 |
|
|
 News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2006 
Mexico Prays for Peace as Election Tension Mounts
 Greg Brosnan - Reuters
| | President Vicente Fox's party has roots in Catholicism, Mexico's dominant religion. While former welfare officer Lopez Obrador says little about his religious beliefs, Calderon is from a devout Catholic family and opposes legalizing abortion. |
Mexican Catholics flocked to a shrine on Saturday to pray for a peaceful election, but not even pious pilgrims were immune to the rising political tension gripping a divided nation before next week's vote.
With leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador holding only a slight poll advantage over conservative ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon in a bitter campaign of tit-for-tat barbs, some fear electoral violence around the July 2 vote.
Carrying banners reading "Unity for Peace," thousands of the faithful clutched icons of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's revered patron saint, walking past reams of campaign posters on their way to her shrine in a working-class northern Mexico City neighborhood.
President Vicente Fox's party has roots in Catholicism, Mexico's dominant religion. While former welfare officer Lopez Obrador says little about his religious beliefs, Calderon is from a devout Catholic family and opposes legalizing abortion, which is banned except in certain cases such as rape.
Some Catholic community groups say the church may be using such hot-button issues to sway voters in favor of Calderon.
As traffic parted for the marchers, the din of car horns was replaced by the soft voices of hundreds of hymn-singing schoolgirls.
Vendors ducked in and out of the procession hawking religious medals and Virgin of Guadalupe souvenirs.
"We want people to vote in peace," said organizer Guadalupe Bustamante. "We are not mixing politics with religion."
But for Monica Benitez, a 43-year-old marketing specialist proudly wearing a rubber bracelet bearing Felipe Calderon's name and the orange, blue and white colors of the ruling National Action Party, the two were inseparable.
Shading herself under an orange parasol, she said Lopez Obrador was a danger to the faith who could trigger political strife and even impose a harsh leftist doctrine banning religion and worship of the Virgin of Guadalupe herself.
"We don't want war, we don't want disturbances ... he wants to take our virgin away," she said. "He's going to do it; Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is crazy."
ABORTION AN ISSUE
A man handed out leaflets saying it was a sin to vote for a candidate who favored abortion - another apparent plug for Calderon, even though Lopez Obrador has not said he backs legalizing it.
While not all the pilgrims wore their allegiances so openly, few appeared to be fans of Lopez Obrador.
When a group of middle-aged women began giving out leaflets urging people to vote for Calderon, many gladly accepted them until organizers politely asked them to stop.
But when an old man offered yellow flyers bearing Lopez Obrador's smiling face, he was immediately engulfed by a crowd shrieking "Away! Away!."
Scuttling away after narrowly escaping a beating, he shouted back: "What happened to 'Love thy neighbor?"'
Not everyone was concerned about politics.
As priests said Mass from a balcony in the Virgin of Guadalupe basilica, Mazahua indigenous women wearing pink embroidered dresses sang a prayer for peace and harmony.
Listening in the shade with his wife and grandchildren, Jose Casildo, a 66-year-old cleaner who had come from a poor parish on the northern edge of the city, said Lopez Obrador had his vote, but he had not come to pray for his victory.
"I want a clean, peaceful election, whoever wins," he said. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us