Elections in Mexico this Sunday. Key Elections.

This coming Sunday, June 4th, there will be elections in Mexico. Not presidential; only three states will be voting for new governors (and a fourth will be electing some 200 mayors). But these elections — the results in one state in particular — will shape the future of Mexico, for at least the next decade.

Elections for mayor are happening in the state of Veracruz, and elections for governor in Nayarit, Coahuila, and the state of Mexico. Yes, we have a state called after the country; someone must've run out of naming ideas... No, not really. It's more like the country is named after the state—or, actually, the city. In brief, when the Spanish conquered this land they'd call La Nueva España (New Spain, stretching from Nicaragua all the way up to British Columbia), they divided it into reinos, which translates literally as 'kingdoms' but it's in practice more like provinces, and one of these provinces, because it included the Mexica capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan (now rather in ruins), was named México. After independence from Spain came about and Mexico City was proclaimed the capital of this brand-new nation (1824), the city separated from the state into the Distrito Federal, DF for short (kind of like Washington, DC ). And so we ended up with both a city and a state (and a country) named México.

La Nueva España, circa 1821. At one point, the territory also included Cuba and the Philippines.

Back to the present. As I write (and as you read), the electoral process is going on in the state of México—and it promises to be one of the dirtiest ever. Which, if you know anything about Mexican elections, you know that's saying a lot. For as long as I can remember, and as long as my parents can remember, elections in México have always been 'arranged'. We all knew upfront who the new president would be, who the new governors, mayors, members of parliament, all of them, simply by virtue of the party they belonged to. The PRI held on to its dictatorship hand-me-down rule for 70 years by becoming masters of electoral fraud—and, of course, this resulted in a growing cynical defeatism in the population, which played right into their hands.

Jackie: Film Reviews from the Curaçao Film Festival #ciffr

It took me long enough, didn't it? Finally—finally—I'm here with the first review. Of the first film in our festival roster. (I could've started with my favorite and worked my way through to my least favorite, I guess, but—given the obvious time limitations in my blogging—it just seemed faster to go down the list in order. Plus, this way, you as the reader won't know in advance whether the review is a positive or negative one. Fine, there are no real negative reviews—except one—but there are a few four-stars-with-caveats.)

The film festival opened on Wednesday April 5 officially, but one week earlier, on March 29, they had a pre-screening of what the festival organizers expected to be one of the films in highest demand: Pablo Larraín's Jackie.

I am shameless... (And I apologize.)

So much for my new year's resolution to not let more than two weeks go by without posting... It's going on 3 months since my last post here, and more than that on the dog blog; it's a wonder I even remember how to. Shame on me.

Much has happened to blog about, and plenty of times I began composing drafts of posts... I just never got around to finishing them before things changed. Again. I got a job, which upended my 'carefully balanced' schedule of dog walks and writing and (at least the intention of) blogging. I've since quit said job (yeah, short-lived experiment; one learns more from mistakes than from success). Two of the four puppies we took in as fosters back in December are still not adopted, which means they're still here, and as part of our effort to make them more adoptable I've begun taking them to training (well, one of them, since that's all I can afford time- and money-wise). I'm still not done with the dog book, but over the last two weeks I made some serious progress. I hope to have that done and delivered to the publisher for another round of edits before the month is out.

The dog book cover, as designed by Everytime Press

Oh, and we had the film festival here in Curaçao two weeks ago, April 5th to 9th. Forty-seven absolutely extraordinary films (well, except one). Impossible to see them all, obviously, but we did manage, with careful logistics planning that included Cor taking off two whole days from work (and one extra one after the festival, just to rest up), to see fifteen of them. Sixteen, if you count the preview film, Jackie, which screened one week before the festival began (and again during the festival, but seeing it beforehand allowed us to fit in one more film over that busy weekend).

Our film-fest booty, courtesy of Cor (who, unlike me, remembers to take photos of these things for posterity):
tickets grouped and stapled by day, from Wed Apr 5th through Sunday Apr 9th.

And I desperately want to share those fifteen (fine, sixteen) films we saw. They were thought-provoking and gorgeous: their narrative styles, the cinematography, the diversity of stories and points of view, their timeliness and value in view of current events. So, as of this week, I'll start posting a review every few days here. No, I won't make the mistake of committing to a certain day of the week or even a fixed (-ish) schedule; we all know how well that's worked out for me in the past. But I do want to share them, for you film-lovers out there, of course, but also for me, as a sort of journal record of the impact these films had on me.

So... See you soon!