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 News from Around the Americas | June 2006 
Why U.S. Has Stake in Mexican Election
 Hιctor Tobar & Paul Richter - LATimes
| | Reveriano Orozco, shown at one of his Las Vegas money order businesses, holds a certificate of appreciation from the Mexican Federal Elections Institute. The certificate recognizes a local club of Mexicans from the state of Michoacan for their work encouraging other Mexican expatriates to register to vote in Mexico's July 2 presidential election. It is the first time Mexicans living abroad have been allowed to vote by absentee ballot in their home country. (Clint Karlsen) |
When an estimated 40 million Mexican voters go to the polls next month to pick their next president, the result could affect the lives of 296 million people north of the border.
A victory by leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on July 2 would add an emphatic exclamation point to a series of Latin American elections that has seen voters roundly reject the "Washington consensus," the model that emphasizes fiscal discipline and pro-market policies.
A victory by conservative candidate Felipe Calderon might make Mexico a stronger U.S. ally than ever before.
"I suspect the Bush administration would prefer Calderon," said Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington. "There's a greater likelihood of continuity with Calderon. It would eliminate any concern about making connections to other leaders in South America that they have doubts about."
Still, analysts in the United States and Mexico note that Lopez Obrador has not made Washington or U.S. business a target of his stump speeches.
"Both Lopez Obrador and Calderon have been very moderate and very mature in the way they've handled the topic of the relationship with the U.S. in the campaign," said Gabriel Guerra Castellanos, a former Mexican diplomat and presidential spokesman. Both candidates have resisted the temptation to play the Yankee-bashing card with voters, he said.
Once trailing badly in the polls, Calderon surged into a virtual tie in March, when he began attacking Lopez Obrador as a dangerous radical, saying his proposals to increase spending on social programs and public works projects would bankrupt the country and bring back hyperinflation.
Last week, a prominent business group in the northern state of Nuevo Leon said it would go on a "tax strike" if Lopez Obrador was elected.
On the campaign trail, Lopez Obrador says he wants to win by a wide margin so the economic elite "doesn't try to haggle us out of our victory." Recent polls suggest Lopez Obrador has reclaimed his lead.
With Mexican voters more polarized between rich and poor than at any time since the 1910 revolution, there's talk that the United States' most populous neighbor and the main source of its legal and illegal immigration could descend into political anarchy and economic crisis in the hours after election night.
"The democracy Mexico has built is fragile," said Enrique Krauze, a historian and essayist here. "If the result of the election isn't respected by all parties, there could be chaos. Politics is the fastest theater in the world. Anything could happen."
For seven decades, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, ruled Mexico with a firm hand. The party kept together a country with strong regional and class divisions.
The election of Vicente Fox of the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, in 2000 put an end to the "big finger" system by which each president handpicked his successor. But Fox proved to be an ineffective leader. He couldn't push through the tax reform that was at the heart of his economic plan, and failed to get a new airport built for Mexico City.
Nor has Fox been able to make good on a key promise he made at the beginning of his presidency: that his friendship with a like-minded President Bush would quickly bring a comprehensive immigration reform law in the United States.
"There's widespread agreement that things cannot continue as they are," with legislative gridlock and a weak president, Guerra said. "No matter who wins the election, we will see a more effective executive."
Calderon is something of an unknown quantity as a leader. He was president of the PAN and was briefly energy secretary under Fox, but has never held elective office. He has promised to continue Fox's free-trade policies.
In the recent presidential debate, Calderon said he would negotiate a new accord with the U.S. and Canada to stimulate investment in the areas of Mexico that have sent a lot of migrants north. He said Mexico needed to keep close economic ties with the U.S.
"The world has changed
and we have to change our mentality," Calderon said. "It's not enough to put your head in the sand and close yourself off."
Lopez Obrador took a different tack. He suggested that keeping a strong economy at home was the best way to reduce immigration.
"I believe the best foreign policy is a domestic one," he said during the debate. "If we do things right in Mexico if we clean our house, if there is progress in our country, if there is justice, security and political and social stability we will be respected abroad."
Stephen Johnson, a Latin American specialist at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, said Calderon would appeal more to the Bush administration because his platform had "a more detailed free-market economic approach."
But there is only a remote chance that a Lopez Obrador victory would bring a radical shift in the relationship with the U.S., Johnson testified to Congress this spring.
Mexico "is not a country that would be comfortable going back to one-party rule or to an extensive government presence in the economy," Johnson said. Nevertheless, some of Lopez Obrador's more radical supporters expect him to move in that direction, and "it will be his dilemma to find a way to deal with that."
During the debate, Lopez Obrador hinted at a more confrontational approach to Washington if he became president, saying he would order all 45 Mexican consulates in the United States to establish extensions of the attorney general's office to defend immigrants against discrimination.
"The next president of Mexico is not going to be a puppet of any foreign government," Lopez Obrador said. "We will have a relationship of mutual respect with the North American government."
The biography of Lopez Obrador, the son of merchants from the southern state of Tabasco, contains elements similar to those of the leftist and populist leaders who have recently come to power in the region.
Like Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Lopez Obrador is the candidate of an established leftist party with a proud tradition of resistance to authoritarianism.
Like Nestor Kirchner of Argentina, he is a veteran politician with experience as an elected executive he was mayor of Mexico City until last year.
Lopez Obrador is a dark-skinned leader in a country where the fair-skinned tend to dominate the political class something he shares with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. And like Evo Morales of Bolivia, he has credentials as an activist and street fighter Lopez Obrador was bloodied by police during demonstrations against alleged electoral fraud in Tabasco.
If Lopez Obrador were to win, it would mark a turn to the left, "but to the European social democratic left of Brazil, Chile and Argentina, rather than the more populist, authoritarian left of Chavez and Morales," said Robert A. Pastor, director of the Center for North American Studies at American University and a National Security Council official in the 1970s.
A Lopez Obrador victory "would be a reflection of the fact that the principal challenge in Mexico remains poverty and inequality," Pastor said.
Bush administration officials have avoided public comment on Lopez Obrador's candidacy except to say they would cooperate with whoever won the race. Many regional experts doubt that a victory by the populist candidate would cause a major disruption in the relationship.
U.S. analysts point out that it would be difficult for any Mexican leader to radically alter the country's growing interdependence with the United States. If Lopez Obrador were elected, he would need strong U.S.-Mexican economic ties to helped pay for increased social benefits he has promised the poor, they say.
"There may be changes in style and some shift in direction, but in macroeconomic terms I don't think you'll see major changes in Mexico's overall economic orientation," said Peter DeShazo, a senior U.S. diplomat for Latin America until 2004.
Lopez Obrador has criticized some aspects of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Among other things, he says he would renegotiate provisions that are to open Mexican markets to U.S. corn and beans in 2008.
Still, "the reality is that Mexico is the third-largest trading partner to the United States, and that's important to both countries," said DeShazo, who directs the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
DeShazo said that the new Mexican president would face a divided legislature, just as Fox did, and would "need to build consensus to get anything done."
Pamela Starr, Latin America specialist with the Eurasia Group, a global risk analysis firm, said Lopez Obrador probably would surprise many observers as president, even those followers who expect him to carry out a messianic revolution.
"I think his enemies will be surprised that he won't be a spendthrift," Starr said. "He will sustain macroeconomic stability. His supporters will be surprised that he is not going to aggressively go after the monopolies and the elite. He's too much of a pragmatist to do that."
Tobar reported from Mexico City and Richter from Washington.
Leaning Left
Should Mexicans elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador president next month, it would be a continuation of a string of recent Latin American elections in which leftist candidates have won office:
Year Country Elected
2006 Chile Michelle Bachelet
2005 Bolivia Evo Morales
2004 Uruguay Tabare Vazquez
2003 Argentina Nestor Kirchner
2002 Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
2000 Venezuela Hugo Chavez
2000 Chile Ricardo Lagos
Sources: BBC, CIA World Factbook |
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