Democracy in Mexico

Marc Lacey in the NY Times, reporting on elections in Mexico:

One of the nation’s most powerful factions — the country’s drug lords — had attempted to hijack the process. Through bloodshed, they managed to keep voter turnout down in some states and scare off many poll workers, prompting one former president of the Federal Election Institute, Luis Carlos Ugalde, to lament that this was the first Mexican election in which drug dealers played a visible role in interrupting the process.

But the polling went on and the results were accepted, with voters appearing to steer away from candidates with perceived links to traffickers. In the border state of Tamaulipas, the populace seemed particularly intent on declaring that drug lords should not decide elections, voting in the brother of a candidate who was murdered less than a week before Election Day by a wide margin.

Narco violence in Mexico is a tragedy, but against this backdrop the courage of the people shows plainly: "Only when the year grows cold do we see that the pine and cypress do not fade."