Sunday, November 19 – Election Day

It’s a crazy day in Tacuati, in most of Paraguay probably. Today’s the day we elect mayors and city council members, and it began with a huge thunderstorm that lasted most of the night and kept everyone in their house til about 10am. Even though the roads are still muddy, people in Tacuati are out and about and voting up a storm. Keep in mind that voting was compulsory during the dictatorship, and that there was only one candidate/party on the ballot. This is only the fourth time in history that Paraguayans have participated in a free election for their mayors.


Everyone over the age of 18 can vote (once registered), and voting for the municipality of Tacuati includes the city and also the surrounding settlements, some as far away as 40k. Voting takes place in the central school here, and another school about 35k away, so obviously transportation is a huge concern for folks who want to vote and live far away. Buses are used to shuttle people back and forth, and candidates and their friends bring pickup truck-fulls of people in to vote as well. There’s a bit of a party atmosphere down at the school right now – it’s very quiet and professional, but people are milling around and chatting, houses near the school are selling lunches, and I heard something about a soccer game later on.


The voting itself seems really efficient and well-managed. Rooms in the school are designated by last names (A-C in room 1, for example) and clearly marked, and there is a voting table inside where someone checks off names and hands over two paper ballots, one for mayor and one for city council, then the ballots are dropped into clear plastic bags hanging from the table so everyone can see there was just one ballot dropped in. In addition to that name checker, there are several other people assigned as monitors to each room, with official badges and everything. They expect the results to be announced by 5pm tonight when the polls close. There were a handful of police and military officers present as well, but they were, as usual, chatting and terere-ing and being generally un-scary.


There are four parties on the ballot, though like the US there are only two main ones, Colorado and Liberale. The party names don’t appear on the ballot (a sample one was posted, that’s how I know) but they are arranged by Lists, so that the liberale candidates are all Lista 2, and the advertisements for weeks were in the party color (blue in this case) and gave the list number and candidates name (also all posters had the candidate’s photo). I’m not sure if you have to vote entirely within the party list, or if you can elect a few candidates from each party for city council.


EVERYONE who can votes here it seems, some people coming from Asuncion nine hours away to cast their ballots. (When you move out of Tacuati to live somewhere else, you can register to vote in your new hometown but most people choose to stay registered in voting in their birthplace, so this weekend is like a big family reunion with tons of people in town). I don’t know the percentage, but it’s certainly higher than the measly percentage in the US who exercise their right to vote.


OK, I’ll confess, I’m part of that percentage that didn’t vote in the US last week. Peace Corps gave us an absentee ballot request form, but I didn’t know if I’m still legally registered in New York, where I still have a drivers license, or in Georgia, from where my mom paid my taxes for me. Rather than sort it out, I just dropped it and, as so many Americans do, took for granted the privilege of voting in a free election. And PS, go dems!


Anyway, the campaigning leading up to today seems to be pretty low key, but it’s hard for me to tell exactly because noone was campaigning to me. I’m on good terms with both candidates – Salvador Torres, the Colorado candidate, is the brother of the current mayor, uncle of my contacts at the Supervision, brother of Elisa my host mom, and has given me a ride on a few occasions and invited me to asados (cookouts). Orlando de Vaca is the Liberale guy, and he owns the carniceria (meat store) where I buy most of my groceries, his sister is my closest neighbor, his cousin is Andrea’s host mom, and he is my landlord. Virtually every house in town has a poster up for one or the other candidate, and right now it looks to me like it’ll be a close race. I believe it’d be the first time a Liberale won here. There has been no campaigning allowed for the past 24 hours – like in Honduras, there’s a sort of “cooling off period” immediately before the election, which is probably a good idea.


I’m not looking forward to tonight, when the winner is announced. I have tried very hard to be supportive of both candidates and the election process in general without taking sides, and Peace Corps prohibits us from participating in any way in politics. Surely after the announcement the winners will do a caravana, a little car-and-moto parade around town, honking horns and generally being obnoxious, so I’ll find out that way who won. And there’s sure to be tons of drinking on both sides. Traditionally the losing candidate and their supporters have some vergüenza, or are ashamed, after the election and don’t go to work or anything that would have them intereact with the winners for a few days, so I’m not sure what tomorrow will be like either.


POSTSCRIPT – 11pm – and they’re literally dancing in the street across from my house. Orlando de la Vaca, the Liberale candidate and my landlord and neighbor, won the election by something like 150 votes. It’s an incredible feat, the first time since the formation of the Liberale party 70 years ago that they’ve won. Even more amazing is when I am told of what the Liberales have gone through as the opposition party during the dictatorship – stories of repression and torture and murder aren’t uncommon among families I know. They’ve put up with so much for so long, and tonight in Tacuati (and apparently in other cities around Paraguay) the opposition party has finally won their chance to govern. I know I’m not supposed to pick sides in the elections, but it’s hard not to side with the underdogs. Especially when this particular underdog has talked of working to bring a hospital, computers, and other changes to Tacuati. Much of that may be typical campaign nonsense, but it’s hard not to feel tonight that change is in the air and that Tacuati may be a very different place a few years from now. Orlando had asked me a few weeks ago to help him, if he won, to learn how to use the computers he plans to by for the mayor’s office. I wonder if my role here will change too, with a new mayor a little more intent on progress. I can’t help but feel excited – a victory for the other party would have meant an affirmation of the old boys, the corrupt and powerful, and the Liberales seem to truly be the party of the people.


It was a strange night .. At 5pm everyone gathered in the street to await the election results. We were told an announcement would be made at the school, and there were hundreds of people gathered there, but for those of us who didn’t want to walk those few blocks we waited on street corners to hear the election results. Every so often we’d hear horns honking and people yelling and wonder if an announcement had been made. Every few houses there’d be a group of people just standing on the street, waiting to hear results. After about 20 minutes, people started driving by on motos, and we’d yell and ask them if they’d heard who’d won. They would yell “lista 2,” which was what my neighbors wanted to hear, but we weren’t sure that they meant that that’s who’d won or if they were just yelling their support for lista 2. Andrea and I went walking around to see if we could gather more official information, but that was the best we could get. It was like taking a survey, as more and more motos went by and said Lista 2 we kept getting more excited and more excited. Andrea and I tried our best to be waiting with our neighbors, and not specifically waiting with members of either political party, and tried to not stay in one place too long so it wouldn’t look like we were supporting either side. It’s hard to be interested but impartial, but I think we managed. Finally a phone call arrived and we knew for sure the Liberale candidate had won (though we’ve still heard conflicting reports on the exact vote totals, it was somewhere around 150 votes separating the 2 candidates!). A few minutes later the caravana started, truckloads and motos full of people yelling and tooting horns and generally being excited. We spent the night drinking and eating dinner at her host mom’s house, where they were celebrating the victory but we could pretend like we were just hanging out with the fam. It’s nearing midnight and the music’s going strong across the way (and there’s occasional horn honking and fireworks too), so I’m thinking I won’t get much sleep tonight. Tomorrow I wonder if the Colorado folks will be bitter or worried for their jobs or secretly happy or what. Their entire world pretty much changed overnight. Whether it changed for the better remains to be seen, though tonight the feeling of progress and change and hope is pretty overwhelming.