Expatriates Have Impact on Mexican Politics

A large framed photo of the presidential candidate sits on a mantel, his pensive glare staring at the crowd of volunteers packed into a room in this Boyle Heights house.

The message is simple: Cuauhtemoc Cardenas wants you.

“He is very excited about this tour here in Los Angeles,” Oscar Estrada, a deputy with Mexico’s Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, tells the group. The candidate asks for them by name, Estrada says in Spanish: “Where’s Felipe? Where is Milecio?”

Such is the relationship between the Mexican presidential candidate and his Los Angeles supporters.

The PRD’s Cardenas, who polls show is running third among the candidates in Mexico’s presidential race, arrives in Los Angeles today seeking votes and support. His foot soldiers are the kind presidential candidates love.

They showed up on a recent Saturday night ready for work and each left with an assignment: to help find a site for a political dinner, hand out fliers, give a speech, serve as a driver. The candidate is relying on them to make his visit a success. They know the city. They know the Mexican population here. They are his voice in Los Angeles.

Ask Melania Mora why she gives her time and she says the Mexican government is only disguised as a democracy. Her desire for the nation? True democracy.

Many volunteers say improved conditions in Mexico have a direct impact on the United States.

A better Mexican economy, for example. “That way our people won’t have to come here,” said Jose Gonzalez, a tool and die maker who is coordinator of the local campaign. “It’s not that I don’t love the United States. I love the United States. I’d like for people in Mexico to have the things people in the United States have.”

Another Mexican presidential candidate, Vicente Fox of the center-right National Action Party, or PAN, visits California today and Monday.

Like Cardenas, Fox has local residents assisting him.

The visits demonstrate once again how events in the United States and Mexico are inextricably--and sometimes ironically--tied. An estimated 10.8 million Mexicans live outside the country, most in the U.S. Although they cannot vote in Mexico’s election, they possess a growing influence on the electorate at home. Any candidate hoping to break the more than 70-year dominance of Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is now obligated to make Los Angeles a stop on the campaign trail.

“The reason Fox and Cardenas are coming here is because whatever they do here resonates very loudly in Mexico,” said Denise Dresser, a visiting fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy.

Cardenas supporters gather at a house on Soto Street in Boyle Heights. The house with the bright yellow banner across the top and birds of paradise in the frontyard has become a headquarters for Cardenas’ Los Angeles tour.

“He doesn’t want any contact with the consulate, an authority of the Mexican government and of the government of the United States,” said Estrada, who is an undersecretary of organization for the PRD. “His intention is very clear--it is to meet with Mexicans here in California, and obviously he is very interested in having successful meetings with the media, because the media are very important.”

Mexicans in Los Angeles represent scores of votes back in Mexico, where relatives and villages each year receive an estimated $6 billion from immigrant U.S. workers.

Cardenas’ Los Angeles supporters are factory workers, office workers, retired people, young and old. They share roots in Mexico and a deep desire to improve it.

“The only thing that doesn’t work in Mexico is the government,” said Gonzalez. “This is a problem for the people. How can it be we have everything we need in this nation, but we have to leave our towns and our country because there is no hope?”

According to the PRD, 25% of Mexico’s population--about 22 million people--lives in extreme poverty. Under the rule of the PRI, millions of people have been forced out of the country to look for employment in the U.S. It is an example, PRD supporters say, of how PRI rule has had an impact on the United States.

Supporters gathered at the Boyle Heights house believe Cardenas is the only candidate committed to change--someone, they say, who can end a long period of corruption and dishonesty.

The volunteers are all members of Alliance for Mexico, a coalition that includes opposition groups.

Members of the alliance have launched a campaign called “Vote for Me,” encouraging Mexicans in this country to tell relatives and friends in Mexico to vote for Cardenas.

Hector Alvarado, a union worker from Maywood, said that for every 10 Mexican workers in the United States, there are 100 friends and relatives living back home. “We are 10 million,” Alvarado said. “We could be 100 million.”

The alliance has about 1,000 registered members throughout California. There are offices in Boyle Heights and Maywood.

Many members are longtime Cardenas supporters. In 1997, he became the first popularly elected mayor of Mexico City. The son of beloved Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas, he earned a civil degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Supporters respectfully call him El Ingeniero, the engineer.

Many believe Cardenas has already won the presidency once. In 1988 he ran a strong race but lost to PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

“Many people to this day believe that Cardenas may have won that vote and it was stolen from him,” said Dresser, who teaches political science at the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico.

After the election, throngs of protesters converged in the Main Square in Mexico City--and in front of the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles.

Some of those local protesters, including Gonzalez, became activists after that election. PRD supporters, known in Spanish as perredistas, run a Web site, https://www.perredista.com. They gather in states with large Mexican populations.

If the alliance members are Cardenas’ voice in the United States, he promises to be theirs in Mexico.

One issue is allowing Mexicans living outside the country to vote in Mexican elections. Support for the idea among Mexicans in the United States is strong, and Cardenas backs the concept.

Last year, the Mexican senate took no action on a bill that would have created a mechanism to let Mexicans living abroad vote in the July 2 presidential election. According to the Mexican constitution, electoral law changes must be adopted at least one year before an election.

“This thing of not having the right to vote has really stung a lot of people,” said Felipe Aguirre, a coordinator of Cardenas’ visit.

“There were a lot of people who really wanted to participate,” he said. “A lot of people who come here from Mexico never participated in an election because they never thought their vote was worth anything.”

A Desire to See U.S.-Style Democracy

But Mexicans who live in the U.S. now have the experience of witnessing this democracy at work, and want to see the same in Mexico.

“The PRI government did not recognize us, that we are Mexicans,” said David Silva Villalobos, who heads the PRD in Washington’s Yakima County.

To demonstrate their ire against the government’s failure to allow them to vote in the July election, the alliance is organizing a cabalgata, a cavalcade of horseback-riding charros. On June 24, they will travel from Washington state to Tijuana, picking up riders along the way. In Tijuana, those with election cards will cast their votes on July 2.

Silva, who holds dual citizenship in Mexico and in the United States, is also active in the Democratic Party. “We will be always Mexicans, even though many of us obtained U.S. citizenship so we can protect our rights,” he said.

The opposition parties are not alone in recognizing those who have left Mexico for the United States.

“Mexico as a state also has been courting Mexican immigrants for quite a long time,” said Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, an assistant professor of sociology at USC.

One means of maintaining contact with Mexicans in Los Angeles is through the hometown associations, groups that support the towns the members left behind.

Though many associations are independent bodies, in recent years some have been formed through the Mexican Consulate. It is an example, Rivera-Salgado said, of the government seeking to influence Mexicans living in the United States.

Any Mexican candidate who visits here, however, must expect to have to win over many in their audience.

“My organization is nonpartisan,” said Guadalupe Gomez, president of the Zacatecanos Civic Committee. “We listen to all candidates and we go for the best candidate and the best proposals. Our goal is to present a platform where the candidates can come in and give their messages . . . what they’re going to do about education, jobs, the environment, the economy, about the debt that Mexico has.”

Months ago the civic committee extended invitations to Mexico’s six presidential candidates. Only Cardenas and Fox responded, Gomez said.

Fox had been scheduled to speak in Los Angeles, but instead will spend his California visit in Bakersfield, Fresno and Sacramento.

During his two-day visit, Cardenas will meet a wide swath of Mexicans and Mexican Americans. His schedule on Monday includes a meeting with members of the hometown associations. A rally is set for 6 p.m. Monday at Olvera Street.

The visits, though hardly the first by a Mexican candidate, illustrate the changing status of Mexicans living here, Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez recalled when one candidate in the 1994 election was asked about allowing Mexicans abroad to vote. The candidate responded, “ ‘We’re not going to give the votes to the delinquents,’ ” Gonzalez said.

“It’s a big change,” he said. “The former candidate called you ‘delinquents.’ The present candidate comes to look for your vote and your sympathy.”