Among politicians of different ideological affiliations, it has become fashionable to invoke presumed higher forces to resolve what local politics cannot. The formula seems simple: assign, deliver or consecrate public affairs to gods and their auxiliaries so they become co-responsible administrators, auditors, or at least provide a deterrent shield. Religion has been brought to the center of politics in an attempt to disguise or soften the failure of government and the collapse of the national political class that never manages to get anything right except what benefits their particular interests.
The legal letter [Constitution] that has given form to a pact of republican co-existence with separation of Church and State, is thus converted into a museum piece without visits. And it opens the way for a new Vatican wave that--after having supported the PRI in its return to power--believes that the time has come to collect on the agreed interests through a greater presence in the schools, public squares, streets and the communications media and with a shameless 'propping up' of certain politicians by the statistically dominant religious elite.
On April 20 in the city of Chihuahua, the state's governor spoke in an auditorium filled with over 10,000 people. The principal seats were occupied by archbishops and bishops from the northern region. There the PRI Governor pronounced the ritual words:
"I, César Duarte Jáquez, hereby consecrate myself, my family, and my public service in the society. I ask the Sacred Heart of Jesus to listen and accept my consecration, that the intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary might help me, I deliver to God and His divine will everything we are, everything that we have in the state of Chihuahua."
Before this "surrender", Duarte asked God's forgiveness "for everything that has happened in the past in Chihuahua." The mayor of the capital and the local presidents of the Legislative and Judicial powers were witnesses. An enormous image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, owned by the Autonomous University of Chihuahua, had passed through the entire audience before being installed at the front. Emmanuel Acha and his son Alexander performed a pop version of The Guadalupana, and the actor and singer Manuel Capetillo also participated.
In his turn at the microphone, the Bishop of the Tarahumara, Rafael Sandoval, explained what had happened:
"To consecrate means to give something or someone to God, in this case the state of Chihuahua (...) It is to introduce [God] into your environment so that everything might be of God. Now, it belongs entirely to God" (quoted from Alejandro Salmon's note published in El Diario de Chihuahua, http://bit.ly/16Yfjzt and Carlos Martínez García's article in La Jornada, http://bit.ly/17DlTuD).
A year earlier, another Duarte, the one from Veracruz (a kind of patron saint of journalists and protesters, the immaculate electoral male, practiced in praying the rosary of SEDESOL [Secretariat of Social Development, whose head was involved in vote-buying scandal in Veracruz]) had attended the consecration ceremony for the state of Veracruz, led by Bishop Luis Felipe Gallardo Martin del Campo in the cathedral of the beautiful port. Governor Javier Duarte de Ochoa claimed that he attended this ritual as a citizen in the exercise of his constitutional rights and, when interviewed by the press, spoke of the importance of promoting good values in society. As noted in the Diario de Xalapam, the event was attended by the Governor's mother, Cecilia de Ochoa Guasti; the president of the Board Salvemos [Let's Save the] Cathedral, Tere Malpica; Mayor Carolina Gudiño Corro; Anselmo Estandía Colom and the Catholic leader John Rick Miller (http:/ / bit.ly/11bGKxS).
Miller was a "corporate executive and worked in the government of the United Kingdom until his total conversion through the Virgin Mary twenty-one years ago". He has dedicated himself to apostolic activities in various parts of the world, including:
"In Colombia, following discussions with the country's Cardinal Primate, His Eminence Pedro Rubiano and with the President, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, there was a renewal of the consecration of the nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and a consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary" (http:// bit.ly/13vvKwJ).This weekend the mayor of the city of Monterrey took her turn, with her recipe widely distributed across the Internet:
"I, Margarita Alicia Arellanes, entrust the city of Monterrey to our Lord Jesus Christ so that His kingdom of peace and blessing might be established."
Arellanes has a bachelor's degree in law and social sciences from the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon and did "graduate studies in constitutional law and public law at the University of Salamanca, Spain" (bit.ly/11pw9yb). She is accused of being part of a political group financed by the casino entrepreneur Juan José Rojas Cardona and in which participated the Larrazábal brothers, famous for the cheese scandal and for gambling in Monterrey.
Before Arellanes, the mayor of Guadalupe, Nuevo León, the PRI member César Garza, made a similar "surrender", as can be seen at http://bit.ly/17Dpby4. In the municipality of Benito Juárez, also in Nuevo León, the PAN member Rodolfo Ambriz Oviedo did the same thing (http://bit.ly/ZFY9Bh).
In Baja California, the mayor of Ensenada, the PRI's Enrique Pelayo Torres, delivered the keys of the city to Jesus Christ (http://bit.ly/165Zmn2). And not to be forgotten are the religious tones used by AMLO [Andrés Manuel López Obrador, candidate from the PRD] in his second presidential campaign, not only regarding his loving republic. And now there is the coincidence of Miguel Ángel Mancera appearing in the atrio of the Metropolitan Cathedral in order to develop a campaign of voluntary disarmament. Amen. ... Spanish original
*Julio Hernández López was born in Coahuila and deeply rooted in San Luis Potosí. An active member of the Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI) for 16 years, he was Chairman of the State Executive Committee in San Luis Potosi from 1994-1995, the year when he was deposed and later resigned from the PRI. During the federal election of 2006, he was one of the principal complainants of alleged fraud in elections that favored Felipe Calderón. He is known as a critic against the television duopoly in Mexico and the influence it has had on imposing perceptions of reality upon society, including the idea of "the 'supposed' election fraud" in 2006. He writes a daily political column for La Jornada.