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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | September 2005 
Deputy Hopes To Derail López Obrador Bid
 José De Cordoba - The Wall Street Journal
| | A young, conservative, Mexico City councilwoman is working day and night to thwart the former mayor's presidential aspirations. |
Tough, street smart and working class, Andrés Manuel López Obrador recently stepped down as mayor of this sprawling metropolis to run for president of Mexico. Young, chic and upper class, Gabriela Cuevas is determined to stop him. Cuevas, a 26-year old member of Mexico City's local congress, has stalked López Obrador during the past four years, trying to goad him into political errors. Around town, she is known as Diputada Demandona or Deputy Lawsuit for the many actions she has filed against the 51-year-old presidential hopeful.
López Obrador can run, but he can't hide his record, says Cuevas, who delves into the minutiae of city reports to gather ammunition for weekly news conferences blasting the López Obrador administration for everything from Mexico City's wave of kidnappings to corruption among Mexico City officials. "If he wins, I'll have to go into exile," says Cuevas. "He's very vengeful." The antagonism between Cuevas and López Obrador goes to the heart of the political drama unfolding as Mexico gears up for next July's presidential election.
Some wealthy and middleclass Mexicans see López Obrador as a dangerous radical. But many of the country's more numerous poor think he's great. His 70 percent approval rating in Mexico City polls comes, in part, from giving US60 monthly pensions to elderly Mexico City residents, regardless of their income, railing against rich bankers and building a spectacular elevated highway around the city. He is far ahead of his rivals in national polls.
The Bail Incident
Cuevas catapulted to national prominence in April when she posted US180 bail in order to prevent López Obrador from going to prison over a minor land dispute. Under Mexican electoral law, a conviction would have disqualified López Obrador from running for president. But Cuevas was convinced that the mayor would use a conviction or even a night in jail to present himself as a political martyr, chased out of the race on a technicality by a fearful establishment. Unable to go to jail, the mayor angrily denounced Cuevas and a colleague as "cowards and swindlers" and marched to the judge's office to demand he return her money. The judge agreed with the mayor. According to jurists, this marked the first time in Mexican history that anyone went to court in order to try to go to jail. Days after Cuevas's failed attempt to provide bail, half a million Mexicans marched in support of López Obrador, whose standing was soaring in the polls. President Vicente Fox quickly dropped all charges against López Obrador, sparing him a trial and clearing the way for him to run for higher office. Fox is barred by law from running for re-election.
Even Mexicans who don't like López Obrador viewed Cuevas's bail offer as a clumsy misstep, but she is unapologetic. "He wants to be Mexico's Gandhi, but he's a delinquent," she says. "If that photo of him behind bars would have been taken, we'd never get rid of him." César Yáńez, López Obrador's spokesman, said the former mayor didn't want to comment on Cuevas because to do so would be to give her an importance she doesn't possess. Cuevas says she decided to ramp up her crusade after two of the former mayor's closest political allies were caught on video early last year stuffing thousands of dollars in bribes from a city contractor into suitcases and suit-pockets. The contractor, Carlos Ahumada, has remained in jail while the two former city officials are free on bail. Earlier this month, Ahumada sewed his lips shut as part of a hunger strike to protest his continued incarceration.
Cultivating A Network Of Informants
Now, the young lawmaker cultivates a network of informants within the city bureaucracy, who feed her the latest sorry statistics on the city's crime wave, which she then passes on to reporters. Using her cellphone's text-messaging system, she recently arranged a secret rendezvous with her undercover sources at a local cafeteria. "It felt very James Bond," she says. She also hired a bus to take journalists on a night-time tour of the city's dysfunctional police stations. Clad in blue jeans, she marched into a grungy station, where fliers of unidentified murder victims hung on the walls, and interviewed detectives who complained that they had to dig into their own pockets to repair their patrol cars. López Obrador, the son of a shopkeeper, rose to political prominence by organizing sometimes violent protests, blockades of oil wells and marathon marches in the 1980s protesting Mexico's lack of democracy. After his political career stalled in the former ruling party, he bolted to the leftist opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), casting himself as a champion of the downtrodden. As mayor, he drove a beat-up Nissan Tsuru to work and cut his salary when he took office in 2000. As presidential candidate for the PRD, he promises to build a bullet train to the U.S. border from Mexico City among other spending projects.
Congressional ‘Rugrat’
Cuevas, tall and blond, was born in an upscale Mexico City neighborhood, went to a private Catholic girls school, and rose through the ranks of President Fox's National Action Party, or PAN, as a youth activist. Thanks to friendships with party elders, Cuevas, at age 22, became the youngest federal congresswoman of her legislative class, and was dubbed the party's "Rugrat." Barred by law from running for re-election to Congress, she got the nod to run in one of two PAN strongholds in Mexico City, and became the youngest politician directly elected to the city's assembly. Determined to expose what she sees as López Obrador's hatred of whiter, richer Mexicans, she says she deliberately flaunts her looks and wealth. Last year, she showed up in an elegant black business suit to hector the mayor with a series of rhetorical questions after his annual state of the city address to the assembly. She says she hoped to provoke him into a down-with-the-rich diatribe, but the mayor, looking glum, brushed her off. Yáńez said López Obrador respects honest entrepreneurs who with their own efforts create jobs and wealth. He rejected any racism or classism on the former mayor's part. "To say he doesn't like somebody because she or he is guerito is absurd," said Yáńez, referring to Cuevas's blond hair. |
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