Thursday, May 5, 2011

Happy Cinco de Mayo = Happy Birthday, PRD

Today is Cinco de Mayo, which is also the birthday of the PRD: The party was officially established on May 5, 1989, nearly a year after the 1988 electoral fraud that might or might not have deprived Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas of the Mexican presidency.

As El Universal reports, the party is indeed undergoing a process of "repositioning," or the separation of waters between its main poles, which are now aligned essentially around either Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) or Marcelo Ebrard. Unless we will actually see the promise being kept - that either will step down in favor of the other who is ahead in the polls - it is hard to imagine that the left will arrive at the 2012 election united.

As it were, I'll be in El Paso, TX for the day - and I will cheer both the Mexican army's victory over  the French in Puebla on May 5, 1862, but also the birth of Mexico's only real leftwing party, the Partido de la Revolución Democrática. Happy birthday, PRD.