MEXICO LETTER:Not everyone was happy with Mexico City's mayor for organising a mass kissing event
SALVADOR IRYS, a 30-year-old charity worker from Mexico City, had a normal St Valentine’s Day.
He got up late, put on a sleeveless T-shirt to show off the tattoos that cover his arms from shoulder to wrist, and headed downtown with his boyfriend Fernando. The two men stood outside Mexico City’s 16th-century national cathedral and locked lips.
They were joined by more than 39,000 other smoochers: teenagers, tourists, young couples and old, who gathered in the Zócalo, one of the world’s largest city squares, in a bid to break the world record for the most people kissing simultaneously.
For Irys, it was about more than a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Standing outside the austere national palace, home of Mexico’s first congress after independence from Spain, he says that, not so long ago, a friend of his was arrested and fined for kissing her girlfriend on the street.
“This is about self-expression,” Irys says. “It’s not so easy to discriminate now – the city has laws to protect you.”
The kissing event – called Bésame Mucho (kiss me lots) – is the latest initiative organised by the government of Mexico City mayor Marcelo Ebrard. A lanky figure with Harry Potter-style glasses, Ebrard knows how to make headlines. Previous projects included erecting the world’s largest outdoor ice rink last December, when temperatures regularly broke 20 degrees, and building an artificial beach in summer. More controversially, in a country where the majority call themselves Catholic, Ebrard has legalised abortion and gay marriage.
Bésame Mucho wasn’t just about adding the world’s kissing kudos to the city’s reputation. It was billed as a mass protest against violence against women, which the city government says affects 15 per cent of couples in some age groups.
Behind the stage on the square, the city government had set up a row of tents. Inside, city officials and local charities offered tutorials on why violence against women is wrong, 10-minute Aids tests, and sex advice.
“They have a left-wing government here, and this kiss is a statement,” says Christina Montero (55), who made the five- hour journey from Guanajuato to Mexico City to attend the event.
In Guanajuato, a splendid colonial town constantly awash with tourists, public displays of affection have become political dynamite. Mayor Eduardo Romero of the conservative National Action Party, which has strong ties to the Catholic Church, passed a law banning “obscene touching” in public. But within days, public outcry swept the law off the books. Romero has since launched a campaign to celebrate kissing in a bid to repair his reputation.
Ebrard certainly knows how to get people out on the streets. Teenagers on high-school scholarships were asked by the city government if they fancied participating. The result was dozens of smiling teenage girls, complete with angel wings, tossing confetti and offering hugs and kisses to passersby. Other more enterprising souls simply strode confidently around the square with signs offering their lips for a mere five pesos (about 27 cent), or even for free.
Not everything went according to plan. When the scheduled time for the smooching – 4.30pm – rolled around, the assembled crowd was far short of the target the city government had set itself. Perhaps it was the heat, or maybe the locals were happy to just listen to the music and watch others smash world records. Either way, the hours slid past and still the kissing had not begun. By 6.30pm, the crowd was whistling impatiently, and the sultry hostess had gone from sexy exhortations to explaining how much she hates men who get angry when girls walk in front of the TV.
But, as 7pm rolled around and the sun finally set, the kissing happened. Not smoothly – they took three stabs at it, each time with a distressing number of people checking their mobile phones, or staring at the cameras, or doing any number of things that didn’t involve the required kiss of more than five seconds.
Eventually, the Spanish official from Guinness World Records told the crowd that, while several thousand people had not taken part, the record had indeed passed from London to Mexico City. The crowd let out a slightly exhausted cheer.
Not everyone was happy with the event, or its organiser. Ebrard has never made any secret of his desire to be president. More than a few have suggested that policies including rent-a-bike Sundays and free Viagra for the elderly are early campaigning for the 2012 election rather than an attempt to raise the standard of living for the inhabitants of a poor, polluted and dangerous city.
Still, like it or not, the kissing record now belongs to Mexico City, and to Ebrard. St Valentine’s Day – or the day of love and friendship as they call it here – now has a new significance for the city’s 20 million or so inhabitants, regardless of political affiliations.
“I came here to see couples – married couples, boyfriends and girlfriends,” says Maria Avella Reyes, a 70-year-old cleaner who says Ebrard’s laws on abortion and gay marriage go against God’s teachings. “It’s a beautiful event.”