I received an email from a friend today. Her name is Daniela Pastrana; she is a Mexican journalist living and working here in Mexico City, who has worked at Reforma and La Jornada, among other publications. With her permission, I translated and am now sharing her message:
Dear friends: I write this letter to those whom I believe share with me the bitter feeling of recent hours. Because for me, as for many others, this was not a race about a candidate over another. It was a battle to stop an economic process that has generated nothing but inequality and hatred. I, like many others, wasn't thinking about a president when I went to vote this past Sunday. I was thinking of a turn towards that model which dehumanizes us, denationalizes us, but above all, demoralizes us.
That's why I want to invite you all today to defend our right to hope. [My husband] Eduardo and I were talking about this last night after watching an interview by [TV Azteca's] Javier Alatorre with Felipe Calderón: We don't want him to govern us with the project he's proposing. And we cannot accept six more years of an economic model rejected by half the voting population, just as we cannot legitimize a tainted political campaign that spent obscene amounts of money to instill fear.
Some, like myself, feel trapped by that axiom of the lawyer set: "better a bad agreement than a good disagreement". Today, I think that is not the case. The "institutionality" was the flag under which the PRI kept itself in power for seven decades; the "it's best not to say anything, don't make a move, don't do, don't fight" attitude. But that is a fallacy, because defending one right doesn't mean you have to squash another one, which is how many of those who don't see and don't hear (and who actually DO stage illegal coups) operate. To defend a right simply means to demand firmly that it be respected.
So let's get moving. The period of mourning ended yesterday. Today we need to defend the project we voted on. It's not about going to war against our friends and family, nor returning to the campaigning in which we dig our trenches deep and draw battle lines and just hurl adjectives at each other. No, it's about peacefully and joyfully mobilizing to defend our right to have hope. I am 35 and have two children; I want, I NEED this hope.
From what I read today in La Jornada, there are others mobilizing. Eduardo and I invite you to join three initiatives:
1. Do not respond to those, among family, friends, co-workers, who will try to pressure and bait you with "Calderón won". Let's not waste energy debating or responding to ANYTHING, at least until there are official results. But also, they should know, with our silence, that their hatred has hurt us and that we celebrate nothing because there is nothing to celebrate.
2. Yesterday [Monday], the president of the voting booth where I was functioning as vote inspector called me on the phone and told me there were booths in the zone where the posted results didn't add up with what was posted by the PREP [Preliminary results]; the difference wasn't much, three or four votes per booth... but multiply that by 130,000 booths... to this we must add the 3 million votes that are not showing up, and the difference between votes for president and the votes for senators and congresspeople. I don't want to discredit anything up front, but I can't trust an IFE that during the campaign failed to show impartiality, just for the sake of "safeguarding the institutions". Quite the contrary, the institutions must also be the caretakers of democracy. Eduardo and I are circulating a letter to the president of IFE to state we're more than 13 million Mexicans who, at the very least, expect absolute transparency in the final vote count.
3. Not only is the percentage of the vote tied; the entire country is divided into two very distinct sides: 16 states (mostly all from the North) were won by Calderón and another 16 (the South) were won by AMLO. So, if after counting every booth's polling report, we find that Calderón "won" by a minimal advantage, he and his party must and will know that HALF the country doesn't want and doesn't accept his project and his proposals. That if he wants to govern for all us Mexicans he must modify his project substantially. Just like they went out on the streets to demand safety, we can take to the streets to demand justice and equality.
Dear friends and relatives: In 2000, the desire to get the PRI out of our government led many people with a civic sense to vote for Vicente Fox, and ultimately - as Denise Dresser said - that "useful vote" was in the psyche. Nobody, absolutely NOBODY that I know, has improved their quality of life since then: Those who were in debt are still in debt, those who had financial problems still have them, many have lost their jobs since. And now, the campaign of hatred against AMLO made PRI supporters return the favor and yield their "useful vote" to Felipe Calderón. The result is the same: the imposition of a political, economic, social and even religious project undesired by the majority of the population.
Today, perhaps moreso than 1988, we need to mobilize and defend our vote. We must go out, by all means available to us, not with anger or sadness, but with joy and conviction, and demand that the will of half the country be respected. Eduardo and I were talking about it last night and we have no choice. They have left us no choice. For once, let's do what Felipe urges us to do and think of our children.
Greetings, and... Smile!
Daniela Pastrana
I told her she needs to start blogging. More to come from Mexico soon.