Wedesday

An update of yesterday's news: México's election commission, IFE, is resolutely planning to burn up all of the evidence from the recent election.* This after official requests from both parties to preserve the ballots for further study. IFE is the organization that ran the disputed vote in July, and I imagine the organization's neutrality is in some question since the proof of their viability as non-partisan arbiters will be heading up in smoke soon. The actual date remains unannounced. This erasure of the disputed Mexican democratic status' recent footprints is the letter of a sixteen year old law, and is scheduled to commence sometime before Calderon swears the oath of office in December. More bodies: the deputy director of state police in Ciudad Victoria was killed yesterday.* On Monday, a freak fire broke out in the nation's largest Fireworks Market, outside México City, vaporizing many corrugated vending stalls.* This comes just when fireworks are needed most: the celebration of Mexican independence starts with the Grito de Delores shortly before midnight on Friday. No one was hurt in this year's firework disaster. This year's? Yeah, a similar fire broke out last year in the same market, on Independence Day no less, when a patron puckishly lit off firecrackers too close to the billions of large paper tubes of gunpowder you might expect to find in a fireworks market. Hundreds of stalls were destroyed as the fire roared quickly throughout, prompting an effort to rebuild with newer, safer materials to keep the same thing from happening again this year. Tonight, we ate at Pacifica with a couple traveling through Monterrey on the way to teach in Durango. If anyone reading this is ever in San Pedro, get the lobster burritos at Pacifica. Hardly traditional food, but nonetheless.... [Cavin]