The Mexican election is on Sunday and the whole country is in a state of tense anticipation. People are being careful who they discuss their political ideas with for fear of getting into arguments. My husband, for the first time in our marriage, is actually going to vote and even believes that his candidate is worthy and capable. I am not not a Mexican citizen and so cannot vote.

A couple of weeks ago my husband plastered both our cars with political stickers. Fine with me, when I lived in the US I usually wore my politics on my sleeve and on my bumper. So I’ve been driving around for weeks advertising someone I can’t vote for. Whatever, no biggie.

But the funny thing is that I’ve had several friends come up to me and get in my face about my bumper stickers. In each case the person has been downright rude and accusatory, and they even seemed to actually be afraid of my views. And in each case the person knows I can’t vote anyway so why do they bother confronting me? I’ve been walking around wondering why people are so rigid and so protective here about their political views?

In the US we’re pretty well used to the idea that we might have different political ideas from our neighbors and our friends. In my case having different political ideas won’t keep me from being friends with someone. It probably WILL keep me from talking to them very much about politics but that’s the extent of it.

But here in Mexico people are very protective of their political ideas. They care very, very much whether their friends are with them or against them. And I think the reason is that in reality democracy is a very new thing in Mexico.

The PRI ruled Mexico for over 70 years. And even though there were elections everyone knew they were rigged and the PRI would win. People didn’t expect fair elections and so their own political ideas didn’t count. When Vicente Fox, from the PAN, was elected it represented a real change in Mexican politics. It meant that the PRI wasn’t in control of the elections any longer. And it meant that if people voted it might mean something, it might have value.

So here we are about to have what everyone hopes is the second fair presidential election in the history of Mexico, and now people CARE! So that’s good and all but it seems to me the next lesson these folks need to learn is that the thing that will make their democracy really strong will be diversity of opinion…but until they figure that out I guess I should expect to be accosted for my bumper stickers.

So yesterday we went to our neighbors’ house to suffer while Mexico lost their World Cup soccer bid against Argentina. Mexico played better than I expected and the game was a pretty good fight from start to finish. Mexico appeared to my soccer-naive eyes like they made more errors than Argentina, and their passing was weaker and less clean. But they also had more umph than Argentina. I’d love to see how well Mexico would do if they cleaned up their passing and were a little faster.

When it all ended everyone was sort of sad and down. Except for me, since I’m not a big soccer fan and I’m not Mexican it’s easy for me to get over a predictable loss like this one. My neighbor (the husband) is the kind of guy who turns up the music when he’s feeling low. So pretty soon it was cranked way up and everyone was dancing. It was therapeutic and made me remember how much I used to love dancing. I fully plan to drag my husband off dancing as soon as possible.

After everyone else left and after we got tired of dancing the conversation turned to the dreaded Mexican election! My neighbors, it turns out, have very different political ideas from my husband and I. I found myself getting easily frustrated with my neighbor’s (the wife’s) narrow point of view and her shortsighted understanding of economics and of the dynamics of being poor. She believes what a lot of right wingers believe, which is that poor people are to blame for their place in the world. She doesn’t see that capitalism requires, by it’s nature, a lower class to exploit. I spent some good energy trying to share my point of view with her. And she listened pretty well. But I think that fundamentally she believes that the government should not be in the business of helping people in need, regardless of their ability to make positive change in their lives without help. All I know is that the rich people I know don’t need any help to get ahead, but the poor people I know could sure use a leg up.

I know it’s kind of after-the-fact but I think I should say something about my recent re-entry into the US. It was my first trip to the US in a year and my first couple of hours were “interesting”.

The first thing that hit me as we traveled was just how damn close Miami is to Cancun. I swear the plane just took off and then it was landing. Kiddo and I didn’t even have a chance to finish the puzzle in the back of the airline magazine.

When we got there we had to go through US Immigration. Why was I nervous? Why does law enforcement in my own country make me nervous, but in Mexico the cops don’t worry me at all?

The Immigration agent did the usual test for kidnapping thing on my kid, asking her who she was traveling with and what my name was. She’s been through this test enough times now that she knows to use my name, the first few times she’s would tell the agent she was traveling with Mom and then the agent would have to ask what mom’s name is. Now she tells them exactly what they want to hear…none of that kid stuff. Immigration agents don’t intimidate her…

Once we cleared Immigration and Customs we had a long layover in the Miami airport. Somehow this warranted the acquisition of a pack of gum. So kid ran off to get some. I gave her a dollar, which had been in my wallet for a year, but it was not enough. The only pack of gum she could find was $1.75. I told her that unless it was made with gold dust I wasn’t giving her more money for gum…so we skipped the gum in favor of another American favorite…overpriced pizza! Somehow it was easier to justify $5 for a personal size pizza than $1.75 for 10 pieces of gum. At least it was supposed to be food.

After we got over the sticker shock issue we settled into the airport layover routine. For me this involved getting a headache right away. I quickly realized that the reason for my headache was the fact that I had to filter out lots of background babble. You see, here in Mexico, most conversations I overhear in public are in Spanish. Which means, since my Spanish sucks the big one, that I can easily IGNORE them! Returning to the US means that all of a sudden I can understand the crap going on around me! What an invasion I tell you! I don’t want to overhear some uptight guy on the phone rescheduling an appointment with some deadbeat client…and I don’t want to understand when some mom is trying to cajole her children into saying thank you for whatever it was they didn’t appreciate! Jeez, just writing about it gives me another headache.

In fact the only thing that saved me from going mad in a red hot minute was the fact that this was, after all, only Miami. Miami is a bilingual place and fully half the overhead conversations were in Spanish. Imagine if I had landed in some other, more white, more English, more American airport. They would have had to take me out on a stretcher…swear to god.

So we waited around for 3 hours in Miami and then we took another flight to Orlando. That trip lasted all of 37 minutes, a real thrill I tell you, all the danger of taking off and landing and none of that middle part they call flying. Forget the puzzles. Forget the drink service, just keep that seat in the upright and locked position for the whole trip.

The Orlando airport was a hoot. I have NEVER, in my whole LIFE, waited longer to get my bags! What in the world did they do with our bags? I sure hope our bags had more fun than we did. You know those boards they have that are supposed to tell you which baggage carousel your flight’s bags are on? Well in Orlando the person responsible for updating those boards has Alzheimer’s…one carousel was marked for our flight, and I personally saw (1) bag from our flight doing the round trip there. The next carousel over was not marked for our flight, and I saw (2) bags from our flight over there. Well, after a full hour our bags finally showed up, 3 carousels away from the one marked for our flight. I’m just glad I noticed…otherwise we might still be there.