The Mexican Constitution that today governs us (Mexican and foreigners), ratified February 5, 1917, was a surprising idealistic- and democratic-minded governing umbrella to have been born in the middle of a merciless and cynical Revolution that cost two million lives.  Though made of vulnerable material, that umbrella continues to shed convenient shade over sanguinary, culture-deep corruption.  At least this, to great extent, is the way it has been referred to by a number of government veterans, and a long list of Mexico’s most respected journalists, scholars and authors.  Carlos Fuentes for instance, whose most accessible novel, “The Death of Artemio Cruz,” is an instructive chronicle of the betrayal of the Revolution’s admirable goals.

As two opposition would-be candidates road-test their marketing-designed, made-for-TV presidential campaigns, sober-sided President Felipe Calderon tries to shift attention away from his administration’s signal effort, a three-year war against the drug cartels.That war is clearly judged a failure by most Mexicans. Since Calderon took office December 1, 2006, the war has claimed considerably more – say informed independent observers – than the 15,000-some lives usually reported.

Winter rains change all living things up on the high mountain flanks facing away from Guadalajara’s graceless sprawl. Horses get spooky, cattle more balky as rain-laced wind pivots from its usual eastern entrance to slant in from the south, then the west, raw and crazy.

To many Mexicans, this Republic presently seems to be stalled in easily foreseen, self-concocted chaos.  This is the time of disorderly municipal changes of power.  Nobody’s happy, not even in those municipios where the same party retains office with a new alcalde.