Everyone rides the Metro

I suppose one could say something snarky about this photo of AMLO in a metro station. He’s cutting expenses on campaign travel, or he’s really having to look for campaign venues (and he did give a speech on his train). But I think there’s something more that should be said…

…there’s a cop next to AMLO and for all I know, there may be snipers and guys with machine guns just outside camera range, but think about what this picture says. For all the foreign (and domestic) reports of rampant crime, and violence and political instability, a presidential candidate can be in a crowd without being surrounded by a phalanx of handlers and, whatever else is happening around them, regular people are going to go about their regular  daily business.  I don’t think anyone would have thought of closing down the station, or even clearing the escalators just because an internationally important politician (and major party presidential candidate) was passing through.

In the U.S., we seem to make a big deal out of …. everything. On reason I moved to Mexico is that there are no big deals… people just live their lives. And, unlike the U.S., where the theoretical possibility of something bad happening creates a logic of its own when it comes to public figures interactions for the public, here it’s a sense that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself”.