Election Day

One of the things that I was congratulating myself on before coming to Guatemala was that I would be absent from the US for most of the run-up to our presidential elections, therefore avoiding most of the campaigning, which gets old fast. There's nothing like slipping out of the country to avoid our political skirmishes, I felt equally satisfied when I was in France for the year during the Clinton impeachment and only had a cursory knowledge of the happenings. Little did I realize, though, that I would be stepping into Guatemala right in time for their second round of Presidential elections. Apparently there was something like 14 candidates for the first round around 2 months ago, and two candidates were eligible for the second round, which just took place on Sunday. I was pretty convinced that the candidate promoting himself as "La Mano Dura", the Firm Hand, was going to win. Maybe this was because it was his theme song that was stuck in my mind from the trucks driving around blaring it throughout the day. In fact, one of the best things about being at Lucky's house is that she lives on the outskirts of her town and so there were no promotional trucks tooling around and I got a little respite from the song. It is pretty catchy, though, while I didn't even know what the other candidate's theme song was. Maybe I thought he would win because I spent considerable time around Guatemala City, which turns out to be one of the few areas where he did win, and which is also where the primary newspaper is published. Well, whatever the cause, I thought Mano Dura would win, meaning the return of military power to Guatemala since he was a General. According to my landlady, this meant soldiers would go into villages again and do whatever they wanted such as raping young girls. The election called for tough measures, though, such as the prohibition of the sale of alcohol from the evening before the election until the morning after. I suppose they figure that will increase the voter turn-out, or decrease the possibility of buying votes. And in addition to signing their names when they went to the polling place to avoid people voting twice, everyone also rubbed their index finger in a dark ink to mark themselves as having already voted. Well, in the end, much to my surprise and perhaps to the surprise of the capital dwellers, the other candidate won, the one from the Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza party. There were firecrackers in the street, there was hooting and hollering, flag waving, people were happy. It seems like another of case of voting for the less worse candidate, but that can result in a big difference.