On your marks, ready? Out!

A birth.

Of the 363 days that will last in the battle to direct the destinies of our nation, more than two-thirds have already passed—like a fast drone.

In just 93 days, in the solitude of the voting booth, every Mexican of legal age will be able to conjugate the verb to vote as they please: some will opt for homage and support;

others will cross out condemnation and rejection.

The start of the electoral campaign, live

Morena's followers fill the Zócalo waiting for Claudia Sheinbaum

Handkerchiefs are waved in farewell to the 41 days of inter-campaign.

They have fulfilled their mission: to appease the guerrilla war that raged within the two sides that are currently disputing the largest election in the contemporary history of Mexico.

Today, all the candidates - the good, the bad, the worst, the drawn and the failed ones - as well as the presidential hopefuls, Sheinbaum and Gálvez, remain firm in their positions: ready to start the race to the sound of the opening shot. .

The third candidate, Álvarez Máynez, we are told, is still in the stadium locker room.

His false third way wasn't even enough for him to go out and warm up.

We will miss him neither in the competition nor in this text.

Pay attention to the status of the contenders.

Both show signs of wear and some fatigue.

Throughout their journey through the nebulous terrain of the inter-campaign, both exhibited muscle, staggers, winks and the occasional grumble.

I start with Gálvez, who from the beginning of the inter-campaign - due to strategy, necessity or mishmash - had a notable presence in the media.

With 24 points below his opponent, it was double or nothing.

Kill or die.

That day or never.

The woman from Hidalgo began the intermediate stage of the electoral process on the rise, after the heavy media coverage that supported her pre-campaign closing speech.

One of Argentine affiliation, which she left her supporters rejoicing by considering it the first serious speech of the campaign and which fought for nouns that no one can in good faith repudiate: life

, truth and freedom

.

That portentous sermon demonstrated that Marko Cortés's confession of corruption—now distant and unpunished—had caused a miracle.

As a result of the renewed antagonism between the leadership of Acción Nacional and Alejandro Moreno, Gálvez—blessed be God—stopped serving two masters and gave the coup de grace to his hesitant movements: he moved to the right, carried a crucifix, changed the huipil for the tailored suit, adopted a libertarian motto and was photographed with Felipe Calderón.

His first campaign rally will be—it couldn't be any other way—in Irapuato, Guanajuato.

Let there be no doubt about the prevalence of the blue and white principles that govern it.

The opposition candidate also began—interrupted, resumed, and interrupted again—her Truth Conferences;

She hired Argentine farms to position her digital agenda and, in a controversial attempt, she ran abroad to shout “Wolf, wolf!”

and then be chased with arrows.

A double was enough for him to escape that sudden battle in New York alive.

Her memory of the remedy lasted longer than that of the runner.

For Sheinbaum's part, the decrease in his media presence during the break was notable: less exposure leads to fewer mistakes.

Her appearances were limited to controlled environments and intensified towards the final days with a series of interviews on the harshest radio news programs.

She came out well.

During the inter-campaign, the former head of government chose—in the face of the mocking eyes of those who call her Calca—to follow the advice of her mentor: why settle for traveling the country three times when you can do it four?

While the Morena candidate was accumulating kilometers on the odometer, the president could not sit still and chose to shake the chicken coop three times.

The first shake-up shook Congress with two dozen constitutional reforms—always one more provocative than the previous—challenging Sheinbaum to reconcile them, sometimes shoehorned, with the hundred proposals that emerged from his own Dialogues for Transformation.

Nervous laughter, sometimes out of touch.

The tension between the candidate's conciliatory program and presidential radicalism was noted throughout the country.

The second shock came with the president's morning suggestion regarding his administration's interventions on decisions of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation.

They showered vituperation and hatred.

The third and last rattling—due to lack of time—involved the violation of personal data protection laws to the detriment of a New York Times reporter who sought to disseminate an unsubstantiated report on the alleged illegal financing of the president's electoral campaigns.

The move generated both unanimous public complaints and a radical change in the topic of conversation.

Point for the president.

But not everything was imbalance and contradiction.

During the inter-campaign, the candidates sometimes achieved some symmetry.

Thus, for example, both visited Pope Francis: a movement as synchronized as it was judicious.

A few weeks ago, half of right-wing voters expressed their preference for the official candidate, while ten percent less favored the PAN candidate.

Could either of them have been able to capture some point in her Vatican visit?

Along the same compensatory lines, for the second day of the campaigns, both sides will have paraded with their own human entourage boasting the popular support that backs them: the pink squad led by whoever was the president of the electoral institute (it would take time to explain the mess) and the icing on the cake headed by the official candidate herself.

One of the candidates, Tyrians will say, marched in search of support, while the other, Trojans will say, walked around already raised on her shoulders.

Each one will describe each other.

So far we have come.

If the race ended today, according to the most recent polls (Buendía & Márquez), the winner would wear cherry, leaving the red and blue candidate behind 23 points.

The adjustments—the totes and the titos—made by Xóchitl Gálvez during the inter-campaign period would have only allowed him to get one tiny point closer to Claudia Sheinbaum.

So much jumping with the ground being so even.

Now the campaign without prefixes begins.

Tsunamis of propaganda and information are predicted, as well as three presidential debates, as expected as they are little seen.

Patience.

In thirteen weeks and a fair, the head-on collision will take place that will crown the queen.

On the second day of June, we will go anonymously to the polls to do what one thinks one does when voting: delegate, reward, demand for one or all.

On June 3rd, another time will come other than this, and we will leave behind the old world of static categories.

That day—when every hashtag is over and the unifying enthusiasm subsides—we can whisper a couple of

I-told-you-so words

and resume our lives as if nothing had happened.

The crowd disperses.

Meanwhile, they start!

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