VivirLatino

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.

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