Politics Has Language of Its Own in Mexico

As official results from the July 2 Baja California elections dribbled in at a desultory pace last week, opposition leaders accused the ruling party of deliberately employing dilatory tactics to prolong the process.

“It’s clearly deliberate tortuguismo, “ charged a spokesman for the National Action Party, or PAN, using a word that translates literally as “turtleism,” or deliberate foot-dragging.

Mexico’s peculiar political universe has developed its own vocabulary, and many of the most intriguing phrases have been on display in Baja in recent weeks during one of the nation’s most-contested and liveliest elections.

Words such as tortuguismo are often employed in non-electoral contexts, but such expressions take on special meaning in Mexico at ballot time, when linguistic cunning is at a premium. Nowhere is that more evident than in discussing electoral fraud, for such activity is a highly specialized field here.

One example: Traditionally, ruling party loyalists from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, have arrived at the ballot boxes carrying so-called tacos --numerous ballots, premarked in favor of PRI candidates, that are rolled up in the form of the tasty Mexican treat.

Magicians of the Election

Fraud is broadly known at election time as alquimia, or alchemy, and its practitioners revered as alquimistas (alchemists), magos (magicians) or artistas (artists). Theirs is the power to turn defeats into lopsided victories, inflating registration lists with multiple names and with the identities of the dead and non-existent.

Tactics of electoral chicanery have advanced with the modern age. So-called fraude cibernetico, or cybernetic fraud, refers to computer breakdowns that conveniently favor the ruling party, buying time or resulting in altered results.

In part because of such tactics, PRI leaders have long been accustomed to what is known in the border area as the electoral carro completo, literally, “full car,” which is better understood north of the international boundary as the clean sweep.

Although PAN ultimately emerged triumphant, critics say that wasn’t because PRI stalwarts didn’t try to employ their old electoral shenanigans, a hallmark of which are the hornos crematorios, or crematory ovens, where officials have overseen the incinerations of opposition ballots.

On election day, opposition leaders were out in force, attempting to prevent any large-scale fraud by PRI loyalists. They attempted to have monitors present at each of the state’s almost 1,200 casillas, or voting precincts.

Thus, early on the morning of July 2, PAN vote-watchers stationed outside of a PRI-affiliated neighborhood reported the departures of suspected mapaches, or raccoons, as thieves who steal and stuff ballot boxes are known.

“We’re seeing the same old carrusel (carrousel),” bemoaned one opposition leader, referring to the practice in which bus and carloads of PRI loyalists are driven from precinct to precinct, casting ballots numerous times.

The carrousel riders, noted Mauricio Gonzalez de la Garza, a columnist with the Mexicali-based daily La Voz de La Frontera, are also variously known as votantes rotatorios, or rotating voters, and ejercitos galopantes de votacion, or “galloping vote armies.”

In the Tijuana neighborhood known as Colonia Sanchez Taboada, opposition observers discovered another old friend: The infamous casilla caminante, or walking precinct, which shows up in an area where it’s not supposed to be, ensuring that only the cognoscenti--PRI supporters--are able to find it and vote there.

‘Pregnant’ Ballot Boxes

Then, of course, there are the so-called casillas madrugadoras, or early morning precincts, whose boxes are already stuffed with ballots marked for the PRI by the time voting begins in the morning. Such stuffed ballot boxes are also known as embarazadas , or pregnant.

In the same Tijuana neighborhood where the walking precincts occurred, opposition leaders charged, the PRI resorted to so-called election day tortuguismo, or delays. Huge numbers of voters who lived in other areas were assigned to vote in that community, resulting in long lines that served to discourage area residents from exercising their franchise.

But if voting precincts can walk why can’t ballot boxes dance? Indeed, a few days after the vote count began, a Mexicali newspaper headline spoke of reports of “Anforas Danzantes,” or dancing ballot boxes, at the Tijuana school where all of the city’s returns were being kept under Army guard.

Apparently, quick-working mapaches, those sly raccoons, had attempted to grab some of the authentic ballot boxes and replace them with “pregnant” ones. Their plans were foiled, however, when journalists from a local weekly were on the spot and attempted to photograph the spectacle, scaring them away.

Now, with the Mexican government’s avowed determination to clean up its elections, maybe the need for such tactics will cease. “The magicians and the alchemy artists would then be without work,” said columnist Gonzalez. But not necessarily. “Democracy is not perfect,” Gonzalez noted.