining that they would not be able to vote. He gave them the locations of other special polling places. We learned from him that this is not new. In 2000 there was a similar problem in polling places such as this one where voters wouldn't be likely to vote for the "correct" candidate. They are simply shortchanged ballots. With five hours remaining, the polling place was out of business.
We decided to go to one of the other locations where out-of-towners can vote that the IFE observer had suggested to the people he turned away. At the Agua Caliente Tower at Fundadores Blvd. the line of people circled the entire park. A Telemondo news crew was interviewing people and we were told that this location had also run out of ballots. No new voters were being permitted to join the line, so those coming from the previous location would be out of luck here too. It was 3:00 PM - three hours remaining for election day.
People in the line noticed the badges Barbara and I were wearing and were eager to tell us how long they had been waiting in the hot sun. A woman holding a baby, standing about midway in the line looked at her watch and held out her hand with all five fingers extended. I looked around for anyone offering water to the people in the line - there was no one. Then a woman came up to me obviously distraught and hoping I could help. Oscar translated that she'd been told at her local polling place that her name wasn't on the list. So she's been directed to go to this special voting place. She's waited for six hours to vote, only to be told when she got to the end of the line that she couldn't vote here because her voter card showed that she could vote in her local place.
Gabriella showed me her voting card. The photo was clearly her, the address was Tijuana. The right to have a voice in her government was so important to this poor woman that she'd given up her day off to stand in the hot sun for six hours to cast her vote, and for her persistence she was rewarded with rejection.
Id' read that the same company that had been used to scrub Florida's voting lists in 2000 had been used to do the same in Mexico. Perhaps Gabriella was one of those names removed from Tijuana's voter roll. The long lines and shortage of ballots reminded me of Ohio. Voter suppression and disenfranchisement - is this how America spreads democracy? I'd been so impressed with the transparency of the Mexican election system, but somehow corruption prevailed.
After observing the vote tally at the polling station where Silvia had been working we went back to their home to watch the results. We'd been hearing rumors all afternoon that Obrador was ahead by a huge margin. The television showed something else. First, Mr. Ugalde, president of IFE explained in an almost monotone voice that the election was too close to call. Then President Vincente Fox appeared, again repeating that the election was too close to call. The four anchor persons on the channel seemed confused and troubled. Things were not going as planned. Suddenly Lopez Obrador was making an announcement. It seemed that he was about to concede. Oscar was translating for us as he said that he would respect the outcome of the vote, even if he lost by one vote. BUT he had not lost. In fact he had over 500,000 more votes than Calderon. He was declaring victory!
Back to the news anchors, looking more troubled than before. Fumbling on their words. Then a voice-only response from Calderon, apparently also claiming victory. Curiously the audio was lost several times in his speech. I went to bed but couldn't sleep. I was reliving the day after the November 2004 election all over again. This is the cruelest kind of theft, when the thief holds out his hands and tells you that you have not been robbed.
According to one email I received, on Sunday afternoon between 5:30 and 6 p.m. Vicente Fox called Luis Carlos Ugalde, the IFE president, to ask him to change the entry of results of the PREP, the Preliminary Election Results Program, in such a way to benefit Felipe Calderon. According to this report, the candidate of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD, would have had between one million and a million-and-a-half votes more than the National Action Party (PAN). But thanks to this play the results are were changed to exactly what they wanted them to be.
When I said goodbye to Silvia on Monday morning at the border crossing, I saw a different woman than the one who greeted us just two days earlier. Something was missing from her beautiful almond-eyes. I thought about it as we waited over two hours to cross the border. What was gone was hope--hope that somehow her country could defeat the corruption that had sold off their resources and their future. I looked across the border at the United States and thought how fortunate I was that I could return to the USA with no more inconvenience than a two hour line. And then I thought about how corruption is dragging our country down the same ugly path it had taken Mexico.
Anyone paying attention knows that the level of corruption in American government is spreading like a cancer. Once the cancer has spread to our electoral process the patient cannot be saved. That's why we must focus all of our energies on protecting this vital organ from attack.
Democracy and corruption cannot coexist. Eventually one must devour the other. That's what's on the table in Mexico and here in the United States. Once the election process is corrupted, the voice of the people is silenced.
Silenced, but not destroyed. Because the human spirit will eventually prevail. Historically, oppression always leads to revolution, if not through legal, non-violent channels, then regretfully, by any means necessary. This is why we must call on every lawmaker who is not corrupt to stand up and insist that this election in November is fair, accurate and transparent. Otherwise, we will become Mexico.
To see photos of our visit to Tijuana, go to http://www.criscenzo.com/....