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Historical Election Day In Mexico

On November 7, just a week ago, Mexico celebrated one of the most important elections in Mexico's history. No, these were not presidential election ... but close! These were elections to choose the presidential candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the ruling political party for over 70 years. This elections were special because it is the first time the PRI chooses its candidate in this way. Before this historical day, the President of Mexico was the only person who decided who was going to be the next presidential candidate for the PRI, this infamous tradition was called in Mexico 'el dedazo' (the pick of the finger). The candidates in this historical election were:

Manuel Bartlett	Francisco Labastida	Roberto Madrazo	H. Roque Villanueva

In this ocassion the consultancy firm Mitofsky, which is the firm hired to perform the exit polls in order tho have preliminar results of the election, requested the help of hundreds of volunteers to cover the many different districts in which Mexico is divided. In Chiapas we were forty the people that covered the districts in the Chiapas' highlands. We travelled on Saturday the 6th, to the city of Comalapa, an hour distance from Comitan (near Guatemala). It took us nearly six hours from Tuxtla Gutierrez to Comalapa. We arrived approximately at 14:30 and there we received our instructions on how to proceed in the polls the following day. The job consisted in filling out a sheet of paper where the names of the PRI candidates, the null votes, and the null ballots were printed. After having written out all the data we had to call Mexico City to inform Mitofsky and then they would inform the media (in this case Televisa) of the preliminary results.

We left from Comalapa around 18:00 and then the group was split. Some went to Chicomuselo, others went to the highlands villages, and my group went to Motozintla where we stayed overnight. The wether was nice to us, the temperature being of about 15 Celsius. The small town is surrounded by mountains, this makes Motozintla a special place to visit.




On Sunday, November the 7th, the Election day. We left town and went to the village named Belisario Dominguez, this is a village of very difficult access. We went to the Common called Francisco I. Madero, we travelled about one hour to get to this place, the road is a road of dirt and stones, it is in very bad condition because of the heavy rain of last month. Th Common has less than 400 inhabitants, it is loacated in a valley surrounded by mountains and rivers. The place is completely isolated from the rest of civilization. When we arrived the poll station were already opened and we had to wait until they close at 18:00 to start counting the ballots. Thse gave a total of about 300 votes. The results from this district were:

Manuel Barlett: 9 votes
Francisco Labastida: 117 votes
Roberto Madrazo: 110 votes
Roque Villanueva: 4 votes
Null votes: 39
Null ballots: 77

The winner in this district: Francisco Labastida by a small margin. However in the municipality of Motozintla, where we spent the night before, the winner was Roberto Madrazo

This was a very interesting adventure for me. I saw places I had never seen before, that I had never imagine the poor conditions in which this people live. But despite everything they live happy (or so it seems) and just because of that I really hope they receive all the help they deserve from the person they elected.

The winner in this historical election nation wide was Francisco Labastida. I only have to thank for the opportunity that was given to me to be part of history itself.

*****

Edition 1

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