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 Editorials | August 2005 
Mexican Politicians Face Challenge in U.S.
 S. Lynne Walker - Copley News Service
| | Paulino Hermosillo and his family were among the few in South Gate who heard a pitch from a Mexican party leader. (Photo: John Nelson/CNS) |
Manuel Espino looked at a sea of empty chairs in the South Gate High School auditorium and contemplated the magnitude of the challenge facing Mexico's political parties.
Espino, the leader of President Vicente Fox's National Action Party, or PAN, came to this city bordering Los Angeles on Saturday to court Mexicans who recently won the right to cast absentee ballots in next year's presidential election.
But nothing was going as planned.
A powerful politician whose appearances in Mexico command big crowds and thundering applause, Espino expected supporters to fly in from all over the United States to talk about the immigration plank in his party's campaign platform.
Instead, only 30 seats in the auditorium were filled.
The empty seats provided a harsh lesson about how hard Mexican politicians will have to work to win the votes of the estimated 4 million registered voters in the United States eligible to cast ballots in the July 2006 election.
As his eyes swept across the meager crowd, Espino tried to find something positive in the embarrassingly low turnout.
"This is a good experience for us," he said. "It tells us the size of the job we have to do to stir interest among Mexicans in the United States in participating in decisions in our country."
One in 10 Mexicans live outside their country. Roughly 98 percent of those expatriates – an estimated 11 million – live in the United States. In a close election, which the upcoming race is expected to be, they could be the deciding factor.
But the politicians don't know how to reach them.
Many of the potential voters left their country years ago. They have assimilated into small towns and big cities across the United States. Their children were born here. They own homes and businesses. At least 100 are U.S. millionaires.
The more-established expatriates have the luxury of looking to their roots and searching for ways to make Mexico a better place for those they left behind. Now that they are schooled in U.S.-style democracy, they have become more demanding, more critical of the Mexican government.
"We want Mexico to progress, to develop economically so that when we go to the U.S. it is for pleasure, not out of necessity," said Luis de la Garza, who left Mexico 22 years ago and now owns a Spanish-language television station and a Spanish-language radio station in Dallas. "If we develop Mexico, we can slow immigration."
Immigrants send home billions of dollars a year. This year, the figure will reach nearly $19 billion. But their ambitions stretch beyond helping their families and contributing to public works projects.
They are pushing the Mexican government to turn its attention to the impoverished countryside. And they are urging changes in financial regulations that would make it easier for them to invest in their own country. They insist they should get the same financial concessions that the Mexican government grants to foreign companies that invest in Mexico.
"Immigrants are not waiting for what the parties promise," said Primitivo Rodríguez, Mexico coordinator of the Coalition for the Political Rights of Mexicans abroad, who lived in the United States for nearly 20 years before returning to Mexico. "They are saying this is what we demand. This is what we need. Now there is real pressure."
The expatriates also command respect for another reason: They hold powerful sway over relatives in Mexico who seek their opinions before casting ballots.
"The politicians understand that the vote of each immigrant is a double vote," said Carlos Olamendi, who left Mexico 25 years ago and now runs a restaurant in Orange County. "Immigrants have value because they have influence."
Each of Mexico's three major parties is searching for ways to tap that growing wealth and political clout.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, sent the 24-year-old son of presidential hopeful Roberto Madrazo to the San Joaquin Valley this month to persuade immigrants to take advantage of the new law allowing them to vote by absentee ballot.
Meanwhile, the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, is working on an immigration platform that will touch on issues such as scholarships for the children of immigrants, programs for women and child immigrants who face crises in the U.S. and a binational health care program.
In December, when nearly 1 million immigrants return home for the holidays, the PRD plans to launch a voter registration drive in pueblos throughout the countryside, PRD congressman Juan José García said.
The party also hopes to extend its political structure in the U.S. beyond traditional states such as California, Texas and Illinois to new migrant-receiving states such as North Carolina and Georgia.
"This is a great opportunity to create a political community in the United States," García said. "All of the parties are now obligated to include in our platforms attention to issues that will win the immigrant vote."
No one has taken as great a political risk as Espino did when he became the first party president to visit the United States after the Mexican Congress voted in June to allow absentee ballots.
The idea for the trip, Espino said in an interview before he came to California, was to ask immigrants for their ideas before the party drafts its platform.
Although that hardly sounds revolutionary in the context of U.S. politics, it is a refreshing shift for Mexicans.
"They're coming to listen," Olamendi said. "That's a change."
But when Saturday's meeting began, it had all the earmarks of a typical Mexican political gathering.
The group of dignitaries sat above the audience at a table on the auditorium stage as the session began. Then the governor of Guanajuato, Juan Carlos Romero Hicks, gave a long-winded speech that prompted some yawning spectators to stand up and leave.
"They're going for something new here, but they're working with Mexican rules," said Steve Weingarten, a communications consultant who attended the meeting. "This just doesn't play in America. They're Mexican (voters), but they're used to the American trappings of how politics works."
The session that was scheduled to last until 5 p.m. ended shortly after Espino grabbed his coat at 11:30 a.m. and headed for the door.
He acknowledged that his party is foundering in this uncharted territory, where the old patterns of Mexican politics clearly don't apply. When he gets back to Mexico City, he said his party will work on a new political strategy for the PAN's campaign north of the border.
"This is an enormous challenge. We still don't have an organization in the United States," he said. "We need a complete evaluation of our political presence in the United States." |
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