Water and Peace

It's an election year in Mexico. Not a presidential election, but nearly everyone else, from national to state to local officials. This means that posters are everywhere! I'm sure there is also a lot of TV and radio coverage, but we rarely watch/listen Mexican news bc they talk so fast about so many things that we can't keep up. (We do read some newspapers in Spanish, but sort of skim over the topics that aren't interesting to us.) The signs give us a great opportunity to learn spanish, bc they are very repetitive. As in, there are about 5 or 6 different political parties and hundreds of representatives running, but the same sign is reprinted and hung in dozens of locations. So we can pass the same slogan over and over until we understand!

Last weekend, we went walking through the southern part of Mexico City, an area we don't normally visit. *we were looking for the coffee shop that sells my sister-in-law's handmade items, but couldn't find it.* So, we saw lots of new signs. Including someone running on the slogan of "Agua & Paz" or "Water and Peace". Not even a complete sentence, just water & peace. no verbs, either, so I'm not sure what he's going to do with the water and peace. We can only assume that he was promising more of both.

It seemed silly, too simple really, to only offer water and peace. Then again, fresh water and lasting peace seem like the same thing that Jesus offered 2000 years ago, and it's still out of reach of so many peoples.

Mexican Government lesson of the day: the mexican president serves only 1 6 year term, and other national officials serve 3 year terms and can be re-elected (but I don't know how many times). Most state and local officials are elected on a 3-year cycle also, merely because the turnout is so much higher.

I'm surprised by the number of women running for office. It is possible that Mexican law requires that a certain number of seats be held by women; this is common in other countries, but not in the us. (In fact, the US made Iraq write into their constitution 30% female representation, but we don't have that.)