Wednesday

Sunshine is off on a business trip to Durango as of this morning. The capital of Durango State is nestled right up against the other Sierra Madres, just about as far away from the Pacific coast as I am from the Atlantic. Durango is primarily known to tourists as the place where Hollywood built all its Mexican sets during the heyday of cinematic westerns. There are movie sets still crouched in Durango's rocky landscape, moldering away in the Chihuahua desert. Sometime when the trip is longer than one eight-hour workday between two seven-hour drives, I'd like to go there and see that. Today, however, I will sit here and read the news to you: there was a federale crackdown outside the Chamber of Deputies in México City Monday injuring fourteen pro-PRD demonstrators and sparking instances of reprisal. ALMO urges his forces to react non-violently. Yesterday, hundreds of riot police sealed off the congress building with barricades and steel walls anticipating outgoing President Fox's national address to be held there September first. This is just the first date of concern in the upcoming month. September sixth is the day the tribunal must legally announce a president elect, and the sixteenth is the annual Independence Day celebration, usually marked by the president ringing the bell in the National Palácio bordering the Zócalo. But the PAN leader is persona non grata in that Zócalo, now. In 1810 Miguel Hidalgo rang the same bell on the same day to rally a popular revolt against the Spanish in the little town of Dolores in Guanajuato State. If you're listening, Mr. Fox, I say it is high time the celebration moved back to its roots. Of course, he'd have to ring the replica they installed when the real bell was moved to the DF. [Cavin]