Famed Mexican author Elena Poniatowska set out on Sunday to vote just like every other Mexican citizen who felt the weight of their civic duty. Elena, like others, was an eyewitness to shocking irregularities at her local polling place, and wrote it up in an editorial called “Si se enojan los volcanes” in yesterday’s La Jornada newspaper. Given that this is the kind of reporting you won’t read about in U.S. mainstream media and that not all of our readers read Spanish, we’re translating the entire piece:

“Just before 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, July 2nd, Paula Haro, my daughter, and Lorenzo Hagerman, my son in-law, stood in line to vote on Avenida Revolución, at the Casa de la Cultura Jaime Sabines. Since Paula and Lorenzo don’t live in Mexico City but in Mérida they looked for a special polling place and I accompanied them before I went to my polling place in la colonia del Carmen. By 2:00 pm they (Paula and Lorenzo) still had not voted (because the polling place opened late and there were a lot of voters), as two police officers counted those who were waiting in line out in the sun and said “There are only 750 ballots so there aren’t enough.” In the line appeared a whole bunch of nuns (some about 80 years old) and none of them were denied voting, but at 2:30 p.m. the rest of the line had to give up their chance to vote (after waiting for several hours) because of the lack of ballots. While many went over to the entrance door to yell “We want to vote, we want to vote”, they had no other choice than to disperse.

This was no isolated case and there are more and more reports like this, on top of those that have reported that even with a voter registration card in hand their names were not on the list. If we add together all those who weren’t able to vote for one reason or another — which is in and of itself a violation of their civil rights — wouldn’t the results (which according to the IFE has Calderón leading by 385,000 votes) be reverted?

If we add to this the months of the television terror campaign in which Andrés Manuel López Obrador was presented as the greatest danger, and if we add as well the threats of loss of homes and belongings, the conspiracy and the purchase of votes done in the old PRI style, the daily slandering, and all the ruses of the past that the PAN brought back to life, all the illegal interventions on the part of President Fox causing perennial interruptions in the elections, we Mexicans might have woken up to just another Monday, July 3rd, and not this one which seeks to give us more of the same.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been, in addition, victim of “friendly fire” from the so-called revolutionary left. If Patricia Mercado would have been as gracious as Heberto Castillo in 1988, who recognized defeat by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, it would be impossible to disguise the difference in votes in favor of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. However, we can’t despair nor resign ourselves. Not all is done. We are mobilized, we have the power of response, we aren’t going to accept that ballots be burned like in 1988, our indignation is red hot, and we are still volcanos under the white summit of Popocatépetl and Ixtacíhuatl.”

– Elena Poniatowska

Poniatowska has been harshly criticized by Lopez Obrador’s opponents because of her public chiding of PAN members who she says “slander” the candidate via a television commercial she did for his coalition (View the video on YouTube).

Via / La Jornada