When Citizens Disagree on Even the Time of Day
On today's op-ed page of the LA Times, Jorge G. Castan~eda, a political scientest and writer in Mexico City, used time zones as a metaphor for the political fragmentation and social dissolution of today's Mexico. Among other things, he writes: One example involves the time zones in the country and the absurd debate that took place in March as to who would adopt daylight saving time. Some states have adopted the hour change, others have not. Some are on U.S. Central time, some on Mountain time and some on Pacific time, while the one that used to go by Eastern time--Quintana Roo, where Cancun is located--decided to go back to Central time. While Mexico City Mayor Cuauhtemoc Cardenas wisely desisted from heeding his rank and file and accepted the federal government's decision to move clocks forward on April 1, it was touch and go for several days. The country cannot even agree, literally, on the time of day. I assume that the ``April 1'' here was the date of Cardenas's decision, not the date the clocks actually moved (which was presumably April 4 as usual in North America these days). We know about Quintana Roo and have some idea of states that fall into all the categories mentioned above, but it perhaps some states have changed since last year, and it would be useful to know exactly what happened in Mexico this spring. Reference: http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/COMMENT/t000041976.1.html
Paul Eggert wrote:
On today's op-ed page of the LA Times, Jorge G. Castan~eda, [...] The country cannot even agree, literally, on the time of day.
I would hope they wouldn't agree! What time did he want it to be in the whole country: LA Time, Mexico City Time or maybe halfway in between? Sounds like a silly analogy about fragmentation to me. Or to look at it another way, if someone in The Capital wanted to impose a country-wide standard time, I can see why there would be fragmentation! -Paul
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Paul Eggert -
Paul Hill