High Noon by the Trash Dump

It’s been said that politics is not a spectator sport but a rough-and-tumble affair. Mexican politics, at least as practiced in our little town of San Miguel, seems to combine both elements—silly stunts and fun spectacles.  

A couple of postings ago I mentioned the battle over the billboard by the town trash dump, a mano-a-mano epic battle between the PAN, the National Action Party, a pro-business GOP-like operation, and the PRI, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which despite its name is about as revolutionary as corn flakes.

For five or six consecutive weeks the two parties fought over control of the billboard strategically located by the entrance to town if you’re coming from Mexico City. One week, the billboard would advertise the wonders of Guanajuato state government, controlled by the PAN, only to be painted over a few days later by PRI operatives, to declare San Miguel a PRI kind of town.

Et tu, Mauricio?

The back and forth went on until Christmas Day when, right when the PAN operatives were halfway through reclaiming the billboard, a bulldozer showed up and reduced it to scrap. I don’t know the political affiliation of the operator but—hmm—I suspect he or she was sent there by someone in the PRI-controlled City Hall, located only a half mile down the road, and the headquarters of our PRI mayor Mauricio Trejo. 

So now we have the out-of-control garbage dump by the entrance of town crowned with the twisted remains of a half-painted PAN billboard.

Elsewhere, San Miguel has become one giant PRI signboard, proclaiming the accomplishments of the PRI at the national and local level, and giving the party credit for everything short of the rotation of the earth.

If only the bulldozer dispatched by the PRI to demolish the PAN billboard had taken a little longer to even out the hills of trash or cover them with black dirt. That almost would have made this silly squabble almost worth it.  

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